We’ve been running a day late on everything this week and this very important story from yesterday is no exception. To make up for that, here’s the report in full from Murry Evans of the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With the leaders of five tribes in attendance, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas read a congressional resolution Wednesday apologizing for “ill-conceived policies” and acts of violence against American Indians by the U.S. government.

Brownback spoke during an event at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., where he and Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, Lois Capps of California and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii joined representatives from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Pawnee nations, Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith said.

All those tribes are based in Oklahoma, except for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, which is based in South Dakota.

Smith said that while most tribes had not specifically asked for a formal apology from the U.S. government, the gesture was appreciated.

“It’s difficult to issue an apology and sometimes it’s difficult to accept one,” Smith said by phone from Washington. “Once you put those differences of the past aside, perhaps the next step is, can you do any better in this round? That’s where our greatest challenge is. The history of the U.S. (toward American Indians) is not a bright record. The real question is, what happens from this day forward?”

Brownback, a Republican, had pushed for the resolution since 2004. Both houses of Congress approved it late last year and President Barack Obama signed it in December. Lawmakers have described the resolution as a symbolic gesture that would help promote a renewed commitment by the federal government to the tribes.

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That’s a suggestion Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, who first sponsored the Native American Apology resolution back in 2004 with then Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo. It took until last fall, however, to get the resolution passed. I’s since been signed by President Barack Obama.

Now, reports Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing, here, Brownback wants some public acknowledgment of the importance of the occasion. His remarks to Toensing came earlier this month during National Indian Gaming Association’s annual Indian Gaming Trade Show & Convention, where Brownback was a guest speaker.

“I’ve been pushing the administration to have a major public ceremony, but they aren’t taking it on yet,” he tells her:

Brownback hoped tribal leadership would put forward an effort in the form of resolutions from the National Congress of American Indians, the United South and Eastern Tribes and NIGA urging Obama to have “a very public ceremony, invite the tribal leadership to be there and then the country knows about it. We passed it, but nobody knows about it. It isn’t like it didn’t happen, because it did, but you need to bring the resolution to the country. The words have been stated and now it is law,” Brownback said.

In late February, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, urged Obama to publicly acknowledge the Native American Apology Resolution.

“This apology deserves national recognition and public acknowledgment. To give true hearing to the apology, we respectfully request that you hold a White House ceremony with tribal leaders to formally issue the apology to Native peoples. We also look forward to additional steps in an action plan that will help to right the past wrongs,” the FCNL said

A similar letter from NCAI is circulating, as well as one from Brownback and other lawmakers.

Gwen Florio

Remember the proposed – albeit watered-down – Congressional apology to tribes?

Apparently it’s a done deal, signed by President Barack Obama on Dec. 19 as part of a defense appropriations bill, as Indian Country Today reports here.

But the newspaper’s Rob Caprioccioso asks the pertinent question:

Is an apology that’s not said out loud really an apology? What if the person expressing the apology doesn’t draw attention to it?

As Capriccioso correctly points out, the measure isn’t even a precise governmental apology. Instead, it apologizes “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.”

Oh, and it specifies that there won’t be any reparations.

The White House has done nothing to publicize the apology, even though it issued a press release on the president having signed the overall defense bill that contained the resolution.

That silence stands in contrast to leaders of other countries who’ve apologized to their indigenous populations, and also to former presidents in the United States who apologized to African-Americans and Japanese-Americans, for medical experiments and internment, respectively.

Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Mont., and Washington, D.C., criticizes the “overwhelming silence” on the resolution.

“What kind of an apology is it when they don’t tell the people they are apologizing to? For an apology to have any meaning at all, you do have to tell the people you’re apologizing to,” says Coulter, who is Potawatomi.

“I have had my doubts on whether this is a true or meaningful apology, and this silence seems to speak very loudly on that point.”

Gwen Florio

Everybody is all over this one today, from the New York Times, to the Salt Lake Tribune to SooToday.com, and more. All of them make a basic point – it’s great, really great, that the president is hosting this meeting (which actually will be held at the Interior Department), but it’s probably a stretch to expect significant, immediate results.

In addition to Obama, tribal leaders will also have access to cabinet members, which brings us to this interesting nugget in the middle of the Times story. Reporter Noelle Straub asks Interior Secretary Ken Salazar whether Obama will address the long-long-long-delayed (our longs, not hers!) issue of a congressional apology to tribes.

