Johnson, Kingman-Wapato honored at women’s ‘Supporting Each Other’ luncheon
The 13th annual National Indian Women’s ”Supporting Each Other” luncheon singled out Jacqueline Johnson and Gay Kingman-Wapato for long careers with major Indian and Alaska Native organizations.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, introduced Johnson, Tlingit, the current executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. ”NCAI’s voice is loud and clear” in Washington, Murkowski said. ”NCAI has gathered much of its strength under Jackie Johnson’s leadership.”
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., introduced Kingman-Wapato, Cheyenne River Sioux, executive director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association. Ron His Horse Is Thunder, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, later took the podium to reveal that Kingman-Wapato works without pay for the slenderly funded association – often giving him direction he couldn’t put a price on anyway.
The audience exceeded 100, with many dropping in from the NCAI mid-winter session in the same hotel.
Apology resolution has backers in the House
Fresh from amending Senate Bill 1200, the hard-fought Indian Health Care Improvement Act reauthorization, in the Senate, the apology resolution of Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., has won backers in the House of Representatives, where it is known as House Joint Resolution 68. An ”H.J.” resolution can become law if it passes the House (having already passed the Senate) and is signed by the president.
Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., Chickasaw by birthright though not enrolled, has taken up the resolution in the House. It is identical to the Senate version and would be attached to the House version of the IHCIA.
Some opinion leaders within Indian country have raised their voices against a congressional apology to Native peoples that doesn’t include reparations or a secondary resolution against future dispossession of Indian nations.
But Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the retired Northern Cheyenne senator from Colorado, in Washington on the health bill that he spearheaded for years, said symbols are important in America. ”And this [apology] is a symbol of the tragedy that befell American Indians. … It’s a kind of atonement.”
Campbell said many lawmakers are concerned that once an apology is approved, the other shoe will fall in the form of demands for reparations. With a precedent set, reparations could then be expected from blacks, the Irish, etc., Campbell said, describing the thinking on Capitol Hill. ”That’s also one of the things that’s holding up the Akaka Bill [for federal recognition of a Native Hawaiian governing entity, after Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka] … as well as the Lumbee [recognition] bill down in the Carolinas.”
Boren’s press secretary, Cole Perryman, said the apology resolution closes with a disclaimer that ”Nothing in this section 1) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or 2) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.” He declined to assess the resolution’s chances in the House, saying it would be speculation at this stage.
Emergency fire bill includes tribes
Catastrophic wildfires on federal land, including land held in trust for tribes and individual Indians, would be fought with funding from a separate designated account under a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., chairman of the Natural Resources Committee; Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the Resources subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands; and Norman Dicks, D-Wash., chairman of the Interior Department Appropriations subcommittee in the House.
The Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, H.R. 5541 in the House, seeks to fund the separate account with appropriations equal to the average costs incurred, over the preceding five fiscal years, by the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service.
A dramatic rise in the cost of suppressing catastrophic emergency wildfires has siphoned money from the Forest Service, according to a Natural Resources Committee release, initiating what Rahall terms ”a sad trend – turning the Forest Service into the Fire Service.”
Grijalva added that fire seasons will continue to intensify due to climate change and drought, underscoring the need for public land managers to use protection and prevention funds for those purposes, rather than emptying them every year in the fight against catastrophic wildfires. Dicks said escalating fire costs threaten the ability of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to carry out their core functions of land management.
Interior whistleblower reaches agreement
A witness against the federal government in the Cobell v. Kempthorne class action lawsuit over the Individual Indian Money trust has reached an agreement with the Department of the Interior that holds both parties harmless from liability or wrongdoing.
Robert McCarthy ended his government service Feb. 16, little more than two weeks after the federal judge in Cobell, James Robertson, drew on his testimony in finding that Interior cannot account to the plaintiffs for the IIM trust. McCarthy, then an employee in the solicitor’s office at Interior, contradicted the argument of the defense that it can account for income from land leases, stating in part that revenue collection was on an ”honor system.”
Interior’s delegate agencies depended on lessees to report income on the land the lessees themselves leased, McCarthy testified. ”They had no proactive way of invoicing payments even when they were in default. I saw files that were years in default [of payment] and no action was taken to issue even default notices, let alone invoices.”
In ruling against the government, Robertson wrote that Interior used ”something like an honor system,” relying on lease holders for accurate and timely payment.
According to a release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Government Accountability Project, both representing McCarthy, the former low-income legal aid programs attorney and tribal law clinic director will take up a new post as managing attorney of the Oklahoma City Law Office for Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.
