Bureau of Indian Affairs Archives - Page 3 of 4

Spokane County seeks second federal study of Airway Heights casino

By Mike Prager, Tom Sowa, The Spokesman-Review

Spokane County commissioners are asking the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to take a new look at possible negative impacts of a proposed Spokane tribal casino on Fairchild Air Force Base.In a recent letter to the BIA, commissioners said information has surfaced indicating that an “accident potential zone” could be extended into the area where the tribe is proposing its casino-resort.The commissioners’ letter says new information provided to the county under the Freedom of Information Act supports their request for another look at the project. They want a new study to include “outstanding questions regarding the safety of the Spokane Tribe’s proposed casino-resort project in Airway Heights,” the letter said.County commissioners have hired the law firm of Perkins Coie LLP with experts in Washington, D.C., to prepare their challenge to the casino project, as well as former U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, of Spokane.

Commissioner Al French said he didn’t have the cost of hiring those outside consultants immediately available, but confirmed it is a substantial amount.

“This is something we are very concerned about as a board,” French said, pointing out that Fairchild contributes $1.3 billion to the region’s economy each year.

Spokane Tribe officials say the casino – part of its Spokane Tribe Economic Project – would create jobs and benefits for tribal members and attract more businesses to Airway Heights, where the proposed project would be built.

The tribe also commissioned a detailed study, prepared by Madison Government Affairs, which claimed the casino would have no adverse effects on the air base.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs said Tuesday that the agency received the commissioners’ letter and added it to the official record being reviewed.

A year ago, county commissioners submitted more than 50 pages of comments against the casino proposal, arguing it could endanger the future of Fairchild, the area’s largest employer.

The BIA allowed comments for and against the proposal to be submitted through May 1, 2013.

Since then, the tribe’s application has been reviewed by the Office of Indian Gaming in Washington, D.C. The department has not said when it might issue a ruling on the application. If approved by Kevin Washburn, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the Interior Department, the casino would also require approval by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

Commissioners say new reviews of Fairchild flight paths suggest the proposed casino would be inside an accident potential zone that wasn’t identified in the initial environmental impact statement.

Fairchild has established accident potential zones at the end of the base runway that extend in a straight line from the runway through portions of Airway Heights, south of U.S. Highway 2. The tribe’s environmental impact statement relied on the existing crash zones, which the commissioners now argue are inadequate.

Those accident zones were based on a 2007 study, which did not account for prevalent training patterns to the north of Fairchild, the commissioners’ letter said.

Charts of flight patterns show that pilots using visual flight rules often make sharp turns over the proposed casino site during takeoffs and landings. The racetrack-shaped pattern on the north side of the main runway goes directly over the casino site.

“The casino project is located right under that racetrack,” French said.

The amount of overhead air traffic qualifies the casino area for protection as an accident potential zone, commissioners argued in the 63-page letter.

County officials said they recently discovered a 2011 Department of Defense instruction that says, “Where multiple flight tracks exist and significant numbers of aircraft operations are on multiple flight tracks, modifications may be made to create (accident potential zones) that conform to the multiple flight tracks.”

The letter also states that comments from the Air Force obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act show the flight-pattern conflicts are more extensive than indicated in the final environmental impact statement.

Civilian encroachment is one factor considered by the Air Force in its periodic reviews of air bases for potential closure.

The commissioners have taken steps in recent years to address encroachment by leading a multiagency rewrite of zoning laws to provide buffers for Fairchild. Last fall, they asked voters to raise their property taxes to buy manufactured home parks in the existing crash zones, but the measure was rejected. However, a state grant is being used to buy the former Solar World housing, which has been cleared of occupants.

Indian affairs receives 1.2 increase in fiscal 2015 budget request

By Ryan McDermott, Fierce Government

Bureau of Indian Affairs programs would receive a 1.2 percent increase over this year’s enacted amount under the White House budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

The budget request totals $2.6 billion for Indian Affairs – $33.6 million more than fiscal 2014 enacted, said Interior Department Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn during a Senate Indian Affairs Committee Wednesday hearing.

Tribal self-determination and self-governance programs have eclipsed direct service by the Indian Affairs Bureau at DOI, Washburn said.

More than 62 percent of the appropriations are provided directly to tribes and tribal organizations through grants, contracts and compacts for tribes to operate government programs and schools, Washburn said.

But committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said the budget request isn’t enough.

“Every line item is deficient,” Tester said. “1.2 percent is not right. This needs some work.”

He said the percentage increase for Indian Affairs pale in comparison to increases at other part of the DOI. The National Park Service request is for 22.2 percent more than this year and the Land Management Bureau request is 6.1 percent more.

But Washburn argued that Indian Affairs budgets under Obama have been larger in the last five years than another other parts of the DOI. The BIE budget request for fiscal 2015 makes up $2.6 billion of the agency’s $11 million total request.