Salazar “sidestepped” the issue, she reports, “but he acknowledged that the tribes’ story has been ‘swept under the rug in many different ways,’ and said the current administration plans to change that.”

Among the many, many concerns of tribes is a request that Obama’s administration sign on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada, New Zealand and the United States are the only three countries among more than 100 affected by the declaration not to sign the document. (See video.)

Gwen Florio

This commentary on the U.S. Senate’s approval this week of the congressional resolution apologizing to tribes (see previous posts here and here) comes to us from Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Mont., and Washington, D.C.

The Senate has just passed a resolution that apologizes to American Indians and other Native Americans for the wrongs done by citizens of this country. But a genuine apology means you won’t do it again, and this resolution does nothing at all to stop or correct the on-going wrongs that the federal government inflicts on Indian and Alaska native nations. Unfortunately our government still takes Indian land without paying for it, still refuses to account for the Indian money it holds, still violates its treaties with Indian nations without making amends, and still maintains a body of policy and law that is so discriminatory and racist that it should have been discarded generations ago.

More steps will be needed for Congress to finally adopt this resolution. To make a real apology, Congress needs to stop doing the things that it is apologizing to Indian nations and other Native peoples for.

Americans generally do not know that the federal government continues to treat tribes this way, and the evidence is that the public does not support or condone this mistreatment.

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Here’s the full text of a story in today’s Rapid City (S.D.) Journal, by staff writer Kevin Woster, that bears reprinting here. We’d sure like to hear more of this.

South Dakota Sens. Tim Johnson and John Thune agree that a resolution of apology to Native Americans approved Tuesday by the U.S. Senate is a valuable gesture from the federal government to Native people.

But a day after the Senate approved the apology as part of a military spending bill, Johnson and Thune also said that an apology isn’t enough.

“The Native Americans deserve an apology, but they deserve much more than that,” Johnson, a Democrat, said during a conference call with reporters. “They deserve full funding for the treaty responsibilities that the federal government has taken on. And that includes health care, housing, education and jobs, especially.”

Thune said during a separate conference call that the resolution was a valuable symbol in acknowledging “the wrongs of the past.” But Native people need more than meaningful symbols, Thune said.

“The real issue, I think, is what we are doing in terms of improving conditions on the reservations,” the Republican said.

That work must focus on controlling crime, improving infrastructure and creating a safe-and-secure environment for education, business development and better health care, Thune said.

Gwen Florio

PS – Since we posted this story, two more senators – Sam Brownback of Kansas and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota – have added their voices praising the resolution. You can read their comments here.

Twenty-five years too late, Peruvian tribe buries massacre victims
The inhabitants of the indigenous village of Putis, in Peru, finally buried their dead yesterday, a quarter-century after their relatives were slaughtered by the Peruvian military during its fight with the Maoist Shining Path. A “truth commission” determined the military killed the people – after tricking several into digging their own mass graves – because it suspected them of collaborating with the group, according to this Associated Press report on National Public Radio. Family members walked 30 miles carrying 92 coffins. Mayor Gerardo Fernandez, who lost 15 relatives in the massacre, tells the AP that “we have two feelings. On the one hand, we are in pain for the dead. But on the other, we’re happy that we can finally bury them.” No one has been charged in the killings at Putis, a village in Ayacucho state. Ayacucho means “the Corner of the Dead” in the Quechua language.

Troubling report from Colombia on killings of indigenous Awa people
The week brought this Amnesty International report on the third mass killing – this time involving 12 people, four of them children – of the Awa Inigenous Peoples in less than a year. “How many more have to die before the government acts to protect these communities?” asks Susan Lee, Amnesty’s Americas Programme Director.

A British take on Indian Country
A reporter from the Guardian in London is taking Route 66 across the United States and calls this particular installment on Indian Country, which has a good video, “The Grapes of Wrath Revisted.” Rita Watson Claude, who is Navajo, tells reporter Chris McGreal that “the culture’s not there no more … they’re going towards the white people way.” She talks at length about how her children don’t speak Navajo, and then blames herself for not teaching it to her children – underscoring to the importance of language as a way of maintaining culture.

