WASHINGTON – Oct. 7 found Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell packing up his
office. After 22 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate,
the Colorado Republican and Northern Cheyenne tribal member retires from
office following the current 108th Congress. In this third installment of
his interview with Indian Country Today Sen. Campbell talked about passing
Indian legislation and his plans for the future.

Indian Country Today: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has passed
more legislation on your watch as chairman than ever before. In your
experience, what are some of the keys to getting Indian law through
Congress?

Campbell: Sure has. I’m proud of that. I think, you know, getting Indian
laws through Congress – part is the ability to get along, because so much
around here is done by personal interaction with senators. You yell at them
or swear at them or badmouth them behind their back, or all that – that
doesn’t work. Then try to go back to them next day and ask for help on a
bill. Fat chance! They’re human beings too. You’re not going to get the
help, that’s all. They’ll smile and zip, it’s gone. Can’t do that.

So those relationships I think are important. That’s why I try to not be
partisan in my approach to things here. And that’s why the whole committee
is non-partisan. That’s why I’m the chairman and Senator Inouye is the
vice-chairman. It’s the only committee in the Senate that’s done that way,
by the way, where you have one on each side of the aisle, reporting out an
awful lot of things together. You know, it’s clear – fight when you must.
But it seems to me that reach consensus when you can is the first approach.

The other thing I think we’ve really tried to do, particularly since Paul
has been with me [Paul Moorehead, Campbell’s chief counsel on the
committee], is make sure that no bill passes without Indian input before
the fact. We don’t pass bills and then say to the tribe, look what we’ve
done for you. We say to the tribe up front, here’s a concept, what do you
think? Is this what you’d like us to do? And then we go from there. And I
hope that whoever follows us will do the same thing. We’ve all heard the
old story about Congress passing a law to give refrigeration to Eskimos. I
don’t know if that ever happened or not, but it’s an example of why some of
the things we put in place here, by the time they filter to Indian tribes,
they don’t fit.

The other thing I think that needs a lot of progress is that – a lot of
people don’t know, we can pass a law, we can get it signed into law. That
does not mean it’s going to happen. Because then the regulatory process
starts. And the agencies that are going to implement the law, the bill that
we passed and the president signed, then do the rulemaking business. That
may take a year or more or whatever. Sometimes it falls apart, and they end
up with rules that are almost diametrically opposed to what the concept of
the bill was. And sometimes, even after they do the rules, they don’t do
the information part, so that tribes know they can avail themselves of
such-and-such. And we found that some years ago, when we passed and the
president signed into law the bill to authorize the department of veterans,
Veterans Affairs, to sign memorandums of understanding with tribes, so that
Indian veterans on the reservation could get low-interest VA loans. They
couldn’t do it before that, because that’s tribal ground, they couldn’t do
it. Now they can do that.

Well, we tracked it after what was it, three years? We found only eight
people after three years had even availed themselves of this program, when
there’s thousands of Indian veterans out there. And the reason was, they
didn’t know it. Which means the agencies didn’t do a good job of sending
the information to tribes. You know we can’t really control that in the
legislative part, but it’s where the weakness is sometimes. The tribes
simply don’t – they’re not aware of some of the things that we have done in
our end of it here in legislation because it wasn’t implemented at all, or
it wasn’t implemented right, or too slow or something.

ICT: “Once a Senator, always a Senator.” What are your plans for staying
involved with Indian country once you leave Congress?

Campbell: That’s what they say … I’ve heard it a lot. And I’m going to
stay involved. Mostly because I’m a true believer. Also though because I’ll
still have access, for one thing, i.e. once a Senator always a Senator. And
so I hope that NCAI or NIEA [National Congress of American Indians,
National Indian Education Association] or something, I’ll be doing some
speaking to them. And probably you know – I’ve had a whole bunch of offers
already as you might guess, I told them come back and talk to me after I’m
out – but ‘I’m probably going to be with a law firm out of town. Not in
town [Washington] because I don’t want to live here, but I mean
representing the tribes somewhere. I’ll know more next spring when I’m out
[of Congress]. Going to go with a speaking bureau here in town, mostly to
colleges about Indian issues.

And one of the fun things I’m going to do, I gotta go out and make some
money, and so one of the things I’m doing – we’re licensing the name
Nighthorse … They do outdoor products like clothing, backpacks, tents …
I’ll be doing some designing of clothing and so on, which I really enjoy.
And then the other thing is I’ll be back in my shop a lot more making more
gold rings, which I dearly love to do anyway. That’s therapy for me. Yeah
it’s an income, but it’s also therapy too. So I expect to have a very
challenging life. I’ve had some great offers from colleges and universities
if I want to teach again. I don’t know, I’m just kind of listening to them
all.

