United Nations Security Council Resolution 1779

Transcription

I am pleased to introduce the person that will present the afternoon panel, Walter Echo-Hawk. Walter is the author of a very distinguished book entitled "In the Courts of the Conqueror" and he's currently an adjunct professor here at the University of Tulsa College of Law. I met him when he was writing this book, but I've known him for, more or less, 38 years because he was an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund down in Boulder. Now he lives here. But he is an extraordinarily dedicated litigator. Now teaching, but he also practices law with Grove and Dunlevey, a local firm, and he is the Chief Justice of the Kickapoo Tribe court. So Walter it's all yours. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Walter Echo-Hawk and I thank Wally Johnson for the very kind and generous introduction. This morning, we heard a very amazing bit of oral history from the actual participants in the Nixon administration who converged at a single moment in US history, during the making and formation and early years of this landmark American Indian self-determination policy, which has endured to the present day. And right now I have the distinct honor of introducing the next panel, which will discuss how that policy was used during the rise of the modern Indian nations. But first, let me welcome, if I may, all of the panelists on both panels to our great state of Oklahoma. We are home to thirty-nine Indian nations, and are very glad to have each and every one of you here with us today because the Indian nations of Oklahoma are vitally concerned with today's conversation. No principle is more important to Indian nations than the principle of self-determination. As panel one made clear, the creation of that policy in 1970 was a historic moment. It did spark and facilitate some great nationbuilding advances throughout Indian country as our Indian tribes regained their sovereignty. And I think that it is well described by Charles Wilkinson as one of the great American social movements that rivals in importance the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the women's movement in American history. More recently the United Nations has endorsed this self -determination policy as a framework for protecting the human rights, the political rights, the cultural rights, and the property rights of indigenous peoples worldwide. And I think that that ratifies and reaffirms the self-determination policy here in our own land. And to my mind, it demonstrates that President Nixon got it right in 1970. So with that, let me introduce our stellar panel, if I may. And I'm very grateful to the organizers for putting together this wonderful group. We have our moderator, Mr. Reid Peyton Chambers, an esteemed colleague and one of the premier Indian law practitioners in the United States. Reid has already been introduced, but he is very able to guide our conversation this afternoon. The first speaker will be Philip S. Deloria. Oh, I'm sorry, LaDonna Harris. And I'm deeply honored to present her introduction. She is one of the grand matriarchs in the tribal sovereignty movement. She has inspired and anchored me during my career as a native rights advocate. She's a member of the Comanche Tribe, born and raised here in Oklahoma. With political activism that goes back to the sixties, you know, when she formed Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity to empower our tribal communities here in Oklahoma. She moved to the national stage in founding the Americans for Indian Opportunity in 1970. And her community service record extends far beyond Indian country to the mainstream organizations and even internationally and she's going to bring, I'm sure, some very deep and broad perspectives about the nature and importance of self-determination. Next I have the privilege of introducing Phillip S. Deloria, a man whom I've deeply admired for many, many years. He's widely considered throughout Indian country as having one of the finest and most powerful minds in Indian policy. He's a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He's a Yale Law School graduate, and for thirty-five years he was the Director of the American Indian Policy Center at the University of New Mexico School of Law. A pivotal time in Indian history where the policy center focused on federal Indian law and policy analysis regarding the role of our Indian tribes and our tribal governments in the American political system. Today Mr. Deloria is the Director of the American Indian Graduate Center in Albuquerque where they focus on assisting Native American graduate students and college students. More than anyone, Mr. Deloria is able to speak to the policy implications of self-determination. And I look forward to your remarks. Third, we have with us today, we're very fortunate to have him, Professor Robert Anderson, who is of the Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota. Professor Anderson is a leading scholar in federal Indian law, one of the contributors to the Cohen's Handbook on Federal Indian Law, the 2005 edition. He's a long-time visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Currently, he is a professor of law at the University of Washington, where he also directs the Native American Law Center. Professor Anderson also has a stellar legal career as a litigator. Having worked for twelve years as a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, involved in very complex and important litigation. He's also versed from his years working for her as a special assistant to Secretary Babbett on political and policy matters as a special advisor to Secretary Babbet. And most recently, was on the Obama transition team for the Department of Interior, the year 2008. In him, we can see a career and the dedication that makes Professor Anderson a prototype role model for our Native American attorneys in the 21st century. We need look no further than to Mr. Anderson. Finally, last and certainly not least, I am very pleased and privileged to introduce Hilary C. Tompkins. She carries the distinction of being the Department of Interior's top lawyer. For the past three years, she is the very first Native American women to be the Solicitor for the Department of Interior, supervising the work of three hundred and fifty attorneys . She has a high caliber, groundbreaking legal career. A member of the Navajo Nation, she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1996. Clerked at the Navajo Nation Supreme Court. Worked at the Navajo Nation Department of Justice. Went on to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney and a litigator with the Department of Justice. And I think that in her we can see our current and next generation of federal Indian law attorneys and know we are in good stead. We're fortunate that she is here. She's very aware of the self-determination framework for Indian affairs today, and we look forward to her remarks. So with that, I'd like to turn the proceedings over to Mr. Chambers. Oklahoma, please welcome our moderator. Thanks very much, Walter. Good afternoon everyone. Without further ado, they've already been introduced, I'm going to call on my old friend, not old friend, my longstanding friend, LaDonna Harris. Thank you. I am an old friend. And it's wonderful to be here, and particularly be in this beautiful museum. The Gilcrease is really the jewel, one of the main jewels of Oklahoma. So I'm pleased to be here amongst friends and friends throughout the ages. I am going to... You may have noticed something in Bobbie's presentation, by Bobbie Kilberg's presentation. I knew her as Bobbie Green. The first time I met her, she was at my house as a young White House Fellow, and they were the first time that there were two Indians involved in the White House, chosen as a White House fellow. And I was eager to meet with them, but she seemed to know more about Indians than they did. And I just adored her, that I didn't have to explain what, didn't have to go through Indian 101 for her. She had already been out on the Navajo practicing law there. She herself came out of the, more or less, beneficiary of the Office of Economic Opportunity. And I consider myself a beneficiary of that. That is how we started Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity here, and was the first statewide organization, Indian organization in the state. It was there I learned how to be an organizer and learned much about politics. But I wanted to share with you about Bobbie, you know, as being a Comanche, relationships are the most important thing. We say, relationships and responsibility to those relationships. Since that time that we first met at my house, she became my