No justice for Indians from Justice

So now the Department of Justice wants Judge Royce Lamberth to recuse himself from a 9-year-old lawsuit filed by American Indian tribes against the government.

Among other things:

The department criticized Lamberth for making a “gratuitous reference” to murder, dispossession, forced marches and other incidents of cultural genocide against the Indians.

Gratuitous? Rather, isn’t this part of the process of showing willful negligence for two centuries by the Department of Interior and State before it in negotiation, and implementation and honoring, of various treaties?

Lamberth’s ruling, the Justice Department complained, described the Interior Department to be a “dinosaur — the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind.”

No shit.

Now, I believe that, to some degree we as an entire nation have to find a way to get tribes, especially those tribes primarily west of the Mississippi with established tribal land holdings, to move into the 21st century while not losing their sense of who they are.

At some point, that will probably involve ongoing changes into the current legal status of recognized tribes vis-à-vis the government. These changes are needed, as anybody who knows anything about Jack Abramoff knows.

And, for people who have followed the Abramoff dealings with various tribes, it also shows that American Indians are most definitely not simon-pure, nor any sort of Rousellian “noble savages.” To the degree many of them, such as Navajos and Hopis of my childhood Four Corners area, or the Gwitchin of sub-Arctic Alaska, want to try to hold on to native life, that relationship has to change for their own good.

Traditionalists in those tribes, such as the Navajos who have twice voted down casino gambling, recognize that.

But, those changes can only take place on the far side of a fair settlement of this lawsuit. Because, until then, Native Americans cannot vest a sufficient amount of trust in this government.

And that’s true of today’s Interior Department, and Bill Clinton’s, not just that of, say, President Grant.

That’s why Judge Lamberth held both Clinton and Bush Interior secretaries Bruce Babbitt and Gale Norton in contempt. Unfortunately, both major parties still refuse to get it.

Meanwhile, some Anglos want to look like friends of American Indians, but only if they can do it on the cheap.

Sen. John McCain R-Ariz., has criticized the government for having “never really even made any serious attempt at keeping track of the revenues” it owed the Indians. McCain says, however, that the $27.5 billion figure is “just way out of sight.”

How do you know, John? You just admitted Interior has no clue as to what the right amount is. What you’re really saying is that, no matter the justice of the tribes’ claim, paying that much is out of your sight.

Well, maybe if we skim some money off the top of the socialist Central Arizona Project, rather than letting fat cat agribusiness and corporate holding company “farmer” friends of yours buy irrigation water for 10 cents on the dollar, we can find part of that $27.5 billion.