Deborah Hayes
[ director of the Office of Workforce Diversity ]
: Good afternoon.   Audience: Good afternoon.
Deborah Hayes: We are truly flexible in terms of today's program event,
and so I've been given my marching orders.
I'm really good at following orders, so we are ready to begin
because the congressman is on a very tight schedule this afternoon.
I believe he needs to be back for a vote,
and we appreciate him readjusting his schedule.
And because he readjusted his schedule,
we are going to readjust ours.
I am Deborah Hayes, and I'd like to welcome each of you
to today's keynote presentation.
I'd also like to acknowledge our partners, or co-sponsor,
the Law Library, as well as Dr.   [ Rubens ]
Medina. And so without further ado, it is my pleasure to bring
to the podium -- and so we're going to move the program along -
Ms. Susan Anderson, who will sing the National Anthem.
And she is from the Indian Health Service.
Please rise.   Susan Anderson
[ singing ]
: "O! say can you see by the dawn's early light What
so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land
of the free and the home of the brave?"
[ applause ]
Let's give Ms. Anderson one more round of applause.
[ applause ]   And again, it's about flexibility,
and so we will bring forward Dr. Medina
to provide his opening remarks.
And then we're going to move to the next portion of the program.
Let's welcome Dr. Medina,
law librarian of Congress, to the podium.
[ applause ]   We can do better than that.
[ applause ]   [ cheering ]
Law Librarian of Congress Rubens Medina: Thank you very much.
We are here to celebrate, once more, Native American Heritage Month.
In so doing, we celebrate our commitment to respect,
and preserve the rich Native American traditions and cultures.
Since our nation's birth, pluralism and diversity have been hallmarks
of the American experience and success.
November is an appropriate month for this celebration,
because it is traditionally a time
when Native Americans hold fall harvests, war renewal ceremonies,
powwows, dances and feasts.
This is an opportunity to recognize hundreds of different tribes,
many diverse languages, and celebrate the history, tradition,
and values of Native Americans.
Native American Heritage Month serves as a reminder
of the positive effect native peoples have had
on the cultural development and growth of the United States
of America, as well as the struggles
and challenges they have faced and overcome.
Therefore, today we pay tribute to the Native Americans
who have contributed to shape our nation.
The events, which have been planned for this month,
are the responsibility of the Native American Month Planning Committee
under the leadership of co-chairs Dorothy Coley,
Office of Workforce Diversity, and Leon Scioscia, Law Library.
This Library   [ of Congress ]
Committee, meeting since August, has dedicated their time
to ensure four quality programs for this month.
The committee is present here today.
And I would like for them to stand, and be recognized.
Please, members of the committee?   [ applause ]
And at this time, it is indeed an honor and a privilege
to present Dr. James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress,
who will introduce our very distinguished guest speaker.
Dr. Billington, please, sir.   [ applause ]
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington: Good afternoon,
and welcome to the Library's latest program in celebration
of the Native American Heritage Month.
This celebration is one of the ways
in which the Library heightens awareness,
and recognizes the contributions of Native Americans
to the Library and to the nation.
Library curators have actively gathered materials
about Native Americans over the years.
And the material tells, in detail, the role that they have played
in the life of the nation.
We have thousands of books containing information
about Native Americans, and also what is probably the largest
collection of manuscripts relating to American history
of which the Native American story is an integral part
that keeps reappearing in all kinds of ways in these records.
Researchers using the Manuscript Division, for instance,
will find many divisional collections that focus
on Native Americans, and document their role in the creation
and development of the United States: the papers, for instance,
of Robert Latham Owen, an enrolled Cherokee, 1856 to 1947,
second Native American to be elected to the United States Senate,
one of the first senators - one of the first two senators to be elected
from Oklahoma, lived from 1907 to '25; the papers of Walter Fisher,
1879 to 1936, secretary of the Interior between 1911 and 1913,
related particularly to Oklahoma's Native Americans;
microfilm collection, in the Benjamin Franklin papers,
shows several entries for Native Americans, including observations
on the treaty-making power of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania;
plan to Regulate Native American Trade;
1787 Letters to a Cherokee noblewoman and a Cherokee chief.
Other curatorial divisions --
the American Folklife Center has the largest collection in the world
of Native American field recordings.
These Native American recordings that began in 1890,
long before that was fashionable,
have recorded for more than 150 communities.
Rare Book and Special Collections has a 1775 edition
of Bernard Romans's "A Concise Natural History,
East and West Florida," with information
about the Native Americans of the Gulf Coast
that has special reference to, and descriptions of,
the Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw.
Rare Books also has Native American language to --
believe me, this isn't a speech.   [ laughter ]
This is a little institutional flag waving.
[ laughter ]   But it's a Native American flag.
