through as a people. we ought to remember, we think about the long walk. it's a little bit different than a lot of traditions this oklahoma, the cherokees with the trail of tears or the chickasaws or so many of our tribes. the long walk you know the history, of course most everyone in this room does, is a two-way walk. it's a long walk away, a long walk back home, too. and we're engaged as native americans in a very long walk, the longest in american history. and much of it is a walk away from who we were. and sometimes forced relocation, sometimes forced assimilation, sometimes forced efforts to literally eliminate tribal governments altogether but we're now, i think, at the turning point and we're in the long walk back. the long walk back home. the long walk back to retaining our sovereignty, retaining our identity and retaining and celebrating the unique

contribution that each and every indian nation makes to this wonderful nation that we all call the united states of america. thank you very much. [ applause [ applause ] >> and now you all know why we're so proud of our enrolled chickasaw member of congress and his profound words that he shared with us today. today we are honored to be able to be joined by two other members of congress. it gives us a good example of this bipartisan effort to really come together. so i want to introduce and to recognize today we have chairman the chairman of the senate committee and indian affairs, a native hawaiian. he's brought the spirit of

cultural protections, of the importance of some of the values of our language programs and of course the hope and the opportunities to come forward as part of his championship in the senate committee and he's joined today by vice chairman senator barrasso from wyoming who is among many things in his support for indian country really championing the energy bill and moving forward the energy bill which we think is another great opportunity for the country. if either one of you would like to say a few words we would be glad to have you both come up standing together like you do in the committee. thank you. [ applause ] >> aloha.

it is a pleasure to be with you today and to hear ncai president keel's assessment of the state of the indian nation and tribal priorities for the coming year. it is important for all native american communities to be the american indian, alaska native, or even native hawaiian to take stock of where they are. and set achievable goals for the coming year. at this time when all governments are having to do more with less we must endeavor to strengthen the ability of

tribal governments to develop local economies, spur job creation, and meet the needs of their people. i am committed to reminding my colleagues and the promises made to tribal nations. and working to protect the federal program services that are mandatory to meeting debt responsibility. vice chairman barrasso and i continue to lead the committee in a bipartisan manner to resolve ambiguity and federal law regarding the rights of native communities and the jurisdiction governments.

we look to advance native solutions to native concerns. in this congress the committee has held numerous hearings, roundtables, and sessions because i believe in hearing from the stakeholders as we do important work. native communities are innovative in their approaches to self-sufficiency particularly in energy. economic development and education. they are demonstrating the capacity to meet the need of the community and we must remove barriers to their work. in keeping with federal policy of self-derpgs and

self-governance, the committee will continue to build the record on issues vital to native peoples, their identities and the importance of their homelands. we'll work with you to build the foundation for a new era in the government to government relationship. you also have a strong partner in the obama administration in assistant secretary larry eckelhart and we have had good cooperation with them and relationships and also with secretary salazar as well. as many of you know my two top priorities are the legislation and the native hawaiian

government reorganization act, both are vital to ensuring parody in federal law and resolving ambiguity in america's relationship with its first peoples. the fix bill clarifies the secretary of the interior's ability to take lands into trust for all tribes. an authority the exercise has s has exercised for years. it has keted instability in rural communities across the country. and a legislative fix screen over 100,000 jobs for american workers and significantly improves law enforcement on and near reservations.

we are seeing new legal challenges to the status of indian lands. these kinds of lawsuits cost money, and that is better spent meeting the needs of native peoples. this issue has bipartisan and bi-cameral support. and i extend to my good friend, tom cole, for his leadership on this issue. the united states aided in the illegal overthrow of the kingdom of hawaii. the private native hawaiian of the traditional government. shortly there after the congress began exercising its indian affairs powers to address native

hawaiian conditions and has done so this over 150 laws. 100 years later, for the united states role in the overthrow of the kingdom and the suppression of their right to self-determination was enacted. it is time to make things right and pass my bill. under my direction we will continue to advance several other important bills. the native class act and powers, native communities to implement strategies that produce strong educational outcomes for the

children. ensuring tribes have the authority and resources to address issues of violence against women. these bills have the ability to thrive. as a native hawaiian working with others doing things with aloha and right and just is the cornerstone of who i am. my career is proof that being who we are as native peoples is effective in washington, d.c. i do encourage tribal nations to participate in the process.

