[env-trinity] Fw: Patrick Kennedy comes to Hoopa

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~2378355,00.html# 

Eureka Times-Standard 

One from the Kennedy clan tours Hoopa 

By John Driscoll The Times-Standard 
  

Friday, September 03, 2004 - 

HOOPA -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy floated down the Trinity River, met with tribal leaders and 
toured some of the key ventures of the Hoopa Valley Tribe on Thursday. 

The 37-year-old Kennedy is in his fourth term in Congress, and sits on the House 
Appropriations Committee. A Rhode Island Democrat, he is vice chairman of the 
Congressional Native American Caucus. 

Raft guide and tribal member Chuck Carpenter explained how salmon spawn as Kennedy and 
members of the Cabezon Tribe of Mission Indians floated through a riffle. It's a river running 
strong for this time of year, as releases from an upstream reservoir pour down, trying to stave 
off a potential fish kill on the lower Klamath River. 

"This river means a lot," Carpenter said. "It's our whole world. Our elders looked at the river 
as a mystical place." 

Kennedy is touring American Indian tribes on a trip out West, and will head to New Mexico 
today. He sees himself as an advocate for tribes, which are often overlooked or ignored in 
federal legislation. 

"We have to take inventory, each session, of a myriad of bills that impinge upon sovereignty," 
Kennedy said. 

For example, in Homeland Security legislation, tribes often aren't mentioned as governments. 
So instead of the typical federal to tribal government relations, tribes are left to deal with 
states for security resources, Kennedy said. 

He said he works to fix bills so they reflect tribal sovereignty. 

The Hoopa Valley and Cabezon tribes are two of 10 tribes working on tribal trust issues 
outside of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, said Danny Jordan, self-governance and 
commerce director for the Hoopa Tribe. 

The tribe has a set of business codes that allow development of businesses under its own 
regulations, he said. Since the tribe's casino is small, it has concentrated more on non-gaming 
efforts, like timber and a cannery, Jordan said. That has required an improvement in 
infrastructure. 

One of the latest endeavors is a treatment facility that will pump water from the Trinity River 
to serve some 800 homes, including houses in the Bald Hills area that didn't see phone service 
until the 1980s. 

Kennedy's tour follows another tour by his cousin Caroline Kennedy in the 1980s. And Patrick 
Kennedy said his uncle, Robert Kennedy Sr., was a champion of American indigenous people 
at a time when no one was paying attention to them. 

The Taos Pueblo was the first tribe to endorse Robert Kennedy Sr. when he ran for president 
in 1960, Patrick Kennedy said. He'll visit the Pueblo today. 

"For me, building relationships in Indian country is important," Kennedy said. 

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