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.
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