Health, Native Hawaiian bills advance in Senate
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs voted four bills out of committee May 10, putting them before the full Senate with a year and a half left to go in the 110th congressional session. The early action increases the likelihood that time will not run out on the bills, as it has in years past on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act reauthorization, for instance.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the committee chairman, has made the reauthorization a priority, as have the National Congress of American Indians and the National Indian Health Board, among others. Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, in Washington on other issues for the lobbying firm Holland and Knight, recalled that when he chaired the committee, he could not get the support of President George W. Bush and his administration and the bill languished. As a result, he added, Indian health care, alone in the national health care system, has been left out of some key advances in medical science.
A Native Hawaiian bill, S. 310, has also been before the full Senate before. The Akaka Bill, as it is informally known after Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, seeks to authorize a process that would result, over time, in the federal recognition of a Native Hawaiian governing entity. In last year’s 109th Congress, the bill faltered on a procedural vote. But a swing of four votes would have brought the bill to a vote on its merits. Since then, changes in the bill, and in the Senate after last November’s election, have improved the bill’s chances to the point that lobbyists and congressional staff alike have speculated on whether Bush will veto the bill if it reaches his desk. The House of Representatives has passed the Akaka Bill in previous versions and is considered likely to pass it again.
Should the Senate concur, lobbyist Patricia Zell said a key strategic consideration of the bill’s advocates will be whether to send it to the president as a stand-alone item, more easily vetoed, or to attach it to a larger bill in the Senate. Zell said there is no predicting an evolving strategy, but noted that bills with a limited constituency sometimes have better prospects when attached to larger bills.
Apology resolution is again before the Senate
A resolution that would apologize to Indian tribes and Native peoples on behalf of the United States is again before the Senate, but this time its sponsor is a presidential candidate.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., left the campaign trail long enough to attend the April 28 dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. He offered an apology, in language similar to the resolution he has sponsored, for historical wrongs and said he’ll work to make up for them. Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, attending as a Northern Cheyenne descendant and, for years, the lead advocate in Congress of a protected site and federal acknowledgment of the massacre, said Brownback is a good man who means it.
The resolution, S.J. Res. 4 in the Senate, states in part that the nation, ”acting through Congress … apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States; expresses its regret for the ramifications of former wrongs and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together; urges the President to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land by providing a proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and Indian tribes; and commends the State governments that have begun reconciliation efforts with recognized Indian tribes located in their boundaries … ”
Bush acknowledges tribal losses at Jamestown
JAMESTOWN, Va. – Continuing a regular theme of the Jamestown commemorations, President George W. Bush told a Mother’s Day audience that the first permanent English settlement in America ”came at a terrible cost to the Native tribes of the region, who lost their lands and their way of life.” The president also acknowledged the enslavement of West Africans in Jamestown’s tobacco fields.
”Their story is a part of the story of Jamestown. It reminds us that the work of American democracy is to constantly renew and to extend the blessings of liberty.”
