department of interior and the buro of indian affairs are not making native americans a priority, and, ufrl, their lack of attendance here today tells me that that's yet another example of them not making this a prifrmt the federal government does need to fulfill its promises and its obligations to tribes, but too often they fall short, and that's not acceptable to me. i also wanted to -- supervisor dillon, at the bottom of your testimony on page 5 i just had a question for you. one of the footnotes talks about how you're cognizant of the special relationships that happen between the tribes and the federal government but that that special relationship should not diminish the intensity with which the government lit gates tribal claims. could you expound a little bit on that and what that means in your experience that you've had with seeing that they haven't litigate that had with intensity. >> thank you. i'd be happy to. what we have found in the litigation that we had is that there were defenses, legal defenses that the government put forth but then did not use. they haven't asserted those