>Dear Mr. Aguilar:
>
>You might want to sample some feedback on Partrick May's illuminating
>article on the McCain/Indian love affair.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Suzanne Marcus Fletcher
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Suzanne Marcus-Fletcher <SMFLETCH@prodigy.net>
>To: pmay@sjmercury.com <pmay@sjmercury.com>
>Date: Tuesday, February 01, 2000 11:26 AM
>Subject: Re: [BIGMTLIST] McCain article: San Jose Mercury News
>
>
>>Patrick:
>>
>>As a reporter, you really need to get a clue and be more responsible in
>your
>>research if you are to be taken seriously. Senator McCain is NOT a friend
>>of the Navajo Dineh, nor the Hopi Traditionalists. McCain pushed the 1996
>>Accomodation Agreement through Congress (part of the 1974 Navajo-Hopi
>>Resettlement Act) which effectively sealed the coffin on Dineh relocation.
>>Not only does the Agreement deny the Dineh their civil rights, voice, or
>>say-so within reservation life and key laws that effect them, but it makes
>>them renters on soil that has been Dineh land since 1500 A.D. Further,
>>signers of the Accomodation Agreement will have the distinct honor of
>paying
>>the Hopi tribe "rent" to remain on land formally their own for only
another
>>75 years, at which time they must leave without any relocation benefits
>>whatsoever. Further, the McCain "AA" forces the Dineh to reduce their
>>livestock to unacceptable sustenance levels, making true survival almost
>>impossible. Those that exceed livestock permit levels on HPL (Hopi
>>Partioned Land), are subject to livestock siezures -- which happens all
too
>>often. These seizures are coupled with Elder abuse and hefty fines,
wherein
>>Dineh Grandmothers get to buy back their livestock from the B.I.A. with
>>exhorbitant interest. The Dineh on Big Mountain for example, have been
>>living in abject poverty without electricity or drinking water for over 25
>>years due to drainage and contamination of their resources by the massive
>>coal mine operations on Black Mesa. The Dineh are unable to make even the
>>most basic home repairs due to the Bennet Freeze law that precludes them
>>from doing so (also a part of 1974 Resettlement Act.) Senator McCain has
>>done nothing in his tenure to help the Dineh with these laws. The
>>Accomodation Agreement does nothing to aid their suffering, nothing to
>>provide them even the most basic survival resource: WATER.
>>
>>You might want to think about another day job, sir.
>>
>>Suzanne Marcus Fletcher
>>Los Angeles, Journalist
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Robert Dorman <redorman@theofficenet.com>
>>To: BIGMTLIST@onelist.com <BIGMTLIST@onelist.com>
>>Date: Tuesday, February 01, 2000 3:02 AM
>>Subject: [BIGMTLIST] McCain article: San Jose Mercury News
>>
>>
>>From: Robert Dorman <redorman@theofficenet.com>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>The following is posted for "educational purposes" and for those without
>>internet access. Others should go to the webpage,
>>http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/mccain30.htm
>>
>>Perhaps some of you would like to enlighten PATRICK MAY on the true nature
>>of McCain's love for the Indians.
>>
>>--Bob Dorman
>>
>>
>> Published Sunday, January 30, 2000, in the San Jose
>>Mercury News
>>
>> Indians find ally in McCain
>>
>> His zeal blends liberal, conservative strains
>>
>> BY PATRICK MAY
>> Mercury News Staff Writer
>>
>> SIPAULOVI, Ariz. -- The Hopi Indians bury their dead
>>on two sides
>> of the mesa that raises this village in its dusty
>>fist. Graves of children
>> face the east, young souls rising with the dawn.
>>Adults lie to the west,
>> their spirits setting with the sun.
>>
>> From the graveyards the desert soars outward, empty
>>yet laced with
>> meaning, boundless though confining as a prison
cell.
>>
>> For the past 18 years, these ancestral lands of the
>>Hopi and
>> neighboring Navajo tribes have drawn John McCain.
>>Presidential
>> hopeful, former Navy pilot and POW whose own spirit
>>was torn
>> asunder inside a North Vietnamese jail, McCain has
>>quietly sculpted a
>> large piece of his political career from the
>>blood-red clay of Indian
>> country.
>>
>> McCain, who faces his most crucial test Tuesday in
>>the New
>> Hampshire primary, has captured the nation's
>>attention. Voters of
>> both major parties are entranced by his
>>unpredictability, heartened by
>> his candor, intrigued by his past.