doughter. I was surrogate to the wedding, that's when she married Bill, I was a surrogate to her first child, and I have the privilege of being her neighbor and friend. And I think, though I was married to a United States Senator and had already gone through the Johnson administration, I learned more about the White House, how the White House functioned through her. She got assigned to the White House and it was because of her... First I should start, the Taos people came to Fred Harris' office and us and he invited me to sit in on the meeting and ask us to be, would he sponser the legislation for the return of the Blue Lake. And we talked to them and it was because of their sincerity. They had been working, as was told, 60 years on this. And many people were involved in this, but Fred was able to take the responsibility of the legislation and he told the staff "If we don't do anything else, we're going to work to help, with the Taos to return their Blue Lake. Well that... of course, I had become involved in Civil Rights in Oklahoma and Indian rights and been involved, so I was beginning to work to make it a civil rights issue, a religious rights issue, kind of on the outside, and then Bobbie suggested that I should go and meet Len Garment. So I called and made an appointment. Not sure how that worked out, but I got in the Nixon White House, and that was quite a privilege. And to know Len Garment was quite a treasure. And I know that he's ill now and unfortunately not with us today, but I wished he were here to share the part of this story that he plays. And through him, I got to know Brad Patterson, we have become friends and have continued to be friends. I feel like I know his family because every Christmas, I get a Christmas card with pictures of the family, either climbing a mountain or something extravagant. So that relationship turned into a very valuable one because, in talking with Mr. Garment I suggested that one of the pictures that went around the world was of Nixon as a candidate was with the, a picture taken with the Taos people. And that we thought we would really like for this to be a non-partisan issue, that Indian issues usually became kind of more of Democratic issue and we were looking to make it a non-partisan issue. He picked up, after a nice, wonderful conversation, he picked up the phone, made several calls, and I was in Griffin's office. He was the leader of the Republican Senate, and his aide said, I don't know what happened. He shook hands with me and then he found himself in Fred Harris's office. And they worked together, the two Senators worked together to make it a bipartisan, because as was mentioned, Senator Anderson from New Mexico was one of the most senior members of the Senate, very distinguished, had all of the seniority that anyone could have, was also head of the Interior Department, which that bill had to come through, and his protege was Jackson, was his protege. So you can imagine coming up against those two people in the Senate, when Fred was quite a new member of the Senate. But they wouldn't let the bill come out of the committee. So Fred said that any bill that came out of the legislature, I mean out of the committee, he would attach the Blue Lake onto it. So they finally had a vote. We felt like we had the votes in the committee. "We." I felt like I was there every minute, so it is a 'we.' We had the votes in committee, it finally got out of committee onto the floor, and making it a bipartisan - it was truly - that was one of the real remarkable things - making Indian issues a bipartisan issue, issues, was one of the real inheritance of the Nixon administration. I tell you that story because it was so personal and of course our families now, the Kilberg family and the Harris families see each other at least once a year. We've gone to Bar Mitzvahs, we've gone to weddings, and all of those wonderful things, so relationships do mean things . She also told me that I should get to know the Office of Budget and Management, because they're the ones who make recommendations to the President. So she took me over to Frank Zarb and I met Frank Zarb, who happened to be, who happened to turn out when the Department of Energy was created, he became the first Secretary of Energy. And it was through that relationship, we helped to organize the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, which was the first time tribes took over the management of their resources and changed the policy and had the Department of Interior and the Energy Department working together. It was a very unique relationship. It had even gotten written up in the newspaper that I sent him a bouquet of flowers because we finally got this accomplished. So it was those kinds of stories that were...and the other that was mentioned this morning that to me was so important was the Environmental Protection Agency. The Environmental Protection Agency has become a very important piece of tribal government. We used that in many, many different kinds of ways and it's helped us work out better relationships with the states, and we all have now the right to, tribes have the right to declare their own environmental standards, which was a very unique change in policy because we were falling though the cracks in Congress and they made an administrative decision on that. So that made it a very important contribution. But I think that making the, I'm spending some time on the Taos Blue Lake because that was such an important, major breakthrough. And that breakthrough, as told by many of the other people who... and I want to say also that Nixon dismantled the Office of Economic Opportunity, but kept the Indian portion of that program and put it over in the Department of Health and Human Services. And it was through that agency, because of the way it had the flexibility more than the Department of Interior, had the flexiblity for many of us to do many more different kinds of activities than we'd ever done. And in fact many times we use the resources from that department to fight the Department of Interior, but we won't say too much about that. But it was a very important thing and has continued to this day. It was also the Head Start Program. It was the Nixon administration that a group of Indian people, Philip Martin from the Choctaws, John Crow from the Cherokees in North Carolina, and Stanley Patiamo. They came and said they're going to do away with Head Start, and it's been the most important thing for our children to maintain their language and give them a cultural base in readiness for school, for education. And so they asked if I would set up an appointment, which I did. And those three men convinced the Assistant Secretary that that was an important point, to save the Indian Head Start program. They took it to the Secretary and the Secretary said, "Well let's save the Head Start program for all people, for all young people." So those three men get a lot of credit for saving the Head Start Program because they made such a wonderful explanation of what the importance of Head Start meant to Indian, young Indian children. Those are the things that I remember. It was a very dramatic time. The civil rights movement, the women's movement. I seemed to get involved in all of those things, but it was important to the Menomonee restoration. That is the second. Because of the success of the Taos Blue Lake, the Menomonee people will tell you today, had it not been for that success that they probably would not have been reestablished as a tribe. They had been terminated in the past. And Ada Deer, many of you know that name, Ada Deer... Again, she was a product of the OEO program, came and lobbied this. I didn't think that the Congress would ever change its mind on this, but she worked the halls of Congress. We gave little receptions and we did things to be useful to the tribe and they passed the, Congress reversed itself on termination and said never again. Not only would they reestablished the Menomonee, but they would do away with termination, never to have it as a policy, federal policy, ever again. So that was a real remarkable time. And it was a result of the Taos Blue Lake. The Alaskan claims was mentioned. Again, Fred and I were much involved in that and I think he introduced legislation for 60 million and it got 40 million, so that was one of the pluses that we like to think of. We didn't watch it close enough about the corporations, but we did get the land settlement. Because they said they were people who still used the land, lived off the land, the land was more important actually than the financial aspect of it because they still lived off the land. That was their argument. But again, most of those were people who brought their issues and