Other parts of the DOI might see a larger percentage increase under the request, Washburn said, but they make up much smaller parts of the agency so the comparison is apple to oranges.

For more:
– go to the hearing page (webcast and prepared tstimony available)

Promised land: Chicago’s Native Americans wait on federal money pledged for social services

By Caroline Cataldo, Medill Reports Chicago

Dorene Wiese operates under the assumption that when she sees a community need, she fills it.

As director of the American Indian Association of Illinois, Wiese runs a youth tutoring program, a GED prep course, a museum and a college from the basement of a Rogers Park church. The children and adults who enter the doors are enrolled members of one of 566 Native American tribes — including Navajo, Lakota, Crow and Blackfoot — recognized by the U.S. government. Wiese, like the majority of Chicago’s Native Americans, belongs to the Ojibwe tribe (Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Canada).

Wiese says problems of poverty, identity and cultural preservation for natives living in Chicago are no different than the difficulties seen on reservations. But, she explains, there is one major difference:

“When you don’t have a job on the reservation, you live with your extended family members,” Wiese says. “When you don’t have a job on Chicago, you are homeless, you live on the streets.”

In February, the federal government admitted neglecting to honor treaties to pay for native social service agencies for decades, leaving a $3 billion debt. As of this year, the government has pledged to honor its commitment going forward. Distributed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to cover education, health care and other social service programs, “contract support costs” historically were funneled to organizations on reservations. This year, the bureau asked for $231 million to pay for running these social service agencies..

But, even as an exclusively native, non-profit in an urban, off-reservation setting, the American Indian Association of Illinois, like others, does not see a penny. Calls to the bureau to explain funding discrepancies were not returned.

This lack of explanation is the problem, advocates say.

As a prominent member of the Chicago Native American community, Wiese wonders why, as enrolled tribal members, organizations like hers doesn’t benefit from this money. In fact, 99 percent of these social service dollars only serve 22 percent of Native Americans — who live on reservations. However, 78 percent of Native Americans in the U.S. live off reservation land, according to the 2010 Census.

“I’ve asked some of the best Indian legal minds in the country about what a tribe is if not the membership, and how is it the tribes do not have to serve their off-reservation citizens?” Wiese says.

No one seems to have an answer.

John Laukaitis, an education professor at North Park University, has spent the past few decades studying urban Native American education. He says, like most of the issues surrounding native populations on and off reservations today, this disparity must be understood through a progression of history.

In the early 1950s, the U.S. government began offering Native Americans living on reservations incentives to move to urban centers like Chicago, Laukaitis said. They were told jobs would be waiting for them, allowing them ways to escape the crushing poverty of reservation life. In Chicago, at least, the reality was much different than advertised. Jobs were few and far between. Many would return to the Bureau of Indian Affairs looking for the help they were promised.

They were on their own.

Living off-reservation, Laukaitis said, Native Americans in cities no longer fell under federal trust treaties that required the U.S. government to pay for tribal education and health care. Around this time there was also a “resurgence of individualism and individual self-determination,” he said.

“There was a collective belief in America at that time everyone could make it on his or her own,” Laukaitis says. “There was an animosity toward anyone who wanted to continue this federal trust status.”

But, unlike many immigrant groups trying to find their way out of poverty in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s, Laukaitis said it is unfair to think of service contracts as a government handout.

“A guarantee of education, a guarantee of health care, a guarantee of all of these services are from a treaty, and historically they were the exchange of land and peace,” Laukaitis said. “So it is really not the same to look at the trust status and the money going toward reservations as welfare.”

The problems facing Native Americans in Chicago today come from this rocky foundation. As less than 1 percent of the population in the area, Laukaitis said Native Americans have little to no political voice in the city, as well as on the reservation.

The American Indian Association of Illinois is one of the few exclusively native cultural centers in the city, catering to the needs of Chicago’s first people, and it is run primarily from donations. When money is low, which Wiese says is pretty typical, the burden falls on her to buy food, pens, paper and crayons to keep the center running.

The harsh reality is Wiese’s programs are struggling to survive. The Native Scholars after-school tutoring program can only operate one day a week. Medicine Shield College, which helps adults earn college degrees, is struggling to meet the criteria that will allow it to go on.

Urban-dwelling Native Americans, in fact, are the poorest people in America, Wiese said. And no one is being held accountable for their welfare in the city.

“We don’t want to take anything away from the reservations,” Wiese said. “But something has got to change for us, too.”

Tribes, BIA and BLM collaborate on oil, gas operations

By The Ranger staff reports

The Arapaho and Shoshone tribes and the Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management, signed a memorandum of understanding Feb. 25 in Fort Washakie.

Through the MOU, the parties said they will engage in a cooperative environmental program to promote compliance on oil and gas properties by lessees and operators on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

“This MOU is a good opportunity for all of us to start fresh, to be on the same page and to work toward the same goals,” said BIA acting Rocky Mountain regional director Darryl LaCounte.

