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Date Posted: 09:27:24 06/27/01 Wed
Author: Anonymous
Subject: NEWS AND ISSUES

Plains Indians want federal money for oil, gas
exploration

By Christopher Thorne, Associated Press, 6/26/2001
18:15

WASHINGTON (AP) Indian leaders want Congress to spend
more money on roads, schools and
housing for poverty-stricken reservations, but some
Great Plains tribes are also looking for federal
money to lure oil and gas companies.

Exploiting the natural resources of their land is key
to the long-term fiscal health of tribes that don't
operate casinos, Indian leaders said Tuesday in
testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Sixteen tribes, scattered across the Dakotas and
Nebraska, say they need at least $150 million for
venture capital funding, tax incentives and studies
of drilling feasibility.

As much as 20 percent of the nation's oil and gas
reserves lie untapped on Indian reservations, said
Tex Hall, chairman of North Dakota's Mandan, Hidatsa
and Arikara Nation, known as the Three
Affiliated Tribes.

If the tribes do not have federal seed money to pay
for feasibility studies, Hall said, the tribes could
stand to lose a significant amount of any revenue
from oil and gas drilling. He estimated that private
drilling companies could keep as much as a third of
potential tribe revenue if the companies had to
pay for exploration and study upfront.

Senators who heard the testimony said they were
generally supportive of the budget requests of the
tribes, but stopped short of promising outright
support for the goals outlined Tuesday.

''If there is one place we have a distinct
responsibility, it is here,'' said Sen. Kent Conrad,
D-N.D.
He described the federal government's treatment of
Indians as a black mark against the country.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has a budget of about
$2.1 billion this fiscal year. That includes
$129.2 million in this year's Interior Department
spending plan that is earmarked for replacing
schools on Indian land. President Bush has proposed
spending $2.2 billion in the next fiscal year.

The tribes of the Great Plains estimate that in terms
of necessary improvements to infrastructure in
their region alone, they need $2 billion.

Indian leaders like Hall and Greg Bourland, chairman
of the Cheyenne River tribe of South Dakota,
said tribes need more money now so they won't need
even more later.

''We have to keep coming back, coming back and coming
back again to the U.S. Congress
seeking to sustain what lifestyle we have left,''
Bourland said.

Hall testified that focusing on oil and gas drilling,
for example, will allow Indians to build their
economies and stop asking Congress for help.

''Our tribal people don't want a welfare check. We
want a paycheck,'' Hall said.

The final Indian Affairs budget is not yet complete.
One amendment to the 2001-2002 budget, that
would have called for $4.2 billion in additional
funds for the Indian Health Service, was adopted in
committee but was killed in the budget conference
committee between House and Senate
Republicans.

On the Net:

Bureau of Indian Affairs:
http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html



Reconciling Little Bighorn
By Peter Harriman
Argus Leader

published: 6/26/01

LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD, Mont. -- A line of vehicles parked by the roadside and bearing license plates from Virginia to Oregon stretched nearly a mile from Interstate 90 up to the Little Bighorn Battlefield Monday.

On the 125th anniversary of the most celebrated conflict between Indians and whites in this country, hundreds of representatives of both races sprawled on the lawn of the visitors' center here. Then they made the hike of several hundred yards up to the white marble monument where approximately 210 members of George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry command were wiped out, and to the site of the proposed memorial to Cheyenne and Lakota victims located nearby.

"This place and what happened here is only now beginning to be understood," said former Rep. Pat Williams, a Montana Republican who used the occasion to call for creation of an Indian-white reconciliation center, to be based at the battlefield.

On a day given over to commemoration of this battle and reflection on what it meant to Indian-white relations, the most fitting memorial now may be the diversity in the crowd that attended.

Participating tribes were all given time on the program, and the Northern Cheyennes opened their portion of the ceremony with a parade up from the battlefield memorial entrance to the site of the proposed Indian memorial.

There, they held a ceremonial victory dance before returning to the lawn below the visitors' center where Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., and Williams were among their speakers.

Nighthorse Campbell, a Cheyenne tribal member with many Montana relatives, sponsored legislation in 1991 that resulted in the Indian memorial being authorized and the site being renamed the Little Bighorn Battlefield from the Custer Battlefield.

Since then, he said Monday, he has observed the evolution of this battle in the national consciousness to the point where all its participants are honored.

Twenty-five years ago, he said, when he attended the centennial celebration, military helicopters flew overhead, Indians at the ceremony were forced to travel as a group and to park their cars in a block "and when we came back, our cars were being searched and our licenses recorded.

"There has been a great deal of change," he said.

Williams, who led the effort in the House to authorize the Indian memorial and change the battlefield name and currently is on the University of Montana faculty, heralded what he hopes will be the next step in that understanding. He said this year members of the Cheyenne tribe approached him with a suggestion that an institute of Indian-white reconciliation be established at the Little Bighorn Battlefield "to help remove the barriers of misunderstanding between our people."

More than a century after the battle "the scars are not healing on their own," he said.

"We need to do better."

Nighthorse Campbell said while Congress can pass laws affecting how this site is interpreted, it cannot pass laws "to make people tolerant, to make them love their neighbors, to make them realize the strength of this country is its diversity.

"Those laws come from the Creator. We have to pass them down to our children."

Williams referred to the recollections of Charles Windahl, a soldier with Maj. Marcus Reno's command who survived Reno's attack on the Indian encampments along the Little Bighorn River and the ensuing two-day siege when that charge was beaten back by the Cheyenne and Lakota, who then overwhelmed Custer. Windahl, Williams said, wrote of watching night fall and listening to the wild cries of the Indians' victory celebration.

"But he was wrong," Williams said. What Windall heard "were songs of death and mourning" for the Indian victims.

"Like so many before and after Lindahl, there is a terrible misunderstanding about the people native to this land."

It has been abetted, he said, by films, "fictional paintings, and one-sided novels."

At the time of the battle and in its aftermath, there have been "broken promises, inattention, lack of respect, and, yes, outright bigotry and racism.

"Let us pledge this site to become a genuine place of reconciliation among the races," he said.

Establishing an institute of reconciliation, "will be a very difficult task, but not as difficult as what people faced on these hills 125 years ago."

Lindall's misinterpretation of what he heard after Custer was anihilated has characterized the historical perspective of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and this nation's image of its Indians for most of the past 125 years, Williams said.

"His misunderstanding can end with us. Let us begin."

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