[ laughter ]
And we're particularly honored to have --
just one more that I have to mention,
which is the first Bible ever printed
in what's now the United States of America, which was printed
in the Algonquin language in 1663 --
So we're honored to have Congressman Tom Cole
with us today as our keynote speaker.
He represents Oklahoma's fourth Congressional District
as a fifth-generation Oklahoman, member of the Chickasaw Nation,
and currently the only Native American in the U.S. Congress.
He serves on the House Armed Services Committee,
National Resources Committee, and as House deputy whip.
He's an advocate for a strong national defense,
the interests of small business and taxpayers, supporter of education
at all levels, and a leader on Native American
and tribal government issues.   He comes easily to public service.
His father, John D. Cole Sr., served in the United States Air Force.
His mother, Helen Gale Cole, served two terms in the Senate of Oklahoma.
He's a former college professor, earned a bachelor's degree
from Grinnell College, a master's degree from Yale,
a doctorate from the University of Oklahoma.
He spread around the riches --   [ laughter ]
-- in three different parts of our country.
It's a great, great pleasure to welcome a distinguished congressman,
a scholar, and a leading representative and spokesman
for the Native American community.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Congressman Thomas J. Cole.
[ applause ]
Rep. Thomas J. Cole (R-Okla.): Thank you.
Thank you.   Oh, thank you very much.
I have to tell you what a personal privilege it is, Dr. Billington.
I read your books when I was a student.
[ laughter ]
And I know a real scholar when I meet one,
as opposed to a hack politician.
So thank you for that extraordinarily gracious
and kind introduction.   And it's wonderful for me to be here
to celebrate National Native American Heritage Month.
Now I ought to say at the beginning that my staff,
as all wonderful staff do, had a brilliant, wonderfully written,
excellent speech which they presented to me on Thursday,
so that I could look at it, go over it, you know,
make any little changes I wanted.
And of course this morning, like all academics,
I threw the whole thing out.   [ laughter ]
You know, decided I'd rewrite it in a much less learned
but hopefully a little bit more personal manner,
to talk to you today.
As a Native American, and as somebody who tries
to spend a great deal of time thinking about the position
of Native Americans in American culture, it's an extraordinary time
that we're living through right now.
It's a time of renaissance for Native Americans, amazing vitality
in Native American culture, great deal of interest and sympathy
in the broader culture toward Native Americans, very uncharacteristic,
frankly, of the whole of our history.
But my own history in my own tribe teaches me that times
of opportunity are always times of great danger.
As my great -- or grandmother used to like to tell me,
"They didn't send us from Mississippi to Oklahoma
because we were doing badly."   [ laughter ]
They sent us to Oklahoma because we were doing well.
[ laughter ]
And there was a lot of jealousy surrounding us.
And indeed, if you think about Native American history that's true.
I use the line, sometimes -- it's rather controversial,
and gets me in a lot of trouble, but it's certainly worth using here -
'a lot of people like poor Indians.'
They prefer for them to be poor and disadvantaged, and to feel sorry
for them, as opposed to them being empowered and able
to control their own affairs and their own destiny.
So I always worry when I see prosperous times
for Native Americans.
By way of introduction, many of you may know me, if you do know me
at all -- because I think congressmen are pretty obscure,
thank God, in American culture   [ laughter ]
-- as a congressman or as a political figure
in my home state of long standing.
But I was raised to think of myself as Native American,
and most importantly as Chickasaw.
Now I have to tell you, this was an issue when I was growing
up of some considerable difficulty on occasion.
I wasn't raised on a reservation.   My dad was in the military.
We moved around a lot, so I wasn't even raised for the first 10
or 11 years of my life within historic Chickasaw territory.
Obviously, if you look at me I have more European bloodline in me
than I do Native American.
And when I was growing up, I was constantly asked,
"How much Indian are you?"   [ laughter ]
And I used to struggle with this question.
As a matter of fact, I once asked my friend,
former Congressman Harold Ford, "Do you ever get the question,
'How much black are you?'   or something like that?"
[ laughter ]
It's kind of an interesting question,
when you sort of wrestle with it, metaphorically.
But I had a great-aunt, Te Ata, who was a quite remarkable figure,
and you'll hear me refer to her.   And she lived to be almost 100.
She was born in 1895, died in 1995.
And over the course of an extraordinary life,
she was arguably one of the first
and most famous early 20th century Indian folklore artists.
And if we had a picture of her,
she was strikingly beautiful, and strikingly Indian.
She carried our culture everywhere.
She literally performed, gave the first state entertainment
at the Roosevelt White House in March of 1933, for Ramsay MacDonald
and the prime minister of the British Empire.
[ She ]
spent the night in the Lincoln bedroom.
You know, we have the letters she wrote, of course to her mom.
