SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
Page 1 TOP OF DOC
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1999
TESTIMONY OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND OTHER INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS TRIBAL BISON PROJECT
WITNESS
MIKE FOX, PRESIDENT, INTERTRIBAL BISON COOPERATIVE
Mr. REGULA. I call the committee to order.
Our first witness today will be InterTribal Bison Cooperative. Mike Fox. Just summarize for us because five minutes is not very long.
Mr. FOX. Right. Thank you.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. Good morning.
Mr. FOX. My name is Mike Fox, president of the InterTribal Bison Cooperative and manager of the Fort Belknap Buffalo Project.
Page 2 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
With me this morning I have Fred DuBray from Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe; Carl Tsosie from Picuris Pueblo; Mark Heckert, our executive director.
Mr. REGULA. Is this a group that bands together to deal with the bison problems?
Mr. FOX. Right.
Mr. REGULA. And do you market products—meat and so on? I remember from last year, I thought that is what you did.
Mr. FOX. Right. That is a part of our plan.
Mr. REGULA. Right.
Mr. FOX. Thank you, this morning, for the opportunity to present testimony before the House Subcommittee on Interior Affairs. The ITBC requests $10 million for fiscal year 1999.
The ITBC is comprised of 45 Native American Indian Tribes located in 16 States, who are dedicated to bringing the buffalo back into the daily lives of Indian people for the economic development——
Mr. REGULA. Are the herds expanding?
Page 3 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. FOX. Yes. Since we started in 1991, the herds went from about seven Indian tribes, with about 1,500 buffalo, to 38 tribes raising over—close to 15,000 buffalo right now.
Mr. REGULA. Do you have a problem at all with disease?
Mr. FOX. No disease. The only disease problem we have, and we will be speaking about that a little bit later, is the Yellowstone, and——
Mr. REGULA. Yes, I know that.
Mr. FOX. Every herd that is managed by Indian tribes is disease-free.
Our current funding level is at $638,000. That would have been funding for the last two or three years at that level, but our tribes have increased. Every year we get new tribes with new buffalo initiatives.
Mr. REGULA. And each pay some into your InterTribal Council?
Mr. FOX. Right.
Mr. REGULA. Each tribe supports a portion of it?
Page 4 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. FOX. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. TSOSIE. Yes, sir, Mr. Regula, I was here about three years ago, and the vice president of the InterTribal Bison Cooperative. We are now 46 tribes in 17 States and in New Mexico alone we have been doing the buffalo dance, time immemorial, without the buffalo around, since they were all killed off. So we are the answers to the prayers now, and it has really caught fire with a lot of our people.
We are actually not just dancing, we are raising them, and it is enhancing agriculture, and the old ditches are coming back. The restoration is all coming back and it is really moved by our spirituality, and we are here representing the tribes and the medicine people, and this is a return of the buffalo which, with your help, we are trying to accomplish it.
With the little monies that we get, we are hoping to—well, we do have success stories. At my pueblo in New Mexico, we started with one bull and another gift from our tribal member from Taos, who gave us a—their medicine people gave us another female. Now we have gone through 35 animals since you gave us the first $638,000, and now we are able to start maintaining our own and it is starting to pay off. We hope to become self-sufficient in these areas, and like I told you, it is coming back.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. I wanted each of you to have a comment.
Mr. FOX. I thank you for the opportunity. I would just like to stress the fact that I am from Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and I think, you know, we have had a modest amount of success, I might say, in raising buffalo. We have got about 1,000 head up there now and we started with 80 head when we first started this cooperative.
Page 5 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I assume you do not fence them. They just roam?
Mr. FOX. Well, we fence them, but I always like to say we fence everything else out because they kind of go through when we want to go.
Mr. REGULA. I raise cattle. I live on a farm in Ohio, so I know all about fences, but I think buffalo are tougher than my cattle on fences.
Mr. FOX. Yes, they are, and that is one of the things I wanted to touch on, is that this is a sustainable development project. These buffalo have been there for thousands of years. They have been our economy in the past, and we had a very self-sufficient economy based on the buffalo. That was destroyed. Now we are trying to bring that back and there are a lot of reasons for it, not just for economics, but our culture as well.
It is a sustainable thing, and with all of the budget cuts coming in Congress—we understand that there is a big push for self-sufficiency and that is exactly what this project is all about.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. You have about one minute yet. Anybody else want to make a comment?
Mr. HECKERT. Yes. Mr. Congressman, I am Mark Heckert. I just wanted to say that we have been trying for about five years to get the slaughter of buffalo in Yellowstone National Park stopped.
Page 6 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
It is being delayed by both the State of Montana and Federal Government agencies who cannot come to an agreement to get those animals saved, and out alive.
Mr. Fox just told you that there are 10,000 buffalo on Indian reservations. They have killed 3,000 buffalo in Yellowstone in the last five years.
Those buffalo, like Mr. Tsosie said, would be the answer to the prayers of the Indian people.
Mr. REGULA. They migrate in from the reservations?
Mr. HECKERT. No; no. They migrate out from Yellowstone National Park.
Mr. REGULA. Yes, but they are killed before they get out, in effect.
Mr. HECKERT. Yes. We proposed a plan, which is delineated in our testimony, which would remove those animals alive. After a period of testing and quarantine, which I am sure you are familiar with, they would be sent out, alive, to Indian reservations for the use of the people, and as well as other public lands.
Mr. REGULA. I think they would want to keep some because the visitors love to see them.
Page 7 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. HECKERT. Oh, absolutely. We are not talking about de-populating the park. But we have agreements with other national parks for the surplus animals that come out.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much; very interesting. And I think even for visitors, they would enjoy seeing buffalos on the range. You know, in a sense, it is part of the national culture of the United States.
Mr. HECKERT. Absolutely, and it is a shame on everybody that we are killing these buffalo.
Mr. REGULA. Yes.
Mr. FOX. Come to my reservation and see how we raise them.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you.
[The statement of Mike Fox follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
Page 8 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
WITNESSES
PEARL CAPOEMAN–BALLER, PRESIDENT, QUINAULT INDIAN NATION
DAVID MARTIN, VICE PRESIDENT
Mr. REGULA. Quinault Indian Nation. Good morning.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Good morning, Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. Good morning.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. My name is Pearl Capoeman-Baller. I'm president of the Quinault Indian Nation. I have with me this morning David Martin who is vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation.
You have been provided a copy of my written testimony.
Mr. REGULA. Right. It will be a part of the record.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. This morning I would like to focus on three issues that I think are critical to the Quinault Indian Nation people.
First of all, I would like to comment on a cultural center that we would like built for our tribal members.
Page 9 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We have, throughout the past, identified the need to preserve part of our history and our culture, and right now, a lot of the culture is preserved basically in people's homes and personal storage, in attics, and a lot of the history is in the minds of our elders.
We feel like unless we get a facility to house these items, to document what our culture is about, we need a facility to preserve that for the past and for the future.
So what I am asking for this morning is an earmark from the National Park Service Historic Preservation Fund, the Save America's Treasures Project, in the amount of $300,000 to build a facility.
Mr. REGULA. Yes, well, we will not directly have any jurisdiction. We have the appropriation, but I am not sure yet who will make the decision on which activities will fit in with this Save America's Treasures Project.
But once that gets established, you will probably want to make an application there.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. We will do so.
Mr. REGULA. Yes; okay.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. The second thing that I would like to bring to your attention is the need for an elders assisted-living facility. We have two communities, small villages, on the reservation. We really have no place to care for our elders.
Page 10 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. A senior center is what you are talking about.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. A senior center. It is an assisted-living facility. Because right now, we are such a distance from any facilities.
Mr. REGULA. How many members do you have in the tribe?
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. We have about 2,800 tribal members on the reservation. So this morning, I am requesting an earmark of $250,000 in initial, and $150,000 on a recurrent basis out of the IHS-Community Health Program, and that would help us staff it, equip it, and build the center. That is the second item that is critical to us.
The last item that I wanted to bring to your attention is dealing with the lands. I want to put on record our strong support for the Bureau's proposed land consolidation project.
I come from a reservation that is a nightmare to manage, it is fractionated, and we see this pilot project as a program that will help alleviate the nightmares that we face in trying to manage this land, the resources, and it will also eliminate a lot of hassles that the Bureau of Indian Affairs currently——
Mr. REGULA. Would you buy additional land, or how do you consolidate it?
Page 11 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Yes. We would buy individual allotments and try and buy some of the property back from major companies that logged there, years ago.
We want to preserve the rivers and——
Mr. REGULA. This is forest land you are talking about.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Yes.
Mr. MARTIN. Forest land. We have approximately 2,300 original allotments on our reservation. A major portion of those were bought by individual companies, private companies, et cetera, individual owners, that we are trying to acquire back from.
Mr. REGULA. Are they logging on it right now?
Mr. MARTIN. Currently, we have one active company, a local company, that is actively logging on our reservation; yes.
Mr. REGULA. But on the lands that you would like to buy, are they being logged?
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Some of them could be, and some of them are just lands that we want to protect, along the rivers and the lakes.
Mr. REGULA. Are they lands that are contiguous to what is already tribal land?
Page 12 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MARTIN. Because of the fact that the reservation was allotted, we did not have a contiguous manageable land base, other than what we received in 1988 from the U.S. Government due to a surveying error, which we call the north boundary area, and that is the ultimate goal of the Quinault Indian Nation, is to have a contiguous manageable land base, and acquiring those lands is a number one goal of the Quinault Nation.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. We understand.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. On a final note, I want to support any increase in funds over the amount requested by IHS, and also support the Northwest Portland area Indian Health Board budget, and the Northwest Indian Fish Commission budget.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
[The statement of Pearl Capoeman-Baller follows:]
Insert offset folios 20 to 23 insert here
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
Page 13 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
WITNESS
VICTOR R. PRESTON, CHAIRMAN, SUSANVILLE INDIAN RANCHERIA
Mr. REGULA. Next we have the Susanville Rancheria.
Will you, please, give your name so that our recorder has it for the record.
Mr. PRESTON. Thank you, Chairman Regula.
My name is Victor Preston. I am the tribal chairman for the Susanville Indian Rancheria in Lassen County, California. On behalf of our tribal membership, I and our fellow board members are very pleased to be here to provide this testimony.
I would like to introduce to you our vice chairman, Mr. Leo Guiterez, and board member Stacy Dixon, and Hank Sanchez, and our clinic director, Ms. Lea Exedine.
We are all here to address some needs and concerns we have with regard to the 1999 proposed fiscal budget process, as they relate to tribes and to certain programs that we have in effect right now, and the impact that these budget cuts will have upon our facilities.
Of critical importance to us right now is a Youth Treatment Center. The Youth Treatment Center is part of a network that we have established with two other tribes in the State of California.
Page 14 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The two other tribes, are the Southern California Inhel Council and the Toyabe Indian Health Project. We are providing these very much needed services to youth. In the past, we have never had such a program for our youth in Northern California.
In the past, we have had to send our youth out of State. So this is significant to us. An additional significance also has to do with how we acquired the facilities for our YRTC program. You may not know this, but we are the first tribe to actually gain land through the Base Realignment and Closure process, known as BRAC. This occurred two years ago, and this was significant that we were the first, but also it was significant, in that we also were able to obtain existing facilities that the Army transferred over to us.
Mr. REGULA. Which base did you get?
Mr. PRESTON. This is the Herlong Army Base, which was primarily a ammunition supply depot. So we are in the process not only of acquiring that, but obtaining additional parcels of that Army base.
Mr. REGULA. Do you have a problem with waste disposal sites on the base?
Mr. PRESTON. We have been able to effectively deal with that with the U.S. Army. It has been a fully cooperative effort between all the parties involved, and we want to continue the pace and the process of what we are doing right now.
Page 15 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Right now, we are concerned that the pending budget cuts for 1999 will affect us, severely, and so we have some important requests that we want to get——
Mr. REGULA. Are these cuts in the President's proposal?
Mr. PRESTON. Proposal; yes. And we have some bullets here, and since there is so much to present, I just want to, first of all, state that for our YRTC, the main point that we want to request is that for this facility we project a need for an additional $1.4 million for operational costs, and approximately $1 million for renovating the facilities.
Even though the facilities did come from the Army, they still are in need of renovation in order to meet the needs of these youth. We plan on opening this facility as early as April of this year, and so it is imperative that we have, are able to plan ahead, and know where our funding is going to come from.
So for the 1999 IHS and BIA fiscal year budget, we are asking for, in regard to Indian Health Service, a request for the subcommittee to restore the reduction of $10 million to maintain the current health services, without any further reductions.
Mr. REGULA. You have about one minute left.
Mr. PRESTON. Okay. For two, we request the committee to provide for the projected inflationary cost increases to maintain at least the fiscal year 1998 level of services at $53.6 million, and we also request the subcommittee to provide the resources required for pay raises to the Indian Health Services at $36 million.
Page 16 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And we also request an increase of $37.4 million for the population growth that has occurred throughout the Nation in our Indian population, and we also request——
Mr. REGULA. What is the population of your tribe?
Mr. PRESTON. Our population right now is three hundred, but we also have letters and resolutions from 50 other tribes who support our facility because they intend to eventually refer their clientele to us. And we request a program increase of $21 million for operational costs to provide for Youth Regional Treatment Centers nationwide.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Well, you are out of time, but your statement will be in the record. We will take a good look at it. Thank you very much.
Mr. PRESTON. All right, and of course we would have addressed BIA, but we will—hopefully other tribes will address those issues also.
Mr. REGULA. I can understand. Okay.
Mr. PRESTON. Thank you very much for your time.
Mr. REGULA. You are welcome.
[The statement of Victor Preston follows:]
Page 17 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESSES
BENNIE J. ARMSTRONG, TRIBAL CHAIRMAN, SUQUAMISH TRIBE AND KEVIN GEORGE, COUNCILMAN
Mr. REGULA. Suquamish Tribe. Bennie Armstrong.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Mr. Chairman, my name is Bennie Armstrong. This is my associate, Kevin George. I am the chairman of the tribe. He is councilman. We are from Northwest Washington, located on the Puget Sound, in the northeast of Kitsap County, established by a treaty of Point Elliott, January 1855. We are right across from the city of Seattle, 10 miles across Puget Sound.
