Reply #112: A note to the Obama staff.

[sofa king]

Hello, staff of Barack Obama. Thank you so much for taking this campaign opportunity to visit the Crow in Montana. I'm sure that all of Indian Country will be pleased, but now that you've dipped a toe into the waters of Indian Country, you should be aware of the complicated political undercurrent there.

Historically, the Crow and the Sioux did not always get along very well. In fact all tribes are competitors against one another first and everyone else second. So now that you've visited the Crow, you're effectively bound by diplomacy and good taste to pay a visit to the Sioux tribes of South Dakota.

As you know, it was the larger-than-usual turnout of the Sioux tribes in South Dakota which won the narrow reelection of Senator Tim Johnson in 2002. The Sioux tribes of South Dakota and the Ogalala Sioux in particular paid a terrible price for that support, which I recounted here.

I hope that your campaign will find the time before June 3 to also visit the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. You don't have to make mention of my story and probably shouldn't without independently verifying it, but this should be somewhere in the backs of all your minds: Presidential politics is both important and heartbreaking out that way.

I'm sure you also know that thanks to a couple of terms as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Senator McCain has a strong foothold in Indian Country. But as powerful as McCain's name is amongst the 560-some tribes in America, he still presided over one of the sadder and more corrupt times in modern tribal history. You have a chance to hit McCain head-on there and win valuable support amongst America's Native Americans.

Again, thank you for your visit and I hope you'll take my advice and make it only one of many visits in the next few weeks.