As the President and Congress spar over funding for a border wall as a condition for re-opening the Federal Government, Native citizens across Indian Country are experiencing major disruptions to their daily lives.
Indian Country Today reports, “Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, said on MSNBC this morning that the chairman of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa told her that tribal police are not being paid because of the shutdown. Funding for tribal law enforcement contracts are on hold during the shutdown.”
It is a similar story for those Native communities who rely on the Indian Health Service (IHS), a federal entity whose services are often guaranteed by treaty. A recent report in the New York Times estimates that for one tribe of the Chippewa in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the shutdown is costing “about $100,000, every day, . . . federal money that does not arrive to keep health clinics staffed, food pantry shelves full and employees paid.” Some 1.9 million Native people are being affected.
The same is true of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Writing to officials in Washington D.C., Colville Business Council Chair Rodney Cawston, in recent article in the Tribal Tribune of Nespelem, WA, argues that the shutdown has had “a disproportionate impact to tribes’ related to land management, health services and other social service programs.” Cawston believes “the impact to the tribal timber industry alone is resulting in a tribal loss of approximately $400,000 weekly and the impact to federal direct and indirect support costs is resulting in a loss of $1.5 million weekly.”
“The trust responsibility that underlies the functions that the IHS and BIA serve makes them much different from National parks and traditional land management functions of the Department of Interior.”
A visit to the IHS website this week displays the stark reality of the shutdown for indigenous communities.
“Dear Tribal Leader,” the message reads, “there will be no funding available from the HIS until such time as appropriations are enacted and available for such purposes. We acknowledge that this circumstance may result in insufficient funds to carry out the terms of the agreement (the Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act) and that the program may cease to operate.”
Coming on the heels of a year-long assault on Native land by the Department of Interior and the Trump administration, the shutdown of the federal government is yet another blow to tribal sovereignty and yet another example of promises unkept.
As Kevin Washburn, who served as the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs under President Barack Obama, explained to a reporter from the New York Times, during a shutdown, “Indian Country stops moving forward . . . and starts moving backward.”
It is time this administration started honoring its trust obligations to Native people.
Further Reading
http://www.tribaltribune.com/news/article_92a5690a-12b6-11e9-aafc-57f1d70299a4.html
