by Liz Ruskin

President Trump proposes to cut the Indian Health Service budget by $300 million, and the head of the IHS had trouble justifying that 6 percent cut at a Senate hearing Wednesday. Senators on both sides of the aisle say they’re outraged at the state of affairs at IHS, and it goes beyond the budget cut.

The acting IHS director would have had a rough hearing anyway. Chairman Lisa Murkowski and other members of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee have spent years shaping the IHS budget. Some represent large Native populations. They weren’t likely to welcome cuts to drug abuse treatment, mental health services, clinics and hospitals in their states.

But just last week, the Wall Street Journal put a spotlight on the agency’s dire faults. Murkowski says she was horrified to read the Journal’s accounts of fatal misdiagnoses, and inept staff at IHS facilities in the Great Plains.

“Because this is our IHS,” Murkowski said. “These are our facilities that are supposed to care for our First People. And the stories that were detailed were shocking.”

Murkowski says she’s normally laser-focused on home-state issues, but Alaska’s Native health facilities are run by tribes, under contract to the IHS, so their problems aren’t the same. Murkowski, though, says, the national problems are far too big to ignore.

Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, suggested changing the name of IHS to ‘Indian Health Suffering.’

“These are real families–single moms, single dads, aunts, uncles, elderly tribal leaders –that are suffering greatly. It’s a tragedy.”

Acting IHS director Michael Weahkee acknowledged none of this in his statement at the hearing. He portrayed the proposed cut to his agency as small.

“(It) will allow us to maintain and address our agency mission to raise the physical, mental, social and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaskan Natives to the highest level,” Weahkee said.

Murkowski was incredulous.

“I know that your job is to defend this budget but I just have to say ‘wow’ after listening that,” she said. “I would think that we don’t have a problem within the IHS system”

Several senators expressed frustration IHS didn’t provide data on Medicaid reimbursements, the revenue IHS gets when it treats a Medicaid recipient. Murkowski says the information is important, because senators are supposed to vote soon on a health care bill that would cut Medicaid, without knowing the effect it would have on IHS.

Jon Tester, Montana’s Democratic senator, was calm when he started questioning Weahkee.

Tester: “Were you told not to answer any questions here by the way?”

Weahkee: “No. No.”

Tester: “Because I think it’s absolutely unbelievable that you can separate how much money that Medicaid has helped to a third party billing.”

Tester’s impatience built as he repeatedly tried to get the acting director to answer one specific question.

Tester: “What does this budget do to your ability to hire staff?”

Weahkee: “We have a lot of efforts under way ….”

Testser: “Is there an increase in dollars for hiring staff or decrease?”

After a few minutes of a fruitless back-and-forth, Tester became exasperated.

“I’m going to tell you something,” Tester said. “Indian Health Service is in a crisis. And if you have served in Indian Health Service for 10 years and you have answered the questions in Indian Health Service like you have today it’s no wonder that it’s in crisis. I cannot believe what has transpired in this hearing today. All I want is some damn answers.”

The White House hasn’t nominated anyone to head IHS permanently. Health Sec. Tom Price said at his confirmation hearing he was aware of problems at IHS and wanted to fix them.

By Jacob Resneck

An Alaska Native weaver of Chilkat blankets has received one of the nation’s top awards recognizing traditional folk art. The National Endowment for the Arts’ director of folk and traditional arts, Clifford Murphy, says his organization is honoring 62-year-old Anna Brown Ehlers for her outstanding weaving.

“National Heritage Fellowships are the highest national honor in folk and traditional arts. So this is really a lifetime recognition for mastery of traditional arts,” Murphy said.

Chilkat weaving is an indigenous art-form practiced by coastal people in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. Traditionally, mountain goat wool is woven on a loom and blended with thin strips of cedar bark to create elaborately patterned blankets.

Born and raised in Juneau, Ehlers’ Tlingit ancestors come from the village Klukwan.

“The designs on the Chilkat blanket represent our clans,” Ehlers said. “So the designs say who you are and by knowing that I’m from the Whale House–people know where you’re from. And it’s not an ownership of the land, it’s our identity.”

She says her children have helped her since they were old enough to use a knife.

