When the meetings of a state Commission of Indian Affairs are besieged with groups demanding that their culture clubs and they, the members themselves, be recognized by the State as Native American Indians, when members of federally-recognized Native American Indian tribes are denigrated in public by a commissioner of Indian Affairs as being less worthy of recognition in Tennessee than the in-state descendants of indians who died over a hundred years ago, when recognition of the state's historic tribes and Native American heroes is less important than trying to embarrass a public appointee at a Commission meeting, when a fullblood member of a federally-recognized tribe with years of service and statewide community respect is unseated from his/her position as elected chairperson of the Commission of Indian Affairs by the lobbying efforts of an election official who is a member of a state-recognized tribe not native to Tennessee on behalf of a person unknown outside his/her local community and with no proven tribal affiliation, then i think it's time to ask ourselves, Whose interest is the Commission of Indian Affairs serving -- Indians or their opponents? As a critic of the last Commission, as a community organizer of this iteration of the Commission, as former chair of the Advisory Council and of TNNAC, i have a greater degree of investment in the success of the Commission and a better historical perspective than most people. Commitment to the Commission is a choice that is tested weekly by liars and haters and racists, and affirmed daily by the problems requiring attention and the prospects of projects that will create a better future. This year, 2009, brings the legal time limit of the Commission. If anybody wants it extended further into the future, the state legislature requires an argument be made that its current existence promises future success. It will be difficult to win such an argument with the legislature when the legislative officers appoint persons with no Indian Preference over the number-one choice of the community who is a member of a federally-recognized tribe. It would be stupid to try to win an argument with the state Government Operations Committee again this year with the Joe-Joe Show again present to attack and insult representatives of the state's historic tribes. It is wrong to defend a Commission with a decreasing number of members of federally- and state-recognized tribes and an increasing number of advocates of state recognition of culture clubs as tribes. How to defend a state agency in which the workers are demeaned and the posers entertain themselves with personal attacks.