Specifically, the MOU outlines a process and timelines for the parties to:

– review all ongoing oil and gas operations on the reservation with tribal ownership interest to identify actual or potential adverse environmental effects;

– identify prospective sources of federal funding to the tribes to support monitoring, inspection and enforcement;

– develop an environmental plan for oil and gas operations; and

– formalize a structure for future communications between the parties regarding environmental concerns arising from oil and gas operations.

“We look forward to working collaboratively with the Arapaho and Shoshone tribes, as well as with the BIA, to manage oil and gas activities on the Wind River Indian Reservation,” said BLM Wyoming state director Don Simpson.

For more information, call BIA realty officer Marietta Shortbull at 332-4639 or BLM resource adviser Stuart Cerovski at 332-8400.

Yankton Sioux Tribe road projects take a new path

By Associated Press

MARTY, S.D. (AP) — As the Yankton Sioux transportation planner, Wesley Hare Jr. received reports of a dangerous intersection often used by tribal members.

Accidents and near-misses were occurring because of a blind spot near the junction of S.D. Highway 46 and a Bureau of Indian Affairs road leading to Marty, Hare said.

Hare contacted the South Dakota Department of Transportation about the problem.

“A (DOT) person was out there, and he observed for a week and saw the near misses,” the tribal planner said.

A road turnout was constructed for safety reasons, Hare said. “We have gotten a lot of feedback and good comments on it,” he added.

The Yankton Sioux isn’t the only tribe with such issues. Transportation needs remain a challenge for Indian Country. In order to share their experiences, nine tribes from across South Dakota have created the Tribal Transportation Safety Summit.

The Yankton Sioux Tribe recently hosted the fourth annual summit at Fort Randall Casino. The two-day meeting drew around 100 officials — double the first summit and the largest turnout in the event’s history, Hare said.

The nine tribes that took part were the Rosebud, Oglala, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Flandreau, Sisseton-Wahpeton and Yankton.

The Yankton Sioux highway department not only cares for tribal roads but also partners with Charles Mix County and the state’s transportation department, he said. “As far as tribal roads, we have only 28 miles. But in conjunction with the county and state, we have maybe 1,200 miles,” he said.

During last month’s highway summit, Hare learned of the vast road miles that other tribes maintain.

“Marty to Greenwood is only six miles for us,” he said. “But communities (in other parts of South Dakota) may be 30 to 50 miles apart, and they have to take care of those long stretches.”

The Federal Highway Administration has encouraged these types of tribal conferences across the nation, according to June Hansen the tribal liaison of the state’s transportation department.

“During the annual meetings that SDDOT holds with each of the nine tribes, the topic of transportation safety and ideas to improve safety was a recurring theme,” she said. “The SDDOT was happy to partner with the nine tribes and a number of other agencies (on setting up the summit).”

Those agencies include the federal transportation agency’s South Dakota division office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, South Dakota Department of Public Safety and the Northern Plains Tribal Transportation Assistance Program.

“The real heart of each of these summits is the host tribe, and all the host tribes have done an outstanding job with each of the summits,” Hansen said. “That is especially true for Wesley Hare and his staff with the Yankton Sioux Tribe. They really outdid themselves with some truly unique and special events like the honoring of the YST Code Talkers from World Wars I and II.”

At last month’s summit, the tribes also talked about cooperation between their road and police departments to cut down on drunk driving and related fatalities.

The Yankton Sioux presentation was given by Hare and Louis Golus Jr., the road maintenance supervisor. Besides the Highway 46 turnout, Yankton Sioux Tribe successes include the installation of reflectors around Marty and the road leading to Greenwood.

Among other projects, the Yankton Sioux Tribe has worked with other entities on a Lake Andes walkway and welcome signs around Charles Mix County, acknowledging the Yankton Sioux traditional homeland.

In addition, the transit program, started in 2011, has grown rapidly, Hare said. The transit operates 18 hours daily, running a route of 16 stops. The tribe constructed 14 shelters for passenger waiting for rides.

Passengers rely on the transit for reaching destinations ranging from jobs and medical appointments to the Boys and Girls Club and Fort Randall Casino.

“Forty-five percent of our people don’t have any (personal) transportation at all,” he said. “The transit is a really growing program. The first year, during a month’s time, we had between 500 and 600 riders. Now, we are over 2,000 riders a month. It has just shot up.”

In his work with the federal government, Hare noted a shift from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to tribes. Tribes now take care of planning, hiring their own engineers and doing their own construction. In addition, funding goes directly to tribes rather than funneled through the bureau.

That isn’t to say the bureau and tribes have become disengaged, Hare said. “We keep in touch with the BIA in Aberdeen. We still use them for a lot of technical assistance,” he said.

Hare was elected chairman for the Northern Plains Tribal Technical Assistance Program, which serves 26 tribes. Adequate funding remains a concern at all levels, he said.

In that respect, the annual highway summits take on growing importance as tribes make the most of their resources, Hansen said.