“We prepare the materials in the springtime and whenever mountain goat hunters call me and ask me to meet them at the ferry terminal or they send me a hide on a plane, my children and friends and relatives of mine, all show up and work the mountain goat together,” Ehlers said. “And it’s not a fun job, that part I can tell you – but it’s a necessity.”

Ehlers and the other eight National Heritage Fellows which include a Hawaiian slack key guitarist and an African-American blues harmonica player will each receive $25,000 and be feted at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. this fall.

by Antonia Gonzales

Randy Phelan, vice president of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, was among governors, mayors and stakeholders meeting with the Trump administration this week to discuss how to improve U.S. infrastructure, which included energy talks.

The tribe has been working on oil and gas development for the last nine years. The reservation sits in the heart of Bakken oil and gas reserves.

Phelan met with the president, vice president and senior administration officials at the White House.

“Across Indian Country we need to listen and be part of the process–be heard and make sure our people are represented,” Phalen said. “Opportunity’s there. we just have to make sure we key on opportunity.”

In March, the tribe’s chairman, Mark Fox, told National Native News there are pros and cons of this type of energy development. He says one benefit is revenue.

“On Fort Berthold, with well over a billion dollars paid out in royalties paid out since 2008, two-thirds of that have gone out to individual allottees or tribal members who own land,” Fox said. “For the first time in the history of our tribe since we’ve interacted with the United States government, many of our families, many of our elders have been able to realize royalty revenue that they can do things like get new homes, better car, take care of their grandchildren–do things that they’ve never been able to do that before. So we’ve fostered and supported that development.”

Royalties are also helping the tribe with education, health care and housing. Fox says cons include negative influences from the industry such as crime and environmental impacts.

The Trump administration has vowed a new era for American infrastructure, which included green-lighting the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipeline projects, saying they create jobs and will boost the economy.

 

By Antonia Gonzales

Talks among Dakota elders, Walker Art Center officials and artist Sam Durant will result in the dismantling and burning of a controversial art installation.

Officials  with the renowned art center in Minneapolis delayed the grand re-opening of its outdoor sculpture garden scheduled for this weekend after Native community members voiced concerns the scaffolding piece emphasizes a painful history for the Dakota people. In an original narrative about the scaffold installation Durant mentioned it was partly based on the structure used to hang 38 Dakota men in 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. Critics say the piece inappropriately recalls that tragedy as well as the 1865 executions of leaders Medicine Bottle and Little Six at nearby Fort Snelling.

Sheldon Wolfchild, a relative of Medicine Bottle, was with the group of elders who organized to respond to the artwork.

“We’ve been affected for 500 years for all of our First Nations people on this whole process of injustice,” Wolfchild said. “When it came to the hanging sculpture, it just brought back all the generational trauma and emotions again for our people.”

Wolfchild says part of the process working with the art center involved sharing Dakota perspectives.

“Finally, educating the people of Minnesota and the rest of this country about the negative things they have done to get our land,” he said. “We are going to have part of a closure here in the burning of (the scaffold) and the terrible, terrible thing that happened to our people.”

The artist and the art center committed to never create the Dakota gallows again.

In a written statement, the Walker Art Center said this is the first step in a long process to rebuild trust with the Dakota and Native communities throughout Minnesota.

Plans call for crews to take the wooden structure down June 2. Native American leaders intend to hold a ceremony and burn the wood from the installation at Fort Snelling at a future date.

A year after the abduction and death of a girl on the Navajo Nation, Congressional leaders are taking steps to ensure funding for the AMBER Alert system for tribal communities. Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs heard comments from tribal leaders, law enforcement officials and others this week on a bill authored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. to amend the PROTECT Act.

Navajo Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty was among those speaking at the meeting in Washington, D.C. in favor of Senate Bill 772.

“It’s important as a Navajo Nation leader–as a mother–to make sure that our children not only feel protected, but our community feels that their leadership is responding to their needs,” Crotty said in an interview. “We’re working swiftly with our federal partners to make that a reality, and that we not only prevent—but if a future incident may occur that we’re well-prepared and that child is returned safely home.”

Crotty stressed the importance of allowing tribes to continue to be part of discussions. She urged the committee members to keep the dialog going. Challenges to implementing a notification system include covering the vast reservation that spans 27,000 square miles. Nearly 40-percent of the reservation has no cell service.

