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<P>Eureka Times-Standard
<P><B>One from the Kennedy clan tours Hoopa</B>
<P>By John Driscoll The Times-Standard <BR>
<P>Friday, September 03, 2004 -
<P>HOOPA -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy floated down the Trinity River, met with tribal
leaders and <BR>toured some of the key ventures of the Hoopa Valley Tribe on
Thursday.
<P>The 37-year-old Kennedy is in his fourth term in Congress, and sits on the
House <BR>Appropriations Committee. A Rhode Island Democrat, he is vice chairman
of the <BR>Congressional Native American Caucus.
<P>Raft guide and tribal member Chuck Carpenter explained how salmon spawn as
Kennedy and <BR>members of the Cabezon Tribe of Mission Indians floated through
a riffle. It's a river running <BR>strong for this time of year, as releases
from an upstream reservoir pour down, trying to stave <BR>off a potential fish
kill on the lower Klamath River.
<P>"This river means a lot," Carpenter said. "It's our whole world. Our elders
looked at the river <BR>as a mystical place."
<P>Kennedy is touring American Indian tribes on a trip out West, and will head
to New Mexico <BR>today. He sees himself as an advocate for tribes, which are
often overlooked or ignored in <BR>federal legislation.
<P>"We have to take inventory, each session, of a myriad of bills that impinge
upon sovereignty," <BR>Kennedy said.
<P>For example, in Homeland Security legislation, tribes often aren't mentioned
as governments. <BR>So instead of the typical federal to tribal government
relations, tribes are left to deal with <BR>states for security resources,
Kennedy said.
<P>He said he works to fix bills so they reflect tribal sovereignty.
<P>The Hoopa Valley and Cabezon tribes are two of 10 tribes working on tribal
trust issues <BR>outside of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, said Danny
Jordan, self-governance and <BR>commerce director for the Hoopa Tribe.
<P>The tribe has a set of business codes that allow development of businesses
under its own <BR>regulations, he said. Since the tribe's casino is small, it
has concentrated more on non-gaming <BR>efforts, like timber and a cannery,
Jordan said. That has required an improvement in <BR>infrastructure.
<P>One of the latest endeavors is a treatment facility that will pump water from
the Trinity River <BR>to serve some 800 homes, including houses in the Bald
Hills area that didn't see phone service <BR>until the 1980s.
<P>Kennedy's tour follows another tour by his cousin Caroline Kennedy in the
1980s. And Patrick <BR>Kennedy said his uncle, Robert Kennedy Sr., was a
champion of American indigenous people <BR>at a time when no one was paying
attention to them.
<P>The Taos Pueblo was the first tribe to endorse Robert Kennedy Sr. when he ran
for president <BR>in 1960, Patrick Kennedy said. He'll visit the Pueblo today.
<P>"For me, building relationships in Indian country is important," Kennedy
said. <BR></P></BODY></HTML>