The Man to See On Indian Affairs?

Lobbyists have long profited from ties to people in power. But rarely are those relationships--and the favors they can win--displayed as brazenly as they have been recently at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the agency that confers federal recognition on tribes and can turn dusty reservations into billion-dollar-a-year gaming palaces. One unabashed appeal took Linda Amelia of the Chinook Indian tribe by surprise in January. Amelia saw an opportunity to advance her group's long fight for recognition as a tribe at a California G.O.P. meeting attended by Wayne Smith, the No. 2 man at the BIA. Amelia gave Smith her...

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