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An American Indian's Quest for Justice
| Article
# : |
11393 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
2,592 Words |
| Author
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Tom Nugent
Tom Nugent teaches journalism at the University of Maryland
in
Baltimore. His works include Death at Buffalo Creek,
published
by W.W. Norton. |
Like hundreds of other Congressional lobbyists, he works out of a high rise office building in downtown Washington.
Like most of the others, he moves daily through a world of push-button telephones, computer printouts, and traffic clogged freeways: the high-tech world of the modern American city.
But his heart belongs to another kingdom to a far-off realm dominated by "warrior songs" and "big medicine" and the shattered remnants of a once-mighty nation of buffalo hunters and tribal dancers.
You can feel the presence of this second kingdom, as soon as you step into his office on 18th Street and come face to face with the ceremonial drums.
Covered with tanned skins of buffalo and deer, the tall drums stand like watchful sentinels behind the cluttered desk. On the wall above them, a Pawnee tribal blanket glows in a ceremonial montage of ebony and scarlet.
As the headquarters for a nationwide organization known as the National Tribal Chairmen's Association, this colorful office serves as the command post for one of Washington's most unusual lobbyists.
It also provides the dramatic setting for an extraordinary kind of balancing act a daily highwire stunt performed by a man who has two names.
In the busy offices along Capitol Hill, they know this man as Raymond C. Field the hard working and fast moving executive director of the nation's largest and busiest tribal lobbying operation.
Out on the rolling prairies of Oklahoma, however, they have another name for the to two-year-old Mr. Field: They call him "Tied Bear."
Out there, on the blue-sky reservations where the Great Plains Indians struggle to survive in an alien environment, they also understand the dangerous hazards of the highwire balancing act which takes place daily in Mr. Field's Washington office.
They know what it means to have to live in two very different worlds, and to maintain a precarious balance between
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