were so persuasive and had the courage to do it because of the success of the Blue Lake. And then of course, with the support of the White House was the Alaskan claims again became the success it has become. I think that's what I'll share with you now and perhaps you'll have questions afterwards, but I'm the grandmother of the group. I'm the elder of the group, so I got to talk first. Thank you. Thank you LaDonna Thank you. Thank you so much for your leadership over the years on Indian issues. It has been a wonderful thing for the Indian community. And the second speaker, I guess you're the grandfather of the group. What does that make us? Old Grandpa Sam Deloria. You better be careful. I want to just say one thing about Sam as the Director of the American-Indian Law Center for over thirty years in New Mexico Mexico. Sam, when I was Associate Solicitor and Kent was Solicitor, there were a couple of dozen Indian lawyers in the country, American Indians who we're lawyers, and as a result of the tremendous work Sam has done over the years, there are now several thousand through that program and through similar programs. Thank you. I did it all by myself. My own money. I appreciate that, Reid. Obviously a lot of... Fred Hart started that program. He's still sitting in a corner office at the University of New Mexico grumbling to himself, not out of regret for having started the program, he is just a guy that grumbles to himself a lot. As I am, as you are about to find out. I am constrained, although nobody has made the mistake today, I am on a crusade for everybody to understand that this is a lectern not a podium. A podium is the little thing that the conductor stands on. So when somebody says, "I'm hiding behind the podium," that means they're down there standing somehow huddled behind a little riser that's this high. This is a lectern. I'm here because it's after lunch and I ate a little bit of lunch and if I sat in that chair much longer then they'd just go directly to Bob Anderson. First I want to plug a book, and that is Mark Trahan's book called "The Last of the Indian Wars," is that it? "The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars," which is a really interesting account of basically the relationship between Forrest Gerard and Henry Jackson and how the hiring of Forrest Gerard enabled Henry Jackson to do a 180 degree turn in his Indian policies and the Blue Lake thing figures quite prominently in the book. I really recommend that you take a look at it. Mark is here today. My understanding was we were supposed to talk about the aftermath of the Nixon message up to today. I don't know if I can make it all the way up to today, but we have these kids that are going to talk after us who can... Now to me, today is anything after about 1980, so you got a lot of ground to cover. First, let me just answer definitively a question that was asked several times regarding the roots of contracting. It was OEO, there's no question about that, and in fact the impact - I've said this in a book chapter I wrote about 35 years ago, the impact of OEO was enormous and that can't be overlooked. After the first couple of years of tribes participating, and OEO is not just the legal services program, it's community action program was the main program that was available to Indian tribal governments. And the fact that they ran them successfully simply made it impossible for anybody in Washington to argue that Indians were incapable of running their own affairs. It could not be argued. We had not made nearly the mess of OEO programs as the urban programs had made of the very same program. So, although it is right to examine the process by which things changed in the Nixon administration, we have to look at the set-up for that, which was it would not have been possible for any administration to continue to deny Indian tribes and communities the right to govern their own affairs. Now how it was done and how enthusiastic it was done is another question entirely and I was really fascinated to hear people who were in the administration talk about it. It reassured me of something that I had wondered and that is was this something that was done at a certain level of the White House and the President was only dimly aware it was taking place. I've heard the story about the football coach before and stories like that I always think, "Eh, that sounds too Frank Capra for me to really embrace, but okay, I'll buy it." You know, he'd liked his football coach and that's fine. I don't care what motivates somebody to do what I want him to do, you know, hey, cool. So I don't doubt a single word that was said this morning. I find it answering the question I had always wondered, did he even know this was going on? Did he know the significance of any of this? The Nixon policy as embodied in the message, but also other policy matters, I think will always be the gold standard of federal Indian policy. Not because it's perfect. Partly because it went so far beyond what Stewart Udall and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were willing to do, we got a lot of lip service and very little action from Interior in terms of actually changing things. And there's just no two ways to say that. What I mean is the Nixon policy was so distinct that no administration since then or, I would submit to you, in the future, is going to be able to surpass it because if you surpass it, you are going to make promises that can't possibly be fulfilled. And so every administration since then has either tepidly embraced the Nixon policy or pretended it never happened. But it is a cliche of Indian policy analysis and Indian history that Nixon was the best President for Indians ever or the best President for Indians since Roosevelt, if some people argue that. It certainly is the gold standard and I don't think any other President is going to try to top it, because you can't, and you don't want to get too much farther out on a limb. So Democratic administrations are not going to embrace it because he was a Republican. Republican administrations are not going to embrace it because no Republican likes what's in the Nixon policy, at least no modern Republican. So I think it's there as an historical artifact and it's probably not going to change. What were the problems over the years in implementation of the Nixon message? One thing that I've always felt uneasy about and it kind of came back to me today is that there is, we're quite away from... By golly, Bill Rice! As I live and breathe, Professor Bill Rice! Policy making in a way, this is going on TV and everything. I still have to say it. In a way, the Taos has kind of distorted Indian policy in the sense that everybody in the world loves the Taos Pueblo and the people from the Taos Pueblo. And so, having them embody the first major move of this Indian policy, how are you going to top that? How can those of us with more humdrum issues to be brought before the federal government for resolution possibly hope to provide anything that brings hardened federal officials to tears? We can't do that. This is not an argument against recognition of the beauty of Indian cultures and it's not an argument at all that the Taos Pueblo people are manipulative, in fact, one of the many good things that can be said about them is that they're completely oblivious to that sort of thing. Nevertheless, it puts the rest of us in the position of saying, how can I compete with these guys? How can I get the attention of the federal government to my little humdrum thing which inloves some acres of land we're really entitled to, that we want to get back, but I can't do all this pageantry, I can't make cry. What the hell is this all about? So in that sense, the idea that you have to appeal - I love playing with Facebook, I put wacky things on my Facebook page, and I put a thing on Facebook the other day saying, "The Western hemisphere's Native Americans, our new slogan is purveyors of spirituality to the Western world for over half a millennium." You know, we're not performers, and this is not a criticism of the Nixon administration, it's more a reflection on this society, we're not performers. We shouldn't have to make you cry to get justice. We shouldn't have to present a particular pageantry of culture in order to get justice. Justice is justice. It shouldn't have to be earned through entertainment. It shouldn't have to be earned through personal relationships and family relationships. That's not the way you run a government. That's not the way you do justice. So, I am a little uneasy about that. As people proceeded to look at the Nixon message in action, in life, I think that over the years we have tended to simply accept the Nixon message as the gospel and we have done very little to look at the complications and the implications in the Nixon message. What is self-determination? I haven't the faintest idea. I know it's a slogan, I know it's the name of a piece of legislation, I know it was in the Nixon message, but when it comes to looking at the actual implications... For one thing, the term self-determination internationally means something completely different from what it means in terms of American federal Indian policy. For the second thing, is self-determination that somebody else is paying for isn't really self-determination. It's a different kind of relationship. We don't talk about that at all. We talk about self-determination in the abstract, but we spend almost no time looking at what the exact outlines are. There are many other policy issues that we simply don't discuss in this business. The Congress, which is supposed to set policy, has no clue. You could go and you could testify to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs or to the House committee, whatever they call it now, Natural Resources or something, you could tell them anything about federal Indian policy and they would believe you because they who are responsible for it have no clue what federal Indian policy is. Their hearings have nothing to do with federal Indian policy. Their hearings are basically trotting out the same half a dozen guys that they like to hear from to talk platitudes about something they call federal Indian policy, but nobody's looking at federal Indian policy. And at least, I will have to say, for the Nixon message is it touched the important bases in federal Indian policy. The problem is in implementation we have left it at that. We haven't really followed through. That's as much our fault, on the Indian side, as it is anybody else's fault. Conflict of interest. If I'm not mistaken, Reid Chambers wrote a Law Review article about it. Didn't you introduce it into the conversation? I think Bill Veder did Sam, but I did write on that. The conflict of interest was not... Bill Veder was a guy who worked for the Justice Department and then later worked for Interior, right? Yep. He was never wrong about anything. You were wrong about everything. He was never wrong about anything, and the interesting thing was that he took opposite positions on things, so it was a little hard if you were going to follow him to know which, now I'm not going to say anything about anybody running for major office at the moment, but sometimes you had to know which Bill Veder you were trying to emulate. Reid I think probably contributed more in his article on the conflict of interest that he wrote while you were still a professor... I don't know when he wrote it. I'm going to stop asking him, it's my turn up here. Reid made a tremendous contribution and the acknowledgement in the Nixon message, the acknowledgement of a conflict of interest was an enormously important acknowledgement for a President of the United States to make because it was an acknowledgement that in having a relationship - they always take a picture when I'm going like this - in having a political relationship with Indian tribes, the United States is limiting its own sovereignty. I shouldn't say that. I'll have a bunch of tea bags thrown at my head as I walk out to go to my car, but that in fact is the case. When you admit the existence of somebody else, something else, you are acknowledging the limitation of yourself. So having the President admit to that was tremendously important. Problem is he was wrong, in a way. In the next administration, Griffin Bell came in and wrote a letter in which he said the United States never has a conflict of interest because the United States is always the client. The Justice Department never has a conflict of interest because the United States is always the client. Griffin Bell was right, in a way, and wrong in another way. Where we have failed to implement the Nixon message is not in not enacting the Trust Council Authority legislation. That would have been a disaster for the Indians. The reason it would have been a disaster for the Indians is the minute they set that up, every single meeting that any federal agency had from then on that involved an Indian issue, they would look at each other and say, what about the Indians? And somebody would say, the hell with them! They've got their own lawyers. Let them sue us if they don't like it. And the importance of that is the standard in court is the federal decision has to be outrageously beyond the federal official's legal authority. If you are arguing within the administration, within an executive branch, you are arguing how discretion should be exercised, a much easier standard. If you have to go to court on everything, you're going to lose 90% of the time. So the Trust Council Authority was the wrong solution to this problem. Griffin Bell had a point. The United States is always the client, or almost always the client. Are you trying to shut me up? No, I'm not, not right now. Three more minutes, okay. I get three minutes and five seconds. We've got to save some time for Bob and Hillary. The United States is almost always the client. Where we should have moved was when Griffin Bell said, we balance competing statutory obligations all the time. Wally Johnson said that this morning and Kent said that. What we need to do to deal with this conflict is to look at the process by which they do this balance and put that subject to a regulatory procedure so that we can be assured that the Indian argument gets the proper hearing. That's what we have failed to follow up on and that is the way to manage this problem successfully because you cannot... Just hiring twelve lawyers to sit across the river in Virginia and sue federal agencies is the worst solution to this because, as Reid said this morning, there are times, many times, when the conflict of interest works in favor of the Indians. And if we are not in the meeting when the decisions are being made, we can't take advantage of those times. So it's the wrong thing. Alright, that's all I've got to say. I'm disappointed because I think that the profession that I've spent so much time with, the legal profession and legal scholars have done so little to analyze the Nixon message and have done so little to really look at the hard policy questions that are facing us that are implicit in the Nixon message. I want to express my gratitude for having been invited to be here and I really hope that somebody will take the time to get, in addition to whatever oral history these people from this morning have already given into tape recorders or something, this is an important story. It's an important story because Indian people really don't know enough about how the Federal decision making process works. And the times now, the issues now are so much more - if you compare San Francisco Peaks, where the Indians really have never been given any consideration whatsoever, just as important to those tribes as Blue Lake is to Taos, but Blue Lake was isolated. It's way the hell up there. Nobody else wants to do anything up there. San Francisco Peaks, we would be interfering with skiers. I think that's unconstitutional, to interfere with the rights of skiers. So, there are a lot of other considerations and let me just say in closing, the Sierra Club, it's my understanding, the Sierra Club during Blue Lake thing told people that the reason Taos wanted it back was so they could put a resort up there. Next time they ask you for money, remember that. And thank you so much and thanks for all your work over the years. Our next two speakers are I guess the grandchildren here, the younger Indian leaders. Bob Anderson's been a leader in the Clinton Interior Department and now at the University of Washington, Bob. Thank you Reid, and thanks to the Gilcrease and to the Nixon Foundation and organizers for inviting me to this event. I just want to talk about some of the ongoing work that rose out of the events that were described this morning and I think that many of you will appreciate the fact that these cases, these issues go on forever. And the question that is foremost in my mind right now is the larger question of the trust responsibility and trust administration. Secretary Salazar's created a National Commission on Trust Reform to look at these issues surrounding financial management, which are very important and have been in litigation for many years, but also issues involving management of tribal natural resources in conjunction with the tribes, in conformity with the self- determination policy, and have asked us to make recommendations for congressional changes and for changes that could be done administratively, either by the Secretary