“The networking between the various tribal agencies that work to improve transportation safety — whether they are from the engineering, education, enforcement or emergency services — has grown each year,” she said.

Frustration Surrounds New Tribal Labor Force Report

Rob Capriccioso, ICTMN

Is the 2013 Indian Population and Labor Force Report making anyone happy?

Tribal leaders and citizens have yet to say whether they are gaining anything useful from the report, which was issued in January after a long delay by the Obama Administration over apparent data collection problems.

The 151-page Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) document includes a lot of data. It generally says that there is a lot of poverty on many reservations, many Indians work for tribal, state or federal governments, and Native youth are especially having trouble finding jobs.

It says precious little about what is working for some tribes, and how other tribes can copy the success stories. And it provides no data on how federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) investments in tribal reservations in 2009 and beyond actually impacted Native employment, and whether there were lasting economic impacts that would call for greater federal investment in certain areas. Congressional leaders who lambasted the lateness of the report in summer 2012 had hoped that when it was eventually released that it would at least provide a little insight on how ARRA worked—or didn’t work—for struggling tribes.

With roots going back to 1982, the report is supposed to be a tool for both tribes and Congress, depicting the labor and employment landscape across a wide range of tribes facing a multitude of economic situations.

Congressional supporters of the rationale for the report say that tribes could ideally use the data, which is supposed to be issued every two years, to make fact-based quantitative arguments for improved federal and other assistance.

But that ideal situation is not happening, says Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chair of the Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs, and he does not think it is likely to happen given the new data in the current report.

“The 2013 Indian Population and Labor Force Report recently released by the Bureau of Indian Affairs is far from a helpful document,” Young tells Indian Country Today Media Network. “In reality, this document has more potential to cause harm than good. What was published is essentially a reprint of unhelpful and outdated U.S. Census Bureau data, all of which was publically available prior to the release of the report.”   Young notes the failings of Census Bureau data collection, including the miscounting and undercounting of thousands of Alaska Natives and American Indians, are already well known.

“From what I’ve seen, the report contains huge gaps in data for many parts of Indian country and relies heavily on making estimates about tribes’ economic circumstances,” Young adds. “Additionally, the report’s labor and employment statistics are not accurate metrics for providing a realistic picture of the actual circumstances in Native communities.”   Young believes that Alaska Native and American Indian communities will actually suffer if agencies use this report for making policy decisions or determining how best to allocate federal resources meant to support programs in Indian country.

Young’s view is representative of other Congress members focused on Indian affairs who want the report to be doing more than the current one. Retired Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) echoed Young’s concerns in July 2012 when the report was gaining attention for being long overdue. “It is crucial to have an accurate record of employment statistics in order to best assess need and to appropriate financial resources to tribes,” Akaka then said. “Understanding the current economic outlook will better help us to put forth legislation that will increase economic development and job creation in Indian country.”

One of the reasons the BIA cited for the long delay surrounding the current report – the last of which highlighted 2005 tribal data—is that they wanted it to be better than previous ones. “When we are able to release something, I am confident that it will be far more accurate than any report we’ve ever released before on this issue,” Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn told ICTMN in August 2013 when asked why the report still had not been released.
The new report may be more accurate, but it is still a source of frustration, BIA leadership concedes.

“Our economist did the best he could with imperfect data,” Washburn says. “We are neither the U.S. Census Bureau, nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those agencies both exist and we do not believe Indian country wants us to become them. We are not a statistical agency. Our primary mission is to provide services to tribes.”

Washburn, hearing the critiques of Young, says it was a tough situation. “We hired [the economist] to help Indian Affairs make more accurate (and therefore hopefully more compelling) budget submissions to Congress,” he says. “However, the economist was hijacked from this equally important task and reassigned to help with the labor force and population report in hopes of making it more accurate than in the past.”

On why the ARRA tribal outlook was not covered in the report, Washburn cites the limited resources of his agency. “The fact is that we had only one economist working on this, and I believe that it would have taken a battery of economists to produce an analysis of all the effects of ARRA,”’ he says. “It was hard enough simply trying to gather the labor and population data for 566 tribes in twelve BIA regions. Moreover, the requirement for the report was enacted with the 477 law, many years before ARRA. The data was not intended to show anything about ARRA. The report simply has no relation to ARRA.”

Washburn also suggests that Congress should re-evaluate whether it is wise to have the BIA and, in turn, tribes shoulder the costs of this biannual report. “A tribal administrator with the Citizen Band of Potawatomi told me in a public meeting that it would cost her tribe $500,000 to do everything the tribe needs to do to accurately report labor and employment data for this report,” he says. “That is one out of 566 tribes. I do not feel that the 477 law was intended to impose such costs on tribes.

