And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Seattle Times
September 12, 1999,
Local News
Posted at 11:07 p.m. PDT; Sunday, September 12, 1999
Mark Trahant / Times Staff Columnist
McCain and Gorton remain worlds apart on Indian treatment
Are Sens. Slade Gorton and John McCain really in the same political party?
Both call themselves conservative Republicans. Both will be on Washington's GOP
primary ballot on Feb. 29, Gorton running for re-election to the U.S. Senate and
McCain making a presidential bid.
And, to be fair, on most issues these two are philosophically closer than, say, Gorton
and Washington's Democratic senator, Patty Murray.
But their views regarding federal-American Indian relations could not be more
different.
Gorton, when state attorney general, carried the arguments against tribal fishing
rights to the Supreme Court - and lost.
As a senator, Gorton has been a consistent critic of tribal sovereignty and treaty
rights. He has tried to use the appropriations process to strip tribes of governmental
authority, shift federal dollars away from wealthier tribes and rewrite the historical
government-to-government relationship.
Indian affairs is rarely an issue that drives voters. But it can open a lens that
reveals much about candidates and their views of the world.
In contrast to Gordon, picture McCain under the Window Rock - a large hole surrounded
by red sandstone - at the Navajo Veterans Memorial a few weeks ago. McCain waits
patiently while a woman prays in Navajo, then while another sings the national anthem
with a drum.
The senator notes the irony: The U.S. government once forbade Indians from speaking in
their own language; then, during World War II, the government encouraged Indians to
use their native language skills to transmit code across the Pacific; now a native
woman sings - in native tongue - an anthem to that government.
McCain champions tribal sovereignty and treaty rights because, he says, America's
honor is at stake. "Go back and read the treaties and you'll have little doubt about
the obligations," he said during his campaign stop in the Navajo Nation.
McCain promised that if elected president - "and I wouldn't place any bets on that at
a Native American casino," he said - he'll return to Window Rock before his
inauguration. "We will talk. I will listen and we'll forge new policies for our
nation," he said.
McCain's commitment was born in 1983, when House Interior committee Chairman Morris
Udall, the late Arizona Democrat and a longtime advocate of tribal rights, asked him
to be the Republican voice on Indian matters. Most of McCain's advisers urged him to
pass because, no matter what he did, it wouldn't help him win elections.
But he said he "was honored to get close to Morris Udall," who taught him to respect
this country's solemn treaty obligations. McCain eventually became chairman of the
Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and worked closely with Udall on legislation, winning
praise - and votes - from his American Indian constituents.
McCain, a Navy fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, also is popular because of
the high concentration of military veterans on reservations.
"There's a higher percentage of Native American names on the Vietnam wall than those
in any other population group," McCain said. In every war, he adds, Indian country
sent its young people first.
McCain's visits to reservations weren't designed, at least originally, to win votes,
but there has been a payoff. Even former Navajo President Peterson Zah, who has long
been active in Democratic Party politics, is urging supporters to register Republican
and vote for his friend, McCain, in Arizona's presidential primary.
"If you're a Democrat, like me, you can change over (to the GOP) during the primary,
and then back again later . . . that's allowable under the rules," Zah said at the
rally.
Back here in Washington, American Indian voters don't even need to change parties to
vote for or against Gorton (any voter can pick up either party's ballot). But there's
already considerable fund raising and other anti-Slade slates at work for the 2000
election.
If that seems odd, remember that federal Indian policy has never followed predictable
party lines.
Several decades ago, for example, Washington Sen. Henry Jackson, a Democrat, supported
bills in Congress to terminate the federal government's relationships with tribes. But
he changed his mind in the early 1970s when President Nixon, a Republican, supported
tribal self-government.
Even today many American Indians have fond memories of the Nixon White House and its
Indian policy - the same sort of hopes they have for a McCain administration.
Copyright ) 1999 Seattle Times Company
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine
of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE
http://shell.webbernet.net/~ishgooda/oglala/
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