I watched the entire forum via live webcast. The Democrats were collectively impressive, presenting a consistent worldview that’s not always obvious in a sometimes discordant primary. Mr. Castro, who gave such a thoughtful presentation I’m glad he qualified for the next debate, summed up their platform: “ I believe that everyone counts. ” I can always tell if someone hasn’t spent a lot of time around Indians because they never use that word — which I still like because that’s what my two grandfathers, Carlile and Cicero, called themselves and it makes Christopher Columbus look incompetent — but the Democrats all professed to respect tribal sovereignty and vowed to honor treaties and legal trust obligations and to consult the nations’ leadership on policies affecting their lands and people, often throwing around the magic words “ government-to-government” relationship .

The president was invited but did not attend. While his name came up a few times — if you want to cultivate the indigenous vote, never hang a portrait of the architect of Indian removal in the Oval Office — his absence was made palpable by the consistently high-minded discourse. The tribal experts asked candidates substantive, often intricate questions about specific legislation, water safety, infrastructure, health care, immersion language education, the Wounded Knee Massacre and how data collection or lack thereof has compromised justice for this country’s more than 5,700 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

To quote Senator Sanders, “ May I be blunt? ” The president does not possess the knowledge or brain power to credibly respond to any of these queries and crises. Nor would he have had the basic decency of Mayor de Blasio to say that he didn’t know the answer to a couple of questions but that he was eager to learn more. I doubt the president has heard of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and if he has, I question whether he would offer the sophisticated analyses of Senator Harris and Governor Bullock on how culturally ignorant judges affect the children the act was designed to protect, with the governor lamenting that most judicial appointees at the highest levels “ have no exposure or understanding of what Indian Country is. ” That assessment also applies to the president himself — otherwise he wouldn’t, as Mr. Payment put it, repeatedly attack Senator Warren by disparaging one of our “Indian hero women.”

Speaking of, when Deb Haaland, the intriguing Laguna Pueblo citizen who represents New Mexico in the House of Representatives, showed up to introduce Senator Warren, she proclaimed, “I started out as a phone volunteer and now I’m a member of Congress.” According to its leader, the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina has 22 homeless native veterans on a waiting list for housing . The roads on the Cheyenne River Reservation are flooded. But Representative Haaland’s grass-roots path to power proves that every now and then, this dysfunctional country still works.