>>
>> But there remains a side of the Republican candidate
>>that few
>> Americans even know exists. McCain has been a loyal
>>and
>> passionate advocate of American Indian rights since
>>first elected to
>> office in 1982. And his zeal offers a window into
the
>>candidate's
>> character, unobscured by the sound-bite packaging of
>>the political
>> race.
>>
>> Through that window, we see a man driven by an
>>overriding sense of
>> honor, of duty and obligation to a good and just
>>America, spawned
>> during a childhood within a decorated naval clan,
and
>>girded by his
>> own wartime experiences. From that comes an outrage
>>over promises
>> broken and a sympathy for the underdog in American
>>life.
>>
>> But McCain's passion for Indian issues is also
imbued
>>with his
>> conservative values, his conviction that the less
>>government the better,
>> that democracy is better served by self-reliance.
>>
>> ``He saw us as a group that wants to do good but is
>>always running
>> into problems,'' said Peterson Zah, former head of
>>the Navajo Nation
>> and a longtime McCain ally. ``So in his mind, we
>>become the
>> underdog. At the same time, he knows how patriotic
>>Indian people
>> have been, how we've served in the military, how we
>>love this country
>> despite how the government has treated us.''
>>
>> Year after year, in a sort of unspoken compact with
>>American
>> Indians, the three-term Arizona senator has made
>>numerous trips to
>> reservations around the West. He has conducted
>>hearings on tribal
>> woes of child abuse and bitter land disputes. He has
>>burrowed into
>> the heartbreak of Saturday night in Gallup, N.M.,
>>studying the
>> problem of Indian alcoholism firsthand in the
America
>>Bar on Coal
>> Avenue, in the seedy motels along Route 66, and in
>>the garbage
>> dumps behind Safeway that have become home to the
>>Navajo
>> homeless.
>>
>> He has his detractors, though they're hard to find.
>>Some American
>> Indians lump McCain with other politicians they see
>>as carpetbaggers.
>> Others say McCain uses his elected office to control
>>Indians, that he
>> helped crush a tribal leader he considered a threat,
>>that his support of
>> tribal sovereignty is political subterfuge.
>>
>> ``McCain claims to be the Indian's friend, yet he
led
>>the overturn of
>> an elected representative of the Navajo people,''
>>said activist Vern
>> Lee. He was referring to Pete MacDonald, a powerful
>>and popular
>> Navajo leader in the 1980s now in prison for taking
>>bribes. ``I'm not
>> saying MacDonald is totally innocent, but the way he
>
>>was targeted
>> and prosecuted was unfair and one-sided.''
>>
>> Along the way, though, McCain has earned the respect
>>of many
>> Indian authorities and elected officials. As chair
of
>>the Senate Indian
>> Affairs Committee, McCain argued forcefully for
reams
>>of pro-Indian
>> legislation, much of it -- from health care to
>>criminal justice -- bearing
>> fruit today on reservations from California to
>>Oklahoma.
>>
>> Low-key crusader
>>
>> Friends say his views follow sense of duty
>>
>> It's not sexy stuff. Stumping for Indian rights
>>neither draws voters nor
>> opens wallets. At times it has put him in the middle
>>of stubborn tribal
>> disputes that all sides admit are lose-lose
>>propositions.
>>
>> So why does he bother? From interviews with McCain's
>>friends, from
>> his own writings and comments he has made on the
>>presidential
>> campaign bus, answers emerge. McCain fills the 349
>>pages of his
>> autobiography, ``Faith of My Fathers,'' with
>>testimony of how father
>> and grandfather -- both four-star admirals in the
>>Navy -- taught him
>> that true patriotism rests on allegiance not just to
>>America but also to
>> all who live within its borders, both the privileged
>>and the forgotten.
>>
>> McCain's naval service solidified those feelings.
And
>>some who know
>> him well say the brutalizing isolation he suffered
as
>>a POW helped
>> galvanize him to their cause.
>>
>> ``I think John did a lot of soul-searching in
>>prison,'' said Ferrell
>> Secakuku, 62, former Hopi chairman, standing in the
>>sun-baked
>> reservation he has escorted McCain through over the
>>years.
>> ``Thirty-one months of solitary confinement allowed
>>him to
>> understand us, why we feel we are part of the Earth.
>>And because he
>> has suffered, he understands the oppression Indians
>>have suffered,
>> too.''
>>
>> McCain has always reached out to minorities and
other
>>groups he
>> says have been denied the full import of the
American
>>Dream.