Washburn also says he doubts that Congress intended the BIA to bear such costs, but he adds that his agency plans to issue the next report on time, in accordance with the law.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Files Go Digital

Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PAThe caption reads: Graduating Class, 1892. Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pa. Thomas Metoxen (Oneida.) Hattie Long Wolf (Sioux.) Reuben Wolfe (Omaha.) Luzena Choteau (Wyandotte.) William Baird (Oneida.) Albert Bishop, (Seneca.) Benajah Miles (Arapahoe.) Joseph Hamilton (Piegan.) Benjamin Caswell (Chippewa.) Frank Everett (Wichita.) Lydia Flint (Shawnee.) Fred Peake (Chippewa.) Photographer: John N. Choate, Carlisle, PA — Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA
The caption reads: Graduating Class, 1892. Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pa. Thomas Metoxen (Oneida.) Hattie Long Wolf (Sioux.) Reuben Wolfe (Omaha.) Luzena Choteau (Wyandotte.) William Baird (Oneida.) Albert Bishop, (Seneca.) Benajah Miles (Arapahoe.) Joseph Hamilton (Piegan.) Benjamin Caswell (Chippewa.) Frank Everett (Wichita.) Lydia Flint (Shawnee.) Fred Peake (Chippewa.) Photographer: John N. Choate, Carlisle, PA

Rick Kearns

1/10/14 ICTMN.com

Want to know more about students who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School? Now doing just that is far easier.

Stories of Sioux children like Elsie Robertson, or Pueblo children like Bruce Fisher can now be read online, as can parts of the lives of the many thousands of students who attended Carlisle between the years of 1879 and 1918.

Readers can find this information on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project page of Dickinson College of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The college’s Community Studies Center (CSC) and its Archives and Special Collections Department put the project together in 2013 and since August of last year they have been sending teams of researchers to the National Archives to scan and digitize information relating to CIIS.

This week, project directors sent another team to the Archives to continue with the process. One of the directors, College Archivist Jim Gerencser, noted that they had already digitized 1,250 files, comprising about 11,000 pages of text.

“We think that within three years we should be able to capture all the information from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) files,” Gerencser said.

He also said that they had been in contact with a group of CIIS descendants on Facebook and were hoping to inspire other people with connections to the school to come forward. The first page of the project’s website extends an invitation also.

“Desiring to add to the school’s history beyond the official documentation, we will seek partners among those institutions that hold additional records regarding the school, its many students, and its instructors. Subsequent phases of this project will develop the capability for user interactivity, so that individuals may contribute their own digitized photos, documents, oral histories, and other personal materials to the online collection. The website will also host teaching and learning materials utilizing the digitized content and database, and will support the addition of original scholarly and popular works based on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project resources.

BIA: Who’s your leader? C&A per cap checks on hold

December 4, 2013

By LENZY KREHBIEL-BURTON, Native Times

CONCHO, Okla. – Thanks to their tribes’ protracted leadership dispute, Cheyenne and Arapaho citizens will not be getting their December per capita payments on time.

According to a letter obtained by the Native Times on Nov. 26, the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ agency office in Concho denied a drawdown request by the Janice Prairie Chief-Boswell administration from two of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes’ trust accounts. Among the withheld $3 million in lease funds are $1.6 million in oil and gas leases that provides an annual December per capita payment for tribal citizens.

“Regrettably, the Concho agency cannot honor your request for federal action as of this date because the agency does not know with certainty the identities of the validly seated governor, lieutenant governor and members of the legislature for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes,” agency superintendent Betty Tippeconnie wrote in the letter, dated Nov. 21.

The tribe has been dealing with a constitutional crisis for almost three years, with both Prairie Chief-Boswell and Leslie Wandrie-Harjo each claiming to be the legitimate governor. The two women ran for office and were inaugurated together in January 2010, but their alliance dissolved within a year over a series of allegations. Since the women’s political partnership fell apart, each has formed her own government, claiming to be the legitimate authority over the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Boswell and her supporters are working out of the tribal complex in Concho, while Wandrie-Harjo and her government is based out of nearby El Reno, Okla.

Federal law gives the Prairie Chief-Boswell administration 30 days to appeal the decision to the Southern Plains regional office in Anadarko or it will become final.

The Prairie Chief-Boswell administration did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement posted to her Facebook page, the other claimant governor urged her counterpart to negotiate a compromise in order to have the per capita payment funds released.

“All of us members need those per capita monies,” Wandrie-Harjo wrote. “We have suffered enough.

“Boswell needs to swallow her pride for the well-being of the members and meet w ith me and the BIA to get this per cap out or she needs to step down so the BIA and I can get the money out to the members.”

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court affiliated with the Prairie Chief-Boswell administration has not handed down a decision in either pending appeal of the tribes’ Oct. 8 primary election. The justices heard appeals from former governor and disqualified gubernatorial candidate Darrell Flyingman and tribal member and employee Joyce Woods on Nov. 15 and initially announced that a decision would be handed down within 10 days. No verdict had been announced by press time.

