by Fergus M. Bordewich

About the author: Fergus M. Bordewich, the author of Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century,traveled for many years among Indian reservations during his childhood in the 1950s and 1960s.

Superficially, the May 1994 Albuquerque "Listening Conference," as it was rather self-consciously billed by its sponsors, the Departments of Justice and the Interior, provided a spectacle of enlightened official concern. Three members of President Bill Clinton's cabinet—Attorney General Janet Reno, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros—along with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ada Deer sat side by side in a stylishly appointed meeting room at the Albuquerque Conference Center, cocking the ear of government both literally and symbolically to the oratory of a hundred or so...