Kizzia, who wrote a book on native rural village called “The Wake of the Unseen Object,” describes Lena Andree’s upbringing in rural Alaska. Her mother was a Yup’ik Alaskan and her father was a Dutch sled dog freighter, before the arrival of airplanes.

Andree’s heritage makes the governor’s children Native too — one-16th. Because of their heritage, Todd Palin and the Palin children are entitled to some government benefits, including comprehensive medical coverage, Kizzia reports.

After the vice presidential debate, we looked into Palin’s claim that she knows what it’s like for families “to sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care.”

At the time, we noted that it looks likely that the Palin family could have had a good chance of qualifying for federal health care as Native Alaskans. Though the Palins may have decided never to apply, they had a realistic fall-back plan, unlike most Americans.

Now it looks even more certain that the Palins had an alternative if they were ever in a difficult financial position. Kizzia, an expert on Alaska Natives, says the family is not just eligible to apply, but actually “eligible for Indian health benefits under federal law, as lineal descendants of Native enrollees under the 1970 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.”

Palin’s attempts to present herself as the mother of a typical working-class family doesn’t work when it comes to health care.

Unlike the vast majority of Americans, her husband and children had a good chance of qualifying for free, federally funded, comprehensive health care under a program of the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service.

The governor’s husband, Todd Palin, traces his Yup’ik ancestry to his maternal grandmother. Sarah Palin routinely mentions her husband’s background at public appearances, and did this regularly when she ran for governor in 2006. At the time, the issue painted her in a positive light with the Native Alaskan voting bloc.

Todd is a lifelong fisherman. Bristol Bay fishing rights must be bought or inherited in Alaska. In Palin’s case, he says he bought his fishing spot from his grandfather in the 1970s. He also inherited shares in two native Alaska corporations. These shares can only be passed from one blood relative to another. Private citizens cannot purchase them.

Todd Palin’s ancestry grants another plus — it makes him and his children eligible to apply for free government health care.

To qualify for the state-based, federally funded program, Alaska Area Native Health Service, residents must provide proof of ancestry. Cecile Wesley, the director of eligibility at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, told me in an interview that one way of establishing ancestry requirements is to present a shareholder card for one of four Alaska native corporations that list “blood quantum” — the carrier’s percentage of “Indian blood.”

“[Alaska Native Medical Center] does not have a blood quantum requirement,” said Wesley, when I asked what percentage of native blood a resident must have in order to receive the healthcare.

One corporation that issues cards with the blood quantum requirement is the Bristol Bay Native Corp. According to public disclosure forms Sarah Palin filed with the state of Alaska, her husband and their children are BBNC shareholders. Palin’s disclosure form is available here.

Todd Palin and the Palin children are also a shareholders in another Native corporation, Choggiung Ltd.

Wesley said that the Bristol Bay cards have been updated in recent years to include the blood quantum. Older cards would not have been accepted. In that case, the Palins would have had to establish proof of ancestry through the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, or by presenting a membership card in a federally approved tribe.

Like Alaska, the Bureau of Indian Affairs does not set a blood quantum requirement for establishing native ancestry.

Multiple requests for comment from the McCain-Palin campaign were not immediately answered.

It’s unclear whether the Palin’s ever used the native health-service program. But, it’s likely that the family had a better option than “paying out-of-pocket” for health-care coverage.

*Note: This post was originally published at 5:00am Eastern. The time stamp was changed so it would remain on the TWI homepage.

When I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars to make sure we weren’t doing anything that would be seen as condoning the activities there in Darfur. That legislation hasn’t passed yet but it needs to because all of us, as individuals, and as humanitarians and as elected officials should do all we can to end those atrocities in that region of the world.

There’s only one problem: It wasn’t true.

Writing on the Huffington Post today, Shannyn Moore, a liberal, Anchorage-based talk-show host, does a nice job laying out the chronology of the episode, revealing that Palin and others in her administration either ducked or outright opposed the divestment legislation until just a few months ago.

For example, Moore quotes Mike Burns, the appointed head of Alaska’s oil-revenue-based “permanent fund,” as saying the divestment legislation would “complicate” the work of fund managers like himself. “Managing money according to a social or political agenda is a bad bet,” Burns said.

There were other instances, Moore writes, when the administration’s opposition was revealed:

On February 9, 2008, Governor Sarah Palin’s appointed Deputy Commissioner, Treasury Division, Brian Andrews, spoke to the Alaska House State Affairs Committee on bipartisan HB 287, which would require the state to divest from Sudan. He agreed with Mike Burns who said divestment was ‘not the right tool.’ He stated, “The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens’ financial security is not a good combination.”

Right. The permanent fund is only $40 billion (almost $60,000 for every man, woman and child in the state).

Wouldn’t want to let a thing like genocide get in the way of enlarging it.

But Palin’s performance last night was more than fodder for a “Saturday Night Live” skit. It was an embarrassment to those who come from small towns.

After the debate, many pundits declared that Palin’s style of speaking is authentic, a breath of fresh air, a cadence that plays well in middle America.

Well, gosh darn, golly gee, I come from middle America, went to school with the sons and daughters of farmers, knew people who struggled to go to college.  And there’s only one thing I felt about Palin’s “authenticity”–insulted.

Palin is not authentic. She instead is what people who live on the coasts believe to be middle America.

She insulted me in another way.

Palin’s debate performance was a slap in the face of some great people who have made great contributions to the betterment of this country during some of its darkest hours–but who didn’t happen to come from small-town America.

What, for example, would Palin say of Teddy Roosevelt–Sen. John McCain’s supposed hero–and his experience?

Born to great affluence, Roosevelt was a man who suffered great tragedy, disappeared into the Badlands only to emerge as the man who busted up the trusts.