>> Latinos, in particular, have supported him, giving
>>him 55 percent of
>> their vote in Arizona in his last Senate run. In a
>>celebrated anecdote
>> from ``John McCain: An American Odyssey,'' author
>>Robert Timberg
>> describes midshipman McCain coming to the defense of
>>a Filipino
>> servant at the Naval Academy whom an upperclassman
>>was berating.
>>
>> ``Glory,'' McCain would later write in his
>>autobiography, ``belongs to
>> the act of being constant to something greater than
>>yourself, to a
>> cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you
>>rely, and who
>> rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no
>>humiliation can
>> destroy it.''
>>
>> After his release from prison in 1973 and subsequent
>>retirement from
>> the Navy, McCain ran in 1982 for the 1st
>>Congressional District
>> around Phoenix, in a state that's home to more than
a
>>quarter-million
>> of the country's 2.4 million American Indians.
>>Sprawling over parts of
>> Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the Navajo Nation, the
>>country's
>> largest, provided what became an impressive
political
>>constituency for
>> McCain.
>>
>> From his days as a Republican congressman, McCain
>>seemed drawn
>> to the Indians. Peterson Zah recalls seeing the
young
>>politician
>> working a parade up in Window Rock, capital of the
>>Navajo Nation
>> and 345 miles from McCain's closest constituent in
>>Phoenix.
>>
>> Zah remembers McCain as the only politician not
>>riding in a car that
>> day, walking so he could press the flesh of voters
>>not even in his fold.
>>
>> ``My dad said, `Son, that guy must really like
>>Indians because he
>> came all the way up here for this parade,' '' Zah
>>said. `` `If you ever
>> talk to him,' he joked, `tell him this is not his
>>district.' ''
>>
>> Political inspiration
>>
>> Udall, Goldwater shaped McCain's views
>>
>> If geography facilitated McCain's fondness for
>>Indians, it was Morris
>> Udall, the liberal and legendary Arizona Democratic
>>Congress
>> member, who provided much of the inspiration.
>>
>> ``This really started with Mo Udall,'' said McCain
>>staffer Nancy Ives.
>> ``I think they shared a common concern for those who
>>don't have as
>> strong a voice in Washington as they should.''
>>
>> The other influence was Barry Goldwater,
conservative
>>point man of
>> Sun Belt politics whose libertarian philosophy
McCain
>>would come to
>> embrace. ``Goldwater and Udall were early pioneers
in
>>advancing
>> tribal rights,'' said W. Ron Allen, first vice
>>president of the National
>> Congress of American Indians. ``As a conservative
>>Republican,
>> Goldwater voted down international fiscal support
>>again and again on
>> one basic principle: that if we can't take care of
>>indigenous people in
>> this country, we have no right to be putting money
>>into Third World
>> countries. That really resonated with John.''
>>
>> With his election to the Senate in 1986, McCain's
>>passion for Indian
>> matters caught fire. As vice chair and later chair
of
>>the Senate Indian
>> Affairs Committee, hardly a glamorous address in
>>Capitol Hill real
>> estate, McCain plowed headlong into the subject.
>>Staffers recall the
>> senator, a voracious reader, clamoring for anything
>>Indian-related he
>> could get his hands on.
>>
>> ``He loved to engage in discussion about Indian
>>issues,'' recalled
>> staffer Eric Eberhard, former deputy attorney
general
>>for the Navajo
>> Nation. ``Anybody who wanted to take part, from
>>senior staffers to
>> the guy sorting the mail, had complete access to
>>him.''
>>
>> McCain always had time for lawmaking: ``We'd plead
>>with John to
>> chair a hearing if the head was not available,''
said
>>Allen, ``and he'd
>> always do it, no matter how busy he was.''
>>
>> Top of his list were efforts to further the move
>>toward tribal
>> autonomy, championed by President Nixon in 1975 with
>>the
>> Self-Determination and Education Act. ``McCain was
>>ahead of his
>> time in terms of empowering tribal governments,''
>>said Allen. ``He
>> was always focused on strengthening the tribal
>>economy and he was
>> very, very aggressive about it.''
>>
>> McCain's calls for shrinking big government (he has
>>long argued that
>> the Bureau of Indian Affairs needs to be reduced)
and
>>giving ordinary
>> citizens more say in their affairs dovetailed neatly
>>with what Indians
>> wanted.
>>
>> ``He believes in local government,'' said Keith
>>Harper, attorney for
>> the Native American Rights Fund. ``And tribes are
>>local government.''
