Barack Obama was adopted into the Crow Nation and given the name "One Who Helps People Throughout the Land."

In the lead up to Tuesday's primaries in Montana and South Dakota, Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the Flathead Indian Reservation in Pablo, Mont.

The Democratic nominee will face John McCain of Arizona, co-chairman of the Senate's Committee on Indian Affairs.

"All of them at least have had some exposure to Indian country," observed Chickahominy Tribe Chief Stephen Adkins of Charles City County. "It's not a bad place to be."

It's an unusual place for American Indians as we approach the November election.

"I do think there's a difference in what we've typically seen, which is no attention at all," said Karenne Wood, a Fluvanna County resident and Monacan Tribal Council member.

Native Americans make up 1 percent of the electorate nationally and 0.3 percent in Virginia. But the 2000 presidential election placed that percentage in new light. "Folks have begun to understand that every vote counts," Adkins said.

Indeed, American Indians were difference makers in the narrow victories of Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., (in 2000) and Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., (in 2002), said Robert J. Miller, a law professor at Lewis & Clark University in Portland, Ore. "In my opinion, this is the absolutely best year ever for tribal issues to be highlighted."

Bill Clinton was the first sitting president to visit an Indian reservation since Franklin D. Roosevelt. But casino money has resulted in more political influence.

"Native people had absolutely no money at all," said Miller, a tribal judge. "They couldn't lobby Congress. . . . Tribal leaders couldn't even afford to travel to D.C. to visit Congress."

Now, "they have the resources to pay more attention to Congress, and Congress has responded."

Tribal sovereignty -- civil and criminal control of Indian lands -- remains a big issue, as well as protection of sacred Indian sites, federal recognition of tribes and casino gaming. Disparities in health care, employment and poverty continue to afflict American Indians, though Adkins says Virginia's tribes are doing relatively well.

Adkins recalled his brother being refused service in a Charlottesville restaurant while waiting for a train to college in Oklahoma in 1958. "A lot of blood shed in the civil-rights movement opened a lot of doors for native people."

Is Obama -- and his ethnicity -- part of this continuum? Yes and no, Wood suggests.

"There's a sensitivity there as a member of a group that has experienced oppression and someone who has experienced discrimination personally," she said. "He has to be more sensitive on those issues."

But, "one problem is people have lumped native people in the 'minority' category," she said. "They experience many of the same forms of discrimination, but many natives don't necessarily feel like they want the white picket fence. The American dream is something that doesn't include native people."

Climbing the corporate ladder "sort of flies in the face of native values. Native Americans want to articulate their own dream. And they are so rarely asked to do that."

Perhaps that is changing. American Indians have gone from being ignored to being courted. For now, that's not a bad place to be.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.