'Bout Time...Enit?

Senate Panel Considers Apology to American Indians
Reuters

May. 25, 2005 - A U.S. senator on Wednesday urged a Senate committee to pass a resolution apologizing on behalf of the United States to American Indians for centuries of massacres, broken promises and other injustices.

Indian leaders at the hearing said they would need more than an apology to overcome the poverty, substance abuse and health care problems that many of their people face.

The United States has never formally apologized for its treatment of the indigenous people who were living here before European settlement began.

Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who is spearheading the apology resolution, told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs it would be a first step toward healing deep wounds.

"Before reconciliation, there must be recognition and repentance," he said. "It begins the effort of reconciliation by recognizing past wrongs and repenting for them."

Brownback introduced a similar resolution in the last Congress. It was voted out of the committee but the full Senate never acted on it.
The closest the United States has come to a formal apology to Indians came in 2000 when an assistant secretary for Indian affairs apologized for the past conduct of his agency. He said policies of successive U.S. governments had "set out to destroy all things Indian" and left a "legacy of misdeeds that haunts us today."

Brownback's resolution says the United States must acknowledge "the broken treaties and many of the more ill-conceived federal policies that followed, such as extermination, termination, forced removal and relocation, the outlawing of traditional religions, and the destruction of sacred places."

The resolution apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all American Indians "for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on native peoples by citizens of the United States." It also asks forgiveness for massacres such as the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, where as many as 200 Indians were killed, and the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, where about 350 Indians died in 1890.

Indian leaders at the hearing said much more than an apology was needed to help deal with the many problems their communities are facing, including poverty, ill health and poor health care, alcoholism, drug addiction and unemployment.

"The president has proposed drastic budget cuts to many of the programs that are vital to the health and well-being of our people," said Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians.
Edward Thomas, president of the central council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian tribes of Alaska, said it was clear that some in the U.S. government were sorry about the treatment of Indians while others were not.

"An apology to us while ignoring the Third World conditions of so many of our people just doesn't seem genuine," he said.