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February 28, 2008

(OR-Senate) Gordo to Native Americans: screw you!

Yesterday Gordon Smith helped tack an anti-abortion amendment onto the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (SB 1200) via the Vitter Amendment. The net effect is that he voted to attach an anti-abortion amendment to funding for a program that's already anti-abortion and has been so for 25 years!

Big deal, you say. Republicans like Gordo have long opposed the use of federal tax dollars to pay for abortions. But why do they oppose it?

The rational is rooted in the point of why citizens pay taxes in the first place - we pool our resources to provide for the common good. And conservatives don't believe that abortion serves the common good. But that's not at all the point of the Indian Health Service, which is what the SB 1200 funding is all about. The IHS is a government-to-government obligation based on all those treaties our government signed with various Indian Nations and then promptly broke, and broke, and broke again. The federal government OWES this to the Native peoples in this nation. It's the very least we can do after figuratively and literally raping them, generation after generation.

Senator Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chief sponsor of SB 1200, summed up our collective responsibility with this statement to the committee:

Let me describe why there is an urgency. We have a trust responsibility for Indian health care. That is different from other responsibilities. A trust responsibility means we took the land from the indigenous Americans, from the first Americans. We took their land but signed treaties and said: Tell you what, we will give you a deal. Here is our responsibility: We will provide health care for you. That was interpreted much later as a trust responsibility.

Dorgon went on to explain that the federal government currently spends half as much money per-person on this legal and moral obligation to native peoples as it does on inmates in federal prisons. HALF!

We actually spend twice as much money to provide health care for Federal prisoners, those incarcerated in Federal prisons, as we do to meet our responsibility for health care for American Indians. We have a responsibility for both, but we spend twice as much for Federal prisoners' health care as we do for American Indians.

Dorgon continues:

It is not as if there is not a need. American Indians have a 600 percent higher rate of tuberculosis, a 510 percent rate of alcoholism, and diabetes is off the charts. There are about one-third of doctors for Indians versus other populations, and one-fourth of nurses for Indians as other populations. There is a much higher rate of sudden infant death syndrome. Cervical cancer is four times higher. The suicide rate among Indian teens is 10 times higher in the northern Great Plains, and it is triple in the rest of the country. The statistics are endless. We have a full-scale health care crisis.

But there's more. And this is where Gordo's vote adds insult to injury!

Here are some chilling statistics:

• Reported rape victimization by race is: 34% of American Indian/Alaska Native; 24% women of mixed race; 19% of African American women; 18% of white women; 8% of Asian/Pacific Islander women. (Tjaden and Thoennes, National Institute of Justice 1998). [Kevin's Note: The most raped ethnic group constitutes, according to US Census data, just 2% of the population.]

• 80-90% of rapes against women (except for American Indian women) are committed by someone of the same racial background as the victim. (US Dept. of Justice 1994)

• American Indian victims of rape reported the offender as either white or black in 90% of reports. (Department of Justice 1997)

Senator Dorgon continued:

This bill in itself will not fix all that is wrong, but it is the first time in 8 years we are finally getting this bill reauthorized. It should have been done 8 years ago. It is now being done, and it is important.

I have described this bill through the eyes of two girls--one age 5, the other age 14, both dead. Let me describe them. Their relatives and parents have allowed me to use their names so that we understand what this is about and what this urgency is.

First, I will explain Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight, a beautiful 5-year-old Indian girl from the Crow Reservation in Montana. Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight died, and the last 3 months of her life was in unmedicated pain. This little girl went to an Indian health clinic again and again to be diagnosed as having a condition of depression, and she was treated for depression. It turns out she had terminal cancer. She was finally rushed to Billings, MT, then rushed to Denver, CO, and diagnosed as having terminal cancer when it was undiagnosed many months before, and it may well have been able to be treated.

When they finally diagnosed this 5-year-old girl, who loved to dance the Indian dances, as having terminal cancer, she asked her mom if she could go to Disney World and see Cinderella's castle and the Make-a-Wish Foundation allowed her to go to Orlando, FL, to see Cinderella's castle.

They got there and checked into a motel, and that evening, in her mother's arms, Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight said: Mommy, I'm sorry I'm sick. I will try to be better. She died that night in her mother's arms. She never got to see Cinderella's castle.

This little girl deserved health treatment, deserved a health system that we would expect for our children, a good diagnosis, first-class health treatment. She did not get it, and she is dead.

So is Avis Littlewind. Avis was 14. Avis Littlewind committed suicide. She lay in her bed for 90 days in a fetal position, missing school, missing everything. Her sister had committed suicide. Her dad took his own life. This young girl age 14 was lying in a fetal position for 3 months and somehow nobody missed her. No mental health treatment was available. Nobody seemed to identify this little girl was in trouble. And then she hung herself. She felt hopeless and helpless and took her life.

A 14-year-old girl is gone. A 5-year-old girl is gone. But it is thousands, thousands of people suffering with a health care system that is not working. It is not working the way we would expect it to work for us and for our families, and it does not work for Native Americans, the first Americans, for whom we have a trust responsibility and to whom we made a promise. That is why we must get this bill done.

If that testimony doesn't disturb you then I submit that you have lost your humanity.

Oregonians can be proud that Senator Wyden voted against this heinous Vitter Amendment. But it remains an open question why Gordo has the backing of so many Native American Nations in Oregon while he continues to throw their mothers, wives and daughters under the proverbial GOP bus? What could he promise them that would buy their acquiesence on such a profound travesty of justice?

One small glimer of hope can be found in the hot-off-the-presses poll released today showing that Senator Smith's approval numbers continue to be mired in the sub-50% range.

Posted by Kevin at February 28, 2008 01:00 PM