Dear Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), As a Native person, I am one of a few million people for whom the United States government holds a trust responsibility. As a journalist and Native studies scholar, I also am privileged to have my words published by Indian Country Media Network. What I have to say may not ring true for all of Indian country, but I would wager that it will for most at this point in time.
As the new Senate Committee on Indian Affairs chairman, Mr. Hoeven, you are tasked with making decisions that will benefit Native peoples as individuals, but perhaps more importantly, as nations. It is your duty to see to it that the government’s treaty-based trust responsibility is carried out with the highest integrity and honor. Honoring the trust relationship means abiding by the inherent sovereignty of tribal governments. However, to be perfectly honest, I have grave concerns about your capacity to meet those obligations. Here are my reasons:
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To begin with, in the statement you issued with Senator Udall on January 5, Mr. Hoeven, you claimed that jobs and economic growth in Indian families, communities, and businesses will be your priorities in order to “improve the lives of people across Indian country.” You further claim that in your role you will address the issues of job creation, health care, education, public safety, housing, and natural resource management. While these are noble goals, I notice that nowhere do you personally guarantee to uphold the government-to-government relationship with Native nations, or even the federal trust responsibility. Only Senator Udall explicitly affirms both. Senator Udall’s track record in New Mexico speaks for itself relative to tribal sovereignty, and given my experience working with him when he was a congressman, I know that he is deeply committed to these vitally important political realities.
Mr. Hoeven, your statement reflects a startling narrow concern for economic development, and the specific mention of natural resource management is to me a red flag, signaling what your agenda really is: maximized fossil fuel extraction, and removing any and all obstacles toward that goal, regardless of what tribal governments want. The new GOP controlled, fossil fuel-heavy government has made it quite clear that they will prioritize their own corporate interests, from Trump’s initial moves to silence the EPA and Department of the Interior, to congressional goals to abolish the EPA and dismantle environmental protections. To say nothing of Republican dreams to privatize tribal lands.
And why would you be interested in advancing the constitutionally-based treaty rights of Native nations, given that when they assert those rights, you consistently work against them? So little regard do you have, that your own website doesn’t even have dedicated space to Native American issues, even though you have a sizeable Native population in your home state of North Dakota and are chairman of the Senate committee.
But more troubling Mr. Hoeven, in North Dakota you have not stood up for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s right to protect treaty lands in the face of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Of course you wouldn’t, since your top campaign donors come from oil and gas, and you personally are heavily invested in fossil fuels. You have tacitly, if not overtly, supported the civil and human rights abuses perpetrated by the militarized police force of Morton County by not condemning the egregious use of violence against peaceful protestors. And you turned a blind eye when journalists’ rights to free speech were violated with their arrests.
To make matters worse, your recent statement that “now, we all need to work together to ensure people and communities rebuild trust and peacefully resolve their differences” after the Trump administration overrode orders to conduct an environmental impact statement in the interest of meaningful consultation with the tribe, is a rhetorical slap in the face to Indian country. It comes off not only as disingenuous and patronizing, but unrealistic and ahistoric. In order to rebuild trust, there must have been trust to begin with. The shameful history of U.S. treaty abrogation toward the Great Sioux Nation (and all of Indian country)—which the DAPL conflict laid bare—guaranteed that there could be no trust between Native nations and the federal government when it doesn’t even adhere to its own constitutional mandate that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
The behavior of the North Dakota government, under your leadership, Senator Heitkamp, and Governor Dalrymple, further exacerbates the legal (and physical) injuries perpetrated as a result of the legally questionable and morally reprehensible DAPL. It reminds us as Indian people that all the diplomatic language of cooperation and peaceful resolution is, as it always has been, no more than lip service by a colonial power only out for its own self-interest. And let’s be honest: that has only ever been about acquiring and exploiting Indian lands and resources.
In today’s world of extreme extractivism (in which Mr. Hoeven, you are a major player) and increasing climate change, your words of reconciliation ring hollow, in the face of Native people’s efforts to protect their lands and resources from the environmental devastation that the fossil fuel industry inevitably wreaks. With the fossil fuel-dominated, billionaire class’s seizure of government now complete, what is clear is that you are their head gatekeeper in Congress. With you as their ally and uninterested in defending tribal sovereignty, the Earth-rapers undoubtedly believe themselves to have carte blanche to deregulate, drill, and frack their way into the bleak future that awaits all of our grandchildren. And where will you be when they talk about the way their ancestors sabotaged their possibilities to live in a sustainable world? Mr. Hoeven, you will be on the wrong side of history.
Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville) is a freelance writer and Research Associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She was educated at the University of New Mexico and holds a bachelor’s degree in Native American Studies and a master’s degree in American Studies. Follow her blog at DinaGWhitaker.wordpress.com.
