And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Clinton to tribe: Focus on future
BY JODI RAVE Lincoln Journal Star
http://www.journalstar.com/stories/top/stox
PINE RIDGE, S.D. -- The last time Zona Fills the Pipe met an
American president she was 19, and Calvin Coolidge occupied 1600
Pennsylvania Ave.
He also was the last U.S. president to visit her homelands on the Pine
Ridge Reservation -- until President Clinton arrived here Wednesday.
Fills the Pipe, 90, awake since 5 a.m., withstood three hours of 90-degree
heat. But she succeeded in getting a front-row seat to hear Clinton tout
his New Markets Initiative -- a plan to encourage private business
development in the nation's poorest communities.
The Oglala Lakota elder also was among a select few in a crowd of about
4,000 to receive a handshake from Clinton when his speech ended at Pine
Ridge High School about 1:30 p.m. CDT. Fills the Pipe seized the moment.
"Welcome to Pine Ridge," she said. "God bless you, and God bless America."
Clinton's New Markets tour began Monday in the rural highlands of Kentucky
and will end today in the city streets of Los Angeles. The impoverished
Pine Ridge Reservation marked the third of the four-day Clinton tour in
which he is seeking to bring untapped business markets into the mainstream
economy.
Wearing a gray pinstripe suit, white cotton shirt and cowboy boots, Clinton
emerged from his helicopter Wednesday morning and was greeted by about a
dozen tribal leaders wearing ceremonial eagle-feather headdresses.
Later, on a makeshift stage framed by tipis and large medicine wheels
representing the four sacred directions, the president sat beneath a
blistering sun, listening to the steady drumbeat and a prayer song by Arvol
Looking Horse.
Then it was Clinton's turn to speak.
"We have in America almost 19 million new jobs," said Clinton. "We have the
lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for African-Americans and Hispanics.
For over two years our country has had an unemployment rate below 5
percent. But here on this reservation, the unemployment rate is nearly 75
percent.
"That is wrong," he said. "We have to do something to change it and do it now.
"I ask you today, even as we remember the past, to think more about the
future. We know well what the failings of the present and the past are," he
said. "We know well the imperfect relationship that the United States and
its governments have enjoyed with the tribal nations.
"But I have seen today not only poverty but promise. And I have seen
enormous courage." Most of the tribal people, representing small and large
tribes, share the same concerns as the Oglala Sioux Tribe, with housing and
economic development topping their lists. And although Clinton's support to
build new homes and create new jobs signaled hope for some, it also
re-established doubt for others.
Many tribal leaders have seen decades of scant progress on tribal lands.
"Our reservations never should have got in this shape," said Jim Trudell,
director of Nebraska's Santee Sioux Tribe's economic development
department. He attended Wednesday's event. "They wouldn't be in this shape
if big business and people outside the reservation would have stepped in
years ago and helped." American Indians at Clinton's speech represented
dozens of tribes nationwide. Three of Nebraska's tribal chairmen -- John
Blackhawk, Butch Denny and Elmer Blackbird -- were among more than 100
tribal chairmen attending the event that Oglala Sioux Tribal President
Harold Salway described as "a monumental gathering of Indian leadership
from every corner of America." Earlier Wednesday morning, many Indian
leaders attended a one-day, homeownership and economic development summit
in nearby Rapid City, S.D. The Housing and Urban Development
Department-sponsored conference announced several housing improvement
initiatives. They included:
-- A plan to create 1,000 new Indian homeowners within the next three
years, doubling the number of government-insured or guaranteed home mortgages.
-- Two of the nation's largest municipal securities underwriters -- Banc
One and George K. Baum & Co. -- agreed to underwrite $300 million in bonds
annually for the next five years to create a market for reservation
mortgages. The bonds would raise $1.5 billion to be loaned to tribes.
-- HUD will award $1,635,626 in rural housing and economic development
grants to be used on South Dakota reservations. The grants are part of
about $8 million in rural housing grants awarded to tribes around the
country. Nebraska will receive a $150,000 reservation housing grant.
Before his speech, Clinton, accompanied by Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Andrew Cuomo, South Dakota's two senators and FannieMae executive
Franklin Raines, toured the reservation's Igloo neighborhood -- a
collection of ramshackle shanties graphically underscoring housing
conditions in America's poorest county.
Meanwhile, many Indian leaders praised Clinton for acknowledging Indian
Country throughout his presidential term.
On Wednesday, he became the first president to visit an American Indian
reservation since Franklin Roosevelt toured Cherokee country more than half
a century ago. In 1994, Clinton said, he became the first president since
James Monroe in the 1820s to invite Indian leaders to Washington, D.C., to
discuss matters important to them.
"President Clinton's administration has done an excellent job in
government-to-government relationships with tribes," said Claire Horejsi, a
member of Washington's Hoh River Tribal Council. "It seems so ironic we're
finally getting recognized." Said Reginald Bird Horse, a Lakota elder from
North Dakota's Standing Rock Reservation: "I'm thankful he's able to come
and get away from world problems. I'm glad he remembered Indian people."
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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