I want to present two Awards today. One off the top of my head, to Claus Biegert. I don't know if others here are going to have the opportunity to give him a formal thanks from this podium, but some years ago when I was living in Regensburg in Bavaria, a young man called upon me -- it wasn't the dapper man you see before you today, but a young man in a red baseball cap and fatigues with a camera on his shoulder, and it was Claus and from that moment we have been close friends. I have known him for years and I want to pay tribute to him today. Not only for this occasion, we owe him a debt of thanks for this, but he has done so much good work for so long a time, that he stands among us as one of the real champions of human well-being and human dignity.

And so it is my great pleasure and honor to be his friend, and I think we should give him a round of applause. (Applause)

Grace Thorpe, Sac and Fox, is a leading environmental justice activist, organizing against nuclear waste dumping on Native American tribal lands. She is president of the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans, serves on the Greenpeace advisory council for Native American affairs, and sits on the board of directors of the nuclear information and research service.

Grace has long been on the front-lines of Native American politics. She was alongside members of the American Indian Movement who occupied Alcatraz Island in November 1969 - I was there as well. She lobbied in Washington DC for the National Congress of American Indians, and along the way she earned the paralegal degree, and studied urban issues as a Fellow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Grace is also the daughter of Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, and led the campaign for the return of his 1912 Olympic medals, and continues to fight to have his records in the pentathlon, decathlon back on the books.

I have the pleasure of writing at the moment a screenplay, which is based upon the Carlisle Indian School, and so I'm learning a good deal about your father in the process, and Jim Thorpe as you all know was - what can you say - a force of nature. He won both the decathlon and pentathlon in the Olympics, no one will do that again, since the pentathlon is no longer part of that contest, but a man who represented his people in a wonderful and spectacular and dignified way.

I want to say that the American Indian, like many of the other indigenous peoples of the earth and like many of the wild animals of the earth, is an endangered creature. This is not news to us. At the turn of the century - we are about to turn the century again - but at the turn of the present century, the death rate among Indian peoples exceeded the birth rate. That the American Indian persists in his ancient identity today, is one of the great stories of survival in human history.

The greatest threat to the Native American today is the loss of cultural identity, the theft of the sacred. Our Indian children are losing their languages, their ceremonies, their hold upon their heritage. The most sacred aspect of the Indian world is the earth itself. The land, the water, the sky. The sacred earth is threatened in our time as never before, by pollution, by contamination - most of all by disrespect.

Grace Thorpe has long been active in protecting the earth and in preserving the sacred. She has been instrumental in the survival of her people and in the survival of the sacred earth. How richly she is deserving of this Award! Thank you.

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