And what would Palin say of Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, neither of whom suffered through the Great Depression but who inspired a nation to raise itself from the ashes of economic collapse by showing Americans how to reclaim their national spirit and self-worth?

And certainly Palin would have had a field day with Bobby Kennedy, who also came from great wealth but understood and cared for poor people as no politician has since his assassination in June 1968.  Would she have mocked his knowledge of the ancient Greek poets? Would she have ridiculed his large home, his father’s wealth?

The truth is, Palin represents something troubling in U.S. politics. In seeking to be the champion of the struggling middle class, she uses her folksiness to discredit and mock the possibility that someone who speaks with intelligence, grace and reason can know what it means to suffer.

I would search for a quotation here, but I suppose that would show my disconnect from the common folks.

Some took this as an indication that the she intends to abandon the high-profile interviews that have proved unhelpful to her cause, to say the least.

Fox News announced that Carl Cameron interviewed Palin this morning, and the network will air bits and pieces of the interview throughout the day.

Now that she has a relatively successful performance under her belt, the big question is:

Will she be able to maintain the poise and confidence she displayed last night in a one-on-one interview, or will she revert to the shaky, meandering person we saw in the Katie Couric interview?

UPDATE: The first segment just aired, and Palin offered some harsh criticism for Couric.

“Honestly, the Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed, because it’s like, ‘Many, no matter what you say, you’re going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you’re going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that too.

“In that Katie Couric interview, I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing, in terms of an opportunity to ask what a V.P. candidate stands for, what the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about what Barack Obama increasing taxes, which will lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase spending by another $1 trillion, some of his comments that he’s made about the war, that I think may, in my world, disqualify someone from consideration for Commander-in-Chief.”

So basically, Palin was annoyed that Couric saw that her job was to flush out for the American people more information about the character of a relatively unknown candidate for the vice presidency, and not to provide Palin with a nationally-televised forum for spouting McCain campaign talking points?

It’s an old Republican line of attack, but Obama’s latest ad throws it in Sen. John McCain’s face.

Zeroing in on last night’s exchange about McCain’s health-care plan — which taxes employer benefits — the new ad offers a succinct summation from the VP Debate:

PRODUCTION NOTES: Sen. Joseph Biden’s aides promised a prosecutor’s brief for the debate, and this ad carries on that style. Terse messages flash on a black screen, while soundbites from last night are aired. It’s “just the facts,” straight to camera, and Biden looks deadly serious about the health-care choice between the two tickets this year.

It’s a sharp contrast to Alaksa Gov. Sarah Palin — who is depicted as unable to “explain” her own plan.

She made a real effort to go out of her way to play up the “folksy mom/Joe Six-Pack/Washington outsider” angle. Some will find that annoying. But if the anecdotes appearing in news articles on Palin rallies are to be believed, a lot of people — particularly women — see themselves in her. The folksiness probably endears her to these people.

Palin displayed a real propensity for not answering questions, however, choosing instead to steer away from troublesome issues — most notably the question on mortgages, which she directed back to energy. This probably bothers pundits far more than it does normal people — that is, those who don’t ingest news all day as part of their jobs.

For people who follow the campaign casually, those who may catch the evening news and debates like this, I would think Palin’s performance was probably pretty impressive. True, she didn’t answer a lot of questions, but she was poised, confident and assertive in the answers she did give. When she spoke, she directed her words straight at the camera — to talk to people in their living rooms.

She never strayed far from the McCain campaign talking points, except maybe on Darfur and her apparent support for some gay rights. While she didn’t make any huge mistakes, she repeated some debunked claims — but at this point, is that much of a surprise?

In light of her recent disastrous interviews with CBS’ Katie Couric, Palin performed about as well as could be expected. Will many undecided voters choose Sen. John McCain based on tonight’s debate? Probably not. But Palin pulled herself back into the game, after she was hanging by a thread — and some who were concerned about her abilities may give the ticket another look.

Ultimately, she did what she needed to do. Did she win? I certainly wouldn’t say so. On substance, you have to give it to Sen. Joe Biden. But when you factor in things like style and expectations, it wasn’t a huge, decisive blow-out — and that, in itself, is success.

What do you think?

Gov. Sarah Palin (Flickr: NewsHour)

Gov. Sarah Palin’s words in her debate tonight evening with Sen. Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, will be piped into America’s ears through GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain in a simultaneous translation. This was not meant to muzzle Palin’s spontaneous conversation, McCain asserted, but to prevent any Al Qaeda ventriloquists lurking in the auditorium from putting words in her mouth.

“I have more experience than anybody else on earth in counterterrorism,” McCain said, “and I know Gov. Palin has a unique vocal timbre easily imitated by terrorist mimics.” He announced that he has suspended a dentist appointment, a fact-finding trip to Guam and the annual Beer Distributors’ Ball in Phoenix to be in St. Louis — to protect the spunky, four-eyed Girl of the Frozen West.

“Gov. Palin will more than hold her own in tonight’s debate if I have anything to say about it,” McCain predicted, “and, obviously, I will. She’ll bring up what I call the Iraq Free-For-All and how Sen. Obama’s call for calm discussion plays right into the hands of the prime minister of Spain and other strongman tyrants. But let me make it clear that even if you hear my words and not hers, she is her own person.”

The perky Alaskan moose-butcher was busy trading walrus recipes with the Mrs. Dalai Lama, a McCain campaign spokesperson said, and unavailable for comment, but, in any case, McCain wasn’t finished.

“I have now decided, in the urgent interests of protecting our national security, to suspend my trip to St. Louis for tonight’s debate,” he then told a shocked press corps. “Now isn’t the time for a fair and free exchange of ideas by seekers of high office — which is why I invite Barack Obama to join me in rushing back and forth around the nation on chartered jets until something happens.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”