Rural Alaska blog: The Village : (UPDATED) Obama: 'No shouting now. But I would love to come to Alaska'

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Rural blog: The Village

(UPDATED) Obama: 'No shouting now. But I would love to come to Alaska'

Posted by thevillage

Posted: November 5, 2009 - 7:25 am

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Update: Click here to read a White House transcript of Obama's remarks, and the following question-and-answer session.

Meeting with tribal leaders from across the country this morning in D.C., President Barack Obama heard calls from Alaska Natives for help combating suicide, erosion and mining impacts.

He also got an invitation to the 49th state.

“If you ever decide you want to get away from it all come see one of us,” Bill Martin, an Alaska Federation of Natives board member from Southeast, told the president.

“I often want to get away from it all. So I'm very much looking forward to visiting Alaska,” Obama replied.

The White House expected hundreds of tribal leaders at the Interior Department today for the meeting, which began at 5 a.m. Alaska time. During a brief question-and-answer period in which at least three Alaskans called on the president, Martin asked for more funding to battle the state’s staggering suicide rate and warned some villages are ready to slip into the ocean because of coastal erosion.

One speaker warned the Red Dog mine could hurt food gathering. A woman from Kodiak Island said an elder named Erlinda, who works at the local Safeway, wanted to tell Obama she loved him.

“You tell Linda I love her back,” the president said.

Obama said tribal leaders would get a chance to talk issues with federal department heads and members of Congress later in the day, then added: “The only thing I do want to make sure you understand is that when I do visit Alaska, it’s going to be during the summer.

"So, just wanted to be clear about that.”

Tlingit elder Clarence Jackson gave the invocation at the meeting, followed by a short speech by the president who called the event “the largest and most widely attended gathering of tribal leaders in our history.”

Of the 387 tribes that planned to attend the conference 87 are from Alaska -- the most from any state, according to the White House.

Obama talked about a proposal to boost Indian Health Service funding, the value of tribal colleges and the need for stronger law enforcement in Native American and Alaska Native communities.

"On some reservations, violent crime is more than 20 times the national average. The shocking and contemptible fact that one in three Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes is an assault on our national conscience that we can no longer ignore," he said.

As he began taking questions, the president reacted to something someone yelled from the crowd.

“No shouting now," Obama said. "But I would love to come to Alaska."

(Note: I watched the opening of the meeting streaming on the White House Web site. It's still being broadcast online as I write this, but be warned. The quality this morning was very poor. Long freezes & gaps in the feed. Hard to hear many of Obama's remarks on policy and the feds' relationship with American Indian/Alaska Native people. Meantime, read the agenda here.)

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