Bureau comes clean on dirty history in U.S.

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Kevin Gover, the top official in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the United States, caused quite a stir when he apologized on behalf of his department for historical wrongs it had committed against the people it was set in place to serve. It was not so much the apology, which many would argue is long overdue, but the occasion he chose to deliver it.

Stressing he was not speaking on behalf of the United States, only the bureau, the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior made the tearful speech on the occasion of a ceremony acknowledging the 175th anniversary of the BIA. He said he believed he spoke for the bureau's 10,000 employees.

After cataloguing a long list of deceits and violence against Indians, Gover, himself a Pawnee, admitted the department he worked for had formerly "set out to destroy all things Indian. . . . Poverty, ignorance, and disease have been the product of this agency's work," he said.

Gover seemed to leave no stone unturned in offering the apology and illustrating the past conduct of the bureau. He confessed to acts "so terrible that they infect, diminish, and destroy the lives of Indian people decades later, generations later."

Then he urged healing. He said the bureau could not yet urge forgiveness, while the memory of its hateful history remained with the tribes.

It's not likely the BIA will get it any time soon either, judging by some of the reactions stated by Indian leaders and others in the weeks following the apology.

Clint Halftown of the Cayuga Nation posted one of the gentler replies when asked what he thought.

"I feel that it is an apology that should of came from the president of the United States, not the politically appointed assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior. This agency, under the direction of the White House, did these horrible acts to the Native people of this land. But at least (the apology) is a start."

His sentiments were echoed by Darwin Hill of the Seneca Nation who said "they (Gover and the BIA) didn't go far enough."

Wendy Gonyea, who works in the Onondaga communication office in Nedrow, N.Y. said she wrote Gover the day after the apology. She indicated Gover's apology wasn't important to them.

"The Onondaga are traditionalists; we don't deal with the BIA except on a government-to-government basis."

Doug George-Kanentiio, a prominent Akwesasne Mohawk journalist who now resides on Oneida Iroquois territory, sent Windspeaker a whole article outlining his views. He cited numerous alleged recent violations of treaty rights and human rights by Gover personally and he alleged political interference in the affairs of the Iroquois.

George-Kanentiio's solution from the point of view of a "traditional Haudenosaunee" was that "Mr. Gover might (have) said what Native people have waited 170 years to hear: the BIA will be disbanded to be replaced by direct government-to-government relations with the United States in a manner consistent with our ancestral treaty rights and the U.S. constitution. Then he should have resigned."

The full text of Gover's apology is on the internet at www.doi.gov/bia/as-ia.175gover.htm.