Pulling Aid Away, Shutdown Deepens Indians’ Distress

Rich Addicks for The New York TimesAudrey Costa at home on the Crow reservation in Montana with her grandson Benjamin Costa and her daughter, Beth Dawes, right. Ms. Costa has not received her federal lease payment. — Rich Addicks for The New York Times
Audrey Costa at home on the Crow reservation in Montana with her grandson Benjamin Costa and her daughter, Beth Dawes, right. Ms. Costa has not received her federal lease payment.

By DAN FROSCH

Published: October 13, 2013 Nytimes.com

CROW AGENCY, Mont. — Worlds away from Washington, Audrey Costa wondered aloud about keeping her family warm. A mother of three, she relies on lease payments from the Bureau of Indian Affairs on land owned by her family, which can run up to a few hundred dollars a year, to pay for food and electricity. But since the partial shutdown of the federal government began on Oct. 1, Ms. Costa, 41, has not received a check.

“We’re having such a hard time,” she said outside her tattered clapboard home in this poor prairie town deep in the heart of the Crow reservation. “I don’t know what I’ll do. Just tough it out, I guess.”

Like other largely impoverished Indian tribes that lean heavily on federal dollars, the Crow have been battered by the shutdown.

Some 364 Crow members, more than a third of the tribe’s work force, have been furloughed. A bus service, the only way some Crow are able to travel across their 2.3-million-acre reservation, has been shuttered. A home health care program for sick tribal members has been suspended.

Though the tribe has enough money to keep a skeleton government operating for now, it is running out.

“They don’t have a clue what’s going on out here,” the tribal chairman, Darrin Old Coyote, said of politicians in Washington from his office in Crow Agency, which sits in the shadows of the Little Bighorn battlefield, itself closed because of the shutdown. “It is hurting a lot of people.”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which provides a vast sweep of services for more than 1.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives, has kept essential programs, like federal police and firefighting services, running. But it has stopped financing tribal governments and the patchwork of programs and grants that form the thin blanket of support for reservations racked by poverty and other ills.

“You’re already looking at a good number of tribes who are considered the poorest of our nation’s people,” said Jacqueline Pata, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. “When you are dealing with cutting off food supply programs and even nominal payments to tribal members, it creates a dangerous impact immediately.”

The Yurok tribe in Northern California, for example, relies almost solely on federal financing to operate. Its reservation, which spans parts of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, already has an 80 percent unemployment rate, said Susan Masten, the tribal vice chairwoman. With money suddenly unavailable, the tribe has furloughed 60 of its 310 employees, closed its child-care center and halted emergency financial assistance for low-income and older members.

Financing for an environmental program that ensures clean drinking water on the reservation is running low. A second round of furloughs could affect tribal police officers, Ms. Masten said.

“The saddest thing about this is that the federal government has an obligation to the tribes,” she said. “In times like this, where it’s already extremely difficult, any further damage to our budget would be devastating.”

On the reservation of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians in northern Minnesota, all nonemergency medical procedures have been placed on hold, said Dave Conner, a tribal official who helps manage the Red Lake’s government services.

The Red Lake were supposed to have received about $1 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs this month to help operate their government, but the money was not released before the shutdown, Mr. Conner said.

The tribe has budgeted enough money to keep the most critical services running until the end of the month.

“This is a poor, rural, isolated reservation,” Mr. Conner said. “A lot of people rely on our services, so there’s a lot of fear right now.”

For some tribes, the pain of the shutdown has been sharpened by federal budget restrictions this year, known as sequestration, that imposed 5 percent cuts to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service.

Aaron Payment, the chairman of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan, said his tribe had already shut down its H.I.V. prevention program and furloughed employees for its Head Start program for a month because of sequestration.

Now, with nearly $1 million in federal money lost since the shutdown, the tribe is scrambling to shift casino revenue from other programs to keep its government afloat.

“We’re in turmoil right now,” Mr. Payment said. “The impact here is going to be felt by the people who need the services the most.”

Kevin Washburn, assistant secretary for Indian affairs, said the shutdown could have long-term effects on tribes and tribal members. Financial deals and economic programs have been suspended. Environmental reviews of tribal projects will be delayed. And the impact on the thousands of Bureau of Indian Affairs employees who have been furloughed is compounded because many support poor relatives, he said.

“The cushion that tribes might have had to help them get through tough times is gone because of sequestration,” Mr. Washburn said.

In Hardin, Mont., a gritty reservation border town, Presina Grant has been caring for her sister, who broke both of her wrists in a fall. Until recently, Ms. Grant, who is Crow, had been reimbursed $8 an hour as part of the tribe’s health care program.

But after the program was suspended because of the shutdown, Ms. Grant, 43, found herself in a long line of other tribal members applying for food stamps. Her daughter is a high school cross-country runner and craves nutrition. But with money tight, she often must feed her three children frozen food.

“Everyone was just sad — you could just feel it,” Ms. Grant said, recalling the day this month when she collected her final paycheck from the tribe. “People are worried. We’re praying every day.”