And she later went on and performed at Hyde Park for the King
and Queen of England in 1938.
So she was really world-centered -- she was a friend of Mrs. Roosevelt,
who named a lake for her in upstate New York.
So quite an extraordinary figure, and the keeper
of all things Indian in our family.
So when I was wrestling with this question one time, I asked her,
"Aunt Te Ata, how much Indian am I?"
And she looked at me and said, "Wrong question.
You either are, or you aren't.   And you are."
And that sort of settled the debate --
[ laughter ]   -- forever.
And I was taught -- again, my mother was very extraordinarily proud
of our Native American history,
and was the first Native American woman ever elected
to the state senate in Oklahoma.
And she raised us, my brother and me,
to think that it was a remarkable thing to be Native American,
and that we belonged to a remarkable people, and, particularly,
a remarkable tribe and a family with a compelling history.
We can trace that family back to what I think
of as the luckiest Scottish person ever alive.
Name was James Logan Colbert, and he had three Chickasaw wives in 1729 --
[ laughter ]   -- in the Mississippi frontier,
clearly an extraordinarily lucky man.
[ laughter ]   One of those was a direct forebear,
and we can trace the family pretty much from that point on.
And my great-great-grandfather was the clerk
of the Chickasaw supreme court.
My great-grandfather was the last elected tribal treasurer,
and the brother-in-law of Gov, Douglas Johnston,
a really significant figure in Chickasaw history.
There was, of course, Te Ata, who was this incredible figure
and still is amongst Chickasaws.
And then my mother, who was a very accomplished Native American
politician, went a long way for a little Indian girl born
in Tishomingo with a high school education,
extraordinarily accomplished.
But no matter, you know, who married into our family
or what the bloodline was, it was always you were a Chickasaw.
And I remember my father telling me this with some chagrin,
because he was not Native American.
And, of course, he'd grown up in Oklahoma;
he certainly knew tribal people.
He told me once, he said, "I'm not exactly sure what I agreed to,
but I knew, to get your mother to marry me, I had to agree,
you and your brother -- or any children we had,
we obviously didn't have you at the time --
were going to be raised as Chickasaw.
That seemed like a pretty easy deal to make,
and I was more than happy to make it."
And if you think about the history of the family,
at crucial points there were times in which members
of the family could have ceased to be tribal.
Particularly the move to Mississippi --
"move" is a nice euphemism for "forced removal" --
[ laughter ]
-- and frankly some people made that choice.
I have good friends in Mississippi now that are of Chickasaw descent,
but they made the decision they would stay in Mississippi,
renounce tribal citizenship, be able to hang onto their land,
subject themselves to state jurisdiction.
Our family made another choice, which was to stay with the people
of their tribe and go to someplace called Oklahoma and try
to start some sort of new life.
But knowing one's family history isn't really what, I think,
makes Native Americans somewhat unique in our culture.
Being indigenous -- and I would argue,
even more importantly, being tribal -- is.
To me, being indigenous is as much an historical and political identity
as it is an anthropological or a cultural identity.
And that political identity is shaped
by the history of our country.
It relates to how the first Europeans, and then Americans,
chose to treat Indians, and, frankly, how Indians demanded
that they be treated in return.
Before the founding of our country and certainly since its inception,
Native Americans were treated and dealt
with as tribal people, and in tribal units.
That is, they were preexisting sovereign entities.
Sometimes those sovereign entities were conquered or destroyed,
but over time their political legitimacy inside the United States
was recognized and enshrined in both law and legal precedent.
That's very unusual in the New World.
As difficult as our own history in dealing with indigenous people is
in the United States, a friend of mine who's an expert in law
and indigenous peoples once told me, he said,
"The American system is actually the most advanced
and the most sophisticated in the world.
Compare it to South America.   Compare it to Australia.
Compare it to other peoples who've undergone similar encounters
with European civilization.   You'll find, with all its flaws,
it still recognizes the preexisting rights
of the political entities that were there."
This process of dealing with Indians as tribal people,
and as tribal units led to the recognition
over time of tribal sovereignty.   And as members of tribes,
Native Americans enjoy what really is a quite unique status,
and a right to a measure of self-government
within a larger culture that is unique
to them because of their status.
It's important to note that that status was not given to tribes,
nor were tribes created by Europeans or American government.
That status was recognized, and tribes were then regarded
as preexisting sovereign entities that are older than our own country.
And that wasn't always an advantage,
and it wasn't meant to be an advantage.
When you recognize somebody as belonging
to a sovereign entity outside of your entity,
that allowed the government to deny native peoples the right
for citizenship, deny them even the right for personhood
until the 1870s in our country.   One of the great figures -- I was
at a dedication not long ago in Ponca City, Okla.
