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January 18, 2006 :
Former BIA Secretary Kevin Gover on
(Audio Post #1)
Dr. Kim Pearson: We are chatting this afternoon with Kevin Gover, who's a professor of law at Arizona State University and he's also the former Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who is responsible for running the Bureau of Indian Affairs. How are you today?
Prof. Kevin Grover: I'm doing great. Thank you.
KP: I wanted to talk with you about a few things and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me this afternoon. I really want to talk first of all about what you think right now the most pressing issues facing Native peoples?
KG: Well, I tend to group it into two separate groups of issues, actually. First there is an ongoing and probably perpetual battle for Indians to preserve their right to self-government. And, of course, that's been undersieged ever since really from the first contact with the Europeans, and it continues into today. We've gone from a state where the tribes were obviously absolutely free and independent; to a time when every aspect of Indian life was completely dominated by the federal government; to a time now when we're somewhere in between those two extremes and trying to define exactly what the status of the tribes is going to be and what the relationship with the United States was going to be into the future is a constant issue that we have to deal with in every way almost everyday. The other issues, though, that really in many ways are more immediately threatening, is that there are these social pathologies that were in the tribal communities, and I talk about them as the four horsemen of the Native American apocalypse, and that's alcohol abuse, substance abuse, violence against women, and the sexual exploitation of children. These things arised, in part, from the history of the relations with the United States and all of the terrible things that happened in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. But also it is an indication of a broad barrier to define and live by certain values in the Indian community. And we can understand sort of how we got to this place and why for example there's rampant alcohol abuse and substance abuse, but the reality is that these are things that we must resolve for ourselves or it won't matter what our status is in federal law, it won't matter what our relationship is with the United States . These things are destroying our communities right now and they've got to be dealt with.
KP: What has to happen in order for the Indian people to address those issues?
KG: If I knew I would tell it, because there are things have been troubling our communities for a long time. One of the things that I think about a lot these days, and I should add that I have had personal experience with this, I'm an alcoholic; I've struggled with alcohol for many years. Happily, I haven't had a drink in 12 years.
KP: Congratulations.
KG: Well, thank you. So I know about this stuff and I was very typical in so many respects, the things that lead me into drinking, the drinking in my family, and all the shame that was passed on in my family. And it's common; it is the way most Indians who grow up in a tribal community grow up and so my story is not unusual at all.
KP: Is that part of the reason that you're talking so openly about this, to try to break the shame?
KG: Absolutely. Shame is one of those things that can only exist in the dark really. And once you sort of put it out there and say “hey, this is what happened to me, this is who I am, these are some of the things I've done, and here's what I am now.” And all that shame really begins to lose some of its power and we're ashamed as a community. It's really a very terrible thing that tends to happen to young Indian people growing up in a dysfunctional environment.
KP: Ok, I'm going to move on to another question.
(Audio Post #2)
KP: You talked about two categories of problems. One having to do with external pressures on Indian peoples and the other having to do with internal problems and pressures. How would you assess the job that Native and non-Native news organizations do in reporting on these issues?
KG: Oh, I think they do a miserable job actually. I'm not sure that it's unique to Indian issues. Indian issues tend to be extremely complex. And almost necessarily, a writer, even the most attentive writer, even the most thorough writer, is not going to be able to tell the whole of the story in a way that explains it in all its complexity. So they take shortcuts, but what's interesting about it is the shortcuts that they choose to take tell you a lot about the predispositions of the writer. And so what we see is a lot of agenda driven reporting.
KP: Can you give me an example?
KG: Yeah, right now we're seeing an interesting thing playing off the media with the big lobbying scandal in Washington . And Jack Abramoff apparently ripped off his Indian client and first we were going through a period where sort of early on as the story broke there was this portrayal of Indians as victims. These poor old Indians were taken advantaged of by this mean old lobbyist. Now we're entering a different phase where people are starting to say “you know, these Indians sure had a lot of money.” They got it from gambling and what they were trying to do was buy power and influence and they acted like a special interest group, like any other special interest group would act in Washington . Why should Indians be treated especially if they're just going to act like those kinds of people? The problem with characterization is that we're talking about a half dozen tribes here that got involved with Abramoff . There are 560 federally recognized tribal governments. So we can basically say that 1% of tribes are involved in this scandal, and yet because the media does what it does, it's painting with a broad stroke and making it sound as though all tribes or many tribes or most of the tribes have engaged in this kind of conduct. And that's always problematic, every tribe really is quite different, and there is no “Indian point of view” on much of anything. It's this drive to sort of characterize broadly in a way that just can never be accurate. Unfortunately, it really can end up driving policy decisions because politicians respond to perception and not reality.
KP: Indeed, there are new rules, as you know they were proposed yesterday, in terms of congressional relationships and lobbyists, and also rules that the Department of Justice has proposed with regard to regulating Indian gaming. Are those going to adversely affect the economic development of these Indians?
KG: I don't have any concerns about the new lobbying legislation; first of all, Congress is writing rules on how lobbyists {unintelligible} and I promise you, they're not going to do anything that will keep the lobbyists out of their lives. I think the tribes can, should, and will play by the same rules as everybody else.
(Audio Post #3)
KP: You were saying that you're not concerned with the lobbying rules because those will govern how Congress relates to all lobbyists.