We have three priorities that we are working on today. The first one is $200,000 for higher and adult education added to the Tribal Priority Allocation Account.
Mr. REGULA. Do you have your own schools, or do you use public schools?
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Public schools, and BIA-funded secondary schools like Haskell or Fort Lewis in Durango.
Page 18 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Anyway, the need for educational services of all types has dramatically increased on the reservation, and we are working with a local group called Northwest Indian College, that provides off-campus facilities at the local schools and tribal centers to work on higher education and GEDs.
The number of students requesting higher education assistance has nearly doubled in the last 18 months, and the BIA Higher Education Fund is—right now, if you added it all up, it equals about $1,100 per student, and the need for each student for higher education is like $5,000 each.
So what we are requesting is like $175,000 for fiscal year 1999 to provide the additional funds for all types of training for adults, and the tribe continues to support higher education programs, and meet the needs of all the tribal members, whether it be vocational training or college.
The second part of our request is $150,000 Tribal Government, Tribal Courts, and Public Safety, and Justice, from the BIA/TPA account, and we are in a area that is vastly growing. It is a mixed checkerboard reservation where we have Indians and non-Indians alike, and we work with the local law enforcement agencies, and the caseloads have increased, incredibly. A 150 in 1996 to 315 in 1997, an increase of about 110 percent.
So working within our own system, handling our own people, and helping the Annoninees deliver their people, and work with them, it is just like the costs of it have doubled.
Page 19 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So we are training our officers. Our officers are already equivalent to any of the county officers, or whatever, and could be cross-deputized. They know not only tribal laws, but Federal, State, and county laws.
So anyway, with this, our incarceration is subcontracted to other jurisdictions, and sometimes it takes about an hour and a half to the closest place where there is a facility to hold one of our people. So what we are thinking about doing is maybe building a jail and getting it a little closer to home. We do not know what kind of facility we are looking at there. That would be part of that.
And the funds received from BIA are no longer adequate to provide the minimum services needed to insure community safety.
So that law enforcement, court systems, jails, all that, is part of that package.
The last one is to reacquire our ancestral home on Old Man House, and this would be out of the BIA, Wildlife, and Parks Budget. And this is a piece of land where, historically, our tribe owned. It was called Old Man House. It is like a 600-foot long cooperative wood longhouse, and the way that—it was taken a long time ago for the United States War Department to protect the naval base in Bremerton. When they were done with it, they were supposed to return it to us.
Instead, it got piecemealed out and sold to non–Indians, and part of our request is $700,000 in 1999 to purchase that piece.
Page 20 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. That would be several parcels you would have to buy.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Right. Just the part where the Old Man House was located; $700,000 in 1999, $400,000 in 2000, and $700,000 in 2001. And just to reclaim the home of the Suquamish people. And then the rest of the regional requests would be, of course, $1.95 million for the 20 Western Washington Tribes for Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, shellfish management.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you very much.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. And of course some contract support. Thank you.
[The statement of Bennie J. Armstrong follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
W. RON ALLEN, TRIBAL CHAIRMAN AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JAMESTOWN S'KLALLAM TRIBE
Page 21 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe. Good morning.
Mr. ALLEN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
It is good to be here in front of you again this year to talk about appropriation issues. You have my testimony and the details of it.
Mr. REGULA. It will be part of the record.
Mr. ALLEN. I also want to alert you that, as the president of the National Congress of American Indians, we also will be submitting to you some testimony regarding the concerns we have with regard to the overall budgets, the BIA/IHS, and also, as the tribal commissioner in the U.S.-Canada Fishery Commission arena, we will be submitting to you some testimony with regard to that arena as well.
Mr. REGULA. All right.
Mr. ALLEN. With our specific tribal issues, we are a small tribe in Western Washington, a tribe of about 400 people, and we have been coming to you for the last number of years as a self-governance tribe, and self-governance has continued to be successful for us.
We are very enamored with the flexibility that it has provided for us, both on the BIA side and IHS side.
Page 22 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Our first two requests really are oriented around adjustments, regarding the diminishment of the dollars that has occurred to us from fiscal year 1996 to today, including, on the BIA side, the TPA process that we were instructed to impose on tribes from last year's appropriation directly. The TPA process resulted in a reduction of 50 percent to the Portland area, which, for the Jamestown tribe, reduced our allocation by $73,000.
So these numbers are oriented around that. The IHS side is relative to the tribe. Our tribe is one of two tribes doing a 3-year pilot study to engage in a new managed system for health care services, and that one is very important for us.
We are being successful, partially because there is a health care program in Washington State that we are able to access, and buy reduced services, reduced cost services to provide fuller services for our tribal members.
The third item that is a priority for us is, historically, we have never received any land assistance for the tribe. Adjacent to our 3-acre reservation is a 10-acre tract that we have been trying to purchase for some time, but lack of funds simply has not allowed us to do it.
The $600,000 is targeted at that objective, which we are trying to achieve simply for expansion purposes.
We know the actual facilities, and all that, will be really relative to the tribe's capacity to secure those resources.
Page 23 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
On a regional basis, we have a couple of areas. In the Northwest, as you are well aware, because of treaty rights, shellfish has become a major issue for us and we join the other tribes in asking for the $2 million to help the 20 tribes that have shellfish rights to be able to expand our shellfish operations.
We literally manage thousands and thousands of tideland areas, and it is really a very cumbersome process that we have to deal with.
Another area we are supportive of with the Northwest Fish Commission is a technical adjustment. Because of some bureaucratic snafus, if you will, they lost $185,000, and which they are trying to restore for their programs, and we are being very supportive of that.
We are also being supportive of the $3 million request that BIA has made with regard to the Job in the Woods program, and the Wildstock Restoration Initiative. We are supportive of the BIA request for the $1 million for the Endangered Species Act, which, as you are well aware in the Northwest, has really become a major problem for us.
Mr. REGULA. Yes.
Mr. ALLEN. It is just causing us all kinds of heartburn. We have to deal with those responsibilities.
As President Capoeman-Baller mentioned, we are very supportive of Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, and the Northwest Fisheries Commission requests. There are a number of things that we each equally enjoy.
Page 24 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
On the national arena, we are concerned about a number of things, and we would urge you to seriously consider the $900,000 request for self-governance with regard to restoration of the planning grant. A lot of tribes want to come on board, but they are really being bottlenecked now because of their capacity of planning, and then they have another component. They have asked for $500,000 just to increase their FTEs.
That program, that small little office, now, is managing a large number of the tribes, now, and a large number of the monies, and they basically need assistance in order to do their job, if we are going to downside the BIA and modestly increase that program, so that it is managing more efficiently.
We are supportive of the request for $300,000, 150 from BIA, 150 from IHS for Self-Governance Communication. Self-governance is still an initiative that needs to be communicated, so we want that to move forward, and we have asked for a consideration of $23 million, just because of the inflationary cost. That is a ''big deal'' to us.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. ALLEN. The last item, really, is IHS has identified a $120 million shortfall simply because of loss of the mandatory inflationary and population growth increase impacts.
So there is a lot more to it, and I know you will read the details of all these many requests.
Page 25 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of W. Ron Allen follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
HENRY CAGEY, CHAIRMAN, LUMMI INDIAN NATION
Mr. REGULA. Lummi Indian Nation.
Mr. CAGEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Henry Cagey, chairman of the Lummi Nation, and also president of Affiliated Tribes and Northwest Indians.
I will talk mainly on the tribal specific issues, and once again, we are back here requesting from the committee for a new facility for the Lummi Nation, a new educational facility. For the last 8 years——
Page 26 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. You are talking about the school?
Mr. CAGEY. The new school.
Mr. REGULA. Yes.
Mr. CAGEY. Back in 1989–1990, our tribal school facility blew up, and we have been on the list, waiting, patiently, for dollars to replace that facility. So far——
Mr. REGULA. What are you using if the old one blew up?
Mr. CAGEY. We are using temporary modular facilities, which I have got some pictures here to show you the conditions of the facilities that our kids have to live in. Right now, we just had these pictures taken just two days ago, and our kids are having to live under these conditions.
Mr. REGULA. Are these boarding schools?
Mr. CAGEY. These are modulars. These are modulars that were replaced by the emergency conditions declared in 1990 by the BIA. But in 1990, they lost our application, and we had support letters from our delegation supporting putting Lummi back on the list, and so far—in 1992, I think they stopped the new construction. But the tribe is still needing to get the school replaced, and we know that there is additional monies available, but we are not asking to be placed on a new facility list which the Bureau is working on.
Page 27 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We want the Bureau to deal with the problem in replacing the facility, and in our testimony you will see the recommendations that we are making from the committee to the Bureau.
And also there are some alternative solutions that we think might also be feasible, to look at alternative financing for a new facility.
The second issue, Mr. Chairman, is the water agreements, and this stems over the conflict that the Lummi Nation had in 1995 in the appropriations rider that we see in Section 115. We resolved that. What we have now is an agreement in principle to resolve a long-standing situation on groundwater on the Lummi reservation. What is needed to carry out that agreement is additional dollars to look for off-reservation resources to fulfill the need for Indians and non-Indians, and it is going to take money, it is going to take support to do that.
The last one we have on our appropriations is the shellfish hatchery. The Lummi Nation has a hatchery that assists the other tribes in the Puget Sound to supply needed—seedlings, I guess they call them, to enhance the beaches, and it has been supported by the Northwest Indian Fish Commission, and also supported by other tribes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. CAGEY. Okay. And then the other thing, we echo, you know, a lot of support for the Northwest Indian Fish Commission, and getting those dollars increases and the technical support amendment, I guess they are calling it, or correction, in doing that.
Page 28 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The biggest support I think we need, Mr. Chairman, is the contract support issue, and you will probably hear that throughout the day, and getting IHS to really look at fulfilling the need in contract support, and it is a big issue, it affects us all, and we do need your support on it.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. CAGEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of Henry Cagey follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
DR. MURRAY D. SYKES, CHAIRMAN, AMERICAN DENTAL ASSOCIATION, COUNCIL ON FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS AND FEDERAL DENTAL SERVICES
Mr. REGULA. We will skip to the American Dental Association. Good morning.
Page 29 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Dr. SYKES. How are you?
Mr. REGULA. Good.
Dr. SYKES. Mr. Chairman, Members of the subcommittee, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the American Dental Association concerning the fiscal year 1999 appropriations for the Indian Health Service.
My name is Dr. Murray Sykes, and I am chairman of the ADA's Council on Government Affairs.
I also have been practicing the last 30 years in Silver Spring, Maryland, as a general dentist.
Before I begin my testimony I would like to thank the Chairman of the subcommittee for last year's help in funding three periodontal diabetes clinics and increased funding for the modular dental clinics.
Mr. Chairman, last summer, I had the honor of joining five other ADA members from my council, and visiting Navajo area dental facilities in New Mexico and in Arizona.
All of you would have been proud, as I was, of the obvious dedication, enthusiasm, and competency of all the health professionals we encountered.
Page 30 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Despite overwhelming obstacles caused by insufficient funding, there remained one common theme—the patient comes first.
Unfortunately, due to insufficient funding, the amount of treated native Americans has gone down from a high of 34 percent in fiscal year 1993 to a low of under 25 percent now.
Mr. REGULA. You are talking about 34 percent of those that need treatment or 34 percent——
Dr. SYKES. Who are treated; who are treated. They were able to treat 34 percent that came in. They had the people and the facilities to treat 34 percent of the——
Mr. REGULA. So you are really saying it is 66 percent that went untreated——
Dr. SYKES. Yes; yes.
Mr. REGULA [continuing]. Because of lack of facilities, lack of personnel?
Dr. SYKES. And access. There were not enough mobile clinics far enough away to get to them.
Page 31 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Dr. SYKES. Compare this to 60 percent of normal Americans that are treated and I think you see a big difference. On our trip, we went to an area called Tohatchi where I met a young female dentist who had just graduated from Ohio State.
She was happy and enthusiastic but explained to me that she was overwhelmed by the children, 2 to 4 years old, with rampant decay.
It seems in Indian culture there is a matter of where the mother chews the food first, and then gives it to the child. This is the way they pass their soul down to their children. Unfortunately, they are also passing down bacteria called streptococcus mutans which causes decay.
These young dentists are not trained to handle this overwhelming problem. We need more specialists like periodontists to go down there and treat the children and help the dentists that are treating the children.
Mr. REGULA. Would these be permanent teeth of the child?
Dr. SYKES. These are baby teeth, but the baby teeth are needed for speech, eating, and other functions.
The IHS puts a great deal of emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention but their fluoride water systems are not working due to a lack of trained personnel to run the systems.
Page 32 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Fluoridation is the number one efficient and safe way to control dental decay. The ADA requests $800,000 to get these systems functional again.
They need people to go down there and teach them how to work the floride water systems.
Next, we went to remote, desolate, Kayenta, Arizona, and I met another young lady dentist who had been there six months. She loved her patients, they loved her, but she was leaving because she could not tolerate the housing and living conditions.
We have to improve both these conditions in order to recruit and retain dentists. We probably could even get volunteers to go there if we could improve the housing.
The ADA played a large role in getting pay raises to help recruit and retain these young dentists.
The problem is it has not been funded and the Indian Health Service has a large monetary shortfall. There needs to be $8 million for this.
The periodontal diabetes disease project shows great promise and needs $1 million to expand it. The ADA was very disappointed with the administration's fiscal 1999 budget of $65.5 million for this dental program.
The ADA recommends a budget increase of $12.8 million for the dental program, and an additional $10 million for the contracted care.
Page 33 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We saw great success in our visit to the Sage Memorial Hospital, which is a contracted facility.
