From the Associated Press, see below...

>>> <[log in to unmask]> 03/25/05 12:08PM >>>
Native Americans Criticize Bush's Silence
By Ceci Connolly

  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.

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