Better Centuries Late than Never? Washington’s Newest Embassy Is Native American

Washington, DC is home to over 170 foreign embassies; on November 3 the newest one to open is the Embassy of Tribal Nations, to serve as a center for visiting Native American tribal leaders while they conduct business in the capital. On Thursday, President Obama will host what is being billed as the First Annual Tribal Nations Conference at the Department of the Interior, to which 564 tribes are invited to send representatives. The President and senior Administration officials will address the gathering, where issues to be discussed include economic development and natural resources; public safety and housing; and education, health and labor.

“For the first time since settlement, tribal nations will have a permanent home in Washington, D.C. where they can more effectively assert their sovereign status and facilitate a much stronger nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government,” said National Congress of American Indians President Jefferson Keel.

The Conference represents a campaign pledge fulfilled. “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans, the first Americans,” Obama said while on the campaign trail in May 2008. “That will change when I am president of the United States.” He was inducted into the Black Eagle family of the Crow tribe under the name Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish, or “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land.”

According to the AP, during the May 2008 Montana visit by candidate Obama: “Crow Vice Chairman Cedric Black Eagle said a purification ceremony was performed in which the candidate faced east — the source of new life — and was prayed over by his adopted father, Hartford Black Eagle.”

NCAI President Keel notes, “One of our first diplomatic relations with the U.S. was when the Iroquois aligned with some of the first European settlers. The Iroquois’ constitution — called the Great Law of Peace — guaranteed freedom of religion and expression and other rights later embraced in the U.S. Constitution.”

Who knows how different things might have been if an embassy for Native Americans had been established in Washington say, 200 years ago?

In the turmoil of issues that grip us every day, from health care to economic injustice to war and climate change, it is heartening to stop for a moment to remember a politician, and now a president, who kept his pledge to the Native Americans, at least so far, and is taking the time to hear their concerns.

The Care2 community has petitions around the welfare of Native Americans here:
Bring Renewable Energy to Native American Reservations
Stop Predatory Lending on Native American Lands

Read more: embassy, human rights, native american, obama, politics

Photo: Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr, Creative Commons license

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Dewey T.

6:49PM PDT on Sep 16, 2010

The guv-mint has had toooo many opportunities to show good faith toward native people but have purposefully dropped the ball. When this nation was born after 1776 recognizing tribal sovereignty simply did not fit into their grand scheme of "one nation under God".

When Spain ceded Florida to the US in the Adam-Onis Treaty of 1819 the US conveniently ignored Article 6 where the US had agreed to declare all of the inhabitants of Florida citizens of the US. This is just one example.

The battle to perserve our ethnic identities and cultures has only been relocated to different sociological arenas and its identity is being genetically redefined internallly. You can bet your next batch of frybread that if the guv-mint is talking reconciliation and recognition that it is to their benefit.

Just because O-bama is a person of color doesn't mean squat. He still had to go through that process that renders all people of ambition, and all people who are ambitious enough to want to go to Wash. DC, without a soul.

In describing a person of dubious character one of my elders would say, "I would trust that person as far as I could throw him". However, my favorite slogan is, and will always be, the 1970s bumpersticker that said, "Sure, you can trust the government. Just ask an Indian."

Don't honor your ancestors with shame.

send a green star

Nellie K A.

2:01PM PST on Feb 28, 2010

Still a lot of things to do (better and improve) and a lot way to go for the natives.

Abo r.

12:45PM PST on Feb 18, 2010

I hope it is a step to better

Lionel M.

5:25AM PST on Nov 14, 2009

Bravo, bravo, President Obama! However what can now be done to recompense for more than three hundred years of murder, theft and oppression?

Paula L.

7:16PM PST on Nov 10, 2009

It is a step in the right direction. I am of cherokee blood, but we are all Native brothers and sisters. And it is time that which was taken away that our ancestors cherished and nourished is placed back in the hands of the Native Peoples. There is much healing that needs to be done for Mother Earth.

Paula Marie D.

8:57AM PST on Nov 8, 2009

After all the sad centuries, it's about time! For your unique and touching thoughtfulness toward the First Nation People, President Obama, I say chi megwetch (thank you so much)!

Jade H.

4:53PM PST on Nov 7, 2009

Well, it's about damn time! Now, follow up with repaying all the monies the BIA has stolen from them over the last 50 years so there are not families living without electricity, heat, or running water in their homes, close down the BIA (it's and abomination - they're not children to be watched over!)and let their own councils/governments be in charge, let Leonard Peltier out of prison, and start treating them with the respect due them as humans! And don't take another 100 years to do it!

Syntheah A.

2:09PM PST on Nov 7, 2009

To Anne J. F. --
I think that many people do not realize what state many tribes are in due to cut backs in government funding (just stating some of the more recent events, even though we know we could go years listing.) What is it that you feel your tribe needs that they aren't getting? Could anyone help with this issue?
I hope that with all these smart people on this site who apparently would like to be in a position to change things, we could help Natives in several ways.
I am hopeful....even though history tells a different story.

:) Syntheah

Ingrid S.

5:02AM PST on Nov 7, 2009

Yes, it is "better late than never". As the old Joni Mitchell song said, "You don't know what you've got til it's gone - they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot." The Native American ideas and attitudes towards the earth are slowly coming back and spreading, and may be what eventually saves the planet: respect for the mother earth and the other creatures therein, and proper use that does not destroy it and them. Perhaps this embassy will be a place from which to help raise awareness and eventually reverse the second-class status of our Native Americans.

Anne J. F.

6:27AM PST on Nov 6, 2009

WHY DOESN'T THE GOVERMENT HELP MY TRIBE OUT MORE!!! I AM LAKOTA OGALALA SOUIX NATIVE AMERICAN!!! WELL SOME OF ME!!! BUT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THE GOVERMENT IS SOOOO MESSED UP TO MY TRIBE!!! PROBABLY BECAUSE I THINK MY GREAT UNCLE CRAZY HORSE WAS ONE OF THE BEST AND BRAVEST WARRIORS THAT EVER LIVED IN THIS UNITED STATES EVEN BEFORE IS WAS THE USA!!!