WASHINGTON—When American Indian Andrew Lee as a young college graduate took a job in New York’s financial sector, he struck up a conversation with an older man in the street. He asked if the man had seen a recent newspaper article on American Indians. The response still rings in his ears.
“‘Yes, but I think they got it right in South America by wiping out the indigenous population,’” Lee said, quoting the encounter.
That was in the 1990s. Lee went on to befriend the man, an influential figure on Wall Street.
“He eventually came to support the dignity, strength, and diversity of this country’s first peoples,” Lee said as he spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Nov. 29.
Andrew Lee went on to do great things after that encounter, becoming an executive at one of America’s largest health insurers. He now serves as a trustee on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and has been selected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
A mixed heritage native from New York state’s Seneca Nation, Lee said the encounter with the man taught him the importance of “changing attitudes.” It was a theme that featured at last week’s Senate hearing, titled Reclaiming Our Image and Identity for the Next Seven Generations.
Lynn Valbuena, chairwoman of the Tribal Alliance of Sovereign Indian Nations (TASIN) and a witness at the hearing, shared with senators the image problems Native Americans face. Last century the image was of “a feather bonnet-wearing Indian living in a tepee,” she said. Now it is combined with the “the drunken Indian.”
