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Editorial

Candidate Obama Kept His Promise to Native Americans

President Obama at the White House Tribal Nations Conference.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

President Obama campaigned hard in 2008 for the votes of American Indians. He vowed that his administration would pay special attention to their grievances about federal mismanagement and the government’s recurring neglect of treaty obligations. “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans — the first Americans,” he told the Crow Nation in Montana, promising a change.

Flash forward to this week as Mr. Obama attended his eighth and final White House Tribal Nations Conference, an annual summit meeting of Indian leaders he instituted. He received praise for actually delivering on his pledge in multiple ways, including the announcement of $492 million in lawsuit settlements with 17 American Indian tribes for alleged federal mismanagement of their funds and lands. The government holds more than 100,000 leases to manage about 56 million acres of tribal lands rich in mining, timber and oil resources that have historically been exploited at the tribes’ expense.

The settlement was the latest in the administration’s resolution of more than 100 tribal claims, some of them a century old, at a cost of more than $3.3 billion. Separate from that, the administration settled a complex, 13-year-old lawsuit in 2009, agreeing to pay $3.4 billion in compensation for federal mishandling of hundreds of thousands of land trust accounts. That signaled a sea change in the long and bitter history of Washington’s treatment of tribal interests and grievances.

Beyond that, Mr. Obama was given credit by tribal leaders for creating a White House council to maintain lines of communication with them; establishing a buyback program to help tribes regain scattered lands; expanding the jurisdiction of tribal courts; and including tribal women under the protection of the Violence Against Women law in 2013.

Reaching out to Indian nations has been “one of the hallmarks of this administration,” Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, told Cronkite News. Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said the 567 federally recognized Indian nations were “fortunate to have a president” like Mr. Obama, but he worried whether the next president would be as responsive.

There remain numerous unsettled issues. Tribal protesters were on hand this week in Washington, pressing the administration to block the Dakota Access pipeline, an oil conduit that the Standing Rock Sioux tribe says threatens its water supply and sacred burial grounds. A federal court upheld the pipeline this month, but the Obama administration has suspended the disputed construction while it reviews earlier decisions about the project.

At a time when many Americans roll their eyes at campaign promises, it’s heartening to see a president deliver on his. “I hope I’ve done right by you,” Mr. Obama told the tribal leaders, and they responded that he had.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 26 of the New York edition with the headline: Mr. Obama Honors a Pledge to American Indians. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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