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In The Hoop
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2002

Welcome to In The Hoop, Indianz.Com's occasional column about assorted Indian issues.

Gale Talks to The Press
Secretary of Interior Gale Norton made a one-hour address to members and guests of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., yesterday, speaking on a number of hot issues facing her department.

Key among those was the Internet shutdown that has hindered her department for more than two months. She jested at the beginning of her speech that "we've been cut off from even what we had in 1850," drawing some scattered laughter from the 80 or so in attendance.

But to the federal judge on the verge of holding her in contempt and to tribal leaders worried about their membership, the situation is no joking matter. Of course, she was oblivious to the verbal lashing her attorneys were getting several blocks away as she claimed that payments to Indian landowners were being made as quickly as possible.

At the same time, she finally admitted sending funds to Indian Country were the second priority, and not the first, as her attorneys have been arguing and her aides have been telling Congress.

Gale Takes On: Internet Shutdown
"Our entire Department of the Interior system was shut down by court order on December 5. The first thing we looked at were a few areas of the system where public health and safety were in danger.

And that included, for example, the USGS warning system for volcanoes and tidal waves and so forth.

The next thing we looked at was how to make sure that payments to Indians went through our system. We submitted a proposal to the court fairly quickly after that in December. We have been trying to work with the court and with the plaintiffs to get those systems back up online.

We received permission about 10 days or two weeks ago to reopen all of the systems that would allow us to process the basic checks that are made to individual Indians and those have now been sent out.

We still had some problems with getting court permission to reopen the Minerals Management Service (MMS) systems that dealt with royalty checks. We took it upon ourselves to put forward regular, appropriated money as an alternative to pay estimated payments to the tribes and to the individual Indians so that they could receive their checks even while we still have problems getting the court permission to reopen the rest of our system.

And so that process is now underway and they should be receiving those estimated checks fairly quickly.

We've worked very hard to be sure that the Indian beneficiaries were taken care of."

Gale Takes On: Indian Gaming
Norton didn't mention her spat with National Indian Gaming Commissioner Montie Deer over the shutdown but she did address the casino industry and where it is going. She also didn't say Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb is pulling back gaming regulations either, but that's another story.

"Indian gaming is one of those difficult issues. I think we have seen some successes. We've also seen some problems.

We have seen areas where the casinos have become very beneficial economic activities for the tribes. We've seen some others where they have created tremendous conflict with states and surrounding areas.

So we're working to try to minimize the conflicts between the states and tribes.

We just recently went forward with a proposal in California that included issues being resolved by having the local government and the tribes enter into some memoranda of understanding. The county was involved in the zoning for the tribal facility because the tribe volunteered to have that take place.

I think there are some ways of resolving some of the issues.

We need to be very vigilant to be sure that crime does not become a problem in indian gaming. It certainly is one of my concerns to guard against that."

Gale Takes On: The Press
When was the last time Norton received favorable press coverage? Indianz.Com thinks it was when she promoted fire safety, Indian schools and law enforcement but that was before she stopped calling us, so we can't be sure.

But despite the criticism she has received from the mainstream media over Arctic drilling, off-shore development, polar bears, mining laws, sacred sites, Indian trust, environmental regulations, snowmobiles, national monuments and a host of other issues, she said the press -- for the most part -- was doing a good job.

"That's the toughest question of the day here.

I think that, I've seen some of the press corps that has been following the department and has bee developing an understanding of our issues.

I think we have seen overall that the people are working to have an understanding of our issues.

There's some press coverage, and I can think of a few issues, where there's a tendency to take quotes and run with them without checking the facts. I have seen that on a few occasions.

But overall, I guess I don't have too many complaints about what the coverage has been."

Listen to Gale:
MP3: On Shutdown | MP3: On Gaming | MP3: On The Press | RealAudio: Full Speech

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