or by the President though executive order. And we're all taking our jobs seriously because, although we've made a lot of progress in terms of the federal-tribal relationship in the last 40 years, there are still ongoing difficulties that cause tremendous tension between the tribes and the United States in its role as trustee and in its role as it administers other federal programs that affect tribal interests. One of the issues that was talked about this morning, and I think that both Ken and Wally raised it, was the important decisions by the United States to bring a lawsuit called US v. Washington to protect Indian treaty rights in the Pacific Northwest. And that case met with a resounding success in 1974, with the district court recognizing the tribes of the Pacific Northwest's rights to up to fifty percent of the harvestable surplus of fish. That was a wonderful case brought by the administration. Another case was brought by the Bush administration in the late '80s to extend that ruling to shellfish, which was also victorious in the federal courts in the 1990s. And then again in the Clinton administration, a third suit was brought to support those important harvest rights within environmental servitude, a right to protection of the environment in order to ensure that there are salmon and that there are shellfish available for harvest by Indians and non-Indians. And once again, that case was victorious in 2007 in the federal district courts. And I make this point because the litigation theories that were developed in 1970 and '69 by the US Attorney's Office, by the Solicitor's Office, have been adhered to by every administration since then: both Bush administrations, the Reagan administration, and the Clinton administration, and now the Obama administration. And that sends a tremendous message to the opponents of tribal rights and tribal resources, whether they be state Attorneys General or other Western interests that would prefer to have these resources to themselves. It tells them that this is a nonpartisan issue, that the United States is steadfast in supporting tribal claims to these resources, and equally important, it shows that it's serious enough that you have the United States walking into court arm-in-arm with the tribes in this litigation. So, it's tremendous decisions that were made like the one to bring US v. Washington that have generated positive results through out the West in terms of access to treaty resources and water rights through out the western United States. And I know that Hillary has on her desk right now requests from other tribes seeking the assistance of the United States in evaluating claims for instream flows for fisheries support purposes. I was the Associate Solicitor back in the '90s and I know how these arguments go, so Hillary's going to do what Kent did when he brought Reid in to argue with the BLN's lawyers or the Park Service's lawyers, that's to sit down in that Solicitor's conference room with Kent's picture and everybody else's and have a frank and no holds barred legal discussion of the issues that are at hand and then the Solicitor makes a decision. But it gets things out on the table and it's a critical function that takes place in the Interior Department. The water rights cases are critical. They've led to major settlements in the last twenty years. There have been 29 federal Indian water rights settlements that have provided tremendous benefits to tribes and to the non-Indian communities affected by the assertion of those rights. But first and foremost, the administrations have supported these tribal claims, not without a lot of grumbling and a lot of current complaints about exactly how the administration carries these things, but there is a vibrant dialogue going on involving these important natural resources. The Alaska case is really an interesting one to me because I spent a lot of time working on issues up there when I was lawyer for NARF in the '80s and early '90s. And there's no doubt that the settlements grant or recognition of 40 million acres to be held by Native corporations and a billion dollars was a great victory on the asset side. But left out was consideration, in any adequate form, of hunting and fishing rights. Congress revisited that in 1980 in a way that has proven to be unsatisfactory to the Native community. And I know that Secretary Salazar appointed a commission to make some recommendations. The Native community, the Alaska Federations for one, did not think they went far enough. Alaska remains an ongoing experiment in terms of how that settlement act will be administered, and there's a great deal of work to be done now and by future generations of Alaska Native people and their advocates. The whole question of Native rights to hunt and fish in Alaska is something I just want to touch on briefly here because when Congress revisited this in 1980, they didn't want to adopt a Native preference for hunting and fishing rights. They said, "Well, we're going to have a race-neutral, we're going to have a rural preference." They didn't understand the political relationship between tribes and the United States. "We'll have this rural preference and that will cover most Alaska Natives." Interesting to me is the fact that seven years earlier, in the Nixon administration, in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, there was an exemption for Alaska Natives from the coverage of that act's moratorium on the harvest of marine mammals. The Endangered Species Act has an exception for Alaska Natives. So, at that time there was a recognition of the status of Alaska Native people and their entitlement to discrete treatment, just like tribes in the other states and that somehow got lost between 1975 and 1980. So again, more work to be done in those areas. Now, the Supreme Court has caused a lot law professors to kill a lot of trees complaining about how bad their decisions are in many areas and I agree that in two particular areas the court has done a really offensive job. One is in suits involving claims that the United States has breached its trust responsibility to tribes to such a degree that damages awards are justified. The Court has set out a very narrow standard. I think that it's there and, you know, hopefully Congress could fix that by being more precise in how it deals with the obligations of administrative agencies to carry out federal programs. But, as alluded to this morning, I'm not too keen on the notion that this Congress is going to get anything out that either party advances as part of their agenda. It's just too dysfunctional at this point. The other area is the question of jurisdiction over non-Indians on non-Indian land in reservations. With the advent of the self-determination era, tribes really got to the business of regulating, like other local governments do, exercising their sovereignty over matters like local taxation and zoning and so on, and the court has not looked favorably at that, whether they are justices that are appointed by conservatives or liberals. This all comes out of the allotment policy that Reid talked about a little bit this morning. And again, I'm not hopeful that Congress will overturn these decisions and I'm not hopeful that the Supreme Court in my lifetime is going to change course here. But tribes as a result of the self-determination policy do have a way out, and that is through aggressive efforts to reacquire property that they can do with the assistance of the Secretary of the Interior or through their own efforts through their successful economic development ventures that, again, have roots in the fact that tribes had representation in the '70s, won important sovereignty cases that gave rise to Indian gaming and other exercises of authority within Indian country to improve the economic conditions on reservations. So I don't how I'm doing on time here, Reid. I'm gonna leave plenty for Hillary... Three or four more minutes for you to wind up. ...and for the rest of the group to discuss. I'm not as bad as Sam, okay. But I think that there are important tools that are available to deal with these ongoing issues and the fact is that they are going to be around for a long time. So I think in this room we've got people who worked in the Nixon administration on US v. Washington. I worked on US v. Washington in the Clinton administration to get the environmental cases filed. Hillary's got requests in front of her to deal with water rights cases. And these things go on. But we've got a solid foundation of law and policy that I think grew out of these early years, that people have been able to pick and choose from to make use of these doctrines and policies to move the dialogue along so that the Office of Tribal Justice, which was created in the Clinton administration as part of this idea that you needed to have somebody to help implement the trust responsibility, not a trust council as Sam so correctly disparaged, but to have a voice within Justice on the trial attorney side, as was created in the Nixon years, and now we've got a congressionally ratified Office of Tribal Justice that was created in 2010 to be a separate go-to body within the Justice Department to advance Indian interests. So, lots of progress. Significant setbacks in certain areas, but all I think coming out of a solid foundation with the rejection of the self-determination policy. So I'll hold off here and let Hillary take over. Thank you. Thank you Bob and thank you for your leadership in all of these things over the years. And now Hillary Tompkins is the current Solicitor at the Interior Department and can bring us up-to-date on 40 years' perspective on Nixon policy and what's happening today. Yes, in ten minutes, right Reid? Well, people have been around ten minutes. Okay, I'll do my best. So, it's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me. This is a beautiful setting and it's great to be out of Washington, D.C. And I just want to share with you a little bit about my experience as Solicitor. I've been Solicitor since June of 2009 and it has been quite an experience and a real privilege to serve in this capacity. One of the things that I want to share with you is my perspective as Solicitor working in the area of Indian Affairs and share with you kind of my vantage point and philosophy about these issues and give you a sense of where I think we are today. And I do believe we are at a crossroads in history. We're at a very critical point, I believe, in our history. For starters, I want to just share with you my thoughts about federal Indian law and policy, and one of the things that I like to emphasize when speaking with folks about this important issue is that Indian law and policy, in my view, has a paramount role and impact on the lives of Indian people every day. And I think it's important to not necessarily view it as, at least from the lawyers perspective, which is the world that I live in, as an isolated case or an isolated factual dispute, a legal fight between two parties. I think it is much more than that and I believe that Indian law and policy is deeply intertwined with the history of our country. And if you don't appreciate that, you're going to miss a big part of the picture and today's presentation definitely demonstrates that. And it also is about personal stories of Indian people, generation after generation. My own story, my own personal story reflects that. I am a product of a federal Indian policy from the late '60s, right before the Nixon presidency, before the Indian Child Welfare Act. I was adopted as a baby. I was born on the Navajo Reservation. I was actually born in Ramah, in Zuni Pueblo right in the part of the reservation called Ramah, which is the Supreme Court case that was alluded to this morning, which I am recused from. But my family comes from Ramah, New Mexico and I was raised in a non-Indian family. This was before the Indian Child Welfare Act, and so I grew up without my culture and I grew up without my tribe. I grew up in Southern New Jersey. So that's pretty profound impact, I would say, on my own life experience. The other interesting overlap with the Department of the Interior was that I received scholarships from the Navajo Nation from royalties, which Interior and the tribe administer and manage, and BIA scholarships. I would not have gone to Dartmouth or Stanford but for those scholarships. I would not be standing here today as Solicitor but for those scholarships. So it's one of those life's ironies. I believe that I am here today as chief legal representative for the Department of the Interior, an entity that had very significant impacts on my life in very critical stages. So, as I said, I've been in this position for three years now. It has been an incredible journey. And I believe I am so privileged to work with Secretary Ken Salazar and President Obama. This has been an amazing team to work with, and leadership. I think President Obama has really been tremendous in his leadership and commitment to Indian country. He has had a historic number of engagements with tribal leaders. Every single year since he's been in office, he's had a White House conference with tribal leadership. He's a proud adopted member of the Crow tribe and he has been very vocal and supportive of strengthening the relationship with Indian tribes. And similarly Secretary Ken Salazar is just an amazing leader and individual. From day one when I started this position, he said one of his top priorities was rebuilding the trust relationship with Indian tribes, and I'll get into that a little bit more about my experience on some particular examples, but just a very strong advocate for Indian country and also willing to recognize the historic wrongs of the past and emphasizing the need to do it differently in the future. So with this leadership, I think it's been possible to address a number of really important things upon the start of the term of this administration. So when we came into office, one of the first things that we faced was the Carcieri decision, which is the Supreme Court decision that limited the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior to take land into trust for tribes, a finding that only those tribes that were under federal jurisdiction in 1934, in one year, 1934, those tribes that are under federal jurisdiction are eligible to take land into trust. And we have been working very aggressively on interpreting that court decision and also recognizing and supporting the need for a legislative fix of that decision. In our view, it wrongly curtailed the authority of the Secretary to take land into trust. I don't need to tell all of you the importance of land for Indian nations and building their governments, providing services for their communities. And we've also been working on the administrative side to address a number of pending trust applications that tribes have. Since taking office, we've taken 145,000 acres of land into trust. We're also in court defending feta trust application decisions that we've approved. So we do get challenged on those issues. And one of the things I didn't fully appreciate until I was in this role is that this, the Department of the Interior's decision is a very defensive litigation oriented practice. So we are challenged for decisions that we make in support of tribes, as well as challenged by tribes as well. And also in this term in the Supreme Court, we have the Patchak decision, which is an example of one of those instances where a private citizen is challenging a decision of the Department of the Interior in Michigan to take land into trust for a tribe that's been fully briefed and we've had oral arguments and we're awaiting a decision. And we're arguing our position is that there's no waiver of the United States' sovereign immunity to challenge our decisions to take land into trust, that there is an immunity provision or protection against challenges for land that we hold in trust on behalf of tribes. So we're awaiting an outcome on that case. Some other things that have occurred under the Obama administration, and they've even alluded to here, is the enactment of the Tribal Law and Order Act in July of 2010, providing tribes greater sentencing authority, training for law enforcement, recruitment for law enforcement, training for domestic violence and sexual assault crimes, combating alcohol and drug abuse issues. With that act, we are hopeful to provide expanded support and capacity to deal with the issues that Indian country face in that regard. The other issue related to that is, I don't know if you've all been following the legislation, the Violence Against Women Act, and if you've been following it, you'll know the Senate has passed the legislation, but the House has passed a different version that does not include a provision the Obama administration supports, which is concurrent criminal jurisdiction for tribal courts to prosecute non-Indian offenders who have taken action against Indian women. And actually in the plane this morning, there's a above the fold article in the New York Times on this very issue and it says, "For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice." And in this article, it provides the statistic, the harrowing statistic: one in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. So this is clearly a serious, serious problem and a situation that just calls out for help immediately and we're hopeful that Congress will work this issue out in