If you didn't know this either, there is a very nice article about this on the New American Media website today.
Some excerpts from that article are below, but I recommend reading the whole thing.
He was known throughout Indian country as a leader, a fighter, and by his nickname, “the Liberal Lion of the Senate.” Kennedy leaves behind a legacy of legislative achievements that strike at nearly every facet of Native American lives.
Kennedy cut his teeth on Native American issues when he assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Special Subcommittee on Indian Education in early 1969. His older brother, Robert F. Kennedy, served as the subcommittee’s first chairman, prior to his assassination in 1968.
Kennedy called his subcommittee’s groundbreaking 1969 report “a major indictment” of the federal government’s policies on Indian education, policies which he believed led to “poverty and despair,” and a situation Kennedy deemed “a national tragedy and a national disgrace.” His involvement in nearly every major education law, from Head Start to Bilingual Education to No Child Left Behind, demonstrated his commitment to education, especially among Native Americans.
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Kennedy was among the first to truly grasp the importance of consultation, writing in the 1969 report that “perhaps the most important principle that this investigation embraced was simply soliciting, listening to, and respecting the opinions and concerns of Indian people across the United States.”
Kennedy had harsh words for the federal policy of assimilation, calling it for what it was, “a desire to divest the Indian of his land and resources.”
His insights into Indian country were visionary. He wrote in his subcommittee’s 1969 report that the United States’ treatment of Native Americans “raises serious questions about this nation’s most basic concepts of political democracy. It challenges the most precious assumptions about what this country stands for – cultural pluralism, equity and justice, the integrity of the individual, freedom of conscience and action, and the pursuit of happiness. Relations with the American Indian constitute a ‘morality play’ of profound importance in our nation’s history.”
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The subcommittee report touched on other themes, describing federal Indian policy as “coerced assimilation” which led to “the destruction and disorganization of Indian communities and individuals.” He unflinchingly called America “a nation that is massively uninformed and misinformed about the American Indian, and his past and present,” and faulted national attitudes that carry “a self-righteous intolerance of tribal communities and cultural differences.”
The Kennedy report also cited the government’s failure to “understand the human needs and aspirations of the American Indian” as justification for the formation of a committee that would eventually become the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
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Kennedy will also be remembered for his tough stance against IHS budget cuts, as well as for his support for the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and Tribal Self-Governance.
At an Aug. 27 press conference, President Obama not only called Kennedy “one of the greatest senators of our time” but singled him out as “one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.” Obama closed by saying: “The extraordinary good that he did lives on. For his family, he was a guardian. For America, he was the defender of a dream.”
God bless you, Ted. Rest in peace.
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