-- wonderful 16-foot statue of the great Ponca leader standing there,
who, in the 1870s, was the first Native American to go into court
and actually win the designation as being a "human being."
Not an American citizen, just recognized in law as a human being,
quite celebrated case at the time.
So there was an advantage to keeping Indians tribal,
and keeping them outside the existing political system.
But to be fair, collectively, Indians did not traditionally want
to give up the right to be tribal.
They wanted to be treated not just as Indian, but as Comanche,
as Apache, as Seminole, as Choctaw, as Chickasaw.
They intended to maintain that identity.
And if they could hold onto that,
they considered themselves fortunate.
I live the -- there's a wonderful chapter, it's not much read, really,
in de Tocqueville's marvelous book about the differences
between the races in America from a French observation.
One of them being that African Americans wanted
to join the larger society, and were prevented from doing that.
The larger white society wanted Indians to be assimilated,
but Indians didn't really particularly want to be assimilated,
and so there was this core contradiction
from the very beginning.
But, of course, when you raise the question
of tribal identity it raises another question, which is,
"What, exactly, is a tribe?"   And let me start by talking about --
and I do this all the time with members of Congress
who vex...you know, I've become, like,
the token Indian, so they all --   [ laughter ]
-- will come in, and "Well,
it's an Indian ideal Cole will know something about it."
So they kind of wander in with these bizarre ideas about what tribes are.
Now, I usually have to begin with a really basic thing.
First of all, understand, a tribe is not a genealogical association,
and it's not a fraternal society.
It's a living, breathing entity that exists organically.
And its purpose is to improve the lives
and protect the identity of its members.
And, frankly, if it can't do either of those things,
then in time it will cease to exist.
And while a tribe is based on lineage and on ancestry, it's not,
strictly speaking, a matter of blood, or primarily blood alone.
Tribes often adopted
and incorporated different peoples into their groups.
The Chickasaws, which of course is the tribe I'm most familiar with,
adopted the whole Natchez tribe
in after the French had almost destroyed them
in the early 18th century.
Obviously, if you look at the history of our tribes and you look
at my own bloodline, we were, very frankly, much more accommodating
than any other part of quote "American society"
in bringing other peoples into the tribe.
Now I must tell you, we did that for very utilitarian reasons.
We were at war with almost everybody around us in the 18th century,
and so if you were willing to fight we could make you a Chickasaw.
[ laughter ]   And we did.
But enough, again, just about the theory.
Let me talk a little bit about how tribal membership affects my role
in Congress, and also a little bit more about my tribe.
The Chickasaws, you know,
we can trace back sometime into the 13th century.
But we have reliable, but sporadic, accounts beginning with de Soto
in 1540 and 1541, eyewitness accounts.
As a matter of fact, I was recently back in the old Mississippi homeland
of the Chickasaws, around Tupelo, and I was with an archaeologist.
We were on one of these great Chickasaw expeditions with a couple
of tribal officials, a tribal historian --
a very first-rate tribal historian, I might add --
and a local archaeologist, and we were going through these sites.
And he said, "Actually, you know,
this is one of the oldest tribes in the Southeast."
So we could identify -- because they not only were here
when de Soto came through, 150 years later, they were still here
when the next wave of Europeans came through -- we could identify them,
and the names, and the place, and the description
as being the same people.
And they had an extraordinary reputation, a ferocity, as warriors.
Now, they won't tell you everything about themselves
because they not only were warriors, they were slave traders.
And they would capture, particularly once the English arrived,
and capture other tribal peoples around them --
that's one of the reasons why they war --
and trade them into slavery on the slave markets in South Carolina,
in Charleston, so not probably the happiest part of our history.
But they were very famous for being ferocious warriors.
And indeed, if you're raised Chickasaw, you'll learn this.
You know, we beat de Soto.
We ran him out of our territory in --
which we did, and the Spanish accounts mention that.
They defeated two French armies in 1736 and 1737
when they were allied to the English.
And they later won a battle against the Americans,
again with no English help, during the American Revolution.
Now that was an interesting story.
I ran across -- I won't remember this, exactly --
but it was a wonderful letter exchanged between the House
of Burgesses and the Chickasaw Nation in about 1779 or 1780.
The House of Burgesses sent out this incredible letter
to the Chickasaws warning them to stay neutral
in the Revolution with Great Britain.
And the Chickasaws had had a longstanding relationship
with the British, largely because the British armed them in the 1720s
as a counterforce to the French.
I keep in my office a wonderful 1736 article in "Gentleman's Magazine,"
which describes the Chickasaw victory over the French.
Of course the English love to publicize, that -- my gosh --
even red people, with no English help, can beat the French.
[ laughter ]
So it was a matter of great notoriety in 18th century England.
But we had this incredible reputation,
and this sort of braggadocios attitude about our prowess.