the Legislation and Conference Committee because there is clearly a need to have the legal infrastructure in place to provide the vehicle, to provide an avenue for Native American women to have protection, to be protected in the tribal court legal system in these circumstances. So, some other issues that we've been working on are surface leasing regulations. We've gone through pose regulations that will change the leasing regulatory regime for leasing Indian lands. And these new regulations are specific to business site leasing, residential leasing. Believe it or not, before this time there was just one universal leasing system, but now they're customised to the particular kind of leasing activity, also to incentivize renewable energy development. And so we're hopeful that those new regulations will come online this summer. And as was mentioned previously, President Obama in December of 2010 supported the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, demonstrating his support and this administration's support for the principles embodied in that important document, and I actually had the privilege of going with Assistant Secretary Larry Echo-Hawk, who I will miss greatly. I'm sure you've all heard that he's been appointed to a high level position with the Latter Day Saints in Utah, but I had the privilege of going to Geneva with Mr. Ecko Hawk to present the United States record on indigenous rights before the UN Human Rights Council. And that was an important forum to talk about the United States history in that regard. We've also adopted a new tribal consultation policy. The President issued an Executive Order on this early in his administration. And then Interior now has a new policy that's been in effect since December. I think it's a distinct policy, it's different in the sense that it clearly specifies what types of departmental actions require tribal consultation and sets out a process about how tribes interface with the Department, with specific guidelines about engaging in that consultation effort. My experience in this arena, there's been a lot of talk about government to government consultation, but I think it's important to know what that means, how is that done, and how is it meaningful. And I think this policy helps set up some more concrete guidelines in that regard. And lastly I want to tell you a bit about some important settlements that the Department has been engaged in. We settled four major water rights settlements to date. Over a billion dollars in new water infrastructure projects, and there are more water rights settlements pending that we hope to bring across the finish line. And then, an issue that I was very involved in directly when I first came in the door in June, as Solicitor in August, I became heavily engaged in the Cobell negotiations. And let me just give you some context for this. The Solicitor's Office, there's 350 attorneys. We have the Washington office and then regional and field offices. Actually my field solicitor I believe is out there somewhere. Alan Woodcock, where are you? There he is. Alan, he's the field solicitor here in Tulsa. And we have a very diverse legal practice. One of the things when I came in, I was told you have a Division of Indian Affairs and you have regional and field attorneys working on Indian affairs issues, but you also have the Indian Trust Litigation Office. So that's a new office, relatively speaking, and that office in my office deals with all of the Indian trust litigation. Those are cases, there were about 100 cases pending when I assumed this position, a hundred tribes, give or take a few, suing the Department of the Interior for breach of trust. So that gives you kind of the current day context of what has been the evolution of the trust relationship. For many tribes, there's five hundred and sixty-five federally recognized tribes, but for many tribes, they have sued the United States. And there's a specific unit in my office to handle those issues. So coming into this position, I met with Secretary Ken Salazar, and also Deputy Secretary David Hayes, and the Secretary was very clear, this is my top priority. "We need to settle the Cobell litigation. We need to do the right thing." And Deputy Secretary David Hayes was in complete support of that and we got right straight to work on that. That was one of the first things that I handled coming into this position. It's one of the largest class actions ever brought against the United States. Over three hundred thousand individual account holders. There's almost five hundred thousand individual Indians who have trust assets. Not all of them had accounts. Cobell, and I'm always amazed by this, Cobell involved, it was 15 years of litigation, seven full trials, onehundred and ninety-two trial days, twenty-two published decisions, and it was up to the Court of Appeals ten times. And when we received it, we had just gotten a DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. We did hear similar themes that we heard this morning of opposition to settling. Disbelief that we could settle. You'll never settle in a million years, good luck. And we moved forward. We had tremendous support from the Department of Justice and we got it done. We negotiated six months straight, in a conference room, with the lawyers hammering it out. And I tell you, lawyers don't get a lot of credit all the time, but these lawyers worked out a settlement and engaged in the art of negotiation to a level that I think is unparalleled. 3.4 billion dollar settlement. Just yesterday the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's approval of the settlement. So that was fantastic news. 1.9 billion dollars, almost two billion dollars will go to land consolidation to eradicate the impacts of the allotment policy. The Trust Reform Commission, which Bob Anderson is a member of, was also an outgrowth of the Cobell settlement. There was a commitment by Secretary Salazar not only to settle the grievances of the past, but to see how we can not go down this path again and have this commission evaluate what can Interior do differently, what can Interior do better? And also out of this settlement is a 60 million dollar education scholarship fund for Native American students. In the aftermath of Cobell, we also then looked at those other cases with the tribes. And just this spring, we announced the settlement of 41 cases, 41 tribes we have settled with. Over a billion dollars in settlements, and this to me marks a sea change in the relationship. I entered this role where we had been in litigation, Interior had been in litigation for decades with many, many, many tribes. Now, within a period of three years we have settled many of them. And we are continuing to talk with tribes. This is why I think we are at a critical crossroads. In my view, the future of the trust relationship does not rest in the court room. There can always be legal debate about the scope of the trust relationship and whether it's been breached. That can go on to the highest court the land and it will take decades probably to get to the highest court of the land. But in that context, you will have, the outgrowth of that, an adversarial relationship, a chilling effect. Interior will be in a defensive posture. And it has an impact in the sense that the norm becomes that the tribe will sue Interior. In my view, we don't want to accept that as a normal outcome. We need to find those opportunities to see if we can avoid litigation. Sometimes litigation might be the only avenue, and I respect that, and tribal governments need to make those decisions for themselves. From the Interior vantage point, I would say we at Interior as trustee need to explore every option available before that becomes the only viable option. Lastly, I want to say that in lieu of this adversarial litigation regime, I think that we need to focus on a policy based humanitarian approach, looking at things through a humanitarian lens because there are still the dire statistics in Indian country. I remember growing up in New Jersey and my parents telling me, "You're Navajo, you'll go back to the reservation someday." Which I actually did and I practiced in the Navajo courts. I learned about my culture practicing in the Indian court system, learning about Navajo peacemaking, learning about the traditions of the Navajo Nation. And my adopted parents would tell me about the dire conditions on the reservation, and we've all heard of them, and I think one of the things that I find troubling is that there's still those dire statistics out there. They're getting better and I think that there's attention that's been drawn to them. But they're still there, and I've known that for 44 years of my life. Such as, just to give you some statistics, in 2010 the poverty rate in Indian country was 28.4 percent, 28.4 percent, whereas in the rest of the United States, 15.3 percent. Some reservations face up to 80% unemployment. Suicide is the second leading cause of death behind unintentional injuries for Indian youth ages 15 to 25 years old, and 3.5 times higher than the national average. 