Crotty, chair of the Navajo Sexual Assault Prevention Subcommittee, is leading the effort for an effective notification system following the death of Ashlynne Mike on the Navajo Nation in May 2016. Officials issued an AMBER Alert several hours after she disappeared while walking home from school. Her body was found later. Tom Begaye Jr., of Waterflow, Ariz. is charged in connection with her kidnapping and murder. The girl’s death led her family to call on the tribe for enhanced technology and alerts. Tribal officials have since formed a task force to create a more effective notification system.

The official hearing on May 10 was cancelled after President Donald Trump’s sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey. The Senate invoked a two-hour rule which cancelled all hearings. Senators McCain, Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., instead participated in an informal listening session with people, like Crotty, who traveled long distances to give their testimony. The committee consists of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. The Indian Affairs Committee is rescheduling the business meeting for a future date to consider a bills on Indian education and to extend federal recognition to six Virginia tribes.

By Hannah Colton

Congressional Republicans maintain that the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which narrowly passed Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives, will not significantly affect those in the Indian health system.

Republican U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a member of the Cherokee Nation, says the bill entirely preserves the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, a decades-old law that commits federal funding to tribal health care across the country.

“This doesn’t make any change to Indian Health Services. In fact, the whole section on IHS was left completely alone,” said Rep. Mullin.

The fact that the bill doesn’t touch IHS doesn’t mean it would leave American Indians and Alaska Natives unaffected. The plan would make major cuts to Medicaid, and a New York Times analysis counts older Americans, the poor and people with pre-existing conditions among those who would pay more and/or lose insurance coverage under the AHCA.

“All we did with Medicaid is restore it back to what its intended purpose was,” Mullin said. “That is to be state-run and to fall underneath the four categories it was designed for: the elderly, the disabled, the pregnant mother who is single and low-income, and the child.”

The new AHCA was sent to a House vote so quickly the Congressional Budget Office did not have time to calculate its expected impact beforehand. The CBO’s analysis of an earlier version of the bill, however, projected it would ultimately cause 24 million people to lose their insurance coverage.

The current bill now faces an uphill battle in the Senate. The Fairbanks Daily News Miner reports Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska indicated the Senate will likely take its time drafting a separate healthcare bill.

Murkowski is on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which will play a large role in drafting that bill. In a statement Thursday, she said she’ll work to ensure health care reform doesn’t “pull the rug out from those who currently receive coverage.”

“While we work to fix the broken current health-care system,” Murkowski wrote, “I recognize the need to maintain provisions that have worked: the prohibitions on discrimination for pre-existing conditions, no annual or lifetime limits, coverage up to age 26, and Medicaid expansion.”

A spokesman for Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan told the News-Miner he wants to ensure the Senate’s rewrite of the health care bill protects the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act.

By Jim Kent

The Nebraska Supreme Court says it will hear an appeal by four Whiteclay liquor stores forced to close by the state’s Liquor Control Commission. The Omaha World Herald reports the decision means the ultimate ruling over the closures will come sooner rather than later. It’s the latest in a back-and-forth legal battle playing out even as the stores in the tiny town on the edge of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation were forced to clear their shelves over the weekend.

The commission voted April 19 to deny liquor license renewals for the  four stores in the tiny town. Then, a district court judge voided the decision and ordered that the stores be permitted to sell beer pending an appeal. Just hours later the tables were turned again when the state Attorney General challenged the judge’s ruling. Noting that Nebraska law places lower court decisions on hold for up to 6 months when an appeal is in process, the Attorney General overrode the judge’s decision.

As a result beer sales halted over the weekend and supplies were removed from the stores on Monday in the next chapter of a battle to stop Whiteclay alcohol sales that’s been ongoing since 1998.

“I saw the pictures of them loading the beer up too and the trucks moving out…which seemed so odd because you always saw the trucks arriving and dropping off beer not picking it up and leaving with it,” said Nebraska state Senator Tom Brewer who is an Oglala Sioux tribal member and was among those who pushed to close down the stores. “For me I think it’s a good day for Whiteclay. We’ve gone to a lot of expense and time to start the process of cleaning up Whiteclay.”

Brewer said a meeting of the Whiteclay Task Force later this month will bring together Nebraska legislators, medical specialists and economic development experts to chart a new path for the town. He believes the legal appeal to reinstate the liquor licenses is compromised because of charges—including alleged bootlegging—pending against the stores.

