I’m not sure if it was calculated or it is just happened to fall a year after he was officially declared president, but last week Pres. Obama did something many declared “historic.”

Obama and his administration held his summit with leaders of the 564 federally recognized American Indian tribes. It’s the first such meeting between the White House and Indian Country in 15 years, fulfilling a campaign promise Obama made to repair relationships with Native Americans through regular dialogue and annual gatherings.

But history has made American Indians skeptical of the promises the federal government has made to them.

Stripped of their lands and forced on to some of the least desirable territories in the country, the hundreds of indigenous tribes who’d lived here before European settlers arrived, suffered tremendously, losing an estimated 90 percent of their population to disease, malnutrition, and the overall abuses from their new neighbors.

Remarkably, they survived, but they’d been changed. The government called it assimilation. Through policies and strong-armed tactics, the new authority shifted tribes here and there, coerced leaders into deals that they ultimately broke, and tried to obliterate what made this population so unique and special.

The outcome of such efforts is easy to see today.

A quarter of all Native Americans live in poverty, twice the national average. The figure is even more pronounced on reservations, where 35 percent are indigent. American Indians are twice as likely to be victims of crime. They also have a lower life expectancy— nearly six years— and contract diseases at a greater rate than any other ethnic/racial group.

Nationally, the picture in schools is no better. Dropout rates for Native American children are higher for every other subgroup except Latinos. In 2003, two-thirds of American Indian eighth-graders reported being absent at least once in the previous month, compared to 58 percent of Hispanic, and 56 percent of black students.

Also in 2003, more American Indian students reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school grounds; they were also twice as likely to report carrying a weapon.

It’s a disturbing set of figures, especially since American Indians comprise about 1.5 percent of the U.S. population and 1 percent of the public schools.

Under the Obama administration, many in Indian Country see hope for a better future and a better relationship with the federal government— but they are cautious. 

“I’m impressed President Obama is reaching out … I’m hoping it’ll get a dialogue started … I hope it’s more than lip service,” Janice Rowe-Kurak, chairwoman of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma, told the New York Times.

To read more on this issue, reach back into the archives and read my story “Trail to Progress.”

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor