FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 22, 2005

PRESIDENT THOMAS APPOINTED TO STATE-TRIBAL RELATIONS PROJECT

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) leadership has appointed Tlingit Haida Central Council President, Edward K. Thomas, to be a tribal leader representative on the State-Tribal Relations Project.

The State-Tribal Relations Project is a partnership between the National Conference of State Legislature (NCSL) and the National Congress of American Indians; it promotes intergovernmental cooperation between states and tribes and is funded through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

President Thomas was reluctant to accept this appointment due to time commitments. However, he concluded that we must do a better job working with our state legislature to improve benefits to our common citizenry and to reduce the tremendous amount of time wasted fighting with each other over things that really don’t matter in the big picture.

An advisory council made up of Native and non-Native state legislators and staff chosen for their leadership roles in state-tribal issues, along with several tribal leaders and Indian policy experts oversee the project.

The State-Tribal Relations Project has produced a number of publications designed to help states and tribes cooperate as they develop public policies and build government to government relationships. These publications include Government to Government: Understanding State and Tribal Governments (June 2000) and Government to Government: Models of Cooperation Between States and Tribes (May 2002), both of which were reprinted in 2004.

For more information about the NCSL-NCAI State-Tribal Relations Project, visit http://www.ncsl.org/programs/statetribe/statetribe.htm.

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