Finally, in closing, the ADA would like to take this opportunity to tell the committee that because of our concern for the overall health of all native Americans, the ADA has formed a coalition with 20 other national health groups called The Friends of the Indian Health Service.
This coalition strongly supports the request of the National Indian Health Board for funding of $2.4 billion for fiscal 1999.
Thank you for inviting me to appear before the subcommittee and I will answer any questions, if you have any.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you. As you know, we are on a pretty tight leash as far as funds being available.
Dr. SYKES. I understand.
Mr. REGULA. I think it is unlikely that we will have any more than we had last year, so we are going to have to deal with the facts of life when it comes to allocating the resources.
Dr. SYKES. I understand. If we could even just get the funding for the pay raises, I think that would give the infrastructure a great help.
Page 34 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you.
Dr. SYKES. Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Murray Sykes follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
MARY PAVEL, PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOR, NORTHWEST INTERTRIBAL COURT SYSTEM
Mr. REGULA. OK. Northwest Intertribal Court System.
Ms. PAVEL. Mr. Chairman, my name is Mary Pavel, I am a member of the Suquamish Tribe of Washington State and I am a practicing attorney in the Washington, DC office of Sonosky Chambers Sachse and Endreson.
I am pleased to be here today to present testimony on behalf of the Northwest Intertribal Court System, an organization that my mother helped found in 1979, concerning the administration's budget for the proposal of the BIA.
Page 35 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The tribes in the Northwest are very proud of the contribution that NICS has made over the past 19 years in improving the efficiency, fairness, and effectiveness of tribal court systems in the Northwest.
However, much work remains to be done. There have been extraordinary reductions in Federal Indian programs since 1996, to the point where a virtual state of emergency exists throughout Indian country.
Almost one-third of Indian people now live below poverty. Coupled with the increased poverty has come an explosion in illegal drug use and gang activity, resulting in an alarming escalation of serious and violent crimes.
Current law enforcement personnel and judicial services are inadequate to meet the growing need. We urge the subcommittee to work with tribal governments to reverse the downward budgetary trend.
NICS is requesting a modest increase in its base budget to cover its current annual shortfall, cost of living increases for its staff, and restoration of two of the seven positions which were lost as a result of the 1996 budget cuts.
Mr. Chairman, as I am sure you are aware, in order to provide essential judicial services to the member tribes, it is critical that two of the seven staff positions that were eliminated in 1996 be retained.
Page 36 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In particular, the court is very concerned with the lack of public defenders.
Mr. REGULA. How many tribes are served by this intertribal system?
Ms. PAVEL. There are nine member tribes; small tribes.
Mr. REGULA. What would that represent in total population?
Ms. PAVEL. For Northwest?
Mr. REGULA. For the nine tribes, totally.
Ms. PAVEL. There are about 9,000.
Mr. REGULA. So you have a common court system that serves all the tribes?
Ms. PAVEL. Yes, and it is a roving court system. My mother was in fact one of the first tribal judges, ever, in the country.
Mr. REGULA. The system moves around to the tribal locations?
Ms. PAVEL. Yes.
Page 37 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Where do you go for incarceration? Do you contract with a facility?
Ms. PAVEL. Well, it is a Public Law 280 in the State of Washington, so a number of the things we do contract for, certain violations. Some tribes do not have a criminal code. For instance, my tribe does not necessarily have a criminal code. We leave it still to the State because it is a Public Law 280 jurisdiction.
Some tribes are exercising their co-equal jurisdiction with the State of Washington in that regard.
Mr. REGULA. Good morning, Jim.
Ms. PAVEL. Good morning, Congressman.
Mr. MORAN. Good morning.
Ms. PAVEL. Nice to see you.
Mr. MORAN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. Morning.
Ms. PAVEL. The court has detailed written testimony and I would urge you to review it.
Page 38 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Your testimony will be a part of the record as you know.
Ms. PAVEL. I just want to assure the committee—you see all of the tribal leaders who are here today. They carry the burdens of their people. I want you to know that I am a product of what this committee does. I was born and raised on my reservation. My mother was tribal chairwoman. My brother was chairperson. My sister sits on the council. I got through school because of the JOM programs that you fund. My education at Dartmouth was funded because of the scholarship monies that you provide.
I sit here because of you, and if you wonder who this helps, it helps me, and these tribal leaders, they carry that burden, they carry my life in their hand, and so I want to thank you for that.
Mr. REGULA. Now you are a member of a Washington law firm.
Ms. PAVEL. Now I am a member of a law firm that I am very proud of.
Mr. REGULA. In Washington, DC? [Laughter.]
Ms. PAVEL. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Very well. Where did you go to law school?
Page 39 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. PAVEL. University of Washington in Seattle.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, okay.
Ms. PAVEL. Yes. I went home.
Mr. REGULA. Questions, Jim?
Mr. MORAN. As I know you feel, Mr. Chairman, this is the most compelling type of testimony, to see somebody who has made it, who might not have, had there not been a sense of justice and some compassion from the committee. That is what it is all about. The most compelling argument we have made on the National Endowment for the Arts was through Denyse Graves who said, you know, this is what turned her on to the opera.
Seeing you as the personification of what these programs are all about makes a world of difference.
Is Marvin Sonosky the head of the—is that the same——
Ms. PAVEL. It is the same firm; yes. He passed away this last July. We lost him.
Mr. MORAN. Yes. He was a good friend. Thank you very much, Mary.
Page 40 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
Ms. PAVEL. Thank you.
[The statement of Mary Pavel follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
JOE MOSES, CHAIRMAN, THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE WARM SPRINGS
Mr. REGULA. Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.
Mr. MOSES. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I am Joe Moses. I am the tribal council chairman of the Warm Springs Tribe of Oregon.
Thank you for the opportunity. I have four requests.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Page 41 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MOSES. The first is to adopt a $250,000 BIA request for Columbia River fishing site management, and direct that all these funds be used for law enforcement under tribal contracting.
To fulfill a pledge made by the U.S. when it built Bonneville Dam, the Corps of Engineers is finally developing additional treaty fish and access sites along the Columbia River. The first of these new sites is completed and being turned over to BIA to be held in trust for our fishing activities.
The $250,000 request by BIA is needed for these sites, and it should all be used for law enforcement, which is the most pressing need. The sites are a long way from our reservation and have a lot of people living on them, year around. BIA has never really patrolled them, so the tribes, using funds from the Bonneville Power Administration, has set up our own enforcement arm that is effective and cost-efficient.
It principally protects the treaty fishing and related activities, but also generally patrols the sites. Now, as the new sites are being turned over, BPA funding is being cut, the $250,000 is very much needed to insure law and order on these sites.
Second. The Interior Department is responsible for protecting tribal land and water interests in more than 50 hydroelectric projects coming up for FERC relicensing over the next several years.
The license for the Pelton hydro project, which is partly on our land, expires in 2001. Because Pelton is one of our single most valuable resources, and critical to our Governmental revenue, we are developing an application to compete for the license.
Page 42 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The total cost will exceed $4 million. While we can cover about two-thirds of that cost, BIA assistance is needed to develop a credible application, and for ourselves and others, these are important and expensive undertakings.
To provide for their adequate funding, we request the committee to support BIA's request of a $1 million increase for FERC-related activities and ask that it be increased by at least $2 million more.
And third, we urge you to reject any rider amendments that would make substantial changes to Federal Indian law or policy, because our Indian tribes, we are Governments as such, and particularly as small Governments, with a uniquely close relationship with the United States, we believe that the United States should provide full and fair deliberations to changes in laws and policies affecting us.
And finally, we wish to thank the committee for restricting the special trustee from any efforts to develop a separate bank or similar entity. In our opinion, the special trustee has never engaged in meaningful consultation, and his plans have caused us great concern. So we appreciate your intervention.
While the special trustee appears to have given up on banking plans, we ask you to check, and if needed again, impose a similar restriction for 1999.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
Page 43 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MOSES. Thank you.
[The statement of Joe Moses follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. Jim, any time you want to join, why——
Mr. MORAN. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Has the Dental Association testified?
Mr. REGULA. Yes. They have been here.
Mr. MORAN. Oh, they were here. Okay; all right; fine.
Mr. REGULA. We are on such a tight time schedule.
Mr. MORAN. Sure. I understand.
Mr. REGULA. Good morning.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
Page 44 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
KATHRYN HARRISON, CHAIRPERSON, THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE GRAND RONDE COMMUNITY OF OREGON
Ms. HARRISON. Good morning.
Mr. Chairman, and Members of the committee, my name is Kathryn Harrison. I am the chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I am here to testify on the budgets of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service for fiscal year 1999.
Today my testimony will focus on these four issues, some of which you have heard already this morning. Adding funds to the Tribal Priority Allocations to meet tribal needs for community services, education, natural resources, and tribal court services.
Two, adding funds to the IHS budgets for mandatory inflation and population growth increases, and for Contract Health Services.
Three, providing BIA and IHS increases for contract support costs.
Four, removing restrictions on how self-determination funds can be invested.
Page 45 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In submitting the testimony, I would just like to add that the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde have been a terminated tribe. We were terminated for 29 years. So our request is very urgent. We are trying to rebuild our community, our programs, and to regain the health of our people.
So with some of the program cuts that have come through the years, it has been, a really hard struggle, and I want you to know that I appreciate coming here before you.
I come not only as a chairperson, but as a mother, a sister, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and an elder for my tribe. So I just wanted to add that emphasis, that these are very important to me. I have seen many changes through the years, and I would like to see some help for my people.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Kathryn Harrison follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
TRIBAL SCHOOL FACILITIES
WITNESS
Page 46 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
TOM MILLER, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR, HANNAHVILLE INDIAN SCHOOL
Mr. REGULA. Minneapolis Area Community Tribal Schools.
Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, my name is Tom Miller, and I am the school administrator at the Hannahville Indian School in Michigan. It is located on the Hannahville Potawatomi Reservation. I am here representing the 12 areas schools in Minneapolis of which there are 2,500 students. Our concern is that in the recent years, we have sought technical assistance and services from the Bureau of Indian——
Mr. REGULA. This is a system that serves several tribes?
Mr. MILLER. Yes; it does.
Mr. REGULA. And it is operated by the tribes. It is a public school?
Mr. MILLER. It is a system operated with individual schools, with an organization which is the Minneapolis Area Community Tribal Schools, made up under the direction of the school administrators and/or board members, our members of that organization.
Mr. REGULA. From the tribe?
Mr. MILLER. Yes; from the tribe. And the technical assistance and services that we have been lacking from the Bureau of Indian Affairs is one of the great concerns in our area.
Page 47 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Do you get any help from the public schools?
Mr. MILLER. No, we do not. None that I am aware of.
Mr. REGULA. Can you use the public schools special programs, say, for handicapped children, or anything like that?
Mr. MILLER. I believe in some of the organizations, or some of the schools, there are some cooperative agreements with the individual States, and we are talking the four State area of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
Mr. REGULA. This is a residential school, then?
Mr. MILLER. Yes; it is. Day school.
Mr. REGULA. It is in Minneapolis, or nearby?
Mr. MILLER. No. What we are talking about is the—there are 12 individual schools located in the four State area.
Mr. REGULA. I see.
Mr. MILLER. Those schools have formed an organization.
Page 48 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I get it. You are speaking on behalf of all of them.
Mr. MILLER. Yes. I am.
Mr. REGULA. Got it.
Mr. MILLER. And what we are trying to do here is to start a demonstration project. We look at the area and we see that we have approximately $50 million worth of buildings, educational facilities, and that runs the gamut from the very good to the very poor.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. MILLER. The kids are educated in those, regardless, and what we are trying to do here is we understand that the United States Government has a cycle of replacement and repair. We are attempting to develop services and technical assistance which will allow us to extend the life of the buildings and maintain what is there, now, at the present level.
And what we have come up with is a method that the Minneapolis Area Community Travel Schools—MACTS I can call it from here on out—has developed, and we are looking at a demonstration project which would be 1 to 3 years, depending on the speed with which the final product is produced, that would provide a adequate and accurate facility inventory update. That is one of the key factors when you have a school because that generates operation and maintenance monies within the Bureau system.
Page 49 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
That has to be accurate or you are losing money. The second thing is what I call the PPMS. That is a Planned Preventive Maintenance Schedule. As school administrators—and I have been at Hannahville for 18 years, so I have been through a lot of this—is that we see that we put up brand new structures, and then, for reasons of lack of training, lack of services, lack of money, the facilities are not maintained at the level they should be, which shortens the life of the building and makes that replacement cycle become more costly to everyone involved.
So we are looking at developing and are in the process of developing site specific PPMS schedules.
Mr. REGULA. Preventative maintenance.
Mr. MILLER. Yes. It is one of the plus things I picked up when I was in the military.
Mr. REGULA. Yes; right.
Mr. MILLER. Anyway, what we are looking at is if we could ask for $250,000 for a year. We may be back in year—depending on the amount of the project that we can get done, when you are talking a four State area, and we are working with 12 schools, and we are trying to be site specific, there is a lot of factors that come in, that we cannot control.
But we feel that this could be a very good demonstration project for the 185 schools that are in the BIA-funded system, and our request is that if we fund this project, we think it will be a positive and timely answer to maintaining buildings, which makes everything cost-effective, I believe.
Page 50 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much for your time.
[The statement of Tom Miller follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
THURSDAY, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
JAIME PINKHAM, PRESIDENT, THE INTERTRIBAL TIMBER COUNCIL
Mr. REGULA. Intertribal Timber Council.
Mr. PINKHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, again, for this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee. My name is Jaime Pinkham. I am president of the Intertribal Timber Council which is a consortium of over 70 timber-owning tribes in Alaska, and native corporations.
Mr. Chairman, the volume of tribal timber lands that have current management plans have been on a decline over the past few years. Among the larger Category I type forests on Indian lands, one-third of them no longer have a current NIPA assessment. On a smaller Category II forest, which also provides essential commercial and subsistence needs for Indian people, we see about two-thirds of those without current assessments.
