Indian Heritage Month Is Time to Tell the Story
Quaker Lobby Issues Resource, Ideas for Better Understanding
For immediate release - November 6, 2006
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) has produced a new resource that provides a blueprint for promoting better understanding of Native Americans through first person testimony and media outreach. The report, released in November to coincide with American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, provides ideas and first person narratives that can help change the often stereotypical and simplistic public portrayal of First Americans.
Preview copies of the report, Native Americans and the Public: A Human Values Perspective, will be distributed to the media upon request. The report discusses the results of the media symposium “Hear Our Story: Communications and Contemporary Native Americans” which FCNL organized in March 2006. Twenty-two other national Native and non-Native organizations were co-sponsors.
Native leaders such as Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokees, and former U.S. senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell have pointed out that public policy is strongly influenced by public perception. FCNL’s report is a tool for indigenous communities, which often face an uphill struggle to get their stories heard. The report also provides contact information for media planning to cover events on Native American issues.
The concern Quakers feel for the original inhabitants of this continent began before the founding of the U.S. and continues today in FCNL’s work on Capitol Hill. This session of Congress will conclude at the end of November in a post-election, lame duck session during which Congress may vote on the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act (H.R. 5312/S.1057), which is needed to bring the health status of Native Americans up to the level of the general public. The Senate may also vote on the Native American Languages Act of 2006 to preserve indigenous languages
“Congress should go beyond celebrating Native heritage to pass critical legislation that will immediately improve the lives of today’s Indian families,” stated Patricia Powers, director of FCNL’s Native American Advocacy Program.
More information on FCNL's Native American Advocacy Program is available online.
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The Friends Committee on National Legislation, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a non-partisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL works with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from every state in the U.S. to advocate for social and economic justice, peace, and good government. For more information: http://www.fcnl.org
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