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In The Hoop
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2002

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

That's Not My Job
If you didn't attend, or listen to on the Internet, today's House Resources Committee hearing on the Klamath Basin, you missed lots of yelling, lots of promises and no tribal leaders.

Turns out a Democrat request to include input of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon was rejected by the Republican leadership. Perhaps that's why Sue Ellen Wooldridge, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton's deputy chief of staff (yes, the one who agreed to conduct a statistical sampling of the Indian trust fund without researching the project), admitted she doesn't know how tribal interests will influence the debacle.

Wooldridge did acknowledge the tribes' water rights have been upheld by a federal court but said they haven't been "quantified." So until that happens, it appears non-Indians will get all the water because it doesn't look like the Department of Interior is planning on figuring out any time soon how much the tribes are owed.

Sounds just like another controversy we know of.

A Fight!
But Wooldridge's ignorance wasn't the highlight of the hearing. It was a fight between Californians Rep. George Miller, a Democrat member of the panel, and Rep. Wally Herger, a Republican who is not a member but was invited to the meeting.

It seems Herger was upset that Miller took so long to talk. "You gave quite a bit of time to my fellow Californian," he told retiring chairman Rep. Jim Hansen.

"How many residents of yours, constituents, were bankrupt in your district as in mine?" he then told Miller. "We hear from your constituency, the radical environmentalists, over and over and over again. How often do we hear from my constituency, the ones who are going broke?"

"We put men on the moon three decades ago yet we have a radical environmental community from the big cities that are not put of out work but insist on my people going broke," he continued.

"Your constituents are flourishing and are feeling very good about what they are doing," he concluded.

Miller felt compelled to respond. But since he didn't have the microphone in front of him, he had to yell. Which led Herger to yell some more.

"It's Mr. Herger's time," Hansen finally said, ending the debate.

So Where Were the Indians?
Sitting at home apparently. But according to Mark Pfeifle, press secretary for Norton, tribal interests aren't being ignored by the department.

It just turns out that last week's meeting of the Cabinet-level Klamath task force didn't do anything to "help" Indians. "KLAMATH WORKING GROUP HOLDS FIRST MEETING, ANNOUNCES MEASURES TO ASSIST FARMERS AND RANCHERS, CONSERVE FISH" read the March 1 press release.

When asked to explain why Indians were left out, Pfeifle said (from the cuecard) the department "is committed to fulfilling our trust responsibility to the tribes." He also pointed out that the group has only met once and will take into account tribes sometime in the future.

In Your Hoop
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