Posted on 03/25/2005 1:43:27 PM PST by Crackingham
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."
snip
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yes, it's all Bush's fault because he didn't speak out after it happened.
Words fail me.
I thought he said something about it?
Let me look around.
Kinda makes sense a little... I don't think it's a racial thing necessarily, but President Bush HAS spoken about other School Shootings, so...
Oops. Forgot the obligatory, "Hey, Ceci, which democrat's hand is stuck in your back making your mouth move, today?"
Thanks for the link... I'm glad to see he HAS, in fact, said something.
If Bush said anything, these same weasels would be all over him for God knows what.
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.
So Clinton chimed in on Columbine ... to play politics with gun control. These arsewipes are shameless.
As soon as he said something, they'd be bitching about him using it as political gain...
What he's really upset about is that President Bush didn't use the shooting as an excuse for calling for a ban on assault rifles.
Yeah, and if they did look closely at this case with its forshadowing and lack of proper treatement for this kid they would huff and puff about racism for a different reason. If these people had voted for Bush maybe he would pay more attention to them. But not calling attention to a lot of failings in the school and commuinity may be a blessing.
What is he supposed to do? Go on tv, force a tear, and tell us how he feels their pain?
That might well be the European view. (Or the India view. Or the Korean view. Or the Japanese view. Or the Aussie view).
Then he should come out and condemn Prozac, because it's as much to blame as the crazy little kid, most likely.
No no no. I doubt you'll find very many indians, on either side of the political spectrum, wanting any serious gun grabs or bans...
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