As an alumnus, I’ve taken special pride in the amazing accomplishments of the University of Illinois basketball program this year. That team represents much of what is good in the world of sports, and it has deserved its considerable media attention.

But the “Fighting Illini” should not be the only American Indian name making headlines right now.

Make no mistake, these Illini are a unique bunch. As one of the 17,000 screaming, orange-clad fans who witnessed first-hand Saturday’s miraculous 15-point comeback against Arizona, I can attest that they are a special group – a model of what selflessness, a never-say-die attitude and hard work can accomplish.

But for all that, the irony that the sports achievements of a school nicknamed for a group of American Indians garners more headlines than an actual American Indian tribe in crisis is a sad statement about our national priorities.

The American Indian community in Red Cloud, Minn. is still reeling from a school shooting almost two weeks ago that left 10 people dead. Unlike previous school shootings though, the Red Cloud tragedy has strangely all but slipped under the radar of the national media.

Even our political leaders have given it little attention. Until his Saturday radio address – five days after the shooting – President Bush had made no public comments on the shootings. Contrast this with 1999, when Bill Clinton, just hours after the Columbine shootings, urged Americans to “do more…to recognize the early warning signals” of school violence. He visited the school a month later.

Bush’s silence prior to his radio address was especially disturbing to the Native American community. David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and member of the Lumbee tribe, told the Washington Post it was “very telling” that Bush would leave his vacation early to discuss Terri Schiavo, but say nothing for several days about “10 Native people gunned down.”

The recent court battles of Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal struggle over whether her feeding tube should be reinserted, have preoccupied politicians and the national media alike. But all the Schiavo media attention has left Red Cloud practically ignored. And that only adds to the tragedy, because some serious American Indian issues are being neglected along with it.

American Indian youths, for example, are twice as likely to commit suicide as any ethnic group, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The overall death rate among American Indians younger than 25 is three times higher than the national average. American Indians are 650 percent more likely to die from tuberculosis, 670 percent more likely to die from alcoholism and 318 percent more likely to die from diabetes than any other ethnic group. And American Indians are the poorest ethnic group in the United States, making about half of the average income of other Americans. Whatever you may have heard about Jeff Weise’s interest in Hitler and Nazis, these are the dark and, unfortunately, still virtually unknown issues that contributed to the sense of hopelessness that led to his Minnesota shooting rampage.

So as the Fighting Illini continue to receive national media attention en route (I hope) to two more victories, let’s remember that American Indian tribes have more important concerns than coping with a full court press. They deserve some headlines, too.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.