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In The Hoop
THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2002

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

Bureau of Artificial Indians
Now that all the alternatives to Secretary of Interior Gale Norton's BITitanicAM have been submitted, tribal leaders are tasked with finding out which ones might help solve more than a century of trust fund mismanagement.

Some of them you might remember from such consultation meetings as Rapid City and Oklahoma City. But others seem more inspired by science fiction than real reform. (Although sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference.)

Witness the proposal from RavenPack Central Systems, an information technology outfit. According to the firm, the solution lies in something you might have seen in a recent Steven Spielberg movie.

"The proposed system is powered by a revolutionary Artificial Intelligence ‘AI’ technology platform," the company says.

And for just $10 million, RavenPack will get the Department of Interior started with the latest equipment to replace potentially hundreds of government employees with upgradeable, scaleable computer systems. According to RavenPack, this will "allow humans and machines to think together about complicated and complex problems more efficiently and effectively."

If this sounds rather like the rats that are now being controlled by remote control, maybe it's supposed to. Except everyone knows you can't train government employees to do anything.

But What About the Kiowas?
Likewise, the slick proposal by Native American Mutual, a Montana-based finance and insurance firm, is reminiscent of an upcoming MGM flick.

With the goal of "‘IMMEDIATE’ secure relief on existing data," NAM also has software in mind for managing more than 300 tribal trust accounts and how ever many individual accounts Auntie Gale says are in existence today.

The name? Code Talk.

But if you think it has anything to do with a certain HUD project, think again, writes NAM. "It is appropriate to use Code Talk to win the war on a broken trust system in the same manner the famous and heroic Navajo Code Talkers did in WWII," the proposal states.

"NAM is deeply honored to have a Native American Coding System named for these brave warriors."

Congressional medals can't be far behind.

In Your Hoop
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