The Natives Are Restless; Does Anyone Care?

This week, only three presidential candidates attended a presidential forum at the Morongo Band of Mission Indians' reservation in Southern California, reports Diana Marrero of the Gannett news service. (Marrero interviewed Stephen at length for the piece but did not include any of his brilliance in the final edition. WHATEVER!) Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich showed up, but the so-called “top three” (Clinton, Obama and Edwards) were conspicuously absent. It’s dangerous to read too much into the strategies of national campaigns by examining what events candidates do and do not attend, but given that this likely to be the only significant event to be held by and for American Indians, we should consider what this means for the amount of attention being paid to the numerically smallest historically-oppressed racial minority group.

Marrero reports that “[t]ribes contributed $7.6 million to federal candidates in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They spent $16.7 million on Washington lobbying last year.” Issues surrounding Native American interests in casinos was at the center of the Jack Abramoff scandal, which was an indication that the lobbying efforts have been ratcheted up in recent years. Besides being taken for granted or ignored completely, there is a real danger that the issues of concern to the four million Native Americans are limited to casinos.

Like other historically-oppressed racial minority groups, there is disproportionate poverty in American Indian communities and on reservations. And with respect to language, there has been significant concern in the past decade about college and professional sports teams exploiting stereotypes that perpetuate negative imagery of Indians. Yet that issue has not surfaced in a presidential debate.

We are not arguing that the appropriateness of the Florida State Seminole “chop” should take precedence over discussion of the war in Iraq, the economy, healthcare or education, for instance, but it is certainly more important than “say something good and bad about the person to your left” or “would you invite Barry Bonds to the White House?” The utter invisibility of members of this community ( a sizeable portion of which come from important swing states) who are making a concerted effort to exert influence into the political process is disturbing. We are as guilty as anyone else: we are approaching the one-year anniversary of This Week in Race, and of those fifty-two entries, this is the first to address Native Americans. While it’s true that this space is dedicated to scholarly analysis of issues in the news, we cannot hide behind the mainstream media’s inattention. We’ve been clear that we wish to provide leadership on these issues, and like the presidential candidates who failed to show up to the “Prez on the Rez” event this week, we’ve been neglectful.