3.5 times higher. And I know my good friends over at the Health and Human Services and my old friend Pam Hyde from New Mexico working with SAMHSA is tackling those problems and the folks at Interior as well. In my view, there remains much suffering in Indian country. There's also much strength. And let me close with my final thought. I also think one way that the trust responsibility can live on and be strong, the trust relationship between the United States and Indian tribes, one way it can be strong is through Indian youth. The President signed an executive order in December of last year, the White House Initiative on Native American Youth. And Secretary Arne Duncan and Secretary Ken Salazar just signed an MOU. It's a partnership, to form a partnership on education in Indian country, closing an achievement gap, addressing the alarmingly high drop out rate, preserving Native culture and language, which is something I didn't grow up with, but that I know is so invaluable to Native people and their continued strength and vitality as Indian nations. So, I leave you with that thought, that Indian law and policy has to be informed by the people who live and breathe the impacts of the decisions that are made by the federal government every day. And the more that Native Americans can sit at the table and be active participants in that decision making, the more long-lasting those decisions will be, and the more effective. And we have to invest in our Native American youth now because they're going to be the future leaders. They're going to be the future leaders and active participants, not just in tribal government, but in state government, in federal government, in the judiciary, in elected office. So, I believe that is a top priority right now. So, thank you for listening and I look forward to having a dialogue with these amazing panelists and it's been a real pleasure. Thank you. Hillary, thank you. And these settlements of the Cobell case and the tribal trust mismanagement cases have really been groundbreaking. I mean, you did have a whole lot of those when you came in office. We didn't have that, Kent and I. There were Indian Claims Commission cases, but you've really done a terrific job and the administration has, in my view, in making generous settlements of so many of them and thanks for that. I'm going to circle back to your three colleagues here and see whether they have other observations or questions for each other or questions for you. Well I've got one brief point that I forgot to make out of that US v. Washington litigation is that not only has there been court victories, but the tribes in Washington now have more natural resource fisheries managers than the state and federal government combined in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. And it's just tremendous numbers of people on the ground, a lot of young people, who are carrying out these management functions and partnerships with the state and the federal government in a co-management regime that really is pretty amazing and positive. Kent and Wally, looking back on the forty years when the Justice Department and Interior and tribal attorneys were bringing the fishing rights cases. It seems that a lot of what was achieved, to me, over the forty years as I listened today, Kent pointing out for example that almost half of the water in the central Arizona project is now devoted to tribal uses of one sort or another, or the half of, you said Bob, half of the fish now was 5% of the fish in the Pacific Northwest were caught by Indian fishermen. So, it was a situation where the treaty rights had just not been enforced and over the last 40 years, Hilary, you mentioned the 29 or one of you mentioned, maybe it was you Bob, 29 water settlements, 4 in the Obama administration. Hopefully, a couple of more this year, Hilary. We can talk about that. But Sam, I cut you off and I'm sorry to do that. You're always cutting me off. Well, you always have a lot of good things to say. Do you have any further thoughts? La Donna, what about you? I just want to remark on what Sam said about the importance of the Office of Economic Opportunity that created a whole new set of young Indian leadership that wasn't there and then this is the new generation that's following us, so that there was this movement and coming together and what makes a relationship so wonderful is that when you do something and it works out well, the friendship continues through your lifetime. And I thank the Nixon administration for that. Well, I think we haven't mentioned, but Sam and Chuck Tremble and Tassianna have written, I think, a trail breaking article that enlightened me because at least the '60s with OEO, that was before I got into Indian affairs, but have pointed out what a trail breaking time that was for Indian people, taking control, as you said a little bit today, over their own affairs under the OEO programs that came directly to them and not through the BIA. So I think that's, this is going to be in the Tulsa Law Journal, isn't it, soon? Yeah, actually Tassie wrote the article and Chuck and I egged her on. I don't know if anybody from Tulsa Law Review is here but... One of the impacts that it made here in eastern Oklahoma was that the tribes were still appointed by Washington. The tribal leaders of the five major tribes were appointed by Washington at the time, and then when they found out that us wild tribes on the other side were electing ours, they got in there and took over their tribal leadership. That was quite a big movement on the eastern side of Oklahoma. So we were greatly affected and we were affected in another way because we were allotted lands, that we didn't have reservations like other tribes did and so therefore we weren't entitled to the Office of Economic Opportunity. And it was through working with the Indian desk and the Indian Opportunities Council and Sarge Schreiber that said that Indian tribes were entitled to those programs as well. Though the county was counting us, we were not being serviced by the promise of the Office of Economic Opportunity. So they had great effect in Oklahoma that I remember quite well and was very proud of the fact that, what was accomplished here. So a lot of the push really, I think you said Sam that the Nixon message may have been inevitable in some respect for any president because Indian people themselves were taking more control over. Well, it's kind of a platitude, but when anything important that happens historically, it's stupid to say this caused it and point at one thing. Certainly, we had been pressing for greater control over our own affairs for a long time. The Nixon message wouldn't have happened if we hadn't asked for it, if we hadn't pressed for it. There would have been no pressure to do this. Now I'm not saying that anybody this morning said "Yeah, we decided to do this and the Indians were all sitting out there and never even thought of it on their own." But, that's why it's important for people to understand how these decisions are made because also we could've asked for it, we'd asked for it for a long time and weren't getting much progress. We got a lot of good words from Kennedy and Johnson, but Udall was not ready to let us run things. He was not ready. These people came in. They evidently were ready, but they could not deny that we did not make a big mess out of the OEO program. It's unfortunate that in an account of what the Nixon people looked at to see what the Indians wanted, they looked at Alvin Josephy and Edgar Cahn and Bill Veeder. What about the Indians? Did you listen to Indians? Well, if the Indians were filtered through Bob Robertson, then we're really in trouble. You know, that was not exactly the mouthpiece, the megaphone for the Indian voice. I'm just saying, it's important and this has been an important contribution to look at these things from all facets that you can, so you can understand how important decisions really come about. I think that's an excellent note to end on. The hour grows late and we, like with the other forums, we could stay and let this conversation go on and on, but we try to limit these to just ninety minutes and I think we've had our real earful for the ninety minutes. I thank the audience, and I thank our panel and our moderator. And we look forward to further conversations and other legacy forums. Thank you again.