Page 51 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Our forests are increasingly struggling to stay within the compliance requirements of the different management and environmental laws that are out there, because the forestry planning funds have remained unchanged since 1991, while we see the planning requirements upon our forest lands becoming more complex and more costly.
Also, we have noticed a decline in the number of staff in both the area office and the central office forestry program.
Mr. REGULA. You are talking about Forest Service staff?
Mr. PINKHAM. Bureau of Indian Affairs forestry.
Mr. REGULA. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Do you do anything with the Forest Service or is it all done through the BIA?
Mr. PINKHAM. There are some cooperative agreements with the Forest Service on things like pest management and fire control, but mostly on-the-ground funding is accomplished through funding from the BIA.
Mr. REGULA. So you sell standing timber?
Mr. PINKHAM. Yes, we do.
Mr. REGULA. Do you do any processing in the tribal programs, or are the purchasers non-Indians?
Page 52 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. PINKHAM. It varies from tribe to tribe, Mr. Chairman. Some are industrialized, they do their own processing; some sell to local mills. It varies.
Mr. REGULA. Do you have sustained yield in your forests?
Mr. PINKHAM. As a course of Federal law, we must manage under sustained yield, but by the principles of Indian management we usually exceed the requirements of sustained yield, and set aside some of our forest lands for the future, without them being touched at all.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. PINKHAM. And we find, Mr. Chairman, that the continuing decline of funding and professional staff has made it even more difficult for the smaller tribes, who then lack any capability at all to prepare the management plans or to comply with the various environmental laws.
So what we would like to request is $300,000 to increase the Area Office staffs, and $150,000 to help with the Central Office foresters, and we recognize this falls short of what is needed, but we hope that it will help slow the decline.
Mr. REGULA. Do you get any help from the Forest Service? What I am talking about are scientists, or disease prevention programs.
Page 53 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. PINKHAM. On the disease preventions, yes, pest management funds are funnelled through the Forest Service, then on to the tribes.
We would also like to request that forest management inventory and planning be increased by about $1 million, again, to cover the increasingly complex nature of developing new management plans with the environmental burdens that are being placed upon our lands.
For Woodlands Management, we would like an additional $500,000, really would double its current budget, but we see that woodlands are really vital, particularly for subsistence to many tribes. But the current funding under the Woodlands Program only provides for three personnel to cover 9.5 million acres. So that really falls woefully short of what is needed to protect and manage woodlands.
We would also like to see—the latest in resource management is integrated resource management planning, and that has become a basic planning tool for a lot of the private and Federal land managers.
We would like to see the tribes have access to such planning needs as that. Especially when we see our tribe live so intimately connected to the land, it is important that we do holistic management planning. So we are requesting $3 million to help the Bureau of Indian Affairs initiate integrated resource management planning on our reservations.
And finally, Mr. Chairman, we have noticed an increase in forest land base for the Indian tribes through land acquisition, congressional designations, and sometimes BIA land reclassification. Unfortunately, the budgets, as the land base increases the budget has not been increasing, so we are also requesting that under BIA/TPA, that we see an increase of about $2 million, which is equivalent to 7.5 percent of the budget, you know, and tied to 7.5 percent of the land base, be distributed accordingly, to help us respond to the increase in management responsibility upon those acres.
Page 54 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks and I would be happy to answer any further questions.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Your members market quite a bit of timber, do they?
Mr. PINKHAM. Quite a few of our members do marketing, not just nationally, but some have been trying to get into the international market as well.
Mr. REGULA. Mostly hardwoods?
Mr. PINKHAM. It varies across the country. Some are hardwoods; some softwoods out in the Great Lakes area.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. PINKHAM. Thank you.
[The statement of Jaime Pinkham follows:]
Folios 112 to 116 Insert here
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
Page 55 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
ANTONE C. MINTHORN, CHAIRMAN, CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE UMATILLA INDIAN RESERVATION AND ALFONSE HALFMOON, VICE CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Mr. REGULA. Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Mr. MINTHORN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
I am Antone Minthorn, chairman of the board of trustees of The Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation in Northeast Oregon.
With me is Mr. Alfonse Halfmoon who is the vice chairman of the board of trustees. Mr. Halfmoon is also the chair of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commissioner, and Mr. Halfmoon is also a World War II veteran.
Mr. Chairman, we thank you for the opportunity to comment on the fiscal year 1999 President's budget.
Before I get into some specific budget issues, I will comment on an important issue that affects the budget debate on Indian programs. That is Indian gaming.
Page 56 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
One of the purposes of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 was economic development. In this respect our tribe has a modest and successful gaming operation.
The indicators of success include unemployment that has been reduced from 37 percent to less than 20 percent.
Mr. REGULA. Now you have several tribes. It says Confederated Tribes. Is that right?
Mr. MINTHORN. Three tribes, sir.
Mr. REGULA. Do they each have gaming?
Mr. MINTHORN. No. It is a confederation, and we have one gaming operation on the reservation.
Out of 370 people employed, 60 percent are Indian, 40 percent are non–Indian. Gaming revenues have also made it possible to expand our economic base beyond the gaming facility. That is a hotel, golf course, RV park, and cultural institute. This expansion employs another 100 people.
The Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act of 1988 has succeeded, as Congress envisioned, on our reservation. We are building an economy to help our people. I think it is important for Congress to understand some progress has been made through Indian country.
Page 57 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. Chairman, the Umatilla Tribe supports the President's budget, with some important comments. These include the fact tribal priority allocations remain below the 1995 budget levels. Also that inflation continues to erode purchasing power of programs.
There needs to be consideration of tribal input in regard to joint law enforcement initiatives between the Departments of Interior and Justice.
We support increased funding for water rights quantification and negotiation to avoid costly litigation.
We support the inclusion of 250,000 in the budget for the In–Lieu fishing sites on the Columbia River. These funds need to be appropriated and not eliminated as they were in the last year's budget to insure that these sites can be maintained for use by our tribal fishermen. We support the establishment of a pilot program on the Umatilla reservation to address fractionated land ownership problems caused by the Allotment Act.
Regarding the IHS budget, we have these comments. We support a needed increase in the catastrophic health care fund. We support an increase in contract support funds.
And our final comments. Do not constrain self-determination funds investments such as was done in 1998. Do not use the appropriation bill as a vehicle to try and make major changes in Federal Indian policy by the addition of Indian riders.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes our comments. Thank you for your time.
Page 58 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
[The statement of Antone Minthorn follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Our next witness is the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council.
Mr. SKEEN [presiding]. We have a little seat switching going on here, and we will get down to business real quick.
—————
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
TRIBAL NATURAL RESOURCE FUNDING INITIATIVES
WITNESS
IRA NEWBREAST, DIRECTOR, BLACKFEET FISH AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT, BLACKFEET TRIBE, BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION
Mr. SKEEN. Are you Ira?
Page 59 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. NEWBREAST. Yes, sir.
Mr. SKEEN. Welcome.
Mr. NEWBREAST. Thank you, sir. I am glad to be here.
Mr. SKEEN. Begin your testimony.
Mr. NEWBREAST. Your Honor, what I have come here today is for the Blackfeet Tribe's initiative to try and acquire funding allocations for the establishment of a hatchery.
The Blackfeet reservation is 1.5 million acres, and it has 15,000 members on the reservation. We are next to Glacier National Park and have a system of glaciated pothole lakes which totals 20,000 acres. Our recreational fisheries, of which we have come to be dependent upon, quite extensively, are our economic base for many of our natural resource initiatives, and those go into other areas of law enforcement, conservation management.
Our interest is to try and secure our own stocking rates for our reservation, and by the establishing of a new hatchery. We have worked cooperatively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation in trying to get the parameters set up to establish the fish hatchery and assure items such as biological control, baseline information, et cetera.
Our hatchery facility would be built in a three phase program in which we would do the planning and design for which most of the parameters have been established and identified.
Page 60 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The second phase would be the construction. The third phase would be the OMB type operational.
The Blackfeet Tribe is a Great Plains regional tribe, and we are largely identified with the buffalo, but as it has turned out throughout—well, with the onset of Western society, that the tribe has to—and for subsistence issues—orient themselves toward fisheries and a lot more aggressive use of the fisheries, and as such they have entered into our society as really a culturally important entity.
And the fisheries, as we have experienced them—as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has experienced their various budget cuts or concerns, we have experienced a decrease in our stocking rates as the trust responsibility that U.S. Fish and Wildlife provides for us.
And what we would like to see is a regain of our original stocking rates, and secure those and be run by the tribe through a self-determination effort.
Mr. SKEEN. What type fish are we talking about?
Mr. NEWBREAST. We are talking about rainbow trout.
Mr. SKEEN. Rainbow trout.
Mr. NEWBREAST. And this hatchery would be used exclusively to sustain our closed pothole lake systems. We have——
Page 61 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. That is your biggest resource, then?
Mr. NEWBREAST. That is a very extensive resource. We also have a number of—because we are located near Glacier Park, and Canada, we have every large game animal there is, with the exception of caribou and polar bears. Outside of that—and brown bears—we have every species there is. We have a number of threatened, endangered species for which we are also asking an addendum, funding for, that we address.
We have one of the longest standing grizzly bear programs in the U.S., Lower 48, that has been successful.
We have the only established computer model of the cumulative effects for NEPA processes.
We are also looking for an addendum for our existing fish and wildlife contract. We have 15,000 members. We have four game wardens in which to deal with it. We are looking for an addendum to increase that.
We appreciate the funding. In the past it has allowed us to move in areas where the tribe has gained great gains in their resources, particularly in wildlife populations.
We experienced wildlife populations that were minimal numbers before the funding. As we have established our code and our game warden conservation management, we have populations now in the thousands. It is very successful and it needs to grow, and that also includes our initiative here to be funded for.
Page 62 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. You have buffalo?
Mr. NEWBREAST. Yes, sir. We do. We have 120 head on our reservation.
Mr. SKEEN. If you run out, Ted Turner has plenty in New Mexico.
Mr. NEWBREAST. We knock on his door, frequently. [Laughter.]
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you very much for being here.
Mr. NEWBREAST. Thank you, Your Honor.
Mr. SKEEN. Did that conclude your statement?
Mr. NEWBREAST. Yes, sir.
Mr. SKEEN. We appreciate that and I appreciate what you are trying to do. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. NEWBREAST. Thank you.
[The statement of Ira Newbreast follows:]
Page 63 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
NATIVE AMERICAN HEALTH/EDUCATION ISSUES
WITNESS
MARIA CACKUSE, COUNCIL MEMBER, THE TULALIP TRIBES AND KAREN FRYBERG, CLINIC MANAGER; ON BEHALF OF STANLEY G. JONES, CHAIRMAN
Mr. SKEEN. Tulalip Tribes, Stanley G. Jones.
Ms. CACKUSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SKEEN. Identify yourselves for the record.
Ms. CACKUSE. On behalf of Stanley G. Jones, chairman, my name is Maria Cackuse, and I am council member for the Tulalip Tribes. To my left is Karen Fryberg. She is the clinic manager for our tribe.
I would like to thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony supporting the mandatory increases in the appropriation cycle for fiscal year 1999. The Tulalip Tribes is a 638 contract under PL93–638, serving 3,459 members in Snahomish County in Washington State, and one of our first issues, and a very important issue, is the new facilities construction.
Page 64 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Over the past 15 years, IHS has spent five times the amount on hospitals as it has on outpatient clinics. This does not elevate our health status. We can only benefit if expanded outpatient facilities are constructed and we have been operating out of a 20 year old modular unit.
So we would kindly ask your assistance in that area.
And number two is on population growth and Karen is going to speak on that issue.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you. Karen.
Ms. FRYBERG. Hi. I am Karen Fryberg and I have worked 17 years in our health programs at Tulalip, and when we originally contracted with IHS for our contract health services and which we rely solely on to provide health care for our members, we contracted for 1,900 members, and for the years 1988, 1989, and 1990, we did not receive those monies until 1993, and we have received no monies for population growth.
And we are currently serving 4,553 people in Snahomish County, all the Indians that live in and around Snahomish County, and we have not received any extra funds to provide that care since we negotiated with IHS at that time.
And so it is really hard to provide care, adequate care for our members at that level, and so, you know, we feel like, you know, the result of that is poor health status for our members, when we are not able to provide the care that they need, they crucially need.
Page 65 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. So you have outgrown it once again.
Ms. FRYBERG. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. I want to thank you for being here. Mr. Stanley must understand if you want a job done right, well, get the ladies to do it.
Ms. CACKUSE. That is right. [Laughter.]
Ms. CACKUSE. We had one more issue and number three is on education.
Mr. SKEEN. I just wanted to comment, too, that men always get the last word, and that is yes, ma'am. [Laughter.]
Ms. CACKUSE. Oh, okay.
Mr. Chairman, we would like the option of creating our own school district. In 1959, we sold land for one dollar to the Marysville School District to build an elementary school on our reservation so that we could create good education for our children and for the past 40 years, the test scores for this school has been the lowest in the school district. We believe that our tribe, in creating our own school district, we could receive more funds to reduce the classroom sizes and add special remedial programs for our children.
Page 66 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Also, they could be more successful as they grow older in providing good education in the early, primary years, so that they can read before they get into the secondary level.
We would just like your assistance and to be able to create our own school district, and we thank you for your time and consideration for these important issues for our tribe.
Mr. SKEEN. How many children do you have in your school system?
Ms. CACKUSE. We have 800 tribal members.
Mr. SKEEN. 800 tribal members?
Ms. CACKUSE. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Do you take any non-tribal members in the school, or——
Ms. CACKUSE. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Those who live in the proximity——
Ms. CACKUSE. It is a public school.
Page 67 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. I see.
Ms. CACKUSE. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. And you have a real problem.
Ms. CACKUSE. Yes. We do.
Mr. SKEEN. We thank you for your testimony.
Ms. CACKUSE. Thank you.
[The statement of Stanley G. Jones, Sr. follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
TRIBAL PROGRAMS
WITNESS
BOBBY WHITEFEATHER, CHAIRMAN, RED LAKE NATION OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS AND LAWRENCE DUDLEY, COUNCILMAN
Mr. SKEEN. The Red Lake Nation. Bobby Whitefeather. Welcome.
