NEW YORK, NY December 24, 2007 —The fatal police shooting of a Ramapo Indian in Mahwah prompted Governor Corzine to ask an expert panel to report on the status of the state's Native Americans.

WNYC's Bob Hennelly has this report on the panel's findings.

The panel found that New Jersey's Native Americans face discrimination and poverty that is compounded by a sense they are invisible to the rest of the state.

Former State Health Commissioner Chris Grant served on the panel.

GRANT: Most New Jerseyans expressed a lot of enthusiasm and interest for the proposition of celebrating New Jersey's American Indians. They were surprisingly unaware of the continued existence of Indians in the state.

The panel's report called for new state legislation to extend formal recognition to the three tribes it documented. That in turn, the experts concluded, would open up considerable public and private sector opportunities to a native population they conservatively put at 20,000.

The report also called for increased state attention on a botched federal Superfund clean-up in the heart of the Ramapo Indians ancestral lands in Mahwah. For WNYC, I'm Bob Hennelly.