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FROM: INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY NEWSPAPER

_http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412147_
(http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412147)

Mantle of Shame Awards for 2005

(javascript:PrintWindow();) Posted: December 22, 2005 by: _Suzan Shown
Harjo_ (http://www.indiancountry.com/author.cfm?id=26) / Indian Country Today

I've given Mantle of Shame Awards to the deserving, mostly for the
holiday yuks of family and Capitol Hill friends, for 25 years. This started with
the worst ''Indian'' stereotypes, references and statements in politics, sports
and pop culture generally, which I once kept on the mantel of a fireplace.

The constant reminders of deliberate and unthinking offenses against Native
people in American society were so unpleasant that I stopped the practice of
displaying them. Following the custom in some cultures to throw away all
trash at year's end so it isn't carried into the New Year, I got rid of the junk
on the mantel.

But some junk is worth noting, from a safe distance, before it's entirely
trashed. So, here, in the spirit of bundling trash and hoping against hope it
won't return in 2006, are my picks for toxic activities for this year. And the
winners of the 2005 Mantle of Shame Awards are:

Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Ralph Reed and other lobbyists for taking
Native nations' money, greasing the palms of cronies and intentionally or
coincidentally harming the tribes that were paying them top dollar for their help.
Scanlon is singing like a canary and Abramoff is poised to join him on the
perch.

All of this is causing Nixonesque flop sweat for Scanlon's former boss, Rep.
Tom DeLay of Texas, who appears regularly before a judge in his home state
on campaign finance matters; Reed, who's running for the second-highest office
in Georgia on an anti-gambling platform and who's running away from his
record of receiving Indian gaming clients' money to oppose an anti-gaming bill;
and a lot of people who want to hang on to the cushy offices they have.

Tribal leaders and employees yet to be named for hiring all the above and
their ilk as attack dogs against other Indian tribes and people; for giving
campaign contributions to their lobbyists' favorite office-seeker; and/or for
thinking that paying mega bucks to white men gets the best job done for Native
peoples.

Some of these tribal people and workers are being used for investigative
purposes as ''Abramoff's Indian victims'' and may totally escape retribution
for their part in his excesses and their own. They likely will escape
indictments, but have been and will be mentioned in other court documents and as
footnotes in at least one tell-all book.

Indian rainmakers also must share the Abramoff et al award for being part of
his private food chain and for making deals (or being on the verge of making
deals) with tribal monies for his services. Most of these deals were cut
over drinks and dinners at his Washington restaurant (which I never saw the
inside of, I am happy to report).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, once again, for demanding in his best strong-arm
style California's ''fair share'' of Indian casino monies - how exactly does
a state get a share at all, fair or unfair? - and for being, well, himself.

Also sharing in the Schwarzenegger and Abramoff et al awards are all those
elected officials and their staffers who have their hands out (and not in
friendship) and won't even meet with Native people unless the meeting comes with
the promise of money.

Congress and Senate President Dick Cheney for the Dec. 21 passage of the
money-cutting bill that will be the nail in the coffin for many of the programs
serving the people who have the least money, the worst health and the fewest
years to live, and for setting the stage for next year's tax cut for rich,
comfortable and healthy folks.

Sen. Ted Stevens for trying to muscle through drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge by holding up defense funding in a time of war and relief
monies for desperate people in hurricane-devastated states.

He has tried to open ANWR in his home state of Alaska for nearly 25 of his
37 years in the Senate, often by trying to suspend regular rules of order.
Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico foreshadowed next year's maneuver: tacking ANWR
drilling onto a budget reconciliation bill that's easier to pass than an
appropriations bill, because it takes nine fewer votes to stop a filibuster on
the former than it does on the latter.

Stevens threatened other senators with personal campaign trips to their
states for their part in the debate that kept the Senate in Washington during
most of the week before Christmas. And talk about drilling - he was captured by
C-SPAN not once but twice sitting in his Senate seat with his finger up his
nose while he was thumbing it at the Senate rules.

Interior Special Trustee Ross O. Swimmer, a former Cherokee principal chief,
for his advice on the way to carry out the federal trust obligations to
Native peoples, and to those in Interior and Justice who follow it, which has
led to Indian court victories, most recently the Dec. 19 district court
decision to award $7 million in attorney fees to the lawyers representing Indian
account holders in the multi-billion-dollar trust funds case against Interior
and Treasury.

Some scientists and other politicians on the federal dole for spending
another year of taxpayers' (and that means most Native people, too) money arming
the adversaries of Native nations' attempts to repatriate dead relatives,
funerary items, sacred objects and/or cultural patrimony; for opposing and
stalling the technical clarifying amendment to the Native American repatriation
law that seeks to restore the policy's intended balance; and for trying to keep
unidentified Native remains from being reburied or buried.

Washington's National Football League franchise for fighting tooth and nail
to stop the filing of a friend of the court brief against their team's
dreadful name - by the Native American Rights Fund on behalf of the National
Congress of American Indians, National Indian Education Association, National
Indian Youth Council and the Tulsa Indian Coalition Against Racism - because it
explodes the myth that Indians think that name and other ''Indian'' sports
references are swell.

Russell Means, who is Oglala Lakota, for challenging the Navajo Nation's
sovereignty, treaty, jurisdiction and ability to defend Navajo people by
disputing its tribal court's conviction of him in connection with allegations that
he beat his wife and her father, a disabled World War II veteran with one arm.
Means tried to get the federal district court to overturn the tribal court's
decision, but lost his case, appealed that decision and lost again, on Dec.
13, in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ward Churchill, who is not claimed by any of the three Native nations he has
claimed over his public career as an ''Indian'' activist and ''Indian''
professor at the University of Colorado, for attacking those who exposed him as a
pseudo-Indian. This award must be shared with the knee-jerk conservatives
who jumped on him because of his lefty statements and with the knee-jerk
liberals who jumped to his defense because of his lefty statements.

The University of Colorado for standing behind their ''self-declaration''
policy - which enabled Churchill to market himself as an ''Indian'' academician
and as an ''Indian'' writer (after he abandoned marketing himself as an
''Indian'' artist, in order to not run afoul of the federal law that bows to
tribal citizenship laws for determining who is an Indian) - and for substituting
its judgment for Indian nations' legal decisions about who is and is not an
Indian. This award must be shared with Means, who supports Churchill because
he has an ''Indian heart.''

Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C. and a columnist for Indian Country
Today.

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