Page 68 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
[Mr. Whitefeather speaks in Chippewa language.]
Mr. SKEEN. I can answer you in Zuni or Navajo.
Welcome.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Mr. Chairman, good morning.
My name is Bobby Whitefeather. I am the tribal chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, and to my left is councilman Lawrence Dudley.
Mr. SKEEN. Welcome to both of you.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. And on behalf of the 9,300 plus members of the Red Lake Nation, we would like to acknowledge and express our appreciation for the opportunity to testify before the committee this morning.
Just a little bit of background on the Red Lake Nation. We are a very large tribe with a large population base as well as a large land and water base, and like a lot of other rural areas, we are being more and more affected by changes in society.
Situations such as an increase in crime, violence, drugs. We still have high rates of poverty, high incidences of alcoholism, high unemployment, poor health status, inadequate housing, and also inadequate protection for our natural resources.
Page 69 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Now, the Red Lake Tribe is very progressive in meeting these challenges, to try to be a very progressive tribe in self-governance. In fact we started self-governance in 1997.
Some of the results of that is there is extensive community cohesiveness. However, to accomplish all that we need to accomplish more funding needs to be addressed, not only to regulate, but also to all tribes in law enforcement and tribal courts, and the arena of social services.
Since self-governance, we have made some research and examined what our needs are in Red Lake, and our immediate need right now is—unmet need is about $2.6 million to adequately fund the programs.
And while the Red Lake Nation is very appreciative of the increase that was put into the budget last year, however, whenever the residual amount of $23.6 million was distributed, Red Lake's share was less than 1 percent. We are grateful for that; however, I think it demonstrates that there is still a lot of need out there.
Our immediate desperate need is for a law enforcement and detention facility.
Mr. SKEEN. That is your primary problem?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. That is a primary problem at this point; our immediate problem. The current facility is a converted forestry garage, and so what happened was the Bureau remodeled the facility and made it into a jail.
Page 70 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Now the facility itself is not conducive to monitoring of the prisoners, certain prisoners that are prone to suicide and violence, and so over the years we have had numerous suicide attempts.
And within the last 18 months two young men took their lives by their own hand in the facility.
Mr. SKEEN. In the facility?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. By hanging, or something, or——
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes; by hanging. But as a positive to this, Mr. Chairman, the Red Lake Nation has prepared a design of a facility that is projected to be in the area of $12 million, and I think what—the committee that we have established on the reservation, through all agencies, is that we want to commend and support the joint effort between Department of the Interior and Department of Justice, of trying to get more monies out to the Indian tribes, and we certainly support that joint effort.
Other desperate needs, Mr. Chairman, are the uncertainty of what is going to happen when welfare reform truly affects our Nation. At this point in time we have about one-third of our population on AFDC, and another 500 unemployed single adults.
Page 71 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. What is your total population?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. The total population on the reservation is about 6,500.
Mr. SKEEN. Six thousand.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes. And to complicate the matter is that we do not have economic development to any great extent. We do have some tribal industries; however, being where we are located, we are very marginal.
One of the key areas where we are going to be greatly affected is our commercial fishery shut down last year. I would like to remind the committee that I did speak with the Bureau of Indian Affairs regarding this because it is a federally regulated fishery, and relayed our concern that the responsibility rested with the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the regulation of the fishing industry.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, who is responsible for shutting it down?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. The association.
Mr. SKEEN. The association?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. The association is a separate body from the tribal council.
Page 72 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. From the tribal council.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. You still have Federal participation in that facility?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Not to a great degree.
Mr. SKEEN. Not now; it is gone.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. No; no.
Mr. SKEEN. By the way, I would like to point out to the staff here, there is money that is requested now at the Department of Justice for building jails.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. And including a set-aside for a jail.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes, we are aware of that.
Mr. SKEEN. Have you made an application?
Page 73 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. We have not made a formal application. We are still in the design process.
Mr. SKEEN. I see. At any rate, you have started the process.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes; yes. I think we are in Phase II.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Mr. Chairman, another area is health care. The Red Lake Nation operates their own hospital, and we are examining the possibility of assuming responsibility under either 638 or self-governance. However, even if we do attempt to contract for the health care, a recent study that we performed indicates that only 49 percent of the health needs are being addressed at this point.
And we support any increase that the committee would recommend, or the President. I think our effort, jointly, as a community, in 1995, we declared war on diabetes by instituting what we call a MMAD program—a million miles against diabetes—where we are going to walk, as a Nation——
Mr. SKEEN. A persistent problem in Indian country.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes; yes; it is.
Mr. SKEEN. Diabetes?
Page 74 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes.
So it is going to take Larry and me at least 20 years before we get to a million miles for our entire tribe.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, he looks like he is running on a pretty good speedometer. [Laughter.]
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. We are about 60,000 miles at this point. So we have got a good start on it.
Another area is of course lack of housing and we are not sure what welfare reform is going to affect on housing because there seems to be some tendency that there are thoughts out there, that people that—our members who live in urban areas will come to come home.
And the last thing, Mr. Chairman, I think it has been talked about, that the natural resources of Indian Nations has to be protected, and that the same is true in Red Lake.
We have a large land area, we have a large water area, and I believe that the Department has the trust responsibility to safeguard the natural resources of the tribe, and our situation is similar to the gentleman that testified from Blackfeet, is that we do not have adequate funding to adequately manage our resources.
Page 75 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. Chairman, I want to say ''meegwich'' to you, and there is detailed written testimony that we are providing, and as tradition in our homeland, we would like to invite you and any Members of the committee that would come to the home of the Red Lake Nation, whenever your schedule permits. Meegwich.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you. We appreciate it.
Do you have any recreational income from tourism, or anything of that kind? You have that lake there. Is it a resort type operation or——
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. That is an interesting question, Mr. Chairman. The Red Lake Nation is what is termed a closed reservation, where all our land is held in common.
We have had some internal discussions amongst the council members and some elders and some youth, and at this point there is reluctance to open the reservation for resorts and that type——
Mr. SKEEN. You do not have any gambling?
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. We are a gaming tribe. Yes, we do have gaming, but given that we are in northern Minnesota where there are not many people, our gaming essentially is a jobs program.
Page 76 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. I see. I thought maybe with that cold weather up there, that gambling would be pretty good because you stay inside and you just keep pulling on those handles.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Yes. Well, we thought so, too, but snow—not this year.
Mr. SKEEN. Not this year.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Snowmobilers were very disappointed this year.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SKEEN. We appreciate the information and we will do the best we can.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. We either offer you help, or direct you to where you can get help. Thank you.
Mr. WHITEFEATHER. I have got to do my commercial here. Here is my——
Page 77 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Oh, you have got your commercial. We appreciate that. Does that give us a free evening at the gaming tables? [Laughter.]
Thank you.
[The statement of Bobby Whitefeather follows:]
Offset folios 153 to 157 insert here
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESSES
TOM MAULSON, CHAIRMAN, LAC DU FLAMBEAU BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA INDIANS AND
LARRY J. WAWRONOWICZ, NATURAL RESOURCES DIRECTOR, LAC DU FLAMBEAU BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA INDIANS
Mr. SKEEN. Lac du Flambeau. Good to see you again.
Mr. MAULSON. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say that my colleague, one of my directors of the natural resource program, I hope to give him a little bit of time.
Page 78 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
But for the record, my name is Tom Maulson. I am the president of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians in northern Wisconsin. I also carry the cap of Great Lakes Intertribal Council chairperson, and I am also the chairman of the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Commission, which you will hear from one of our deputies later on.
But I think it is really important. You all can read, I know that, because we did get a little bit of help in the last year and we appreciate that, but like I said, it is just a little bit. And I think we need to work harder to really fit, you know, the pot that is needed for Indian country out there, and that is to make sure that the fiduciary responsibility obligations to Indian people are going to be met someplace down the road.
Hopefully this little bit, that increase that we get from the President, and the little increase that you all take time to study on our needs back home, we appreciate that. And you heard my colleague Bobby say ''megwich,'' and that means ''thank you,'' thank you in our language. But we too have a lot of major problems in the health area. I do have, and hopefully as the Great Lakes Intertribal chairman, that I could submit this after we leave as part of the testimony——
Mr. SKEEN. Certainly.
Mr. MAULSON [continuing]. For the tribes in Wisconsin in reference to health care. We definitely are in dire need in those particular areas. That $10 million cut for hospitals and clinics has a major impact, not only on my tribe but a lot of tribes in Wisconsin.
Page 79 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So we are looking forward hopefully that you will take a look at all the other needs that you heard this morning in reference to the things that Indian country needs across the country. I do have one of the health directors, sitting in the audience hoping that I am going to say the right thing here today to, click and say, well, let's get some more like Band-Aids or whatever.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, it sounds like you are picking on the right thing.
Mr. MAULSON. Right. And education is really important to our people as a priority, as all Indian Nations, to make sure that not only are we educated but that you people start to get more educated. And I think my colleague said, once again, come to our reserves and really see the hurts and needs of our people back home. And I think we could get probably a better snapshot than 5 minutes or 5 seconds of what we are trying to do for you.
Law enforcement is another issue back home I think is really important to our people. We are trying to make the non-Indian people or the white people in America see that we are sovereign governments, we are nations, and that we have got people like Gordon up there in the State of Washington wanting to take away sovereignty.
Mr. SKEEN. You don't mean that Senators do things like that?
Mr. MAULSON. I really mean that. I wish he would come to my reservation.
Page 80 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. I am blushing.
Mr. MAULSON. He would definitely see what is happening, you know, our needs.
Mr. SKEEN. Yes, we understand it.
Mr. MAULSON. I know that, and I hope that we can go forth and make a bigger pot for us, because I think it is just—everybody is just sort of playing catch-up here today because our needs are great back home. This is something that my elders, my young people, have identified.
I am going to give a little time, as you guys say, to my worker here, and he is a non-Indian person and been with our program for almost 20-plus years. So this is the dedication that we get from your people.
So I am hoping that we make some impact here today. Like other people sitting here, we appreciate your time. And Larry, if you want to just deal with the natural resource programs?
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. For the record, my name is Larry Wawronowicz. I am the Deputy Administrator for Natural Resources.
Mr. SKEEN. Right. Glad to have you here.
Page 81 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. You have to understand, Mr. Chairman, that natural resources are very vital to the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. Mother Earth gave us the life-sustaining ingredients to borrow so we can live. Our role is to keep them clean and viable.
We share the responsibility as, you know, the tribal governments and the Federal Government, to protecting and enhancing those resources for present and future generations, and as the Lac du Flambeau Band calls it, the Seventh Generation. We are always looking seven generations ahead.
We have to be proactive in our management and it is a big responsibility that you and I have as leaders of natural resources, to make sure that the land and water is protected. The land, water and the air, and all the animals and plants that live along with us, are the major, major part of us. You know, we are what we eat and drink.
In order to protect, conserve and enhance those resources for this generation and for present generation or for future generations, we need some dollars to do that. We have some specific requests within the testimony dealing with wildlife and parks programs for the Lac du Flambeau.
The Circle of Flight program, which is a sort of a regional Great Lakes initiative in terms of enhancing wetlands and the waterfowl populations up and down the Mississippi Flyway, I believe there is like 61 million acres that all the tribes and organizations have that could utilize the dollars to protect those resources. You know, the marshlands are very important in terms of clean water, and it also is very important in terms of the subsistence life style that the tribe has, and of course it gives hunting opportunity for a lot of people up and down the Mississippi Flyway.
Page 82 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Our forestry program, you have heard testimony from the Timber Council. We have 55,000 acres of forested land that gives not only logging opportunities for our members but it also gives——
Mr. SKEEN. Do you have a logging plant there, in operation on the reservation?
Mr. MAULSON. Not a large one. I think we have got two tribal members that do logging within our reservation.
Mr. SKEEN. So it is relatively limited?
Mr. MAULSON. Right. Very limited.
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. We have a forestry program consisting of one forester and three technicians, but they haven't received any increase in funding since 1992, and we are requesting from the committee to look favorably upon earmarking $60,000 for our forestry program.
We have a land management program that is responsible for managing tribal lands, and we have some needs there. And we also want to go on record to support the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. The Band strongly supports the President's $3.5 million funding request, and the Commission also is asking for an additional $195,000. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission are essential for implementing the Band's off-reservation hunting, fishing and gathering rights in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.
Page 83 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We need to deal with the tribal priority allocations. We understand there is $34 million that the President is increasing, requesting for programs, but these monies are not enough and we are requesting this committee to increase it by another $50 million.
Just to give you some little more insight in terms of what the natural resources on the reservation are, I would like to submit this to you for your review.
Mr. SKEEN. Fine. It will be in the record.
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. But the Lac du Flambeau Band has 92,000 acres and we have, you know, 20,000 surface acres of water and 15,000 acres of marshland and 34 miles of creeks, rivers and streams. So the——
Mr. SKEEN. You have a great resource base.
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. Right, and we need to be able to take care of that, you know, for the future use and for present use, and it is very important in the life style of the Flambeau Band.
Mr. MAULSON. Beautiful water, sir, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. And I do like to again reiterate what the tribal chairman said, that, you know, any time any of the committee would like to come and visit our beautiful reservation, you know, please feel free to come and we will give you the grand tour of our wild areas.
Page 84 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you for the gracious invitation, and if we can work it out, we will try to take advantage of it.
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. I hope so.
Mr. SKEEN. I want to say, too, that we are a little disappointed with the President's budget when it comes to health matters and particularly on the Indian country, and we hope that maybe we can prevail on him to be a little more lenient.
Mr. WAWRONOWICZ. I always go with the idea that if you have a healthy environment, you have a healthy human population.
Mr. SKEEN. Absolutely right. Thank you both, very, very much.
Mr. MAULSON. Thank you very much.
Mr. SKEEN. Nice to have you here.
