Sources: Interior Officials Have History Of Hostility To Native Concerns

By Alice Ollstein | April 16, 2018 6:00 am

A scathing Inspector General’s report released last week is raising new questions about last summer’s mass reassignment of Interior Department (DOI) employees that disproportionately affected Native Americans.

Now, current and former members of Congress and former department officials tell TPM that two top Trump political appointees at the department — at least one of whom played a key role in the reassignments — have long been hostile to Native concerns. Both officials, Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, the department’s second in command, and Associate Deputy Secretary Jim Cason, served in top DOI posts during the George W. Bush administration, at a time of intense conflict between the agency and Native American tribes.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, is demanding the two officials testify before Congress about whether the reassignments were politically motivated.

“It’s no coincidence that those workers were sent to other functions separate from the responsibilities they had regarding land issues and Native American issues,” Grijalva told TPM. “It’s a way to take away institutional memory. It’s a way to take away the expertise about the history of the issue and the definition of tribal sovereignty.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/sources-interior-officials-have-history-of-hostility-to-native-concerns


Fucking assholes.....................racist one at that ................


November 2018 cannot get here fast enough