One Group Obama's Kept His Promises To: Native Americans

[tekisui]

Source: McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Speaking to 500 people representing 320 tribes, President Barack Obama pledged last month that he wouldn't forget his campaign trail promise to give native communities a greater voice in the White House.

"I said that so long as I held this office, never again would Native Americans be forgotten or ignored," he said. "And over the past two years, my administration, working hand in hand with many of you, has strived to keep that promise."

For the most part, tribal leaders say the president has been true to his word. And they've been watching, intent on holding accountable the president that many of them helped elect, said Jacqueline Johnson Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. They took careful notes during the president's first Tribal Nations conference in 2009; at Obama's second summit last month, they checked to see what goals had been met in the first year as well as what remains undone.

"There is this feeling that there is traction, that we're having a true dialogue," Johnson Pata said. "We're not saying, 'Check the box, you totally won.' We're saying we've got a great foundation, and now we've got to build upon that."

Some of the work has been symbolic — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar early in the administration restored the historic painting "Navajos Breaking Camp" in his office, after it had been mothballed during the Bush administration, for example.

But other accomplishments have had more tangible and far-reaching effects on thousands of people, including the settlement of the long-simmering Cobell lawsuit, which compensates thousands of Native Americans whose land was mismanaged while held in trust by the federal government.


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/17/106891/in-indian-country-obamas-been.html#ixzz1BJjb0uYL

[bluestateguy]

1. An important vote in states like the Dakotas, New Mexico, Arizona and Montanta

If Obama is win any of those states in 2012, Native American votes will be crucial.

[old mark]

2. K&R...When we get Manhattan back, we want it in the original condition...nt

[nmbluesky]

3. I love to see Native get their land, Mantthan back

I want to see Righ-wing, Tea Party and GOP upset more.. We need to see true their face from mask..

[impik]

4. Unrec for BS title

"*One* Group Obama's Kept His Promises to" - More fringe spins and lies.

[tekisui]

5. Wow. You unrecced a positive story for that?

:eyes:

[vaberella]

7. Hardly. There are good threads with decent titles for the NA story.

I've read a few of them. The title itself is disingenuous.

[tekisui]

9. It doesn't say the only group.

Jeez.

[Phx_Dem]

6. Unrec for the shitty title.

:puke:

[JoePhilly]

12. Any and all praise must be countered.

No matter what Obama does, there is something he didn't do ... and so rather than focus on the positive, some need to knee-cap it.

[mikekohr]

8. President Black Eagle, adopted son of the Great Crow Nation, is fullfilling his promises to ALL

Americans.

[namahage]

10. One "positive" post from the OP. n/t

[tekisui]

13. What is that supposed to mean?

[namahage]

14. It doesn't say the only positive post.

Jeez.

[tekisui]

15. Still don't get your point.

:shrug:

Are you trying to say something about me?

[Autumn]

16. Oh look a red

link, that one goes nowhere too.:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[mkultra]

24. +100 for obviousness

[Autumn]

11. K/R for the title and the

article.

[bigwillq]

17. K and R for title!

YAY TITLE!!

:bounce:

WOO HOO for the TITLE!!

LOVE TITLE

YAY

YIPPEEE

[AtomicKitten]

18. K&R

The OP title is the same as the title at the link. Although it can be construed as implying something snotty, it's a great story about an important demographic.

[boppers]

19. "Native Americans see progress with Obama"

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/16/2587502/native-americans-see-progress.html

Same text, sans snarky title.

[PufPuf23]

20. Let's talk about Cobell Lawsuit and empty sucess by POTUS Obama.

Indian country did not win but POTUS Obama managed to end a long fostering lawsuit that has been in the courts for decades -- the mis-management of of natural resources of natural resources on Reservation Lands by the BIA before management was turned back to the Tribes.

Cobell was settled for $3.4 billion ($1.4 billion cash and $2.0 billion land purchases). The damages have been estimated on court filings as high as $176 billion.

The settlement of Cobell is a victory for Obama in that the lawsuit was ended but obscene and considered as such by most American Indians that have a clue.

Obama has managed to get good PR (like in Tucson) but has been worse than Reagan or GWB for the American Indian.

The terms of settlement of the Cobell lawsuit is an obsenity but it plays well to those ignorant of the actual issue.

[ProSense]

21. "Obama has managed to get good PR...but has been worse than Reagan or GWB for the American Indian."

Really?

Indian Health Care Improvement Act Made Permanent By Health Care Reform Legislation

The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010: A Step Forward for Native Women

Maine Tribes Praise Obama's Commitment to UN Declaration

[PufPuf23]

23. Do some homework on Cobell.

All you show is how little you understand about Indian Country.

The Tribes are getting $1.4 billion cash and $2 billion mostly corporate within Reservation boundaries land transferred to private interests by the BIA or less than $0.02 per $1 of fraud by BIA mis-management. Many of the deserving are already dead and the resources are gone. The proposed land acquisations locally are industrial trashed timberland that is a carrying cost to industry. The $2 billion for land acquisation nationally is a drop in the bucket.

POTUS Obama solved a long festering problem on the cheap with Cobell.

You might want to note that the Obama Administration has not made a formal commitment (be a signatory) in to the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples. Read your own article. Get the big disconnect with what happened over Cobell over your blue headline.

The IHS has been improved (and is a good example of public health care). Funding to the Tribes has favored land enforcement and homeland security over human services and the environment.

BIA control of Reservation natural resources ended under Reagan and the Cobell case was to rectify years of mis-management and Tribal assets held in Trust but sold cheaply to private industry by the BIA over years.

Most Tribes are highly political internally.

I am not a POTUS Obama hater but he has made many decisions and appointments that have disappointed me.

As an aside, one local Tribe is suing as of 2010 the USDA over a National Forest timber sale, a single sale larger that the entire amount of timber sold locally in 8 years by the GWB administration and essentially given away to an out of State corporation. The project went to court over not following the USDA's project EIS restrictions regards to protecting Federally zoned active ritual areas and other cultural protections negotiated with the Tribe or required by existing law. Two other local Tribes received over $2 million in alternative energy grants in 2009 whereas all the monies went for capital improvement for an off-Reservation project owned by a non-Indian private corporation that may be a market for resources from the Reservations.

[ProSense]

25. You're talking a settlement,

money, to make an issue of a number of other significant policies this administration has put in place after decades of neglect of the Native American community.

There are complaints about the settlement for black farmers too, but none of that negates that something was done and long overdue.

[PufPuf23]

26. Yes, a settlement of less than $0.02 on the $1.00

The only Federal victory here was to put to bed a group of lawsuits that turned into the longest class active lawsuit in the nation's history and ended up another ripoff of the American Indian and you cite as an Obama "success".

The Cobell settlement plays well in the media and to some short term thinking American Indian leaders but is an atrocity to analytic rather than short term political thinkers.

How about some discourse from you on the Obama Administrations Latin American foreign policy especially regards to indigenous peoples (Indians) in Bolivia, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela? How does Latin American policy in the last 2 years mesh with agreement in principal with the UN regarding indigenous peoples?

The American Indians have made great strides ever since the BIA quit direct management of Reservation lands in the 1980s under Reagan.

[Name removed]

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