NYTIMES
Published: January 20, 2010

After more than a century of obstruction and delays, still another deadline looms for a settlement that would compensate hundreds of thousands of American Indians for billions of dollars lost by a government that failed miserably to manage tribal lands that had been entrusted to it.

A law passed in 1887 conveyed the land in trust to the federal government. The government-controlled trust accounts were mishandled and lost, cheating the Indian owners out of fees from grazing livestock and gas and oil royalties.

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The Bay State Banner

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There it was, the ever-so-fleeting moment during her speech at the Republican National Convention when vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin paid tribute to her hubby, Todd — her brief mention that he’s of Yup’ik Eskimo background. Todd Palin beamed with pride at the acknowledgement in front of the packed convention crowd and one of the largest TV audiences to ever watch a candidate’s convention speech.But the cheering convention participants and millions of viewers won’t see the same smiles on the faces of scores of other Yup’ik Eskimos. Nor on many other Native Alaskans, who make up nearly 20 percent of Alaska’s population.

A devastating report by the Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 2002, “Racism’s Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska,” painted a picture of decades-long economic misery, discrimination, neglect and alienation for Native Alaskans in Palin’s state.

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