[The statement of Tom Maulson follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998
Page 85 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESSES
FERDINAND MARTINEAU, RESOURCE MANAGEMENT DIRECTOR, FOND DU LAC BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA INDIANS; ACCOMPANIED BY MARY PAVEL
Mr. SKEEN. Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Mr. Robert Peacock. Welcome.
Mr. MARTINEAU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.
Mr. MARTINEAU. Mr. Peacock was unable to make it. My name is, for the record, is Ferdinand Martineau.
Mr. SKEEN. Martineau?
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes. I am the Resource Management Director for the Fond du Lac Band.
Mr. SKEEN. He has an able assistant. You tell him you did a good job.
Page 86 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MARTINEAU. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. Up your salary.
Mr. MARTINEAU. Can I quote you on that?
Mr. SKEEN. Yes, sir, you certainly may. Tell him you are worth every dime and more.
Mr. MARTINEAU. Mr. Chairman, as previous people have testified before you and as people are going to be testifying in the future, we bring a simple message from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. There is a great need in Indian country that is currently unmet, and we are asking your committee to help us meet that need.
At Fond du Lac we have needs in several areas, but I am going to focus on education, enforcement, and natural resources in this testimony.
The top priority of Fond du Lac Reservation has always been education, as most tribes have been. The Band's greatest area of concern is that we have a—that our children are asked to attend a school that is not safe or conducive to learning, and I have some pictures.
Mr. SKEEN. Why don't you have the young lady just go ahead and sit down there, so she doesn't have to stand and hold them.
Page 87 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MARTINEAU. This is Mary Pavel and she is assisting me today.
As you can see, the school is not a very good school. We have operated it since 1980, and——
Mr. SKEEN. Are those portable buildings?
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Go ahead.
Mr. MARTINEAU. We have operated the school since 1980, Four years ago the BIA did a study and they looked at the facility and they said that the facility should be replaced immediately, and they placed us number 14 on the BIA priority list for construction. When we were placed number 14 on the list, we became eligible for planning and design money and we received a grant from the Bureau of Indian Affairs——
Mr. SKEEN. You did get some money, then?
Mr. MARTINEAU [continuing]. Two years ago to do a planning and design study for new construction.
Mr. SKEEN. Has it been completed?
Page 88 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MARTINEAU. It will be completed in April.
Mr. SKEEN. April.
Mr. MARTINEAU. And will be ready for construction——
Mr. SKEEN. But it will be a permanent facility?
Mr. MARTINEAU. It will be a permanent facility, yes.
Ms. PAVEL. The planning and design will be complete in April. The construction hasn't been funded yet.
Mr. SKEEN. Just the planning and design?
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes, the planning and design stage will be completed in April.
Mr. SKEEN. Under your budget.
Mr. MARTINEAU. However, we still rank number 14 on the list.
Mr. SKEEN. For what that is worth.
Mr. MARTINEAU. For what it is worth.
Page 89 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. I hope we get that horse over the line.
Mr. MARTINEAU. And that is what I am here to ask, is if we could get the—
Mr. SKEEN. Get some movement?
Mr. MARTINEAU [continuing]. Get some movement on the construction.
Mr. SKEEN. We will look into it. We appreciate that.
Mr. MARTINEAU. In 1997 the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in the State of Minnesota v. Stone that certain traffic regulations were unenforceable in Minnesota on Indian reservations, where 280 State and certain regulations were ruled that you couldn't—the State officer couldn't enforce it on Indian reservations in Minnesota. It has left a void in the protection of all residents, Indian and non-Indian alike.
Mr. SKEEN. This is in law enforcement?
Mr. MARTINEAU. Law enforcement, yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, you have a big vacuum there because neither one of you are responsible for the——
Page 90 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes. We have been working with——
Mr. SKEEN [continuing]. General law enforcement.
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes, with local and State enforcement agencies to work out agreements where Fond du Lac can provide officers to enforce these laws on the reservation. We have had limited success, but our problem is that we don't have the financial wherewithal to implement a full-blown law enforcement program on the reservation.
And, you know, we appreciate the President's request for an additional $25 million to the Bureau for law enforcement, but it has been Bureau policy that this law enforcement money hasn't been spent in Public Law 280 States, and Minnesota happens to be one. So although there is a ruling in the State courts that doesn't allow certain laws to be enforced on the reservation, the Bureau's policy has been not to spend law enforcement money in P.L. 280 States.
So we are requesting that some of that money be directed towards Minnesota, Fond du Lac in specific.
Mr. SKEEN. For your primary needs?
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. What else?
Page 91 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MARTINEAU. And in 1987 we also had our treaty rights upheld in the 1837 area——
Mr. SKEEN. Treaty right?
Mr. MARTINEAU. Yes. When we signed the Treaty of 1837 with the United States Government, we ceded 3 million acres of land to the United States Government, and when we ceded that land we reserved the right to hunt, fish and gather in that area. And like I said, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that right, and now with the rights to exercise in that area comes the responsibility of managing that land.
Mr. SKEEN. Managing it?
Mr. MARTINEAU. And for the last decade Fond du Lac has been exercising rights in the 1854 ceded territory which is just north of the 1837 area, and we have a good management system. We have been recognized as responsible managers in that area. And we are asking that an additional $200,000 be appropriated through the Bureau to assist us in implementing our 1837 treaty rights. We are planning on implementing the same type of system——
Mr. SKEEN. When you say ''implementing,'' you would take the money to do what?
Mr. MARTINEAU. To provide enforcement and management in that area.
Page 92 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Oh, I see. Okay. For the recreational area, or for the area that you——
Mr. MARTINEAU. For the area that we would be exercising our treaty rights.
Mr. SKEEN. Your treaty rights. I understand.
Mr. MARTINEAU. And we also, as other reservations, have on-reservation needs. In forestry, we currently have a forestry program that operates on the reservation. We have a forester and two technicians.
Fond du Lac Reservation is 110,000 acres of land, and we have about 5,000 acres of wild rice lakes and about 60 miles of rivers and streams that run through the reservation, about 20,000 acres of wetlands, associated wetlands, with the lakes. And we are looking at implementing a wild rice restoration project there and also a forestry project, and we are asking for an additional, I think it is $80,000 and—it is about $100,000 there, to help us implement DIM programs also.
Mr. SKEEN. What is that?
Mr. MARTINEAU. And as I stated earlier, you know, I have a simple message and I also have a simple request, that Fond du Lac and all Indian country needs your help to continue to implement these types of programs and to address the needs of Indian country.
Page 93 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. We appreciate your message and we take it very seriously.
Mr. MARTINEAU. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.
[The statement of Ferdinand Martineau follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESSES
CHARLES W. MURPHY, CHAIRMAN, STANDING ROCK SIOUX TRIBE AND SHARON TWO BEARS, COUNCIL MEMBER, STANDING ROCK SIOUX TRIBE
Mr. SKEEN. How about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe? Mr. Murphy?
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman.
Page 94 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. How are you, sir?
Mr. MURPHY. Good, good.
Mr. SKEEN. Good morning. Are those your children in that batch there?
Mrs. TWO BEARS. Grandchildren.
Mr. SKEEN. Grandchildren. Oh, that is the most important bunch of people in the world, these grandkids.
Mrs. TWO BEARS. That is why I am here today.
Mr. SKEEN. It proves that you didn't go wrong with your own children, when you have the grandchildren. They appreciate grandma and grandpa.
Go ahead, sir.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, my name is Charles Murphy and I am the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and to my left here is Sharon Two Bears, who is one of the Council members on my tribe. Also she is a school board member. And we want to thank you for taking this opportunity to testify in front of you today, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SKEEN. It is a pleasure.
Page 95 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MURPHY. And there are some needs that we need at Standing Rock, and——
Mr. SKEEN. That is what we are here for.
Mr. MURPHY. Right now Standing Rock is facing a difficult need right now, and at this time, within the last nine months, Mr. Chairman, is that we had 45 attempted suicides. Out of those 45, Mr. Chairman——
Mr. SKEEN. Are these tribal members?
Mr. MURPHY. Yes, it is.
Mr. SKEEN. Excuse me for interrupting you.
Mr. MURPHY. But, anyway, six of them had succeeded. And we are relating this back to many, many things, from families to schools and everything else, because the kids were depressed.
The reason why Mrs. Two Bears is here also, Mr. Chairman, is that the school also was closed for one week because of the PCB.
Mr. SKEEN. Excuse me, but I have got a vote on. They tell me that I wasn't paying any attention. So if you will hold it, I will run and vote and get right back.
Page 96 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MURPHY. Okay.
Mr. SKEEN. I am sorry to do that to you.
Mr. MURPHY. No problem, Mr. Chairman.
[Recess.]
Mr. SKEEN. Sorry to run off on you like that.
Mr. MURPHY. Oh, no problem.
Mr. SKEEN. I didn't have my beeper turned on.
Mr. MURPHY. Where we left off, Mr. Chairman, was on that——
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you for your patience.
Mr. MURPHY. Sure. No problem, Mr. Chairman.
We had to close the Bureau school for about a week. There is a—fluorescent light fixtures, what they call PCB in the light fixtures, and what happened is that it was leaking in the elementary school, and it leaked in the BIA office and also in the high school. And what happened is that they closed the school. We have to replace all those fixtures, and we are talking a whole lot of dollars of repairing those lights throughout the schools.
Page 97 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Is that very costly?
Mr. MURPHY. Yes, it is, sir. But, anyway, the estimated cost to replace all these lights and everything else and the repairs that need to go along with this is going be about $11 million, sir.
Mr. SKEEN. Who built the building? How old is it?
Mrs. TWO BEARS. The high school building was—they moved into in 1979. They quit manufacturing these lights in 1978.
Mr. SKEEN. Yes, because of the PCBs.
Mrs. TWO BEARS. Yes, but the Bureau has never replaced any of these lights over the years. You know, I worked in the facility for about 12 years, even in the office.
Mr. SKEEN. I see, so it has been a severe problem for you.
Mrs. TWO BEARS. So they have probably been leaking all of these years, but we just became aware of it, but they are Bureau facilities.
Mr. SKEEN. They don't change their bulbs often.
Page 98 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mrs. TWO BEARS. No.
Mr. SKEEN. Excuse me for interrupting.
Mr. MURPHY. No problem, sir. We need to find these things out.
And Senator Kent Conrad was down there also, not during this time but prior to this, and just looked at the school because we had some other problems with the school at Standing Rock. And yesterday I mentioned to him that we were going to be meeting with the committee today to testify on our needs, and he wished us the best of luck, and we will very hard on trying to get those——
Mr. SKEEN. Conrad is a good representative for you.
Mr. MURPHY. Yes, for North Dakota.
The other thing, sir, is that we have the mental health—we are asking for dollars, we are requesting $250,000 for additional doctors and so forth at the reservation.
Mr. SKEEN. Personnel, medical personnel?
Mr. MURPHY. Right. We have some people right now, a doctor that—some doctors now, but they are only on a contract basis, sir.
Mr. SKEEN. What do they do, rotate in and out, or——
Page 99 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MURPHY. Yes, for whatever dollars that we have got.
Mr. SKEEN. I see. They are just there certain times of the week, month, year?
Mrs. TWO BEARS. They come one day a week.
Mr. SKEEN. One day a week?
Mr. MURPHY. Right. The other thing is that we are asking for $100,000 for alcoholism, also, to help us out in that area. And, Mr. Chairman, we had applied for a COPS grant program. We got that, and—but we still need additional police officers. Our reservation is made up of 2.3 million acres. It is 100 by 100, so it is—we need police officers badly.
Mr. SKEEN. You have a huge area to take care of.
Mr. MURPHY. Yes. And also we are down to—we currently had 20 vehicles but we are down to 9 now, because a lot of our vehicles have over 100,000 miles on them right now, so——
Mr. SKEEN. Big as that reservation, I am not surprised.
Mr. MURPHY. Yes. Right, sir.
Page 100 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. It takes a lot of driving.
Mr. MURPHY. Yes, it is. But, anyway, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to us.
Mr. SKEEN. We want to thank you for making your presentation. I mean, we hope we get, sooner or later get a better system working over there, so every year we don't have to have this business of there is just not enough money and your needs are not met and so forth. It is tough situation, especially with the draw-down on budgets and things. That kind of tough but we will do our best.
Yes, ma'am?
Mrs. TWO BEARS. I guess in closing, having worked in education for 25-plus years, the mental health of our children, with these suicides and with about 125—
Mr. SKEEN. I was astounded at the number of suicide attempts.
Mrs. TWO BEARS. There is about 125 that are being monitored now, and these are children that have been—one of our Council members was a social worker with IHS, and she said we started working with these children when they were young. And all of these six that completed their suicides by hanging were all 14, 15-year-old children.
Mr. SKEEN. That is awful.
Page 101 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mrs. TWO BEARS. They were all males.
Mr. SKEEN. All males?
Mrs. TWO BEARS. All males.
Mr. SKEEN. See how much smarter women are?
Mrs. TWO BEARS. I don't know. But, you know, our mental health for our children——
Mr. SKEEN. Don't say anything. That is a terrible thing. You know, I am not making light of it, but kids like that have the whole world in front of them age-wise, and there are resources like there are anyplace else——
Mrs. TWO BEARS. Resources are very limited. Many of our staff are working overtime, just volunteering time to try to work with the youth. Many Council members do the same thing, you know, have been volunteering time to just try to assist because we don't have the dollars and the additional professional help.
Mr. SKEEN. It is something to be very alarmed about.
Mrs. TWO BEARS. Yes, it is.
Page 102 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. We will see what we can do to help you.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for your time, and you are sure welcome out to Standing Rock.
Mr. SKEEN. We thank you for your time. Sorry that——
Mr. MURPHY. No problem.
Mr. SKEEN. [continuing]. We can't just immediately take care of a problem.
Mr. MURPHY. Right.
Mr. SKEEN. We will do the best we can.
Mr. MURPHY. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.
Mrs. TWO BEARS. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.