And so anyway this letter arrives to the Chickasaws,
and the Chickasaws send back a letter.
I think it's in the "Mississippi Historical Review."
It's one of these local, pretty good historical journals.
And the reply went something like, you know,
"Just tell us when you're coming, and we'll meet you halfway."
I actually told this story, by the way --
this is actually the punch line --
to a group of British parliamentarians
who were visiting Congress one day.
I was introduced as a Chickasaw Indian, and I said, "Well,
I want to tell you something I was reading about last night,
this alliance and us being on your side in the Revolution,
and so here comes this letter.   And our reply comes to you:
'Just tell us when you're coming, we'll meet you halfway.'
And then we went on to say, 'Because we fear no man
or nation while we're aligned with our good friend,
King George III.'" I looked at these British parliamentarians and I said,
"Where have you guys been?"   [ laughter ]
"It's been a long road."   [ laughter ]
And that did, indeed,
change Chickasaw history pretty dramatically.
I remember when I was a kid growing up,
I didn't know who Andrew Jackson was,
but I knew he was a very bad man --   [ laughter ]
-- and had done very terrible things that he had to account for.
But the nature of our relationship
with a broader society changed pretty dramatically
with the European exodus, and when you're left alone
with the United States of America
as your principle adversary that's not necessarily a good thing
for tribal peoples.
And it certainly wasn't a very good thing for us.
But our real claim to fame, if you look at us as a people --
and there are a lot of Chickasaws.   There are 42,000 Chickasaws.
We're not, you know, a few hundred or a few thousand.
We're very fortunate.
As a matter of fact, a wonderful scholar, Robert Remini,
wrote a great book, "Jackson's Indian Wars."
And I remember he gave it to me to read and he said, "You're not going
to like this thesis, probably, but I want you to think about it and talk
to me, and see if you agree."
The thesis, basically, was the removal of the Chickasaws,
and obviously the Cherokees
and the other five great tribes, was what saved them.
It pushed them further west, bought them extra time
that the tribal peoples in the coastal areas didn't have.
And I remember going, not too long after that, to --
we have an annual Chickasaw Festival in Tishomingo, Okla.,
where thousands of Chickasaws come -- and thinking, looking out,
and wondering whether or not that would have ever occurred had
that removal not taken place.
But the real genius was not the ferocity or the warrior spirit,
but the adaptability of the people.
They are a quite extraordinary group of people, and you'll forgive me
for a little personal pride in this.
But when you have a tribe that has the first Native American astronaut
-- and we do -- who has a Gold Medal winner, who has a past president
of the American Bar Association,
whose members include the current American Ambassador
to the United Kingdom, Robert Tuttle, extraordinary group
of business people, it is an amazing collection.
As a matter of fact, I didn't realize Ambassador Tuttle was
a Chickasaw.
I happened to be in London in 2005; I was on a Congressional CODEL.
Unfortunately, it was about 30 days after the bombings
of the London buses and transit system.
We were there to, amongst other things,
carry the official condolences of the American people
to the British people for what they had suffered.
And so we're ushered into Number 10 Downing Street,
and I got to tell you, as an old British historian this was a big
deal for me, to be in Robert Walpole's cabinet room.
I thought, "Wow.   I'm pretty excited."
And the Ambassador had just taken up his post, I think, the week earlier.
He had been hustled in, and we were going in together.
The congressman, who was leading the CODEL, decides he's going
to introduce all of us with some sort of ethnic flavor to it.
It's Curt Weldon, a former member from Pennsylvania.
And he introduces, first, my good friend, Solomon Ortiz, from Texas.
He talks about his family having been "illegal aliens" and coming.
Then Silvestre Reyes, whose family has lived in Texas before it was
in the United States of America, and his history.
And he turned to Mark Souder,
who's German American, and talked about that.
And he turned to me, and he said, "You'll never guess what Cole is."
And I said, "Well, Mr. Prime Minister,
I'm actually Chickasaw Indian."
And the ambassador turned to me, and he said, "No kidding.
Me too."   [ laughter ]
And, you know, so I raced -- when I got home, of course,
the first thing I did was call the governor
of the Chickasaw Nation, Bill Anoatubby.
He was a very good friend.   And I said, "Gov.
Anoatubby, I don't know if you're aware of this,
but there's a Chickasaw who's the ambassador
to the Court of St. James."   He said, "Oh, you mean Bob Tuttle?"
[ laughter ]   And I said, "Well, yeah."
And he said, "Well gosh, Tom, I don't know why you're surprised.
I mean, we were negotiating with the British before there was a United
States of America."   [ laughter ]
So it is an amazing group of people, and also a group
of very political people, people who have been engaged in the politics
of our country for a very long time.
I keep in my office the picture of a man by the name of
[ Charles ]   David Carter.