Tribal Membership Revocations: Dialing For Dollars?

Article By:

Dennis J. Whittlesey

Patrick Sullivan

Dickinson Wright PLLC

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Over the past several years, there have been a series of publicized tribal enrollment revocations of enrolled members – including former tribal leaders – and their entire families. While this phenomenon was extremely rare in the past, it is becoming increasingly and disturbingly common.

Many in Indian Country openly trace this activity from the date on which the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act became law in 1988 and tribes too often spending large amounts of their casino revenues in per capita payments to tribal members. In some cases, as tribal populations grew, revenue distributions were accordingly reduced to continue payments to all members. In other cases, the economic downturn that dates back to 2007-08 led to reduced casino revenues and, in turn, reduced individual payments. Still, many have linked dollar reductions in per capita payments to the increase in expelling members.

These facts are well reported and discussed below in some detail. The casual reader will ask how this could be possible, or even legal. Various legal challenges to disenrollments have been unsuccessful, whether they directly challenge the tribes themselves or seek to compel the Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”) to intervene.

Tribal Challenges usually are made in the face of tribal sovereign immunity and are routinely dismissed. While the federal Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 ostensibly offers legal protections to the victims of enrollment revocations, the reality is that the law is toothless and is not the vehicle through which individual Indians have gained much of anything in the way of rights protection.

BIA Challenges are the alternative, and they involve asking the BIA to intervene to protect the rights of those being banished from their tribal membership, but that agency officially takes the position that the issue of tribal membership is purely a tribal matter and not something in which the federal government will – or even should – become involved.

It is worth noting that the BIA has interceded in enrollment disputes in some unusual cases, the most noteworthy of which is probably that of the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians of Amador County, California. The Buena Vista is a recognized tribe that until a few years ago consisted of one adult named Donnamarie Potts. For reasons that are not altogether clear, the BIA examined Ms. Potts’s status as a descendant to the single Indian family formerly residing on the Buena Vista Rancheria and concluded that she has no ancestral tie to the land and, accordingly, was not a lawful member of the recognized Rancheria tribe. Indeed, the BIA concluded that a second adult named Rhonda Morningstar Pope was the sole adult descendant of the resident Indian family and thus the only person entitled to lawful tribal membership in the Rancheria tribe. As a result of that BIA administrative action, Potts was removed and Pope’s family has subsequently constituted the entire tribal membership.

It is also worth noting that the Rancheria tribe has been attempting to develop a casino on the former Rancheria lands for some 10 years but without success as of this date.

Possible Connections Between Tribal Casino Revenues and Membership Revocations

While there are a number of tribes that have disenrolled members, these writers are not aware of any non-gaming tribes that have done so. Disenrollments are reality, but an established connection between reduced casino revenue distributions and disenrollments is somewhat hypothetical. Nonetheless, examining the facts is enlightening.

For the purposes of this article, it is useful to examine the three tribes currently embroiled in “enrollment reductions” that have received the greatest attention. They are (1) the Pala Band of Mission Indians of California, (2) the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians of California, and (3) the Nooksack Tribe of Washington. They all have operated tribal casinos for a number of years. They all have been making per capita payments to tribal members. They all have disenrolled hundreds of members over the past several years. And they all apparently began disenrolling members shortly after experiencing downturns in casino cash flow that finance the members’ distributions.

The question is whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship between revenue declines and revocations of membership. The known facts speak for themselves, as does the high level of acrimony now infecting each tribe. However, in each case, the tribes are relying on conclusions as to enrollment entitlement that the BIA has the expertise and experience to determine, but declines to do so. The professional historians and genealogists at the Department of the Interior could resolve the disputes with finality, just as they did at the Buena Vista Rancheria. Thus far, they have elected to do nothing, leaving tribes in chaos and disenrolled members in distress.

Pala Band of Mission Indians

The Pala Indian Reservation is in Southern California, and it houses the Pala Casino which opened in 2001. The casino has been immensely successful, to the point that each tribal member currently receives about $150,000 in per capita payments annually from gaming revenues, as well as housing subsidies, health care, and educational benefits. When the casino’s revenues dropped in 2012, the Tribe’s per capita payments dropped by $500 per month, and the membership grew disenchanted with the decline in each member’s income. The drop in revenue resulted in financial pressure on members who relied on the payments, with the result that a long-simmering membership dispute flared into open hostility and ultimately a massive disenrollment revoking the membership of one-sixth of the Tribe’s population.

The Tribe’s membership rules require at least 1/16 Pala ancestry. Such “blood quantum” membership rules necessarily lead to an evershrinking tribal membership as members frequently marry outside the tribe. The dispute centered on a single woman named Margarita Britten, who is an ancestor of all of the disenrolled members. The Pala Executive Committee determined on its own that Britten’s father was white and not Pala, meaning that all members tracing their Pala ancestry solely to Britten as a great-great-grandparent went from 1/16 to 1/32 Pala blood and no longer qualified for membership. With that decision, more than 160 Pala members were disenrolled, an action that cut off per capita payments, as well as access to health care and all other tribal benefits. Tensions continue to run high on the reservation, with the disenrolled claiming the decision was made solely to prop up per capita payments, while members not affected respond that the disenrollment was an overdue resolution of a preexisting problem.

