Responding to a Super Delegate’s Request, Not Hillary

(@ 11:04 – promoted by winter rabbit)

Free urges Oklahoma Indians to exercise power

Kalyn Free, the founder and president of the Indigenous Democrat Network, says Oklahoma Indians need to exercise their political clout.

– snip –

But Free, a member of the Choctaw Nation, says Oklahoma tribes aren’t doing enough to wield their political power. She also says Democrats aren’t reaching out to Indian Country, citing Republican efforts to target Native voters.

There’s a couple things I’d like Kalyn Free to know.

Crossposted at Native American Netroots

I’m going to fill in what I didn’t say in“Dead Indian Creek” & Cultural Hegemony and tell you who Archie Hoffman is and who the president was that could have made things better for Hoffman and all the Cheyenne he tried to help, necessarily including my first cousin (I spoke of him in this diary).

Racism was clearly present in the land theft surrounding Fort Reno. Perhaps those that still use “Dead Indian Creek” can pretend that land theft stopped in the 1800’s, if they acknowledge it at all. Well,

“They want the land given back to them on a platter,” Landow told FRONTLINE when he refused an on-camera interview. “They brought in innocent people like me. They’re a bunch of goddamn uneducated Indians.”

it didn’t.

(Article from 2000)

Source

Fort Reno is a research station that contains a graveyard sacred to the Cheyenne-Arapaho, but is currently under federal control. Senator Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma) currently has language in a pending bill that continues funding for the research station which would prevent transfer of the land back to the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribe.

Source

BILL MOYERS:

Charles Surveyor was chairman of the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma. In 1883 the federal government confiscated a 9,500-acre parcel of tribal land known as Fort Reno. Today there is speculation there may be oil and gas beneath it.

CHARLES SURVEYOR:
 

We don’t want no $100 million for our land or nothing. We want our land back, what’s rightfully ours. That was all we wanted. That’s still what we want.

Archie Hoffman was the former tribal secretary, who tried to help in the return of Fort Reno to the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes. Here’s what Hoffman told Moyers.

ARCHIE HOFFMAN, Former Tribal Secretary:

We knocked on every Senator’s and Congressman’s door in Washington, D.C. We went in there asking for help. Nobody said, “We’ll help you.” How are we going to get somebody’s attention, you know?

Here’s where President Clinton came in and what he said.

Then he asked me, “Do you have any important thing to say?” I got to our Fort Reno deal, and I talked and started going to a little history about that. And he asked his secretary, “Do you have anything on that?” She said yes, she had the whole package here and all that. And he said- “Well, we”- I can’t quote the right words, but it was something like, “We’ll look into it and see what can be done,” or something to that effect, right there.

President Clinton said words to the effect of “We’ll look into it and see what can be done” after saying, “Do you have any important thing to say?”

Well, nothing was “done” and Franklin Harrison, representative of the Tribal Business Committee of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma had “something important thing to say.”

RETURN FORT RENO

Mr. President, my people face terrible hardships. Everyday, we confront poverty, hunger and high unemployment. And even more terrible is the high rate of teen suicide. The current tribal land base, consisting of 10,405 non-contiguous acres, is remotely situated and not conducive to economic development. With the tribal population now at over 11,000, we have outgrown this land base. The reclamation and development of the Ft. Reno property presents the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma with a critically important opportunity. It offers us the chance to build economic, political, and cultural stability within our tribes, and even more importantly, it offers us the chance to work together, to rebuild our pride and self-confidence, to establish our independence and to seize our future.

The Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes have produced a comprehensive conceptual prototype of land use development which offers a creative and economically viable plan for the utilization of the Fort Reno property. This land holds great potential for economic development in the form of businesses which would serve the Native American community and the local non-Native community. Tribal plans for the land also include agricultural development which would provide not only food and employment, but a very real opportunity to work hand in hand with the Department of Agriculture in a way that would be beneficial both to the Agricultural Experimental Station and to the Tribes.

– snip –

Mr. President, it is my duty to inform you that the principles which you outlined in your “MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES” of April 29, 1994 concerning “Government-to-Government Relations with Native American Tribal Governments” have been violated every step of the way in the case of the Fort Reno land transfer. The Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes have made every effort to surmount every bureaucratic requirement with which we have been confronted, only to be continually frustrated in our efforts.

If Clinton had done the right thing, the “chance to build economic, political, and cultural stability” would not have been lost. Allow me to elaborate on the “right thing” before proceeding.

Fort Reno was abandoned on August 18, 1868 under provisions of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

Once again, treaties must not be “the supreme Law of the Land.”

Source

ARTICLE VI

This Constitution, and Laws of the United States which shall be made Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United Stated, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding
.

Proceeding, Pewo would most likely not be saying what I quote below from him today, considering they were going to use it to build “cultural stability.” Remember that Fort Reno (now) is a research station that contains a graveyard sacred to the Cheyenne-Arapaho, but is currently under federal control. (info. from 2000).

Here is what Pewo said very recently, for which I hold Clinton morally accountable in the relevant timeline.

Between two worlds

“I don’t really have anyone to talk to any more in my language, other than my wife,” Pewo said. “Our language is almost gone. I’m now the oldest one around here. There’s nobody I can go see. I get lonely. I cry.”

Hillary takes the credit for the goods things Bill did and says, “Life for Americans was better under the Clintons,” she has said. Not for the Cheyenne it wasn’t, and it’s still not.

Since we can thank Bill in the relevant timeline for a “language almost gone,” we can also possibly thank Hillary for that in the relevant timeline. Part of the “cultural stability” sought with having Fort Reno returned would most certainly have been about preserving the language.  

My first cousin doesn’t want to learn about his culture or language, including the stories that would be passed down to him orally. Thanks Bill. Thanks Hillary. For nothing.
I can not escape the thought that his life would be better if Fort Reno had been returned.  

Let me say it again, I hold Clinton morally accountable in the relevant timeline.

Finally, here is a first hand account from comments of how Hillary lies to Native Americans and evidence of her knowledge and involvement in one vital concern to the Native Americans I’ve communicated with on the internet.

(Emphasis mine)

Here it is!

Carter Camp’s personal account:

McCain and the Cross of Coal: GOP Front-Runner Tied to Theft of Navajo Lands

I spent a month in DC trying to get LP’s pardon finalized after the White House led us to believe he had a very good chance at being pardoned. On thankgiving I stood in front of the white house all day long fasting for him and the other ndn political prisoners. The last day was hell when we had to phone my brother Leonard and tell him we had failed and Clinton had lied to us all along. To make it worse our main contacts were in Hillary’s office so I know for sure she was part and parcel of lying to his supporters and the final decision to deny his pardon. I’ll never vote for her or support her or forgive her.

I think she’ll lie out of one side of her mouth and do irreversible damage with the other.

Those are the things I want Kalyn Free to know.