As the media noted, the White House website switched over to Obama's version at 12 pm Tuesday. Under The Agenda, it lists all the topics the Obama administration considers important.
Civil Rights
Defense
Disabilities
Economy
Education
Energy & Environment
Ethics
Family
Fiscal
Foreign Policy
Health Care
Homeland Security
Immigration
Iraq
Poverty
Rural
Seniors & Social Security
Service
Taxes
Technology
Urban Policy
Veterans
Women
Additional Issues
Hmm. No Indians here. Perhaps they're under one of the main headings.
Under Civil Rights, you can find Support for the LGBT Community. Under Additional Issues, you can find Sportsmen. But I don't see any mention of Indians.
So the disabled get a main heading. LGTB people and sportsmen each get sections under a main heading. But Indians get nothing.
Maybe the site mentions Indians elsewhere? Well, if you search for "Indians," you get 10 hits. Most are presidential biographies. The first hit is for William Henry Harrison, who started as a "simple frontier Indian fighter." Nice.
If you search for "Native Americans," you get only three hits. The first hit is for "Office of Public Liaison--Bios." It's a false hit that contains the unrelated words "Native" and "Americans."
The White House site has no significant information about Indians. Yet Obama promised to appoint a senior advisor on Indian affairs. Now that you've addressed the critical LGTB and sportsmen agendas, Barack, how about addressing the Indians?
4 comments:
When it comes to Indians, Obama is known for promises, PR appearances, and no record at all.
What you find here seems to be continuing that.
It's his 2nd day in office so I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and trust that we will not be forgotten if we follow through on our responsibility to make sure we seen, heard and listened to rather than complaining about being forgotten.
I'm giving Obama the benefit of the doubt too. But so far he hasn't done anything pro-Native that I know of.
From letting the Marching Chiefs march to his "settling the West" remarks to the lack of information on the White House website, everything is a bit troubling. His possible BIA nominee is also drawing fire for not being pro-Indian enough.
A message received via e-mail:
Hi Rob,
I shared your disappointment that there was no mention of Natives or the Obama administration's priorities specific to issues relating to Native Americans. I was specifically looking, after his disappointing speech, which shook my confidence in his commitment to Native Americans and our nations. I even tried looking under domestic terrorism and war, since the BIA came out of the Dept. of War...turned up nothing. However, I did find a Native agenda posted on mybarackobama.com. It looks official, but if it is, I'm not sure why it would be only on that site and not the whitehouse.gov site with all the other official stuff. I actually posted the link to it over the weekend in response to another of your blogs debating Obama's speech.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/firstamissues
Be well,
Kirsten
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