FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 30, 2006

PRESIDENT THOMAS ADDRESSES NATIVE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

Tlingit Haida Central Council President, Edward Thomas, recently attended a Native Leadership Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, that was hosted by the Council for the Advancement of Native Hawaiians and the American Indian Resource Institute.

This conference began with very strong comments by Byron Mallott and Nianoa Thompson that focused on the importance of Native leaders knowing who they are and the people they serve as they go about doing things in the dominant society on behalf of our people. While this is relatively a simple concept, too often we lose the passion for our causes because we don’t remain connected to the people we serve and we don’t fully know our own history.

Alaska Senator Albert Kookesh was scheduled to address the conference but had to cancel due to the loss of a respected community member in Angoon; President Thomas was asked to address the conference in his absence.

President Thomas used this opportunity to discuss the federal funding problems for tribes. It is important to not only dispel the myth that Native Americans get all they need from the federal government, but he pointed out that flat federal funding of tribal programs results in negative funding when taking into account inflation. During the past 2 decades funding to Native Americans on a per capita basis has been much less than federal funding to other American citizens.

It is President Thomas’s position that the Abramoff scandal is not a “flash in the pan” happening but a reflection of how business has been done in Washington, DC for some time now. The voices of the small and needy have been drowned by the powerful voices of the rich and well to do, and you can very directly relate it to the tax cuts to the wealthy and the under-funding of Native American programs.

President Thomas also reported on the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) strategy to change our federal funding message to the Administration and Congress. It appears that the messages we use to justify funding to our people are not working. We must work hard to emphasize that federal funding to tribes does make a difference to the lives of our people and that we do spend these precious resources wisely and effectively.

Finally, President Thomas followed the lead of our non-Native brothers and claimed Waikiki Beach on behalf of the Tlingit and Haida people!

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