Ironic apology <http://www.thenavajotimes.com/National/national.html> WINDOW ROCK - Navajo Nation leaders aren't satisfied with an apology from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs for historical massacres and the forced relocation of American Indians. Navajo Nation Council Speaker Edward T. Begay said, "It's sad that Indian people had to wait so long to get this apology and ironic that, when it finally comes, it is from a federal official who is an Indian himself. "The entire government needs to put forth this apology rather than an Indian accepting moral responsibility for crimes that were committed against Indian people by non-Indians," Begay added. Begay and the council's Government Services Committee Chairperson, Ervin Keeswood Sr., also noted that the mistreatment of American Indians by the federal government is not a problem of the distant past. The Government Services Committee has oversight responsibility over the Navajo Nation executive offices, which includes the president's office and the Division of General Services. Begay said, "The chronic under-funding of Indian programs, the lack of serious economic development initiatives on Indian lands, and the direct attacks on Indian sovereignty by politicians like Slade Gorton, show that the attitudes which led to the crimes that Mr. Gover is now taking blame for are alive and well in American political society." Keeswood, Sr. said, "What Indian people really need are assurances that there has been a real change in the hearts of federal politicians so that this mistreatment will never again occur. "Navajo people have been subjected to forced relocation by the United States government since 1975, and it's still going on right now in the Hopi Partitioned Lands," he said. Keeswood was referring to the Navajo-Hopi-US Land Dispute, which the federal, Navajo and Hopi governments claimed had ended in 1997 with the implementation of "accommodation agreements" - the 75-year leases between the Hopi Tribe and Navajo families on Hopi Partitioned Land (HPL). Kee Shay, 85, a relocation resister living on the HPL, is currently in Hopi tribal administrative court fighting an exclusion order issued by the Hopi Tribe to prohibit him from continuing to live on his ancestral homeland. Keeswood said, "Gover's apology is about historical mistreatment and what Indian people need is to have an end to the current mistreatment. We don't want to have to wait for another apology in another 100 years." Gover, a Pawnee Indian, apologized on behalf of the BIA during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., that marked the BIA's 175th anniversary, which was attended by hundreds of American Indian leaders, federal administrators and BIA employees on Friday (Sept. 8). He recalled that from the very beginning, the U.S. used the Office of Indian Affairs, which later became the BIA, to enforce the removal of the southeastern tribal nations. Gover said, "By threat, deceit, and force, these great tribal nations were made to march 1,000 miles to the west, leaving thousands of their old, their young and their infirm in hasty graves along the Trail of Tears." He said, "As the nation looked to the West for more land, this agency participated in the ethnic cleansing that befell the western tribes. War necessarily begets tragedy; the war for the West was no exception." The Navajo Times contacted Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye, Hopi Chairman Wayne Taylor, Zuni Gov. Malcolm Bowekaty and the White House for their comment on Gover's apology but none had responded by press time. [In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.]