Questions for the candidates

Patrick G. Barkman:  I'm still waiting for an apology• Recently a federal judge ruled that the Interior Department had failed to account for as much as $100 billion supposedly held in trust for more than 100 years for individual Indians for the use of their land. Do you support a fair resolution of this lawsuit and just compensation for the Indians who were swindled by the government that purported to protect them?

• A recent study showed that Indian women are four times more likely than any other ethnic group to be the victims of sexual assault and that their victimizers are, in most cases, non-Indians. One of the reasons for this is that the 1885 Major Crimes Act and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in the Oliphant case stripped tribal courts of the power to try felony offenses and prosecute non-Indians for crimes committed on Indian lands. The U.S. Department of Justice has been abysmally slow to prosecute such cases. Will you push for repeal of the Major Crimes Act and the overturning of Oliphant?

• In 1871, the U.S. Congress unilaterally and unconstitutionally stopped signing treaties with Indian tribes, instituting instead a policy of “agreements” that wouldn’t make the government feel quite so guilty when they later chose to ignore them. Will you as president reinstate the constitutionally mandated treaty relationship between Indian tribes and the U.S. government?