ICT: Some people live right, sounds like.

Campbell: Going to spend more time on the rez. You know before I came in
here [for the interview] I was just thinking to myself that, packing, I’ve
got some medicine bags in here … There’s five of them there. The tribe,
people within the tribe, the chiefs society that I belong to, they do what
they call a renewal ceremony for me every four years, which is kind of a
healing, a healing ceremony, but also – I don’t know what’s in those little
bags, you’re not supposed to know, you know – but it’s medicine. And they
have very strong beliefs about the ability to keep you spiritually strong
when you go through this ceremony. I can believe it too, I believe it too.
I want to get back to doing more of that. I really miss it. You know I used
to go to the sweats more, and I used to go – although I’m not a Sun Dancer,
granddad was and a lot of my relatives are Sun Dancers – I like to go to
the Sun Dance, I like to go to anybody’s ceremony. I like to go to the Hopi
Snake Dance or the – I’m a Gourd Dancer. I do that stuff and I really enjoy
it. Now I don’t get in the Snake Dance – just watch it.

ICT: You’ve mentioned the pow wow circuit a little bit.

Campbell: Used to love it. Used to sing with the drum. Used to dance. I was
never a really good top-notch competitive dancer because in our family, we
never really believed in dancing for money. It came down that, you know,
you dance because you enjoy it, you want to participate, but not for money.
And so I never was a real good dancer. Those professional dancers, that’s
what they do … So I’m going to do more of that. I’m really looking
forward to it.

ICT: It sounds like you’ve earned something and you’re going to enjoy it.

Campbell: Oh I’m going to enjoy it. I was running again [for the Senate] as
you probably know, had the staff hired, office open, had contracts for the
media, did fundraisers, all that stuff. And then I had a health scare. It
didn’t turn out to be anything. It was a false alarm. But it kind of
brought things into focus about whether I wanted to stay six more years or
not. I could have stayed. I would have been a slam dunk. I didn’t even have
an opponent. Nobody even announced. They couldn’t find somebody to
announce. So I could have stayed. But I just decided, there’s a time and
place for everything. With the completion of the museum [the National Museum of the American Indian], I feel like I’ve completed something and
it’s time to move on …

You know, you’re talking about the message that I’d like to leave the
Indian people. I think in some respects I broke the glass ceiling. Because
I’ve been the first one here [Indian in the Senate] since Charles Curtis.
And I had heard of Charles Curtis. He was in the House and the Senate and
became a vice-president, and he was a Kaw Osage. And I thought to myself
when I got here, I want to see what that man looked like. So I went over
and I saw his bust, it’s over in the halls of the Capitol as all
vice-presidents’ busts are. He had a great big handlebar mustache and a
bald head. [Laughter] As I looked at that I thought to myself, I wonder if
they knew he was an Indian when he ran, because there must have been a lot
of prejudice in those days … But I’m proud that I’m here now because I
don’t know if he really believed in the Indian way. You know Indian’s not
just blood, it’s also soul. I don’t know if he believed in the Indian way
like I do. So in that respect maybe I broke a glass ceiling. I can remember
when they used to tell me, “We’ll never vote for you if you don’t cut your
hair.” I’m not gonna do it. What you see is what you get. And I didn’t.

Other guys have been elected on the House side. Ben Reifel was the last
Indian. He was Lakota. He was elected about 35 years ago. Rosebud. If you
go back in the transcripts, and how Ben got elected, his big campaign
promise in those days was that he would do away with the reservations.
Yeah! He wanted to get rid of the Indian reservations. And so what got him
elected was not Indians, it was the Anglo vote in South Dakota. That’s what
they elected him [on]. When I saw that I was – oh man. And I knew Ben. He
passed away a few years ago. I knew him. I thought the world of him. But
that’s not what you should do back here as an Indian … And maybe the
Indians voted, if they voted in those days, if they voted for him they
probably did it without knowing what his platform was, and they just voted
because “he’s an Indian too,” or something. That’s how he got the Anglo
vote. But I didn’t get it that way.

ICT: Thanks for your great championship for Indian people.

Campbell: I was honored to be able to do it. They did me a favor by letting
me represent them.

Throughout a lengthy interview, Senator Campbell repeatedly praised his
staff on the Indian affairs committee, as he did on the Senate floor prior
to the Sept. 21 opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.
Committee staff members in the last months of Campbell’s chairmanship are
Lee Frazier, majority professional staff; Jim Hall, majority counsel;
Rhonda Harjo, senior counsel to the majority; Paul Moorehead, majority
staff director and chief counsel; David Mullon, majority deputy chief
counsel; Perry Riggs, counsel to the majority; John Tahsuda, majority
deputy staff director/senior counsel and Matt Tallmer, majority staff
investigator.