Opinion: Obama administration turning inward on Indian issues

Monday, December 5, 2011  

"President Barack Obama meets with American Indian leaders this afternoon in Washington but, on the law front, it's already been a tough year for the tribes. In February, the president nominated Arvo Mikkanen, an Ivy-educated Native American, to a spot as a federal trial judge in Oklahoma. He would be only the third documented Native American federal judge in U.S. history. But GOP Senator Tom Coburn immediately blocked the nomination and, nine months later, Mikkanen still hasn't received a hearing, much less a floor vote. Worse, no one in Washington seems to care.

Then, in June, the United States Supreme Court stuck it to American Indian interests in a case styled United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation. In a 7-1 decision, the Court ruled that the U.S. could withhold from lawyers for the Jicarilla Apache Nation hundreds of documents that may be relevant to the tribe's long-standing mismanagement claims against the feds. Justice Samuel Alito justified the decision by reminding his audience that the relationship between the feds and the tribe was less about trusteeship and more about power.

In the first instance, Congress failed to do right by Native American interests. When asked why he so quickly denounced the Mikkanen nomination, Sen. Coburn told reporters in February, "I know plenty." Yet he has never had to explain what he knows or why it is enough to sink Mikkanen's candidacy. In the second instance, it's the judicial branch that has failed American Indian iterests. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor called out the High Court majority in Jicarilla. She said that Justice Alito's opinion "rests on false factual and legal premises."

So what is the other branch of government, the executive branch, doing for Native Americans as 2011 comes to a close? Is the White House pushing for Mikkanen to get a hearing? No. Is it pushing Congress to help change the procedural rules in Indian trust cases so that American Indian litigants can have more access to federal documents that pertain to their claims against federal officials? No. Those things would involve the expenditure of political capital -- and the administration has shown repeatedly its unwillingness to spend in this area."

Get the Story:
Andrew Cohen: If Obama Is Serious About American Indians, He'll Offer More Than Eagle Feathers (The Atlantic 12/2)