David Carter, Congressman Carter, who was elected in 1907, Chickasaw,
and served on the Tribal Council with my great-grandfather.
They were good friends.
He served 20 years in the Congress, twice headed up the --
he was a Democrat, the only flaw I know in his background...
[ laughter ]
But he would probably forgive me now --
that headed up the Indian Affairs Committee for a couple of terms,
and actually pushed through the legislation
that ultimately gave all Native Americans the right to vote.
A very interesting figure, and a guy that, later, Speaker Carl Albert
from Oklahoma said was the person
who influenced him to get into politics.
But we not only have him, we have Overton James,
who was a state representative
who helped reconstitute our tribe in the 1960s and '70s.
Gov. Anoatubby -- again, the governor of our nation --
was a congressional candidate.   My mom served in the state senate.
We currently have three Chickasaws
in the state house of representatives.
They're enrolled tribal members.
So it is, by nature, a political grouping
that has been very active politically,
not just within tribal affairs, but trying to reach well beyond it.
The history of that political participation, and it's old and long
and deep, has given us, as a tribe, a great deal of awareness
of being involved beyond the tribe in the larger politics.
I speak to a lot of Native American groups,
and a lot of which are just coming to grips with,
"How do you participate?"
And, "Are you involved in the larger political world around you?"
because we've got so much at stake.   If you're a tribe, believe me,
the most important relationship you have is the trust relationship
with the government of the United States of America.
And I always tell them, "We should never ever be afraid to participate;
we should never ever be afraid to negotiate,
and we should never ever be afraid to litigate."
Those are rights and avenues that we have,
and we ought to use them very aggressively.
My role in Congress is really a very simple one.
As I said earlier, it is to try and explain to some
of my other members some of the complexities
of not just Chickasaw history, but of Native American history,
and of some of the incredibly difficult issues involved
in defending and promoting and protecting tribal sovereignty.
Indeed, I look on it, from a native standpoint,
as my most important role.
And I don't just do that for my tribe.
I've got a lot of Chickasaws, 28,000, in my district.
So they're pretty considerable.   As a matter of fact, I remember
after I was first elected, I went down to Gov.
Anoatubby.
I was doing my little thank-you tour,
went to the tribal headquarters in Ada, Okla.,
a county which is registered 81 percent Democrat,
and which I had carried as a Republican.
And he looked at me and he said, "Cole, just remember,
you didn't carry this place because you were a Republican."
[ laughter ]
"Carried it for other reasons, and don't forget that."
And I actually got a wonderful card from Judy Lee Oliva,
who's a wonderful Chickasaw playwright,
and had written a wonderful play on my great-aunt, and said, you know --
last line I'll never forget because I was reading it very intently
on my election -- and it was a nice congratulatory note.
And the last line was, "Do something for your people."
And she meant "people" very broadly.
In my district, I represent the Comanches.
I represent the Fort Sill Apaches,
the last band of Native resisters in North America.
I represent parts of the Kiowa Nation,
the Southern Cheyenne Nation, Arapaho Nation,
part of the Choctaw Nation.
And boy if you're in Oklahoma, believe me,
you've got Cherokees whether you wanted them there or not.
They're there.   [ laughter ]
But there are lots of tribes.
My own state representative is an absentee Shawnee member
in the Oklahoma legislature.
So it's something that you sort of breathe, and it's part of the air.
But it's very, very important to defend,
and to explain this very unique relationship that we have.
I always tell other members, "Read Article 1,
Section 8 of the Constitution.
When you take your oath of allegiance to the Constitution
of the United States, you're taking an oath of allegiance
to defend Indian sovereignty, whether
or not you recognize it or not.
Because it's there, in terms of Congress's power to regulate trade
with the foreign countries amongst the various states,
and with the Indian tribes, recognized as a sovereign entity
from the creation of the country."
And the threats on sovereignty are multiple,
and come from multiple and, quite often, well-intentioned directions.
My party tends to be, frankly, an antigaming impulse.
I have a good friend --
I must admit, the Chickasaws are a pretty substantial gaming tribe,
although we do a lot more.
We happen to have a chocolate factory, bank --
I used to sit on the Bank Board for the tribe --
metalworking facilities, all kinds
of retail outlets, and 11,000 employees.
So it's a pretty substantial operation.
But gaming helped capitalize the nation.
And I remember explaining once to one of my Texas members
who was trying to sympathize with me -- he was trying to be empathetic,
you know, and Texans don't know much about Indians.
They mostly ran them up to us in Oklahoma.
[ laughter ]
And so he said, "Gosh, Tom, we've got big gaming facility right
on the Oklahoma-Texas border."
And he looked at me, and he said, "I hope you're not offended.
But I just can't be for Indian gaming."
I said, "That is not a problem.
