Tribes Protest Plan To Reduce Federal Aid

Declaring their very existence as tribal people is at stake, about 250 Indians and their supporters gathered outside Seattle’s federal building Monday to protest congressional cuts in aid to tribes.

The demonstration was sparked by a recent Interior appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Senate that cuts programs for Native Americans by about $200 million.

The cuts are not simply a reflection of a tight budget year, the tribal leaders say, but rather are intended to terminate the sovereign status of Indian tribes that makes them similar to states in the eyes of the law. And speaker after speaker pointed the finger of blame directly at one man: Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash.

Gorton, as chairman of the committee that reviewed the bill, was the author of the cuts and pushed them through the Senate.

“It has been one battle after another; one outrage after another from that man,” said Quinault tribal member Joe De La Cruz. “He is trying to push the rhetoric that we are all the same under the Constitution. We know better.”

De La Cruz said the United States “has a contract with Indian people, a fiduciary responsibility” based on treaties in which the U.S. swore to provide for their health, education, housing and social welfare.

The attack on Gorton and his budget bill was echoed by speakers from several tribes, the Washington Association of Churches and the Episcopal Diocese. Also present were representatives of environmental groups and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gorton was out of the country Monday. But in a statement released by his office, Gorton asserted that funding for Indian programs was cut less than funding for non-Indian programs in the Interior budget.

“While the total Interior budget was reduced by 11 percent, we worked to see that Indian programs received a smaller reduction of only 8 percent.”

The tribes dispute Gorton’s arithmetic, saying that under Gorton’s Senate bill, funding for the Bureau of Indian Affairs was cut by 26 percent - the largest cut faced by any agency of the Department of Interior.