WASHINGTON — While President Barack Obama’s popularity has slipped in public opinion polls, he found plenty of support Wednesday among one key constituency: the 566 leaders of federally recognized Indian tribes.
“I’d rank him as high as I can go; a 10, really, to be honest with you,” said Leo Lolnitz, first chief of the Koyukuk Native Village in Alaska.
Brian Cladoosby, the chairman of Washington state’s Swinomish Indian Tribal Community for the past 17 years, said Obama was “second to none” when compared with other U.S. presidents.
Tribal leaders consider the occupant of the White House one of their own. To them, he’s Barack Black Eagle Obama, having received his Indian name in 2008 when a couple on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana formally adopted him. And on Wednesday, they got a chance to meet with him yet again, as the president kept a campaign promise by hosting his fifth White House Tribal Nations Conference.
In a 14-minute speech to the tribal leaders, Obama said he’d make his first visit to Indian Country as president sometime next year, though he didn’t say where he plans to go. He visited the Montana reservation when he was challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in his first presidential campaign.
The annual gathering at the Interior Department gives tribal leaders a chance to make pitches for what they want from Washington in the coming year. In 2014, tribal leaders want an end to the budget cuts known as sequestration and more authority to manage their own affairs, among other things.
A dozen Cabinet officials met with the tribal leaders, promising more help for such challenges as fighting crime, fixing schools and getting better health care.
