Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and lives in Fort Hall, Idaho. Trahant’s new book, “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

By Mark Trahant

We hate health care reform. The bill was too many pages, too complicated and didn’t fix all the problems right now, this minute. (One of America’s core democratic values is our impatience.)

But the why is fascinating. Many of us hate the reform bill because it went too far; but most of us are unhappy because health care reform didn’t go far enough. We wanted more action, a smarter health care system, even, more government to make our health care system work smarter.

Yet that voter angst – both for and against – set the stage for this November election and the Republicans’ Pledge to America. “In a self-governing society, the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent,” the pledge says. (Except that some of us do give our consent.)

Elections are policy choices. And this GOP Pledge is a clear guide about what Republicans would do if given power. There are significant implications for Indian Country in this document (even though American Indians and Alaska Natives aren’t mentioned at all).

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Tags: Congress, Democrats, GOP, Health care reform, Indian Health Service, Mark Trahant, ndian Health Care Improvement Act, Pledge to America, Republican Party, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, Trahant Reports

Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and lives in Fort Hall, Idaho. Trahant’s new book, “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

By any objective measure Barack Obama has been the most engaged and effective president on American Indian issues since at least since Richard Nixon. You could even make the case that Obama is better than Nixon because there has been so much successful legislation and Executive Branch action in less than two years.

A quick review of the Obama record:

• A summit with elected tribal leaders where the president and cabinet members held a town hall. Immediately after the meeting the Office of Management and Budget was charged with the task of improving the government-to-government consultation process;
• Enactment of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act as a permanent statue;
• A significant number of key appointments of Native Americans at the White House, cabinet agencies, even the Interior Department’s chief legal counsel;
• Increased budgets at the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs plus a sizeable slice – some $3 billion – of stimulus fund money that were directed at Indian Country.

I could go on and on with the real results from this administration. (If you need a contrast, remember the frozen glare of President Bush when I asked him about tribal sovereignty or what it was like when the entire budget for urban Indian health programs was to be “zeroed out.”)

As Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry EchoHawk said at Taos Pueblo this past weekend: The president has been communicating to Indian Country with his heart and soul. He quoted Candidate Obama saying: “I promise you, as long as I serve as President of the United States, you will not be forgotten.”

That promise has exceeded expectations. So with this kind of record you would think the election ahead would be exciting. Indian Country has a stake – a huge stake – in the success of President Obama and that means supporting and electing candidates that will back his agenda.

Indian Country ought to have the president’s back.

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Tags: Barack Obama, buffalo post, George Bush, Indian Country, Indigenous Democratic Network, INDN’s List, Larry Echohawk, Mark Trahant, Native American news, President Obama, Richard Nixon, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, Trahant Reports

We got a little behind schedule this week, but next week – as he has every Monday for more than a year now – Mark Trahant will be back in his usual spot. He’s completed his Kaiser Media Fellowship that enabled him to write about Indian Country and health care, but he’s still writing, in a somewhat new format. For starters, he describes himself as a “Twitter poet” – reason alone to pay attention! Here’s his new description:

Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and lives in Fort Hall, Idaho. Trahant’s new book, “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

President Obama said something last week that should define the coming election – and the policy choices ahead.

“The idea was that if we just had blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we left everyone else to fend for themselves that America would grow and America would prosper,” the president said in Parma, Ohio. “And for a time this idea gave us the illusion of prosperity. We saw financial firms and CEOs take in record profits and record bonuses. We saw a housing boom that led to new homeowners and new jobs in construction. Consumers bought more condos and bigger cars and better TVs.”

He continued: “I ran for President because I believed that this kind of economy was unsustainable –- for the middle class and for the future of our nation.”

This is what this country needs to talk about, how do we go about building a sustainable economy?

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Tags: Barack Obama, Economy, Fort Hall, Mark Trahant, President Obama, Shoshone-Bannock, sustainability, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, Unemployment

Each Monday, Buffalo Post – along with numerous other websites and newspapers – features former Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Page editor Mark Trahant’s columns on Indian Country and health care.

As if that isn’t enough to keep Trahant busy, he’s also been writing a book: “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars: Henry M. Jackson, Forrest J. Gerard and the campaign for the self-determination of America’s Indian tribes.”

Amazon describes it thusly, here:

It’s a preposterous title: “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars.” How can that be? Well, there were two great battles in our era: The defeat of termination and the campaign for self-determination. First, a terrible, disastrous policy had to be rejected – and then it had to be replaced by a new progressive policy course for American Indians and Alaska Natives. This is the context for this story about Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Forrest Gerard. Team Jackson and Gerard so changed the landscape of Indian Affairs that virtually every member of the body politic today agrees with the premise that American Indians and Alaska Natives have the right to govern themselves.

Self-determination is a topic that’s been much in the news the past week, what with the Iroquois Nationals’ ultimately unsuccessful fight to travel overseas to the World Lacrosse Tournaments on their Haudenosaunee Confederacy passports.

The incident captured the attention of a lot of people, some of whom will no doubt want to learn more on the subject. Trahant’s book is wonderfully timed.

The book has its own Facebook page, where you’ll find this review by Pete Jackson that includes the following:

[Trahant] leavens analysis of his hero and friend, Forrest Gerard, with enough anecdotes of political horse trading to avoid hagiography. This is a story about failure, hubris, political creativity, and trying, whether sincerely or not, to make things right.

The final, broader takeaway to Trahant’s book: Politics (but no one tell academe this) is not a science. It’s what makes Trahant’s story as rich as human nature is inscrutable.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Forrest Gerard, Gwen Florio, Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Henry Jackson, Iroquois Nationals, Lacrosse, Mark Trahant, Native American news, Scoop Jackson, self-determination, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, tribal sovereignty, World Lacrosse Tournament