I'm not for Indian gaming in Texas, either."
[ laughter ]
You know, we just want to keep this working.
So we try and work that through.
And then, frankly, from the Democratic side quite often we get
threats, in terms of labor unions, or the extension
of federal authority on union activity into tribal affairs.
And so I tell my fellow Native Americans, or tribal people, really,
"I don't believe in Democratic tribes or Republican tribes."
And, you know, there's no such thing.
We have issues that will arise.
What we need is representation on both sides of the aisle,
and an absolute ferocity in defending the concept
and the rights of tribal sovereignty.
And that is an extraordinarily important role that I take,
at least, very seriously as a congressman.
And I take that not just because it is a unique status,
but because of what other people did to preserve it.
My great-grandfather -- I can go to the treasury - excuse me -
the old Chickasaw Capitol Building, which we now have, again,
in our possession, and go to his office on the second floor,
and know that he sat there in 1906,
and made the tough financial decisions of how
to liquidate the assets of his nation
because they were being forced out of existence as a corporate entity.
Individual allotments -- our family still has the last of our allotment,
land, liquidation, what asset went where.
And he would have never believed
that 100 years later he could come back, and instead of 4,000,
which there were then, there would be 40,000,
and there would be this extraordinary renaissance underway.
It was the people that kept us alive from then to now
that I think you have to keep faith with.
Let me close with this, and just an observation.
It's something that's an old story my great-aunt used to like to tell.
And I won't remember it well.
But she tried -- she really had a profound sense of native peoples
and tribal cultures, and also how they came to grips with the reality
of the collision between their world and European civilization.
There's a wonderful story she liked to tell of a Southern Cheyenne chief
who was making a treaty with the American government in the 1860s,
in 1867, trying to come to an understanding
of what had happened to his world.
He was explaining this to the audience and he said, "Once,
this all was the land of the red man.
But then the white man came.   And the black man came.
And the yellow man came.
And I think this is what the Great Spirit must have wanted
because I look at nature, and I see birds of many colors: red bird,
black bird, white bird, brown bird, but all one bird.
And I look at horses, and I see horses of many colors: black horse,
white horse, brown horse, but all one horse.
So with birds, so with horses, so with men,
the Great Spirit must have wanted this
to be the land of all the peoples.   And thus it shall be evermore."
Now, that was a pretty profound way to try to come to grips
with the reality that that particular individual was facing.
And I think it's the right way that we ought
to live together as Americans.
But in the course of that, he never committed to liquidating his people,
or his heritage, or his tribal identity, or his political identity.
Indeed, he intended to keep them.
And this is still something we struggle with in this country.
And I broke, recently, with my party, very strongly,
on the issue of the recognition of native Hawaiians.
Now, they own assets.
There's 200,000 acres, and they have property and they have legal status.
We've passed 160 different laws that relate to how we're going
to deal with native Hawaiians.   They would just like to control it.
Now, we have a Republican governor out there that says they ought to.
We have members of both houses of government - excuse me -
of both political parties in their legislature, who have,
three times, memorialized Congress.
And we have a delegation from that state that says,
"This is what we want to do," and a very finely crafted bill
by my good friend, Neil Abercrombie, on the other side of the aisle.
And yet we tried -- we have a veto threat on that.
And we have an effort to interfere with people governing themselves
within the structure of our laws.   So that's an ongoing battle.
And if I had to pick the battle --
and, of course, politicians always look at the world politically,
not maybe as much culturally or anthropologically,
or even historically as we should, but politically --
if I had to preserve what was unique
about Native American culture it would be the preservation
of that very unique political identity that preexists the country,
that allows them a measure of self-government
and control over their own affairs.
Thanks for coming out and listening to me.
I appreciate it very much.   [ inaudible ]
[ applause ]
James H. Billington: You've told us so much about the Chickasaws,
we thought you ought to have something from the collection to add
to your -- Thomas J. Cole: Aw.   James H. Billington: -- knowledge.
So this is Chickasaw County.   Thomas J. Cole: It is, indeed.
It is, indeed.
James H. Billington: And we ask one more thing of you,
and that is that you press the button, here, which will put
on the Native Americans Web site.
Thomas J. Cole: So, I can just, like, do this?
James H. Billington: You do it, and I'll join you.
[ applause ]   Thank you.
[ applause ]   [ low audio ]
Deborah Hayes: Let's give him a round of applause.
[ applause ]
Now we will go back to the rest of the program.
It is my pleasure to bring to the podium,
for a traditional invocation, Rico Newman,
who is from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Let's welcome him to the podium.   [ applause ]
Rico Newman: A little out of sequence,
but I can say that my prayer was successful.
[ laughter ]
Generally, I give the prayer to sort of set the tone
of what will take place, to kind of put everybody in a certain mood,
and to take things in a certain direction
so that everything will take place in a good way.