meet with my committee staff to share your concern and solutions and continue to move forward together. we are part of a great nation. we must continue to keep it great and by coming together and working together we can bring it about. i look forward to working with you all on your priorities. i want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to have made these remarks. god bless you. god bless your families. god bless the indians and ncai and the alaskans and god bless

the united states of america. [ applause ] >> i wanted to stand here today with our chairman to show how we want to continue to work together in a bipartisan way and we will continue to do that on behalf of the indian people. thank you, mr. chairman. i wanted to be here to express to president keel my appreciation, my admiration, and my respect. i'm so greateful to be here wit you and representative cole's

statements is absolutely right, flexibility and authority. and i want to thank you for sharing those wonderful stories and the history of your family as well as your great-aunt's story. those are lessons we should and can never forget. they are critical to all of us. the -- i listened very closely to the remarks and, to me, it all comes down to what's the real headline of this? it's tear down the barriers to success. and you continue to face those barriers to success. it's remove the obstacles as you have said and that's what we are going to continue to do as we work to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of economic success, of jobs, of health care, of education, and a better way of life. so i just wanted to be here to share with my chairman and with representative cole all of our concerns as well as our good wishes so thank you so much for letting me be with you today.

>> we are honored by your presence. at this time we'd like to open up for questions. we'll start by opening up to questions to our press and then we'll go to open it up to questions from other folks. we do have people on line. we have over 500 sites watching live right now. as well as the taping that will happen -- c-span is taping as well as the radio stations so we will be taking questions onis line, via the ipad. any questions, could you state who you are and who you represent and we do have microphones. thank you.

[ inaudible ] >> do you think that allows tribes, do you think that kind of opens the door for some of these bills because there is such bipartisan agreement for them to become top priorities for this congress? >> i certainly hope so. i think as you mentioned the partisan gridlock, i think the partisan gridlock is not because of the bills that affect indian people. as we said earlier congress has found common ground on those issues that affect indian country. indian policy i think you see across both aisles, support for those programs. i don't know what the outcome would be in some of these bills getting them passed. certainly we are encouraged by the bipartisan support for all of those bills and we thank you,

thank you for that question. >> good morning. my name is levi. i'm with the native news network. yesterday the u.s. census bureau released figures without the american indians live off or away from tribal lands. what can be done to make sure our indians who are living in urban settings and rural settings can get benefit because so much of the money goes direct ly to tribes? >> that's an interesting question and thank you for that. we do realize that the urban indian population is a population of indian people in the urban areas are growing. many of our people have left because of a lack of job opportunities, a lack of programs and lack of access to those opportunities in and around our local communities. the tribal governments themselves are looking at

opportunities to assist those tribal members. it's very difficult a time particularly in those areas where the dollars are limited and because federal dollars are appropriated and utilized by those that are benefited within that local community. and so i know that ncai and some of our partner organizations have looked at how we can help those people in those urban areas particularly in the health care arena we have some urban health care centers that provide health care and access to health care for those who reside in those areas about but those are limited. we don't have those in all the areas we need. we simply have a few, a handful of those health care centers. we need more. but it's a very difficult question and one that we continue to work on. jackie, would you answer? >> i want to add one thing to that because, first of all, yesterday was a great day when

they released that report at the museum and the native american museum and also to be part of that. but look at the maps that is in the press release and the report and it if you look at the maps, the concentration of natives is actually really close and adjacent to native communities, even though we do have a large spread of what we call urban indians there's the highest concentrations are really adjacent to the tribal communities. anyone with questions? >> i was just wondering how the president's state of the union is obviously the other day and he did mention the 24,000 native americans. he failed to mention much more about the native american communities. what is your response to that because, as you said, you are the first americans.

>> obviously we would like a lot more exposure, more comments from the president about the native communities and the policies that affect our citizens. i think the state of the nation address by the president was directed more to congress. i think the priority was looking further and was more broad in the context of the nation as a whole and not necessarily f focused on native america, a few months ago, a month or so ago, there were tribal leaders at the tribal nations summit held here in washington, d.c., in december. tribal leaders, 12 tribal leaders were able to sit down and meet with the president one on within one afternoon. all the tribal leaders that were

there, i happened to be honored to be a part of that. we did direct questions to the president and we asked them for specific areas of support. and obviously the time was limited. we do expect in the future we asked for additional meetings with the president, not just a one-time meeting once a year but these meetings with the cabinet secretaries. those are the people who really affect the indian programs and the services that are provided to native americans. but we ask for that. we ask for support. we ask for meetings with the office of management and budget and other high-level agencies. that's where really we need to be concentrated. you would love to hear the president address and talk about native americans but it's up to tribal leaders to continue to ask for access to the white

