articles july 02

Feds investigating missing Indian Health Services funds

The Associated Press
PHOENIX - Federal authorities are investigating the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked to build new clinics and to rehabilitate structures in four Western states for American Indian health care.

Indian Health Services administrators in Phoenix said the investigation centers on whether a former director siphoned off a portion of those funds from the patient business office.full article

NCAI cool to apology

July 02, 2004
by: Jim Adams
UNCASVILLE, Conn. - Before accepting a Congressional resolution apologizing for past government misdeeds toward Indians, delegates at the National Congress of American Indians mid-year session had one question: Would it include a future apology for the bad things the government was doing right now?

In an angry floor speech, Barry Dana, chief of the Penobscot Indian Nation in Maine, reported that his island reservation was the victim of a questionable Environmental Protection Agency decision weakening clean water controls on the river named for his tribe. "We want to go forward with a partnership," he said, "but it’s extremely difficult when the tribes are the only party living up to the treaty."

"An apology is just words on paper," he saidfull article

Protecting voting rights in Indian country
July 02, 2004
by: Sen. Tom Daschle

Two years ago, Native Americans across South Dakota set records for voter participation. Dedicated volunteers worked tirelessly to register those eligible and get those voters to the polls. Their efforts produced amazing sights: young people voting for the first time, elderly men and women casting their first votes ever. We saw people reminding friends and family members to vote, telling them: "Every vote counts."

They were right. Sen. Tim Johnson was re-elected by just 524 votes.full article

Judge won't rule on gold mine suit

By Karen Ogden
Tribune Regional Editor

MISSOULA -- A federal court judge has declined to rule on whether the federal government broke its trust responsibility to the Fort Belknap Tribes in its oversight of the Zortman-Landusky gold mines.

Judge Donald Molloy said that his court has little relief to offer the tribes unless they directly challenge a 2002 environmental study and record of decision on the reclamation work.

The tribe's complaint with the court fails to challenge a specific agency action, Molloy said.full article

Ancient site a siren call to looters
Denver Post
Friday, July 02, 2004 -

Range Creek Canyon, Utah - Hundreds of tiny flags marked artifacts amid the ruins of a 1,000-year-old Fremont Indian village. The flags were the kind the cops use to identify evidence. So the place looked like a crime scene as much as an archaeological study.

In a way, it was.

University of Utah graduate student Joel Boomgarden stood amid the flags.

He said a pair of 3-inch stone knife blades discovered a few days before were missing.

Weeks after newspapers reported its existence, one of America's newest archaeological discoveries is under siege.

By the time a national media tour made its way to the rugged, remote site southeast of Salt Lake City on Wednesday, thieves already had arrived to begin spoiling a secret that rancher Waldo Wilcox protected for half a century:

Thousands of undisturbed ruins of ancient Native American habitats straddle a 12-mile stream here, dotting more than 1,000 acres and reaching as high as majestic mountain peaks.

With the help of federal money, the state of Utah bought Wilcox's jewel. Whether the government can now preserve it is a crapshoot.full article

Restoring Some Balance
by Alan Bock
July 02

There is certainly some justification for being less than completely satisfied, as Elaine Cassel certainly is, with the Supreme Court's decisions this week on people detained without trial or access to friends, family or lawyers by the Bush administration, notably Jose Padilla, Yaser Esam Hamdi and the 600 or so foreign fighters held in the military prison at Guantanomo. The decisions did, after all, affirm relatively broad powers for the president, during time of war or congressionally-affirmed crisis.

On balance, however, civil libertarians should be somewhat pleased with the outcomes here. One could argue that the court slapped down the Bush administration – as it did, if not as firmly as some of us would have liked – in part because the original claims the administration made for its powers during wartime were so breathtakingly outrageous that the judicial branch had to act, and that by making such extreme claims the administration might have achieved as much as it really wanted with the final outcome. But some conservatives are screaming (though it's not out of line to consider that some commentators are part of the coalition of the duped), and the administration's freedom of action really has been circumscribed, at least a bit.

The bottom line, as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor put it in the Hamdi case, is that the court "made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."full article

Moore's Public Service
Published: July 2, 2004

Columnist Page: Paul Krugman

Since it opened, "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been a hit in both blue and red America, even at theaters close to military bases. Last Saturday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his Nascar crew to see it. The film's appeal to working-class Americans, who are the true victims of George Bush's policies, should give pause to its critics, especially the nervous liberals rushing to disassociate themselves from Michael Moore.

There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?

And for all its flaws, "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job. full article