KG: Right. And as for the Justice Department rules, those were actually brewing long before the Abramoff scandal. But it does show an interesting part of the picture in Indian policy and Indian politics, and that is that throughout the Clinton administration, the same guys that were enforcing Indian gaming laws at the Justice Department were basically on a short leash, and weren't allowed to pursue their own agenda with regard to the regulation of Indian gaming. What's happening now under this administration is that those same guys are finally getting to do what they always wanted to do, which is really crack down on a certain type of gaming machine that has been making the tribes a phenomenal amount of money.
KP: And why is that?
KG: I guess I'd have to say I don't know. I don't know why they take such a narrow view of what Congress authorized in the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. I do know it's an act they had been grinding for a long time, and as I said they're finally getting the chance to pursue their point of view as policy.
KP: You've been on both sides of this, obviously, as a government official and you've been involved in lobbying as well?
KG: I was a lobbyist, mostly a lawyer, but I think when you represent Indian tribes, if you don't know how to change statutes through the legislative process then you're not offering your client all the service they need. Quite often a lawyer runs into a situation where the law is just against you, and no amount of creativity and cleverness can get you out of that. But there is the option of changing the law, and so you go to Congress and if you can persuade enough members that the statute as its written really needs to be adjusted, and its easily corrected, then you can change the law. I did a lot of that.
KP: It sounds as if it's part of what you were referring to and talking about, the sovereignty issues.
KG: Yeah, the reality is Indian Affairs is made up mostly of a bunch of small decisions, like every area of policy I suppose, and there's no chance I could go to Congress and say, restore Indian sovereignty to what it was, nobody would take me seriously. What I can do is go back there and say, hey we're got a law enforcement problem on this particular reservation, we have a fix, we want to take responsibility, if you will make this change in the law, we will take care of this situation. That's the kind of lobbying that I think is extremely worthwhile, and extremely valuable to the tribes, and quite frankly, good for the whole system. So that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
KP: What does it do in terms of helping the Indian tribes get the resources to deal with some of their internal pathologies you talked about?
KG: I think that there is so much to be done, I was thinking just this morning actually, I sort of had a minor brainstorm, but one of the things that occurred to me as we're watching tribes spend enormous amounts of money on different types of undertakings, many of them altruistic and undoubtedly good, many of them I think are idiot lobbyists, $80 billion in two years, that's just absurd. I think this is a matter we've got to resolve ourselves, I don't think there's a federal program to do it, what we do need is the federal support. We need treatment centers, we need aftercare programs, we need all sorts of things and yet, I did some research on this, I once identified 30 different government funding mechanisms for alcohol and substance abuse programs, but not a single one would fund a comprehensive program from the point somebody said, I want to quit using or I want to quit drinking, until some years down the road when they've been successfully treated and they got their aftercare and they're re-placed into the community and they're working. There was nothing out there that would fund such a program. I think government can be more creative and more forthcoming in giving the tribes some tools to address these issues. Bottom line though, it is our problem. And it's one that we've got to solve.
(Audio Post #4)
KP: The tremendous challenges the tribes face, there are Native American victims of the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast this past fall. I didn't see them getting a whole lot of press attention. Do you know whether or not they're getting a fair share of the recovery effort?
KG: I don't know, and the reason I don't know is because we're no longer seeing it in the media. There were a couple of stories a couple of weeks after the hurricane, saying that there were some tribes along the Gulf Coast that were essentially being ignored in the recovery effort. I have no problem believing that, but I haven't seen anything since, so I genuinely don't know.
KP: How then can the media do a better job of bringing to light some of the issues that you've been talking about?
KG: A couple of things. First of all, in many cities, especially places like Phoenix , San Diego , San Francisco , Denver , pretty much all of the western newspapers really ought to have a beat reporter on Indian affairs, and have the same person writing all the time, because Indian communities and Indian politics are extremely high contact. You have to know a lot about the community to really understand the dynamic at work on any issue. The only way you're going to do that is with people of experience. That also means training and hiring a Native journal. There are more and more and that's good, but there aren't enough. Third, the tribes have to become more forthcoming in dealing with the media. I don't know if you remember or if you followed the shootings on the Red Light Reservations…
KP: Yes, I did.
KG: …but the tribe basically shut down the reservation and wouldn't let reporters on. And what they don't understand is that when you do that you're inviting speculation, which is to say you're inviting people to make up stories. And tribes with some good reason are afraid of the media and afraid that they're going to be misportrayed, the reason being they've always been misportrayed. The solution to that is not less information is more, and so the tribes need to sort of develop a method, or approach for dealing with media and becoming more open to them so that the media can tell more of a story than they have.
KP: I know the Native American Journalist Association tries to interest you in situations like that as well.
KG: It does. There's a problem with the Indian media, I'm not sure what the solution is, but much of the Indian media is actually owned by tribes, and so they are in many respects more like house organs than they are genuine independent media outlets. They are tough and they're biding better but in general there's really not an independent Indian media right now. That's bad for us, I think, I'm anxious to see someone establish a good Indian news outlet that really is sort of above being always a “rah rah Indian” kind of thing. We need to be telling the truth about ourselves, to ourselves. If we don't, we invite the popular media to define us, and that's been bad for us since day 1. We still see popular media defining us in very strange ways.
KP: Any final thoughts or advice that you have, especially for aspiring journalists who are going to be listening to this conversation?
KG: One of my big problems with reporters is always, some of the things that I see, if the person had any real grounding not in journalistic ethics but just ethics, being a good person and being an honest person and being a hardworking person, a lot of the problems that I've experienced with the media would have been avoided. I tell my law students the same thing, be a good person and do the right thing, we all know what that is and if we all did more of it there would be considerably less problems in our world.
KP: On that note, thank you so much for your time.
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