Columnist Susan Snyder: Digest some truth this Thanksgiving

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003 | 8:24 a.m.

With Thanksgiving's fable of pilgrims and American Indians a week away, the real-life issues facing the nation's first dwellers is under scrutiny in New Mexico.

National American Indian Heritage Month was half over when the 60th National Congress of American Indians convened in Albuquerque on Sunday.

The six-day meeting of 3,000 leaders from American Indian and Alaska Native nations is focusing on uniting tribes to build stronger relationships with state and federal officials. Threats to tribal sovereignty and the status of money held in federally managed Indian trust accounts are among the topics up for discussion.

A 7-year-old, class-action lawsuit alleges the federal government has failed to keep accurate records regarding revenue generated by the millions of acres of Indian trust lands managed by the government since 1887.

The U.S. District Court has ordered the Department of the Interior to provide a complete review of assets that have been held for more than 300,000 individual American Indian account holders. Government officials have conceded that many of the records have been lost or destroyed. No one knows how much money the fund should contain.

In a September ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth called the Interior Department's handling of the fund a "gold standard for mismanagement" for "more than a century," according to a release from the Indian Trust website, www.indiantrust.com.

As we prepare to sit down to turkey and the folk tales surrounding the kickoff feast of our winter holiday season, it might be a good idea to spend a little time surfing the Internet looking for modern American Indian stories.

Members of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah are asking for donations to help in their annual drive to provide winter food, clothing and propane for members of the Skull Valley band of Goshutes. Log onto www.healutah.org.

And 33,855 citizens have signed a petition to create a national holiday for American Indians. The document, found at www.petitiononline.com/indian/, calls for tribute to "those that endured the world's longest holocaust and most costly in human lives."

Skirmishes between the federal government and the Indian nations continue in Congress and in courtrooms.

A wooden rod adorned with beadwork and feathers hangs in my hallway above a large photograph of Rios Pacheco, a beadwork artist from the Northwest Band of the Shoshone, who gave the piece to me when I moved from Utah in 1999.

I often visited Pacheco's workshop in Perry, Utah. His tribal band was nearly wiped from the planet Jan. 29, 1863, when U.S. Army troops attacked a Shoshone winter camp at Bear River on the Utah-Idaho border. Only descendants of Bear River survivors can be members of the Northwest Band.

More than 450 Shoshone, mostly unarmed women and children, were slaughtered. Some fought. Others plunged into the river's icy waters to escape. The victors paraded through Logan, Utah, bearing the scalps of those who did not.

Look around. Find the stories.

Sometimes it's easier to enjoy the myth after exploring a little of the reality.