Meanwhile, the lawyer for the four stores says he’s considering filing a civil rights lawsuit against the state’s governor. The Omaha World Herald reports attorney Andy Snyder accuses Gov. Pete Ricketts of political meddling that ultimately forced the stores to close their doors. Snyder also filed a motion this week to dismiss nearly two dozen citations against the stores by the attorney general.

 

By Jim Kent

The families of 17 Standing Rock Sioux veterans are receiving Congressional Gold Medals in honor of the men’s service as code talkers during World War I. The men were among those fighting in the trenches along the Western Front in France seven years before Native Americans were granted citizenship by the United States government. Standing Rock Sioux Veterans Service Officer Manaja Hill says the tribe’s World War One code talkers served to defend their people and ancestral lands.

“Their commitment and their willingness to fight for, truly, our way of life, and our land, their families, their relatives,” Hill said. “Truly that’s what it was because there was none of this patriotic stuff that goes on now. We weren’t citizens. They weren’t citizens. What they fought for was what they believed in and that came from the heart. It can’t come from anywhere else.”

Hill also adds that for the Lakota, it was less a matter of talking in code than of simply speaking their own language to each other..

“During this period of time I think very few of our ancestors knew the English language,” he said. “The people who were listening – even on our side – couldn’t understand what they were saying. So I think the term code talker is misinterpreted to a large degree because our ancestors didn’t know how to speak English.”

The Standing Rock Sioux was among nearly three dozen tribes that used their Native languages as an unbreakable code to communicate vital information during World Wars One and Two. The code talkers were often not recognized at the time and for decades after because the strategy was classified. The program that used Navajo speakers during World War II was among the first to go public. They were honored by President Richard Nixon in 1971 and their story was popularized in the fictionalized 2002 film The Wind Talkers.

The Standing Rock code talkers were first honored by Congress in 2008. In all, 63 Standing Rock Sioux veterans were awarded Congressional Gold Medals.

 

By Lee Strubinger 

Following the massive, months-long protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, lawmakers in South Dakota enacted laws curtailing protests in that state. The legislation is in anticipation of demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Now that it’s in effect, the bill stiffens penalties for protesters, expressly restricts blocking highways, and allows the governor to establish temporary ‘safe zones’ where access is limited.

The law went into effect immediately after the governor’s signature because of an emergency clause included in the language. That language initially hampered progress of the bill as it worked through the legislature. State Democrats opposed it, and conservative Republicans viewed it as a power grab by the governor.

Some House Democrats, like Representative Dan Ahlers, changed their stance after public safety officials briefed them on potential actions against the Keystone XL pipeline.

“I talked to our local sheriff and collected a little more info and data and decided I wanted to hedge on the side of safety and continue to work,” Ahlers said. “Hopefully with this letter from the governor to the tribes, to get them together and meet, maybe we can mend a few fences there too.” Ahlers wouldn’t comment on what information he received.

Other Democrats didn’t budge. Representative Shawn Bordeaux represents portions of the Rosebud reservation.

“I think what we’re doing is sending a message to the tribes that we don’t care what they think,” he said.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard sent letters to all nine tribes in the state encouraging communication on how to handle looming pipeline protests.

by Aaron Bolton

The Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency could total $2 billion, putting 3,000 people out of work nationwide, according to the Washington Post and other news sources. Eighteen Southeast Alaska tribes who use the EPA’s Indian General Assistance Program could also see steep cuts in funding as a result. President Donald Trump’s proposal, intended to boost the defense budget, would slash the program’s $65-million funding by 29 percent.

According to an EPA press release, Region 10, which includes Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska, received $32 million for the program in 2016.

Those funds go towards tribal projects such as stream restoration, solid waste disposal, ocean acidification prevention and paralytic shellfish poisoning monitoring throughout the region.

Hydaburg Cooperative Association Environmental Coordinator Anthony Christensen says the cuts would eliminate about four year-round jobs within his tribe. Christensen, who is also in charge of obtaining additional grants for the tribe, added 10 to 15 seasonal jobs could also be lost.

“That’s my job. You take me out of the equation, that puts us in a tough position. Because I’m core to six other grants, sort of capacity building – if I’m unable to do that, the domino effect starts.”

Trump’s budget is not final. The EPA declined to comment for this story.