As for appeals, the Pala leadership took care of that by terminating what might have been a venue for the ousted members to seek judicial relief. In California, tribes may voluntarily settle disputes in the Intertribal Court of Southern California, a tribal “circuit court” providing a neutral forum for appeals of tribal decisions. The Pala Executive Committee voted to withdraw from that court before enacting the disenrollments, so the decision was never subject to review in that court.

The Pala enrollment case was closed before it even was ripe for hearing in that court.

Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians

In Northern California’s Madera County, the Chukchansi Indians operate Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino, a popular and profitable operation conveniently located on a major gateway route to Yosemite National Park. While the Chukchansi per capita payments are small, they are supplemented by tribal payments covering utility and food bills, as well as academic tuition.

Chukchansi has reportedly disenrolled at least 400 members in the past five years, reducing the total membership to less than 1,000. The acrimony over the financial situation has grown so toxic that three separate factions are struggling for control of the tribe after a disputed election and continuing disenrollments.

Last year, then Tribal Council Chairman Reggie Lewis and his supporters voted to disenroll dozens of tribe members. Subsequently, Lewis lost his reelection to Morris Reid in December 2012, but he contested the results on the basis that Reid was ineligible to run. Later that same month, in a chaotic tribal council meeting, Lewis refused to seat the new members, announced that he would remain Chairman until a new election was held, and changed the locks on the tribal government offices. In February, a “tribal referendum” elected Council member Nancy Ayala as Chair and removed Lewis from the Council. Supporters of Reid broke into the tribal offices and refused to leave. Lewis’s supporters responded by cutting power to the building and throwing a smoldering log and bear spray inside to forcibly eject them. The Madera County Sheriff observed the activity but did not act, citing a lack of jurisdiction. On the following day, the scene erupted into a violent melee, prompting the Sheriff to intervene along with more than 100 officers from various law enforcement agencies.

Since then, the Tribe has remained in turmoil. In March, the casino’s bank froze the Tribe’s gaming revenue funds due to an inability to determine rightful control over the account, and in the process halted bond payments and put the Tribe in danger of default on its $300 million obligation to lenders. In May, the BIA rejected grant proposals filed by Reid on the basis that he was not a rightful representative of the Chukchansi Tribal Council. An April tribal referendum reinstated Lewis and removed Ayala. However, in June, the BIA administratively recognized Ayala as Chairperson and Lewis as Vice Chairman, although the two continued to wage their very public dispute. Ayala sought an injunction in federal court to cut off Lewis’s access to the bank account and force the bank to continue to pay bondholders, but the federal judge did not intervene, citing a lack of jurisdiction over the matter. It remains to be seen how the painful dispute will end.

In the latest development, a Madera County Judge cited a specific tribal waiver of sovereign immunity and ordered the County Sheriff to enter the Chukchansi casino and physically remove cash to pay a former casino manager owed $725,000 under a settlement of a suit resulting from his termination before his contract expired. Ayala’s faction has vowed to fight the “till tap,” and no per capita payments are currently being distributed.

Nooksack Indian Tribe

In Washington State, the 2,000-member Nooksack Indian Tribe is near the Canadian border, almost 100 miles north of Seattle. In February, six of the eight members of the Tribal Council, including the Chairman, voted to commence disenrollment proceedings against 306 Nooksack members, including the two tribal council members who did not vote in favor of the action.

The Nooksack disenrollees are descendants of a woman named Annie George. Tribal membership rules require that members either (1) trace ancestry to those appearing on a 1942 tribal census, or those who received allotments of tribal land, or (2) prove that they possess 1/4 Indian blood and any degree of Nooksack ancestry. George’s name did not appear on either list, and her descendants must go before the Tribal Council and present evidence of their claim. The disenrollees appealed the Tribal Council’s decision to the Nooksack Tribal Court, asking for an injunction to the disenrollment, but the Chief Judge denied the injunction citing the Tribe’s sovereign immunity from suit and deferring to the Tribal Council’s broad authority over membership matters.

Shortly after voting to disenroll the 306 members, the Council voted to initiate an election to amend the Nooksack Constitution to “close a loophole” and remove the second path to Nooksack membership. This change clearly would further obstruct the disenrollees’ claims. After the BIA approved the election, the two disenrolled Tribal Council members sought to enjoin the election in federal court, but the Judge declined to stop the election citing the lack of “applicable law” making it unlawful for the Nooksack Tribe to define its membership by race or ancestry. The Constitutional amendment went to a vote of the entire Nooksack membership, the outcome of which has not been announced as of this date.