from Indiana Country Today by Ashutosh Bhardwaj, Special to Today

HELENA, Mont. – While the world celebrated as an African American assumed the highest office in the United States, Barack Obama was accompanied by his adopted parents, brother and clan members of the Apsaálooke, or the Crow Nation.

Twenty-four Crow members traveled from Montana to Washington D.C., hauling horse trailers and traditional regalia to participate in the inaugural parade Jan. 20, after Obama became the first U.S. president to belong to an Indian tribe.

Last May, then-presidential candidate Obama paid a campaign visit to Crow Agency, arguably the first stop at an Indian reservation by any presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy’s visit in 1968 to Pine Ridge, S.D.

Before the rally Mary and Hartford Black Eagle formally adopted Obama into the Crow Nation, conferring an honorary tribal membership. They gave him a family name, Barack Black Eagle, and a Crow name, Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish, which translates as “one who helps people throughout the land.”

more: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/plains/38693927.html