>>
>> During his tenure, McCain pushed a broad range of
>>laws beneficial to
>> the tribes. He championed legislation designed to
>>make it easier for
>> Indians to adopt Indian youths instead of having
them
>>sent off the
>> reservation into non-Indian homes. He pushed for
>>funding for better
>> tribal health care, evidenced by the new $30 million
>>center for the
>> Hopi rising from the desert a few miles from here.
>>And although he's
>> not a big fan of casinos, McCain saw reservation
>>gaming as a step
>> toward Indian autonomy, throwing his support behind
>>the 1988 Indian
>> Gaming Act. That legislation has helped bring
>>gambling -- and millions
>> of new dollars -- onto reservations from California
>>eastward.
>>
>> ``From funding for irrigation projects to preventing
>>theft from Indian
>> grave sites, John was there for us,'' said former
>>staffer Eberhard.
>>
>> A defining moment in McCain's ardor for Indian
issues
>>came in the
>> late 1980s, when a scandal over a serial child
>>molester exploded on
>> the Hopi Reservation. A teacher named John Boone was
>>accused of
>> sexually abusing more than 100 boys at a Hopi
school,
>>and eventually
>> sentenced to life in prison. The scandal shook
Indian
>>country to its
>> core.
>>
>> ``It was one thing to find out the horrible things
>>Boone was doing,''
>> said Zah, ``but we've had to deal with the effects
>>ever since.'' The
>> tragedy continues to haunt the reservation, as some
>>victims have
>> committed suicide, lost themselves in alcohol, or
>>become molesters
>> themselves.
>>
>> ``All during that period, McCain was involved,'' Zah
>>said. ``He was
>> outraged, and he helped amend hiring procedures at
>>reservation
>> schools to prevent this from ever happening again.''
>>
>> Finding cruel realities
>>
>> Hard lessons learned on reservation visits
>>
>> McCain found more cause for outrage with each foray
>>into the desert.
>> Eberhard remembers one trip the senator took to
>>Gallup. Nicknamed
>> ``Drunk City,'' the town has long served as a
>>backdrop to the ravages
>> of Indian substance abuse, even though the problem
>>has been
>> exaggerated into a stereotype most American Indians
>>deeply resent.
>> Still, public drunkenness remains one of the Indian
>>world's biggest
>> challenges, and downtown Gallup at night is the
>>perfect place to see
>> why.
>>
>> ``He was just stunned by the otherworldly quality of
>>what he was
>> seeing,'' Eberhard said. ``From top to bottom,
Gallup
>>on a Saturday
>> night is a rough place -- a lot of people getting
>>beat up, a lot of
>> mayhem in the drunk tank, a lot of mayhem directed
at
>>Indians.
>> There's a real sense of a threat lurking out
there.''
>>
>> On another fact-finding visit, McCain wanted to walk
>>the streets of a
>> reservation town west of Window Rock. ``I told the
>>police to take
>> him to the worst thing they could find,'' said Dan
>>Lewis, now a senior
>> vice president for Bank of America who spent years
on
>>McCain's
>> staff.
>>
>> ``They took him to the Tuba City (Ariz.) dump, where
>>they found a
>> homeless lady living with her two kids in this hole
>>in the ground,
>> covered by a piece of plywood. I'll never forget
>>John's face when he
>> came back up out of that hole. He shook his head and
>>said `That's the
>> worst I've ever seen, and there's no one at all
>>speaking up for this
>> lady.' ''
>>
>> ``That,'' said Lewis, ``lit a fire in his belly.''
>>
>> Whatever's burning inside John McCain has brought
him
>>now to a
>> fateful juncture. Those who know him say his run for
>>the presidency,
>> just like his devotion to Indian people's welfare,
is
>>fueled by one
>> simple conviction:
>>
>> ``He really believes that when this country pledges
>>its word, it's
>> important that it be kept,'' said Eberhard, a McCain
>>friend of 17
>> years. ``And he believes that treaties with tribes
>>are as vital as those
>> with Russia or France.''
>>
>> Keith Harper sees an ever-broader commitment in
>>McCain's support
>> for Indians.
>>
>> ``When McCain says we should care about Indians he's
>>telling us
>> something that's vital to that discourse: that we
>>must tolerate
>> differences among us,'' Harper said. ``And that we
>>can and should
>> keep promises.''
>>
>>
>> Contact Patrick May at pmay@sjmercury.com or (408)
>> 920-5689.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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