Tribal Leaders Meet, Voice Sovereignty Concerns

Bolstered by last week’s historic meeting with President Clinton, Native American leaders from Alaska to Florida met here Thursday with senior White House officials to press for strengthened sovereign status.

American Indian nations are not used to speaking with one voice about anything, but they are united over concern about confusing and often volatile overlap between tribal government jurisdictions and federal Indian policies.

More than 200 tribal leaders began unprecedented meetings Thursday with Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt by discussing ways to resolve conflicts over the management of tribal natural resources and the power of tribal courts.

The two-day National American Indian Listening Conference concludes today with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros joining similar talks about gaming disputes, religious freedom, health, housing and crime.

“For so long the doors of the White House were closed. Now, the gates are open,” Reno said in her opening remarks. “This listening conference is a step toward doing away with the old, closed way of doing business.”

The federally sponsored event at the Albuquerque Convention Center was billed as an opportunity for Cabinet officials to hear Indian concerns in detail, leading to more talks over specific questions of jurisdiction over Native American lands.

Coming into the conference, Native American leaders pointed out that every new Administration vows to do better on Indian lands, but rarely lives up to the promises. For their part, Administration officials feared that the Native American leaders would come to the table with fiery rhetoric rather than practical recommendations.

Babbitt urged Native American leaders to seek out the 90 federal officials in attendance and make their concerns known, close up and personal. And Navajo nation President Peterson Zah, who, along with Cherokee nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller, helped arrange the meeting, told the gathering that “the long-winded should cut it short and the shy should get aggressive.”

By day’s end, that approach seemed to be working. Although specific concerns differed from one reservation to the next, the common denominator was a desire to be treated as sovereign entities. Most of the tribal leaders wanted help to develop their own economies, free of interference from outside agencies or individuals.

For Boyd Graham, chairman of the Duckwater Shashone Tribal Council, about 260 miles north of Las Vegas, that means being able to expand his reservation boundaries for farming and a dude ranch. For Arcadio Gastelum, chairman of the Pascuayaqui Tribe near Tucson, it means getting additional federal law enforcement officers to safeguard a gaming operation and curb delinquency.

In Southern California, “part of the problem is that reservations used to be way out in the sticks where nobody paid attention to them,” said Michael Connolly, an engineer with the Campo Band of Mission Indians in San Diego County.

“Now, urban areas border them and jurisdiction disputes are cropping up everywhere over such things as water rights and gaming centers,” Connolly said. “And while the San Diego Assn. of Governments has an observer on its board from Tijuana, it does not have one (Native American) representative from the 17 reservations in San Diego County.”

“We know what we need to solve our problems--we have the solutions,” added Keller George, a representative of the Oneida Indian nation in New York. “We just need the tools to make them work.”

Few American Indian leaders here were as lucky as Julia Demott, 67, a fisherwoman from the village of Eyak near Cordova, Alaska, who wrangled a seat beside Babbitt during a roundtable discussion. When it came her turn to tell about the lingering effects of the Exxon oil spill of 1989 on her village of 500 people, she at first could barely speak above a whisper.

“Pretend you’re shouting it across the Bering Sea,” Babbitt said with a smile, placing a friendly arm around her shoulders.

Demott did just that, reading a prepared statement in her trembling hands. “Every day there are reports of reduced fish harvests! Exxon says it is because of disease! It is not!” she blared out. “We desperately need assistance in this matter from the Administration!”