by Rob
Capriccioso
Indian Country Today
14 November 2009
WASHINGTON—In the waning minutes of the
day-long White House Tribal Nations Conference, held Nov. 5,
President Barack Obama performed two duties: He said goodbye to
the hundreds of leaders of sovereign Indian nations whom he
invited to Washington, and addressed the horrific shootings at
Fort Hood. In doing so, he created a controversy that has
perplexed some in Indian country.
Some observers who tuned in to see the
president’s remarks late in the afternoon expected him to talk
only about the tragedy.
Thus, many mainstream viewers saw Obama
addressing tribal leaders like Joe Medicine Crow, a citizen of the
Crow Nation, whom he had awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
earlier this year, and then making strong remarks and condolences
regarding the Fort Hood situation.
At the tribal nation event, a somber mood
overtook many of the conference attendees after Obama’s remarks,
with many expressing sadness about the devastating shootings at
Fort Hood. Some said the president did a good job at balancing
both his obligation to sovereign tribal leaders, as well as
addressing a national tragedy.
But opinions outside the walls of the
conference were not so clear cut.
Almost immediately after the president’s close,
some cable commentators questioned his “commander-in-chief”
status. They said they thought it was strange to see him address
tribes when a more important event – in their minds – should have
been capturing his attention.
Soon, negative articles were written about the
president’s speech, and some said he should have canceled the
tribal nations’ summit altogether after the Fort Hood tragedy took
place.
The Drudge Report, a popular
conservative-leaning news aggregator, eventually linked to the
articles, and the topic soon gained more steam.
The day after the conference, NPR interviewed
one of Obama’s top campaign advisers, David Plouffe, about a new
book he had written. The president’s balancing of the tribal
conference with the shooting eventually became a topic of
discussion.
Said NPR host Michel Martin: “[T]here [was]
some talk about that because the cable networks went to his
comments immediately, and wondered, and it was a little bit
awkward. And it kind of made some people wonder whether he’s
really moved into the presidential space, whether he’s really
taken on the role of the President of the United States,
commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, the leader of the free
world. What do you think?”
Plouffe was not moved.
“I don’t have a lot of tolerance for even this
discussion,” he responded.
“I think it’s a – I think in every meaningful
way, he’s leading us in profound ways internationally, and here
domestically. And I think I couldn’t be prouder of the job he’s
doing.”
Many in Indian country also did not have
tolerance for the questioning of Obama’s handling of the
situation, but not for the exact same reasons Plouffe mentioned.
Some said the commentators who questioned Obama
were discounting that he was acting as a strong commander-in-chief
by respecting and fulfilling his promise to hundreds of tribal
sovereign nations – a role so many presidents before him have
ignored.
“The reaction of those commentators tells me
that they just don’t get it,” said Chris Stearns, a former senior
official in the Clinton administration and current Seattle Human
Rights commissioner.
“The idea that the president should just drop
American Indians from his agenda and close the door on us is the
exact opposite of where he is coming from,” added the Navajo
Nation citizen.
“I think the president did a fantastic job of
balancing his duties as the rightful lead in
government-to-government discussions with his duties as
commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.”
Even some conservative American Indians seemed
taken aback by the criticism.
Former Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell,
a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, said the president did
what any good leader would have done – wrapped up quickly and
quietly on national TV and then moved on respectfully to the Fort
Hood tragedy.
“As a national politician, no matter what you
prioritize, someone else thinks you should have focused on their
issue first,” the former senator said.
“He was addressing sovereign leaders. There is
no way that he should have canceled the event.”
Nighthorse Campbell noted, too, that just a few
days after the Fort Hood shooting, Obama met with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House over Middle East
issues.
“No one would say he should have canceled that
talk with a sovereign leader.”
After the controversy, Robert Williams, a law
professor with the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law,
noted that scholar Vine Deloria Jr. in the 1960s said there were a
number of non-Indians who saw Indians as just another minority
group playing the race card for attention, preferential treatment
and reparations.
“Four decades later, there are apparently still
some non-Indians who see it that way,” said the citizen of the
Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina.
“Tribal leaders, however, have always seen
their relationship to the United States in political, not racial
terms. They represent sovereign tribal nations, and so for them,
they relate to the U.S. on a nation-to-nation basis and so, from
that perspective, the president of the United States is acting in
his commander-in-chief role when he addresses and meets with
them.”
Williams also noted that there were likely a
large number of Native veterans in the room with the president at
the conference, given the correlation he’s seen between U.S.
military service and tribal leadership positions in contemporary
Indian country.
Robert Miller, a law professor at Lewis & Clark
Law School, said that to him, the situation easily boiled down to
one of political posturing by the president’s critics.
“We shouldn’t make too much of it, but if it
does show some denigration to tribal nations, it’s pretty hard not
to,” said the citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
The White House declined to comment on the
situation.