house and access to him. i have to say the president, this president, president obama, he made some commitments to indian country during his campaign when he was running for president. he's kept his word. he has placed people in strategic, important positions within his administration and they're doing a tremendous job. but it's limited. again, access is limited and we need to expand that. we need broader support. thank you. >> may i add one more thing? >> sure. >> in the president's message, a lot he talked about, of course, trying to address the economic security of this country but about program flexibility. if you heard president keel's speech today we're asking for the same thing that the president was speaking about in his address two days ago, and we actually have developed a report at ncai that we've shared with the white house. we've had meetings with the white house to talk about some of those areas, those specific areas of program flexibility so we're hoping that we'll be part of his -- you know, part of the work they're doing within the

administration targeting those areas where without a lot of new money but with a little more government flexibility our programs will be more efficient. >> anybody else? >> yes? >> national museum of the american indian, also yesterday's release of the census figures, a very high percentage of american indians are under the age of 24. what would be your suggestion to all on how we can mobilize the vote between 18 and 24. >> i'm going to ask jackie to talk about the native vote, get out the native vote because we do have a concentrated effort to get out the vote this coming year. it is important that we mobilize our young people, not just the first-time voters but that's an important segment but all of our

native scitizens to get out, ge registered and vote. when we look at how many were not even registered, the presidential election, almost a million people. we're not registered to vote. that's a significant piece of leverage to use in these native elections. so it's important that we not only talk about getting out the native vote but we concentrate our efforts on how to do that and jackie's worked extremely hard and her staff and her partner, our sister agencies and partners in indian kcountry hav worked hard to do that. worked hard to address particularly these large indian population areas. >> great. we have a plan. you'll see our plan. just targeting our tribal leaders, every tribe to have a native vote co-order thator, we have monthly trainings for those

coordinators whether it be for the tribe, the state, the region, the organizations. we met with alternative nonprofits on monday. we talked to them about what they can do and what they can't do. we met with the regional tribal organization and talked to them about training and their communities. we partnered with rock the vote and other areas. we will have a native curriculum that will supplement theirs for schools with high populations. we have a whole campaign going on in addition. you'll learn about it, thanks. >> i want to add one area and that is i wanted to thank the members of congress who have come here today, thank congressman cole, snore akaka

and barrasso. their time is crucial but when we talk about supporting indian issues, not just because they're required to, not just because they have constituents within their legislative district but because they understand what it really means. that's what we need in indian country. we need the native vote to talk to those candidates, find out who and what they are, where they come from, do they support our programs? and if they do, let's support them. let's help them. that's what we need to do in a native vote but it's more than just talking about it. we need to organize and mobilize them. thank you. i got busy there. we have another question. >> i'm going to take a question from one of the reporters online. this is from mark truhan, a question for president keel. can this be used to treat tribes as a 51st state for medicaid and

other entitlement programs? >> i think he's referring to maybe this bipartisan cooperation. that would be great. i would love to see that. i think that indian country would love to see this entitlement as a 51st state. there's been a lot of talk about that in the past. we've talked about particularly at the centers for cms. i know that they've talked about some of these regulations and how we can expand those and i know that dr. rubideaux is here and is leading efforts in the indian health service at hhs. to get indian people into programs involved and how we can expand the services to all native americans. i want to thank her for that support and that help. that's a great -- a great topic for us to discuss.

it's something we need to continue. thank you for that question. i know i didn't answer it, but it's a great question. >> yes? >> mary jane with the office of minority community outreach. i want to commend ncai for bridging the digital divide and bringing this foreup into the classrooms that are educating our children. are we going to have any kind of a pulse on how many of our native youth across the country in our public schools had access and opportunity to participate? and as a follow-up, maybe a challenge for you to engage our youth through like a twitter feed or something because i really want to know what our native youth feedback from this phenomenal event is. >> great, thank you. yes, we did. we did extensive outreach and i will tell you, we have a tweet here from a youth who wants to know barbie -- well, i think this is her name, terminator barbie.

so maybe i shouldn't say that. but how do we connect to our youth to leader -- how do we connect 0 our youth to the leaders who spoke during the national conference and do we have a mentor program? and -- yes? yes, we do have a mentor program at ncai. we have fellows and interns that come to ncai. a good share of our staff, our fellows and interns, and we also have a youth commission, partners we collaborate together with including naib, and we developed a youth agenda so we have a youth webpage or our website, we can connect to youth in many ways and will continue to connect with youth. we have a great agenda for this year. we've already developed it. one last question here. so can i have a question from the audience here? yes? >> hi, jim myers, the tulsa

world. you speak of the bipartisan approach that's taken sometimes in congress on different pieces of legislation but that doesn't always translate into success. can you identify two pieces of legislation you believe must be passed by the upcoming session of congress before it can be viewed as a success by the indian country? >> i think the most pressing need that we have is the criteria fix. that's been the priority for indian country for the past several years. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac