C. Matthew Snipp, chair of Native American studies at Stanford University, told The Crimson in an interview last night that “the transcript sounds considerably less obnoxious and more innocuous than the actual talk.”

“But if that’s the transcript, that’s the transcript...I’m as puzzled as anybody now,” said Snipp, who was a visiting professor in Harvard’s sociology department last academic year.

Shelemay, who reviewed a DVD of Summers’ speech recorded by the Committee on Ethnic Studies, confirmed that the transcript was an authentic rendering of Summers’ remarks.

“I am very glad that he released the transcript,” Shelemay said. “It corresponds to my notes,” she added.

At press time, Summers’ remarks had not been posted alongside other speeches on his official website.

‘A SENSE OF DEPENDENCY’

Several scholars who attended the September conference said they found Summers’ behavior at the event to be “condescending.”

“Summers was 15 minutes late and totally unprepared,” Browner wrote in her Sunday e-mail. “He didn’t even have little note cards in hand, and he just started speaking off the cuff.”

Early in his remarks, according to the transcript, Summers cited a Harvard School of Public Health study revealing that in one Native American community in South Dakota, life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh. Persistent poverty among indigenous communities in the United States, he said, is “a major area of concern.” Summers noted that he and his colleagues in the Clinton administration’s Treasury Department “worked hard and, I think, with some success,” to make loans more readily available to Native American communities.

Just sentences later, however, Summers irked several listeners when he asked: “[H]ow does one avoid what I don’t think is good for anybody, which is a sense of dependency on the larger society, a reliance on financial transfers from the outside, a view in terms of special programs that have an aspect of charity and response to charity?”

That remark was “misinformed and unenlightened,” said Yellow Bird, the University of Kansas faculty member.

According to Yellow Bird, the word “dependency” is an incorrect description of Native American communities’ relationship to the federal government. Rather, Yellow Bird said, the U.S. owes tribes hundreds of billions of dollars under treaties that have largely been abrogated by federal officials.

“[Summers] made it sound like we’re just being beggars out there,” Yellow Bird said.

Speaking to The Crimson yesterday, Summers further clarified his comments.

“The overarching point of my remarks was to express a concern about the well-being of Native Americans today: how to increase life expectancy, reduce poverty, and to do so in the best way given the distinctive historical relationship between Native American communities and the larger society,” he said.