Wearing a traditional headdress, Marcus Levings, chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, asks President Obama a question.

AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Matthew Thomas has felt like an outsider all his life.

So when he heard the president of the United States tell hundreds of Native American leaders Thursday, “I know what it’s like to be on the outside looking in,” the chief sachem of the Narragansett Indians was moved.

Not so many years ago, Thomas said, it would have been hard to imagine himself, an unknown member of a small New England tribe, in the same room with the president and the leaders of more than 400 tribal nations — much less with a president as strongly committed to Native American causes as Mr. Obama.

“This is very important, very historic that the president is taking time out to sit with Native Americans, the indigenous people of this country,” Thomas said.

But the meat of the gathering near the White House was, of course, politics — what the tribes want from the federal government and what Mr. Obama and his Cabinet have pledged to give them — so the tone was set when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declared to a loud ovation, “President Barack Obama respects the inherent sovereignty of Indian nations.”

That was a phrase that, to Thomas and many other Indian leaders, echoed the Obama administration’s endorsement of congressional action to overturn a Supreme Court decision that denied a special land trust status to the Narragansetts.

The Tribal Nations Conference in the Interior Department’s high-ceilinged Art Deco auditorium was strong on symbolic touches.

The color guard was made up of elderly Navajo veterans who carried their tribal flag as well as the Stars and Stripes and the standards of the U.S. armed forces.

“A somber legacy still haunts what we do. We can neither escape it, nor erase it,” said Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado.

Mr. Obama attended the traditional meeting with tribal leaders — which he called the largest of its kind in U.S. history — on the anniversary of his election, and in keeping with a campaign promise to a solidly Democratic voting bloc.

Mr. Obama identified himself with the tribal leaders from the opening laugh-line in his speech. Recalling how a Montana couple had ceremonially adopted him into the Crow Nation a couple of years ago, he said, “Only in America could the adoptive son of Crow Indians grow up to become president of the United States.”

But it was a personal aside that struck an emotional chord with Thomas.

“I was born to a teenage mother. My father left when I was 2 years old, leaving her — my mother — and my grandparents to raise me,” Mr. Obama said. “I understand what it means to be on the outside looking in. I know what it means to feel ignored and forgotten, and what it means to struggle. So you will not be forgotten as long as I’m in this White House.”

“I damn sure know what that feels like,” the Narragansett chief said later. “You don’t have a voice ’cause you’re in the so-called minority, and those who do have the majority keep you out.” A case in point, Thomas said, was that it took 12 years for the Narragansett Indian Tribal Police to get access to the state system that permits officers to run criminal checks on suspected lawbreakers.

But things may be looking up for Native Americans, Thomas said, agreeing with Assistant Interior Secretary Larry Echo Hawk’s call for a moment of silence “to thank our Creator for bringing us a president and a secretary of the interior who truly care about our people.”

“I do believe in the president’s position of change. To use his words, ‘Yes, we can,’ ” Thomas said.

(Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that former Sen. Salazar had represented New Mexico.)

jmulligan@belo-dc.com