Omissions

Apparently Wesley Clark, Denis Kucinich, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman also spoke (live or electronically) to the NCAI meeting. Unfortunately Native Times requires a subscription to look at most of its content, so I wasn't able to find anything there, and none of the mainstream newspapers seem to have covered the event in any detail. I went over to Indian Country Today, but so far as I can tell they don't have anything about the meeting. What ICT did have was this article about a commemmoration of the 1794 signing of the Treaty of Canandaigua between the federal government and the Oneida Nation. The article emphasizes that the treaty is the basis of relations between the US and the Oneidas and has not been broken by the federal government -- indeed, it quotes Michael R. Smith as pointing out "a federal court ruling last summer recognizing that 'the treaty is in effect.'" What the article doesn't mention at all, beyond identifying Smith as the Oneidas' land claim lawyer, is the reason a court had to issue a decision upholding the Treaty. The treaty has been violated in practice by the state of New York, leading to a long and thus far unproductive lawsuit by the Nation. This omission makes the article rather surreal.