Countywide : Activist Has 2-Part Plan to Help Native Americans on Reservations

Delbert E. (Black Fox) Pomani is asking for help in collecting gifts, clothes and food for orphans on Native American reservations throughout the country.

He plans to drive to the reservations with other Native Americans to hand out the goods just before Christmas. The drivers will rent trucks to make the deliveries.

Pomani’s goal is part of a vision he had when he was 13, growing up on a reservation in North Dakota. The other part is to compile all treaties signed by the U.S. government and Native Americans in an effort to unite tribes throughout the nation and urge that the treaties be honored.

Many of the treaties of the late 1800s call for free health-care services, education and housing for all Native Americans living on reservations in exchange for an end to fighting. The fighting stopped, but many reservations are so poor that there is no running water, electricity, schools or hospitals, said Pomani, a full-blooded Hunkpapa Sioux.

Pomani, 34, lives in a Fullerton apartment, where he has headquartered All Nations Gathering of Treaties, a new nonprofit organization.

Once Pomani and other Native Americans from tribes all over the country have collected the treaties, the group plans to hold a conference and later present the treaties to the United Nations and President Clinton to demand better living conditions on the reservations.

“It is our overdue right,” Pomani said.

Other Native Americans agree.

Matthew (Haump-Ha-Nazhee) Cleveland, Bear clan chief of the Hochunk Nation on the Winnebago reservation in Wisconsin, said the main purpose of the treaty gathering is to promote unity.

“What we are fighting for so dearly is to get our treaty rights so we can retain our Indian traditions, values, principles and languages,” said Cleveland, who is coordinating the treaty gathering conference, which will take place some time in the summer.

“It would be the most beautiful thing if all the nations could come together as one,” said Frank Graywolf, supportive services coordinator for the Southern California Indian Center. “We are all one. We all have the same things in our heart and if we could just come together to look after each other and take care of each other, than everything around us would be OK.”

Officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs said that California treaties were never ratified and, therefore, are not valid. Other treaties may be challenged in court, said Silas Ortley, a tribal operations specialist.

“But I’m not sure if there’s still time to file suit,” he said. “As far as (unsatisfactory) services, they need to bring it to the attention of Congress, who may not be aware” of poor living conditions.

Pomani and Cleveland said they will notify Congress.

“There’s a lot that needs to be done for the Native Americans,” said Amye Williams, secretary of the treaty gathering group. “It’s time that somebody made people aware of the way Indians live in their own land. What Delbert is doing is really good.”