A Troubled Relationship With Alberto Gonzales

Indian Country Today discusses the troubled relationship between Native Americans and former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

He advocated for a cheap settlement of the Cobell case, which even more outrageously was contingent upon ending U.S. trust responsibility to tribal nations. His Justice Department leaked a litany of nitpicking objections to Congress in an effort to derail health legislation for American Indians. And he undoubtedly participated in the politically motivated firing of eight respected U.S. attorneys, including five who were leaders in prosecuting violence on Indian lands.

According to the article, Gonzales put Native American issues on the back burner again and again:

Since [the June 2007 National Congress of American Indians conference], NCAI President Joe Garcia and Executive Director Jacqueline Johnson had sought a meeting with Gonzales. Finally, they were scheduled 11 a.m., Aug. 27. Staff told them the attorney general was running late, about 15 minutes. They waited while the attorney general of the United States resigned.

Suddenly, Alberto Gonzales had all the time in the world.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. attorney firings scandal also decreased Gonzales’s popularity among Native Americans.

During the congressional investigation into the firings, Attorney Tom Heffelfinger, who worked on the case of the 2005 shooting at Red Lake High School and resigned in 2006 after finishing his work on it, discovered he would have been among those fired:

Monica Goodling, who was then senior counsel to Gonzales and the Justice Department, said that Heffelfinger had been on the list of attorneys to be fired because he'd spent too much time on Native issues. Heffelfinger said he was working on the Red Lake shooting during the time that his name appeared on the list.

"The Red Lake shooting was the worst act of homicidal violence in Minnesota and the third worst act of school violence in the U.S.," Heffelfinger said. "You could well say that it was one of the most important cases I had to deal with when I was U.S. attorney."

Hopefully the next attorney general will actually pay attention to the needs of the Native American community.

The full article can be read here.

(Chris Kellerman is an intern in the DNC Internet Department)

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