http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64317-2005Mar24?language=printer

Native Americans Criticize Bush's Silence
Response to School Shooting Is Contrasted With President's Intervention in
Schiavo Case

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 25, 2005; Page A06

MINNEAPOLIS, March 24 -- Native Americans across the country -- including
tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger
and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the
second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.

Three days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine members of his Red Lake
tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians
complained that the White House has offered little in the way of sympathy
for the tribe situated in the uppermost region of Minnesota.

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red
Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't
said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the
founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When
people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to
life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this
was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

Weise's victims included his grandfather and five teenagers; seven other
students were wounded, and two of them remain in serious condition in a
hospital in Fargo, N.D.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, in an informal discussion with
reporters Tuesday, said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of
those who were killed."

"I hope that he would say something," said Victoria Graves, a cultural
educator at Red Lake Elementary School on the reservation. "It's important
that there's acknowledgment of the tragedy. It's important he sees the
tribes are out here. We need help."

The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his
high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the
brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over whether her
feeding tube should be reinserted.

"The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms.
Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take
time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the
Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a
member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.

"He has not been real visible in Indian country," said former senator Ben
Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.). "He's got a lot of irons in the fire, but
this is important."

Even more alarming than Bush's silence, he said, is the president's
proposal to cut $100 million from several Indian programs next year.

After hearing grumbling from tribal leaders, Jacqueline Johnson, executive
director of the National Congress of American Indians, called the White
House on Thursday to inquire about Bush's silence. "I wanted to make sure
the White House is paying attention to this issue," she said. "I wasn't
sure."

Asked Thursday about Bush's silence, spokeswoman Dana Perino said that he
plans to dedicate part of his Saturday radio address to the Red Lake
tragedy and that he is following the case closely through the FBI and the
Justice Department.

In the hours after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in
1999, President Bill Clinton publicly expressed his condolences and
followed up a few days later with a radio address in which he proposed new
gun control measures and school safety projects.

At the Red Lake Urban Indian Office here, volunteer Marilyn Westbrook said
she was disappointed but not surprised.

"I don't feel he cares about the American Indian people," said Westbrook,
as she collected donations of gas cards and money to enable fellow Red Lake
members to make the 260-mile journey to the reservation. "Why hasn't he
made any statements about what happened with this shooting?"

Staff writers Dana Hedgpeth in Red Lake and Peter Baker in Waco, Tex., and
research editor Lucy Shackelford in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company