But I still want to give the prayer.
And afterwards, I will interpret it in English,
so that he can interpret it
because he told me he definitely does not speak the Lenape dialect
or the Algonquin language.   [ laughter ]
Okay. And if you will, I'd like for you to join me in prayer
in whatever way that you are comfortable,
in acknowledging a power that's greater than yourself.
[ Algonquin praying ]   Okay, you can be seated.
In English, "Creator, maker of all things, we invite you to come
and be among us, and to have your presence felt by all who are here.
We come to you in a humble way, and ask you to please listen
for we have something to say.
We need your blessings, for without your blessings we are then
truly poor.   We ask the blessings of Father Sky.
We ask the blessings of our Mother Earth.
And we ask the blessings of the winds from the four directions.
The Winds of the South, we ask to come, and to give us strength
of body, so that no one here will feel discomfort during
these undertakings.
We ask the blessings of the Winds of the West, that bring us our clouds
and our water, so that those who speak" --
and, as I said, it worked -- "his words flowed freely.
And we ask that your ears be unplugged,
that you will hear what is truly being said here,
and that your eyes will be moist, so that you will not be sleeping,
especially if you just had lunch."   [ laughter ]
"And we ask the Winds of the North, the cleansing winds
that remove the staleness of our air and clean our air
to clean our minds, so that we will not know the extremes of emotion,
that nothing that is said
or done here will cause anyone distress, no sorrow, no anger.
And we ask the blessings of the East that bring us the light of day,
so that you will see, clearly, the truth of what is said,
and what is done here today.
For these, and the many blessings that the Creator gives us,
we ask that he accept our sincere thanks."
[ applause ]
Deborah Hayes: Although we truly would have liked to have heard
that invocation before Congressman Cole's presentation,
I believe that it was well received even after the presentation,
so thank you, again, so much.   Now we will move on.
We're almost to the end.
We have a wonderful ethnic food tasting
that will follow this program.
But we are going to pause for just a moment for a song,
an artistic rendition of the Southwest,
presented by Dennis Zotigh,
who is also from the Smithsonian National Museum
of the American Indian.   Let's welcome him to the podium.
[ applause ]   Dennis Zotigh: Thank you very much.
On way of introduction of Rico, I would like to mention
that his people, the Piscataway people,
were the original inhabitants of Washington, D.C.,
and the land this is on now, so it was very appropriate
that he said this prayer in his language,
the language that was always here.
My name is Dennis Zotigh, and I work for the National Museum
of the American Indian as a community events coordinator.
On behalf of our outgoing director, Richard West Jr.,
and our incoming director, Kevin Gover,
they both send their greetings at this time.
And we'd like to encourage you, if you have not visited our facility,
we all encourage you, please come.
Throughout the United States, there are 562 federally recognized tribes.
And our tribes are very diverse, as diverse as French is
from South African, as diverse as South African is from Korean.
We have a land base in common, a belief in a common creator,
but very few things, other than that, that we share in common.
I'd like to share with you a song which comes
from a place where I grew up.
Let's travel to New Mexico, in the Southwest.
Albuquerque, N.M., where there are 19 different Pueblos;
there was once 127 Pueblos at one time before contact.
But today there are 19.
Let's go north, up the Rio Grande River, to Santa Fe.
Many of you may have been there, in Santa Fe.
Go north 30 miles, to a small Spanish village, called Espaola.
One mile north of Espaola is the Village of Ohkay Owingeh,
the "Village of the Strong People."
It was formerly known as San Juan Pueblo, and was the first capital
of the State of New Mexico.
In this village, young people are taught their language,
and there is a great pride in being of this village.
Popay, of the 1600s -- 1680 -- led a revolt from this village.
So we have a great rich past.   This is the land of my mother.
And when I grew up, I learned this beautiful song
that I want to share with you today.
It is called "Ohkay Owingeh Lullaby."
[ music ]   Thank you.
[ applause ]
Deborah Hayes: Let's give him another round of applause.
[ applause ]
We have come to the end of today's program.
We have received information.   We have been informed.
We have been enlightened.   We have been entertained.
And we have been invoked, in terms of our being here today.
It was an opportunity, and it is an opportunity
to celebrate Native American Heritage Month.
And there are a number of other events
that are scheduled throughout the month of November.
Please refer to this wonderful Web portal, and the URL is listed
on the back of your program as well, for upcoming events.
So on behalf of Dr. Billington, the chief operating officer,
Jo Ann Jenkins, the Office of Workforce Diversity, the Law Library
and Dr. Medina, thank you for attending today's event.
Thank you to our program participants.
Let's give all of them one more round of applause.
[ applause ]
[ end of transcript ]   LOC-071106law1400 1 4/16/2010