[The statement of Charles Murphy follows:]
Page 103 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
JOE PAKOOTAS, CHAIRMAN, COLVILLE BUSINESS COUNCIL, CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE COLVILLE RESERVATION
Mr. SKEEN. Colville Confederated Tribe, Mr. Joe Pakootas. Is Mr. Nethercutt your Member of Congress?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes, he is.
Mr. SKEEN. He sends his regards and asks that we take good care of you.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. There you go. I have to thank him.
Mr. SKEEN. When Mr. Nethercutt gives me an order, we are going to follow through on it, because he is a very good gentleman and a good Member of Congress.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. We appreciate that very much. Thank you.
Page 104 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Even if he is a lawyer.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Some of them may be good, I guess.
Mr. SKEEN. Oh, they are all good. We give them a bad time.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes. My name is Joe Pakootas. I am the chairman of the Colville Business Council for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation. Our reservation is located in north central Washington State, the other Washington, or the real Washington, maybe.
Mr. SKEEN. I understand that. I graduated from high school in Seattle.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Oh, all right.
Mr. SKEEN. So I feel like I am kind of a native of Washington. I spent a lot of time around Camas, Washington, and Port Angeles, as well. My father couldn't find a steady job, so—and he is an engineer.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Anyway, our reservation is approximately 1.4 million acres in size, and we have an enrollment population of about 8,500.
Mr. SKEEN. 8,500 children?
Page 105 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Tribal members, enrolled tribal members. Approximately 50 percent of those enrolled tribal members live on or near our reservation.
The tribes provide a variety of services for members living on the reservation and elsewhere, including resource management, human services, community development, education, employment, and law and order. Our goal for our membership is a healthy society, environment and economy which are maintained and built upon the unique culture and traditions of our tribal people, and we have 12 bands that make up our confederation.
The programs that I will be mentioning are vital to the efforts of the Colville Tribe and what we are hoping to accomplish in the future. Those programs are—under the Bureau of Indian Affairs would be the tribal priority allocations, Paschal Sherman Indian School, Inchelium Public Ferry, tribal courts, and detention facilities. These are——
Mr. SKEEN. How about your health facilities?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. That is also—that will be under the IHS.
Mr. SKEEN. You will cover it? All right. Very well.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. That part of it, after we have talked a little bit about Bureau of Indian Affairs.
These are kind of our priorities, our immediate needs in some of these areas right now. We have needs all across the reservation, not only in these particular areas.
Page 106 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. But this is your primary——
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes, they have been needs for many, many years and they have been unfunded. We are looking for, like so many tribes, for construction dollars for the Indian school and detention facilities, tribal courts.
And one of the education parts of our reservation is what we call the Paschal Sherman Indian School. It used to be called the St. Mary's Mission quite a few years ago, and it is over 100 years old at this time. Part of the facilities have been condemned. We have them in some temporary modular units that were used when we put them in place a number of years ago. Our school houses——
Mr. SKEEN. How long ago?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. I believe it was in right around 1990 when we did——
Mr. SKEEN. So they have had quite a bit of concentrated use over——
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes. We acquired a couple modular units, I believe from one of the base closures.
Mr. SKEEN. Yes.
Page 107 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. PAKOOTAS. And this school has over 175 students throughout the year. We start off, it ranges between 130 to 180 students for a year, and it is a residential-type school. We have dormitories there that house some of the students. But it not only houses our Colville students, but other students throughout the Northwest area there. They come in and get a top-notch education there.
Mr. SKEEN. Do you have non-Indians in the school at all?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. No.
Mr. SKEEN. You don't take any outsiders?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. It is—there is probably a few descendants that attend the school, locals that live on the reservation. Because a number of our parents, like my parents' age and my age, a lot of tribal members attended this school and they are just kind of passing it on down, I guess, through the generations. Some of their children attended school there, also.
But the Paschal Sherman Indian School was ranked in 1982 as up to 14th in fiscal year 1982, and the highest ranking that we had received was third, and that was in fiscal year 1985. And it is nowhere to be seen on the list at this time, and I don't really know the exact reasons for that. I have—wasn't associated with the tribal government back at that time.
Page 108 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
But we are still in desperate need of an education facility to replace a lot of the buildings that we are housing our children in, the dormitories. A lot of them have historical significance. It used to be an old mission, and it was a school back then, too, when they were civilizing the tribal members. And the Bureau of Indian Affairs had taken it over, and the tribe had contracted that school through the Public Law 638. So we are in need of funding.
We also have an agreement with the local public school, which is Omak High School. It is a cooperative agreement where we—they utilize, the impact aid funds. They are funding some of the services up there through the impact aid funding source. That is one of the agreements that really helps out in our education efforts up there, in helping out with the staff.
Another issue is a public ferry service that we have on the eastern side of our reservation where I live, and it is called the Inchelium Ferry, Inchelium-Gifford Ferry, and it is a free ferry service. The tribe had contracted that from the Bureau of Indian Affairs a number of years ago, also. It was under private contract. BIA contracted with a private individual, and then the tribe had contracted that to provide more services.
What it does for my community is, it reduces travel to a major area for hospital services, groceries, and shopping and Wal-Mart, by 70 miles.
Mr. SKEEN. This is a ferry service across some body of water?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Across Lake Roosevelt, yes.
Mr. SKEEN. I see.
Page 109 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. PAKOOTAS. The body of water behind Grand Coulee Dam. And the funding for that has been and is being looked at now by other tribes. We are looking at trying to secure funding to keep that operation going. There is over 200,000 vehicles that utilize that ferry boat every year.
Mr. SKEEN. Do they charge a fee?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. No, no fee charged. In the past when it was under private ownership there was a fee for services, to cross on the ferry boat, but since the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the tribe has taken over, there is no fee.
Mr. SKEEN. So the support for it and the maintenance and all that has to come out of your tribal funds?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes, it comes out of our maintenance funds that go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Yes, the roads department.
And when the funding source goes down for the maintenance, road maintenance, then we have to lay off or furlough our road maintenance crew for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We have over 800 miles of BIA roads on the reservation that our crew maintains throughout the year, and when the funding goes down on the ferry boat or there is additional services needed, then we have to furlough our men to save enough dollars to help the ferry.
Another source of problems for us is our tribal courts, the underfunding of our tribal courts. Our court system receives less than $50 per case, basically, through the budget that is allocated for our tribal court. And recently our docket, case docket, case load for our tribal court got up to 3,400, and this is per year.
Page 110 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. So it is getting critical for you?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes, and the services through our tribal court isn't only for tribal members, it is for all people within the bounds of our reservation, our jurisdiction. And our tribal court handles criminal prosecutions, to tort claims also.
And they are housed now in inadequate facilities. Most of the facilities that the BIA—we contract a lot of these programs—is tribal facilities, and they have been inadequate to begin with, a lot of them are old warehouses, in some situations we are growing and we have to house them someplace, so we will throw up a few walls and try to remodel an old warehouse to house these facilities.
Our tribal court is one of those that is in dire need of some additional dollars and——
Mr. SKEEN. That kind of goes along with your other request for law enforcement?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Give me your highlights, then, on the rest of it. We are going to have to move.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Okay. Thank you.
Page 111 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Sorry to do that to you.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Our detention facility is one that we are looking at, too.
Mr. SKEEN. Detention facilities? Along with your law enforcement and courts?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes. To go into a little bit on detention facilities, we are housing prisoners, and we contract with the local county, and it costs us $40 a day once they get through our tribal court system. And we have been on a list, what they call—we have been going through the ''pony process'' for detention facilities, and we are completing Phase 2 I believe at this time, and looking for funding for the actual construction. We are in——
Mr. SKEEN. So you have done your planning?
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Okay.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. We have Phase 1 done, and that is the 20-percent phase. Now we are looking into—we are working on the 40-percent phase, Phase 2, and then the final phase will be for construction dollars.
Page 112 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We have hopes that we are going to get back up in the priority area for funding for construction. We understand there is new construction dollars that is going to be allocated this year, and we are looking forward to that.
Indian Health Services, mental health and substance abuse is a big concern for our tribe also, like the tribe before me had spoken about too. The big concern there is the juvenile crime rate is escalating on Indian reservations, and basically all crime rate for the reservations is escalating in all areas. We are looking at the mental health and substance abuse as what we are trying to prioritize in the area of reducing those crime rates.
Additional dollars to contract health and Indian Health Services would definitely help that area out. The tribes could actually get out and do some better work, because it has just been basically office work. This is how we have been working, because of the inadequate dollars and the support staff that are needed for those services.
Another area for Indian health is contract health. These dollars are good to start off the year with. We got plenty of dollars and our tribal members can go get needed services. And then toward the end of the year, fiscal year, even halfway through the fiscal year and beyond, it is hard for our tribal members to get needed services. They are put on a priority type——
Mr. SKEEN. They spend the money early in the cycle.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes, and, you know, people are getting needed operations, gallstones and that type of thing.
Page 113 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. I understand.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Once you get later into the season, then you are put on this priority list, and what that does is, it is loss of life or limb they fund first. And so a number of our tribal members are going without needed services, needed operations and——
Mr. SKEEN. But all this is in your list.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes, a lot of this is in here.
Mr. SKEEN. Okay. Well, we are going to take that list, and we appreciate you making your presentation.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. I appreciate the time, and I thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. Sorry we're going to have to hustle you a little bit.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Yes. Don't have time for my joke.
Mr. SKEEN. I've got time for the joke.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. I better not. I got to see George this afternoon, too.
Page 114 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Okay. He gets no joke.
Mr. PAKOOTAS. Thank you.
[The statement of Joseph Pakootas follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
ROBERT NIGER, SAULT STE. MARIE TRIBE OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS
Mr. SKEEN. Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Bernard Bouschor. Welcome.
Mr. NIGER. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Robert Niger, sitting in for Chairman Bouschor.
Mr. SKEEN. Oh, are you? Well, he sent a good representative.
Page 115 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. NIGER. Right.
Mr. SKEEN. Sorry to hustle you, but we are going to have to hold you to about 5 minutes.
Mr. NIGER. Very good.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you, sir.
Mr. NIGER. Thank you. On behalf of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, I want to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee, and I would also like to express our gratitude and thanks for Chairman Yates' service to the committee, for the record.
Mr. SKEEN. He has been a grand fellow, hasn't he?
Mr. NIGER. He has been great.
Mr. SKEEN. You bet.
Mr. NIGER. We are one of the last federally recognized tribes in Michigan, and we have established many activities throughout the years, schools, health centers, court systems and that sort of thing. The two issues that we want to address today is on Indian Health Service. We have appeared before the committee many years emphasizing the shortfall of Indian Health Service dollars, and——
Page 116 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Seems to be indigenous across the board. Every respondent that we have had up here today has talked about the health problem.
Mr. NIGER. Especially the contract health care.
Mr. SKEEN. I see.
Mr. NIGER. And just like our colleagues in Colville, we have a critical shortage of hospital visits. We currently have a need of 3,200 hospital days we are only allowed to take care of about 700 days.
Mr. SKEEN. I see.
Mr. NIGER. And it is the same type situation, where you run out of money during the first half of the year and you are prioritized and, you know, it is——
Mr. SKEEN. And there is very little help available for you after you run out of your money.
Mr. NIGER. Exactly, right. The other thing I wanted to address is the self-governance. We are a self-governance tribe, and we built our own health facility, and when the tribes build their own health facilities they don't receive staffing for those facilities. If the Indian Health Service built the facility, they would automatically receive a staff that goes in there, and we think this is——
Page 117 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. That is kind of a narrow point of view, isn't it?
Mr. NIGER. Right. We should be at least afforded——
Mr. SKEEN. They ought to be happy that you are building it for them and then give you the personnel, at least.
Mr. NIGER. Exactly, right. You know, if you waited for 20 or 30 years for them to build——
Mr. SKEEN. We understand that, too.
Mr. NIGER. Right. The other thing I want to touch upon in self-governance is, the Indian Health Service self-governance program is up for permanent legislation this year. We appreciate your support to make that permanent.
Mr. SKEEN. You got it.
Mr. NIGER. Thank you. The other issue I have is, the tribe is exercising the Treaty of 1836 in fishing rights, and we have expanded that in 1996 to include inland hunting and fishing rights with this treaty, and we have——
Mr. SKEEN. Do you lease hunting out?
Page 118 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. NIGER. Pardon?
Mr. SKEEN. Do you lease hunting rights out to——
Mr. NIGER. Well, we established a tribal code that would license inland hunting and fishing for the membership.
Mr. SKEEN. Only for Indians?
Mr. NIGER. Right.
Mr. SKEEN. You don't have other hunters from off the reservation?
Mr. NIGER. It is all off the reservation.
Mr. SKEEN. It is off. Okay, I understand.
Mr. NIGER. Beyond the treaty area.
Mr. SKEEN. I see what you are talking about. Thank you.
Mr. NIGER. And what we have done is, we developed a code that was developed by the Tribal Council, and we are about to exercise this code. And what we are requesting from the committee is conservation officers to, help police the code, and also for biology, a biology technician, too, to serve as a wildlife management for the code.
Page 119 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Propagation?
Mr. NIGER. Correct.
Mr. SKEEN. Very good.
Mr. NIGER. That is the only thing I have for you today, and thank you for appearing.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you. Sorry to have to rush everybody, but everybody is kind of tight. Thank you very much. It will all be in writing and we will give it due consideration.
[The statement of Robert Niger follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
GARY JORDAN, VICE-CHAIRMAN, ONEIDA TRIBE OF INDIANS OF WISCONSIN; AND DIANA BOWMAN, HEALTH MANAGER
Page 120 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Debbie Doxtator, welcome.
Mr. JORDAN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
This is Diana Bowman. She is the health manager for the health center and I am Vice Chairman, Gary Jordan, from the Oneida Tribe of Indians from Wisconsin.
Mr. SKEEN. Welcome, to both of you.
Mr. JORDAN. We are here to discuss the Indian Health Care Improvement Acts, specifically Section 818.
Mr. SKEEN. 818?
