My award for gross incompetence goes to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and they still hold that first place honor after more than 33 years of my reporting. The sad thing is that their incompetence has hurt so many impoverished American Indians. The BIA's place in the Hall of Shame is assured.

What this comes down to is this: Congress does not see women's protection from domestic violence as a high priority. There are more important things to argue about. This is not to belittle the country's fiscal problems; obviously those are high on the list and need to be dealt with.

Every Native American language is in extreme danger. Some of them are looking at language death in the next decade, and some are trying to just stabilize the number of children who are learning and speaking their ancestral languages.

When we are in the throes of another election year, and we feel the need to retreat to our false sense of aloneness, let us remember we are part of a grand experiment. Compared to the cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the American admixture is still wet clay.

When many of us from Indian reservations see the United States send billions of dollars in foreign aid to Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan and God knows where else, we often wonder why the indigenous people of America do not come first.