In the United States, empty apology by Senate subcommittee
Albert Bender, a Cherokee activist, opines in this Nashville Tennessean piece that “more than symbolism is needed as the American Indian nations largely still languish in the hideous misery created by this government.” He particularly mentions the long-running Indian trust fund case that involve government mismanagement of billions of dollars meant for Indian people.

Tribe shares mobile clinic with uninsured neighbors
Last year, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community sent its mobile medical clinic into the Red Lake Band of Chippewa reservation to provide badly needed medical care. This year, according to this Shakopee Valley (Minn.) News story, the tribe is sending the van out again, not just to other reservations but to the community at large. Tribal Wellness Administrator Joanna Bryant says that it’s the Dakota people’s culture to help others, and the Scott County effort fits that mission.

From Scotland via the Susquehannocks to the Flathead Reservation – stick with us here
The Char-Koosta News on Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation has this delightful story about a gift to Dr. Joe McDonald, the longtime and soon-to-retire president of Salish Kootenai College. It involves Chief Dancing Thunder, grand sachem of Florida’s Susquehannock tribe, and his trip to Scotland, where he heard about the Scottish McDonalds’ ties to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes … well, you’d better just read the story. And, enjoy.

Gwen Florio

Sacred Breath Pow Wow Aims for Smoke-Free South Dakota

The powwow this weekend in Rapid City, S.D., was for a cause – a couple of causes, actually: Emphasizing to Native people the difference between just smoking, and the use of sacred tobacco. And, says this Rapid City Journal story, it also honored the people working to make South Dakota a smoke-free state. “We need to do the right thing – and in this ‘here and now,’ the right thing is not to smoke,” says Oglala Lakota College President Tom Short Bull, whose campus is completely smoke-free. “We are probably the only college in the United States that can say that,” he said. “Most have designated smoking areas, but smoking is banned everywhere on OLC.” And the college president, who is not the world’s tallest man, joked that his family had warned him smoking would stunt his growth. “Looking at me now – imagine how much worse it would have been for me had I smoked. I’m the poster child of the smoke-free campaign.” Read more about efforts to stop smoking at the Black Hills Center For American Indian Health, here.

Alberta Reserve Moves to Block Gas Pipeline

Canada’s Stoney Nakoda tribe is looking at a little-used bylaw to stop a petrochemical firm from building a pipeline within 300 meters of its border. The Eden Valley band has only 500 members, and a Canadian government agency says that hardly qualifies the reserve as an urban center, which would activate the bylaw pushing back the Petro-Canada pipeline1.5 kilometers, according to this story in the Financial Post. But Stoney Nakoda First Nations leaders say many of the people living on the tiny reserve don’t have phones, making it difficult to notify them if there were a leak.

California Tribe Halts Gold-Mining Efforts

Small-scale miners in California will no longer be able to go for gold with suction-dredge mining because of concerns of the effects on salmon runs, according to this AP story, which calls the development a major victory for the Karuk Tribe. What makes the victory particularly sweet is that the tribe originally was displaced by miners in the 1850s Gold Rush, and only recently faced the modern-day threat from a type of mining that stirs up silt and mercury in riverbeds. Other tribes and environmental groups joined the Karuk in pressing for the legislation signed last week by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Congressional Apology to Tribes Moves Forward in Senate

Slow, slow progress here, but progress nonetheless. On Thursday, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee approved S.R. 14: “a joint resolution to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.” Previous attempts to pass similar resolutions, in 2005 and 2007, came to naught. Maybe this year will see success. Here’s a story on the resolution.

Gwen Florio

The Missoula Indian Center is holding a Journey for Forgiveness” barbecue tomorrow afternoon. It’s in conjunction with the national “Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness” movement to raise awareness of the abuses of the boarding school era. The journey is sponsored by White Bison, a Colorado-based nonprofit wellness and sobriety organization for Native people.

The journey ends next Wednesday at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The group has organized a petition that calls upon President Obama to apologize for the schools and their lingering after-effects. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a similar apology last year.

The group seeks 10,000 signatures; so far, it has a little more than 4,000. You can get a copy of the petition and sign it here.

Tomorrow’s barbecue will be from 5:30 p.m. at the Indian Center in Building 33 at Fort Missoula. For more information, call the center at 829-9515.

Gwen Florio