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WASHINGTON – The audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference had heard the message of low taxes and local control from speakers before.

But they had never heard it from one group of speakers who showed up Thursday to the annual gathering: Native Americans who called for less government oversight on reservations and greater tribal sovereignty.

“Try to build a road in a national park,” said Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, and a member of the Cherokee Nation. “Try to put a Denny’s in a national park. It doesn’t happen.”

He and others said that’s because excessive government bureaucracy in Indian Country makes it all but impossible for tribes to push infrastructure and economic development projects in light of the “barriers put in place.”

“Paperwork on paperwork on paperwork” that Mullin said gets in the way of what could otherwise be an economic engine driven by natural resources in Indian Country.

“We can’t achieve that financial freedom because … I have to ask Big Brother for permission,” he said.

Dwight Witherspoon, a legislative assistant to Navajo Council Speaker Seth Damon, said tribes and conservatives have to recognize their “commonality, because it absolutely does exist.”