Lumbee take another step toward recognition
The House of Representatives has voted by a two-to-one margin, 256 – 128, to recognize the Lumbee of North Carolina as a legitimate tribe.
The Lumbee Recognition Act now goes before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, which narrowly passed it last year. It died in the Senate, but this year’s majority Democrats, then in the minority on the committee, offered most of the bill’s support; and Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, both North Carolina Republicans, continue to make their case for the Lumbee within the Senate GOP.
Recognition would make the Lumbee the third largest tribe acknowledged by the federal government, after the Cherokee and Navajo.
The bill overcame opposition in the House from North Carolina freshman Democrat Heath Shuler, assiduously courted by the Eastern Cherokee within his district to oppose Lumbee claims, and other members of the North Carolina delegation. The Eastern Cherokee, owners of a profitable casino in North Carolina, oppose a legislative recognition of the Lumbee, arguing instead that the federal recognition process instituted in 1978 should apply.
But to apply it to the Lumbee would require an act of Congress. The state of North Carolina recognized the Lumbee as a tribe in the late 1800s. After many now much-debated permutations of history and the Interior Department, Congress also recognized the Lumbee as a tribe in 1956, at the same time forbidding them the rights of other tribes, including the right to seek federal recognition through the process dating from 1978.
Johnson comeback continues
The director of brain injury programs at the National Rehabilitation Hospital has given a vote of confidence to Sen. Tim Johnson’s goal of getting back to work in the Senate.
Dr. Tim Yochelson said the senator shows continuing improvement in his movement, speech and cognitive skills. ”He is reading the paper daily and talking with friends, family and colleagues. His memory and processing skills are strong.”
The South Dakota Democrat remains in therapy for several hours, five days a week, and works from home.
Johnson was stricken with a stroke-like intracerebral bleed on Dec. 13, 2006, signaled by slurred speech during comments to reporters. The neurosurgeon in his case, Vivek Deshmukh, also pronounced himself pleased with Johnson’s progress, adding that the most recent MRI indicates continued healing.
Federici’s is the latest guilty plea in Abramoff debacle
Italia Federici pleaded guilty to tax evasion and obstruction of Senate proceedings June 8. She is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 16 to up to five years in prison, fines and restitution.
The obstruction charge stems from Federici’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in 2005, during its investigation of imprisoned former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s dealings with tribal clientele and their fees. Abramoff and an associate, Michael Scanlon, bilked tribes out of tens of millions of dollars, in part by influencing decisions at the Department of the Interior.
Court documents relate that as president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, Federici served as an information channel between Abramoff and J. Steven Griles, a deputy secretary at Interior.
”In such a role,” the charges state, ”the defendant would communicate in-depth with Abramoff and his clients and the issues and concerns applicable to them, and then communicate in-depth with Griles about these issues and/or forward to Griles white papers and other information and documents Abramoff supplied. The defendant also met with Abramoff and Griles in order to speak substantively and directly about these issues.”
Federici misled the SCIA about communications between herself, Abramoff and Griles ”about issues pending before DOI that directly affected Abramoff’s clients while Griles served as DOI Deputy Secretary.”
Griles was a CREA fund raiser. In return for access to Griles, Abramoff and client tribes at his direction became CREA donors to the tune of half a million dollars.
The tax charge pertains to Federici’s misuse of tax-exempt donations to CREA and her failure to file a return on income tax owed the government of $77,243.
In March, Griles became the top Bush administration official so far to be convicted in the Abramoff scandal, pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.
Congo indigenous are the subject of film tour
A full house of Washingtonians at Wechsler Auditorium on the American University campus watched a presentation and prize-winning film clips on the indigenous semi-nomad, or pygmy, peoples of Africa.
Film producer Olivier Jehu Bikoumou narrated the clips and spoke of his work through a translator. He is a member of the film production team recruited in the Congo by the International Conservation and Education Fund, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that sponsors and promotes conservationist filmmaking by local talent in environmentally threatened regions. The Congo team’s ”Price of Ivory” film on elephant slaughter took home a Merit Award for Effective Message from the recent International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Mont.
The target audience of INCEF films is rural people who can take measures on the ground to serve environmental conservation. As stewards of their rural and jungle homelands, threatened by various invasive influences including wildlife decline and environmental degradation, semi-nomads have responded favorably to films produced by the INCEF team, Bikoumou said.
Local though the ”Price of Ivory” audience may be, the distinct indigenous peoples of Africa are beginning to get a global audience after years of eclipse under the ”we’re all indigenous” banner of national governments. The Botswana government is currently contesting by inaction its own high court ruling that the San or Basarwa (also ”Bushmen”), indigenous peoples of the Kalahari Desert, can return there from their removal to government-appointed settlements; and within a week of INCEF’s Washington screening, a Sunday front-page Washington Post feature chronicled the threatened dispossession of Tanzania’s first people, the Hadzabe, to make room for Saudi Arabian safaris.
