Black Elk wrote:
washingtonpost.com
Native Americans Back From Iraq Decry Cutback
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Saying that conditions in Indian country are worse than conditions in
Iraq,
two Native American war veterans spoke out yesterday against the Bush
administration's plan to cut millions of dollars from a fund that
helps
build houses on reservations.
This is what Bush means by "Native American Sovereignty."
Former Army specialist Gerald Dupris, 22, described his mother's
neighborhood inside the Cheyenne River Reservation in Eagle Butte,
S.D., as
"a lot worse than what I left in the military in Iraq."
Dupris said lawmakers reviewing the president's budget "should
realize that
a lot of Native veterans return home to worse than what they left.
They
should realize what we've done for this country, and give back to the
Native
reservation."
Native Americans represent less than 1 percent of the population, yet
they
make up about 1.6 percent of the armed forces, according to Defense
Department statistics. Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 23, a Hopi Indian who
served with
the 507th Maintenance Company in Iraq, was the first female U.S.
soldier to
die in combat.
Between 2002 and 2004, the housing appropriations for Native
Americans and
Native Hawaiians hovered at about $650 million. But last year, budget
cutters started chipping money away.
In fiscal 2005, the administration asked for $647 million and
Congress
approved $25 million less than that. For fiscal 2006, President Bush
has
asked for $582 million, alarming Native American housing advocates.
"The president's preaching fiscal responsibility, and in the same
breath
he's asking for $82 billion for Iraq," said Chester Carl, chief
executive
officer of the Navajo Housing Authority in Window Rock, Ariz. Indians
"are
over there sacrificing their lives to improve the lives of our enemy,
yet
they come back to conditions that are worse. There are no jobs,
there's no
housing."
Carl is also chairman of the National American Indian Housing
Council, which
sponsored the news conference with Dupris and another Native American
soldier, Staff Sgt. Julius Tulley.
The Bush administration painted a more positive picture. During
testimony
yesterday before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Michael Liu,
assistant secretary for public and Indian housing at the Department
of
Housing and Urban Development, said: "Tribes are taking advantage of
new
opportunities to improve the housing conditions of the Native
American
families residing on Indian reservations."
Liu acknowledged that the fiscal 2006 budget "is tight," but he said
that it
"also recognizes the low-income housing needs in Native American
communities." The budget increases the budget authority for a
loan-guarantee
program, and HUD will work to leverage federal dollars with private
investments for both rental housing and homeownership, Liu said.
But that good news is not apparent on the ground, said Tulley, who
served in
Baghdad with a reserve engineering battalion. During his first days
in Iraq,
Tulley said other soldiers griped about living in tents, hauling
drinking
water, eating tasteless food rations and not being able to shower,
watch
television or access the Internet.
But "it didn't take long" for Navajos to adapt to that life, said
Tulley,
41, of Blue Gap, Ariz., the heart of Navajo country. "We were used to
it. I
thought, 'What are you complaining about?' . . . What they missed, it
was
nothing to us."
Blue Gap is "where you see a lot of poverty," he said.
"I'm not here to bash my commander in chief," Tulley said. "Nor am I
here to
speak out against the military. I'm here to say that I've gone to
war. I put
my life on the line. My brothers put their lives on the line. I want
to say,
'Look, I've done my part. My family's done their part. Now I want
something
in return.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30683-2005Feb16?language=printer
--
Words mean nothing -- nothing to George Bush. They are just
utterances. They
have no meaning. Bush can say again and again, "well, we don't do
torture."
We know what happened. We know about Abu Ghraib. We know, we see
anecdotally.
http://www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=05/01/26/1450204
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