Mr. JORDAN. Right. Because we ventured with a bunch of other Tribes, 11 other Tribes to work on getting funding for building health facilities.
In particular, on behalf of the Choctaw of Oklahoma, Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin—they are here in the room today—Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico, Kaw of Oklahoma, Klamath of Oregon, Nez Perce of Idaho, and Oneida of Wisconsin, again, St. Croix of Wisconsin, Sisseton-Wappeton of South Dakota and North Dakota, Stockbridge-Munsee of Wisconsin, three affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold of South Dakota and Tohono O'odham of Arizona, I bring you greetings and a message of hope for our members.
Page 121 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Through the common interests and concern for the health of citizens, we have formed a coalition called Tribal Nations Joint Venture Coalition for Health Facilities. This coalition is committed to working with Congress to make possible the construction of health facilities and is optimistic that this committee will dedicate itself to meeting us halfway so we can improve the situation on the reservations.
Under the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, Section 818 authorizes the Indian Health Service to establish joint venture demonstration projects under which Indian Tribes acquire or construct a health facility and lease it to the IHS at no cost for at least 20 years.
The IHS would not provide planning, design or construction money for these facilities, however, it would equip staff and maintain them. Although two such projects were funded in the past, no funds have been made available for this program since Fiscal Year 1993.
We believe that while new construction modernization has been the priority of this committee, a strong case exists for the funding of the joint venture demonstration program as well. For example, collectively the Tribes participating in this coalition have a service need approaching 80,000 citizens.
The Oneida Nation is working to acquire funds to build a new health facility to better meet the health care needs of its members. Resources in an amount less than $5 million would allow us to serve over 14,000 eligible American Indian and U.S. military veteran patients.
The Tohono O'odham Nation located in Arizona has the second largest land base of any Indian Nation in the United States. Over 20 years ago, the Indian Health Service identified the need for a health care facility for the Western territory of their Nation. The Tribe has now made the commitment to build a facility themselves but resources will be needed to equip and staff the facility.
Page 122 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The Kaw Nation located in Oklahoma has budgeted for the construction of a 7,200 square foot health center, the Kanza health clinic and that will provide comprehensive health care services to an under-served population presently residing in Northern Oklahoma and Southern Kansas.
Were the Section 818 program reopened they would require $1.3 million in Fiscal Year 1999 for equipment purchases and staffing needs.
To provide health care to the 38,000 Native Americans being served at their 63-year old health care facility, the Choctaw Nation has recently begun work on the construction of a $21 million outpatient and 37-bed inpatient facility in Taleheena, Oklahoma. The Choctaw request that Congress appropriate $6 million for medical equipment and the necessary funds to provide 148 new positions for this facility.
The St. Croix Tribe intends to request that Congress provide $645,840 per year to expand medical care at a new facility that the Tribe expects to begin beginning later this year. These funds would likewise be used to equip and staff their facility.
The above is representative of some of the coalition members' desires. The intent is to develop projects consistent with the Indian Health Care Improvement Act which underscores one, Federal Health Services to maintain and improve the health of Indians and are consistent with and required by the Federal Government's trust relationship with the American Indian people.
Page 123 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Number two, a major national goal of the United States is to provide the quantity in health quality services to American Indians in order to raise the health status among American Indians to the highest possible level.
Number three, Federal Health Services to American Indians have resulted in a reduction in prevalence and incidence of preventable illnesses among and unnecessary and premature deaths of American Indians.
Number four, the unmet needs of the American Indian people are severe and their health status is far below that of the general population.
Mr. Chairman, our written testimony amply shows that the existing system is not working. It is an embarrassment to Indian Country and to the United States. Our approach would move us in the right direction. Each coalition member is committed to securing non-Federal funding for construction, planning and design phases. With the proposed appropriation of Federal dollars for equipment and staffing consistent with Section 818, the Tribes can demonstrate the capacity to implement this proposal with approximately three new starts each year with an additional $15 million per annum.
Each coalition member is pursuing a plan designed to adjust the unique needs of their constituency and their communities. While we are jointly advocating for this long-needed approach, we will each have individual nuances and capacities for development.
We, therefore, propose that the selection of Tribes for inclusion be competitive but with the commitment of funding over a minimum of a five-year period be assured. While we know that one Congress cannot commit another, we feel strongly that should this committee offer its commitment that the success of the program will demonstrate its wisdom.
Page 124 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The benefits are many. Tribal Governments can provide construction and development at significant cost over many Federal construction programs. Tribes can generate designs and facility plans in much less time than current Federal processes.
Tribal-based facilities bring the whole array of health related services to often remote communities; vision, dental, pharmacy and dietician services can be brought to where they are needed.
Health facilities will exist in places where they have not or where their conditions make them nonfunctional at worst and dramatically inefficient at best.
Doctors and patients will not have to wait for examination rooms, patients will not have to sit in waiting rooms where the floors sag and they threaten to cave in. Services will be provided in less than 35 years.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, we simply ask that you meet us halfway. We ask that you partner with us to make these facilities a reality. We ask that you support a plan that moves us in the direction of being funded at a level of only one-third of other Americans.
Furthermore, we will be providing written testimony on the Fiscal Year 1999 IHS budget.
Thank you for your consideration and Ms. Diana Bowman and myself will be happy to take any questions.
Page 125 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you, both.
And I am sorry that time is so short. We appreciate both of you being here.
Ms. BOWMAN. Okay. If there are no questions, that is fine.
Mr. SKEEN. I have no questions.
Mr. JORDAN. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you.
[The statement of Gary Jordan follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
JAMES H. SCHLENDER, EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATOR, GREAT LAKES INDIAN FISH AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION
Page 126 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, James Schlender.
Thank you all for coming.
Mr. SCHLENDER. Good afternoon.
Mr. SKEEN. Good afternoon, sir.
Mr. SCHLENDER. My name is James Schlender and I am the Executive Administrator of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission and on behalf of our 11 member Tribes, we thank you for this opportunity to give testimony today.
We are asking for $3.8 million roughly. Most, $3.5 million of that is continuing and the President has proposed the $32,000 COLA for our employees. We support that because our employees are doing a wonderful and exceptional job of managing the harvest of natural resources in Wisconsin.
We are also asking that there be an increase and add-on to our funding of $95,000 to fund a Tribal Court and a registration station for the Fond du Lac Tribe, who will be exercising in the 37th territory of Minnesota which was recently reaffirmed by the Eighth Circuit.
We are also asking for $35,000 to do fish population studies in the ceded territories in Minnesota. And we are also asking for $100,000 to look at sulfide mining in Wisconsin.
Page 127 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. You say what kind of mining?
Mr. SCHLENDER. Sulfide mining.
Mr. SKEEN. Sulfide.
Mr. SCHLENDER. And that is our request and I will not take up any more of your time.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, we appreciate it very much and we will give it every consideration.
Thank you.
Mr. SCHLENDER. One last thing. Today is my birthday and I noticed that——
Mr. SKEEN. Happy Birthday.
Mr. SCHLENDER [continuing]. Mr. Martin and I have an opportunity to have a raise and two of my bosses are here. [Laughter.]
Mr. SKEEN. I think this is a stellar moment for you. Happy Birthday to you and they owe you. So, they better take you to lunch.
Page 128 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SCHLENDER. They are going to do that.
Mr. SKEEN. Oh, they are going to do that.
Mr. SKEEN. All right. Thank you very much.
[The statement of James Schlender follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESSES
DONALD MOORE, SR., CHAIRMAN, BAD RIVER BAND LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA INDIANS
BRUCE HORT, TRIBAL COUNCIL MEMBER
Mr. SKEEN. We will have Donald Moore, Bad River Band Lake Superior Chippewa.
Welcome, gentlemen.
Page 129 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To my left is Tribal Council Member Bruce Hort.
Mr. SKEEN. Bruce, good to see you.
Mr. MOORE. And the Tribal Chairman of the Bad River Band Lake Superior Tribe of the Chippewa Indians.
Mr. SKEEN. You are the Chairman?
Mr. MOORE. Yes.
Mr. SKEEN. Congratulations.
Mr. MOORE. Thank you.
Mr. SKEEN. It is nice to have you here.
Mr. MOORE. As you heard from many of my colleagues in the past from different Tribes is——
Mr. SKEEN. There seems to be a recurring pattern.
Page 130 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MOORE. Right, health care.
Mr. SKEEN. Health care, initial health.
Mr. MOORE. Right, contract health.
Mr. SKEEN. Buildings.
Mr. MOORE. Hospital and clinics.
Mr. SKEEN. Resource development?
Mr. MOORE. Right. Especially contract health. In 1991, we had population, a user population of 1,100 and today we have about 1,600. So, the decrease in funding is detrimental for problems there at Bad River. Also, diabetics is a problem, I understand.
Mr. SKEEN. That seems to be a persistent problem.
Mr. MOORE. Right. We have here, statistically, we have 150 diabetic patients out of a total reservation population of 1,200 on the reservation.
Mr. SKEEN. That is very high.
Mr. MOORE. So, it is soaring. The same way that the cancer rate is growing at an alarming rate also. It has increased significantly and hopefully, you know, the Administration did increase funding to provide for breast and cervical cancer, at the same time we note that other key programs were cut to provide this cancer screening.
Page 131 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So, we are in the same kind of a boat as other Tribes and we are here to try to persuade this committee to help us in these areas.
Also, I have another problem that is our law enforcement. As we strongly support the President's Indian Country Law Enforcement Initiative at Bad River. It is very important like in December our Tribal casino was subject to an armed robbery and we do not have any——
Mr. SKEEN. That is not a fair way to play the game.
Mr. MOORE. No, that is for sure. They came in, you know, those armed robbery——
Mr. SKEEN. The machines will rob you soon enough.
Mr. MOORE. Right. But it was in and out. I mean it happened within three or four minutes.
Mr. SKEEN. Very quickly, huh?
Mr. MOORE. And the law enforcement from our Marconi law enforcement it took them 10 or 15 minutes to get there and by that time it was all over.
And we do not have any law enforcement on the reservation at all.
Page 132 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. None?
Mr. MOORE. No, no presence at all. And that is why we are here today to request $125,000 to hire training and equip two Tribal police officers.
We also urge the committee to clarify the funds from Indian Country Law Enforcement for Tribal Conservation law enforcement. For many Tribes, including Bad River, the effect of enforcement on Tribal hunting and fishing and trapping laws and environmental laws is essential to protecting the health and welfare of Tribal members and community.
We need an additional, two additional law enforcement personnel, two trucks to provide the patrol capabilities at a cost of $100,000. This would be an important and worthwhile investment.
Mr. SKEEN. You have no law enforcement officers now?
Mr. MOORE. No. We have two Game Wardens.
Mr. SKEEN. I see.
Mr. MOORE. Tribal Game Wardens.
So, it is a problem. I have talked to the local sheriff and he is ready to cooperate with us and get some cross deputization, whatever needs to be done.
Page 133 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Well, at least you are working on a plan.
Mr. MOORE. Right.
Also, we have land consolidation which, as you know, the failed allotment policy under which about 97 percent of our reservation lands were allotted, our reservation is so badly checkerboarded now that we are trying to get back most of our land. We are buying a lot of land back to try to get more, we are over 51 percent now, but to protect Tribal members from the horrible effects of a lot of different things we are trying to increase funding in these areas also.
We do get a little bit of money through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But not nearly enough because there is lands constantly sold on the reservation and we are trying to consolidate them into the Tribal network.
And in education we have a Mashkisibi school at Bad River. It means community school and it just started here about three years ago. And at the nearby district, we have a high school that we have a lot of Indian dropout people, kids that we take into that school and we teach them a diverse curriculum including language, cultural, and we have graduated quite a few young adults from that school in recent years, in the last couple of years.
In fact, I was part of their graduation ceremonies and if we did not have that school these kids would be out on the street somewhere. But they did go to that school and did attain an education.
Page 134 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So, we urge the committee to provide $82,000 for operation of the school and $200,000 to enable us to build a permanent school facility. We are doing our best now. We have got a few gaming dollars we throw money to the Council, and throw some gaming money to support the school initiatives now, but it is not nearly enough, because we are, I think, some kids are falling through the cracks.
And child welfare is another one. We need help to limit child abuse and neglect and find suitable Indian families where Indian children can be protected. But, as other Tribes, we are doing innovative things, we are being creative and trying to keep the Indian children in within our community and our families.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, they are part of their own heritage.
Mr. MOORE. Right, right. And the Indian Child Welfare Act works quite well if it is followed correctly.
Last but not least is our natural resources. It is a key to our cultural and economic survival as people, wild rice, deer, walleye are central to our life and subsistence use of these resources is widespread and increasing. Proper management and enforcement efforts are more critical than ever to preserve the integrity of our treaty rights and resources for the members of the Band.
We need an additional $55,000 to enable us to meet our responsibilities under our Tribal/State Conservation Agreement on Lake Superior. Also the annual cost of fish and game program has risen 5 percent per year but the program had no increase for the last four Fiscal Years. Without the increase the Tribe could face a shortfall of $60,000 in fish and game funding.
Page 135 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
These funds would help protect our resources for future generations.
With all that said, the health portion of this year's testimony is the Great Lakes Inner Tribal Council is submitting written testimony today sometime, too, and they have the statistics and surveys that back up, I guess, most of these within Wisconsin of——
Mr. SKEEN. That tracks with your report, too?
Mr. MOORE. Right, right.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, we will put them both together.
Mr. MOORE. Sure. And we finally note our strong support for the full funding for the Circle of Flight program and BIA fish hatchery maintenance program.
I want to thank you on behalf of my Tribe and on behalf of myself and Bruce.
Mr. SKEEN. Well, thank you for your presentation and we will give it every consideration.
Mr. MOORE. We greatly appreciate that.
Page 136 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you for being here.
Mr. MOORE. Thank you.
[The statement of Donald Moore follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
MARGARET PLATERO, PRESIDENT, CANONCITO COMMUNITY SCHOOL BOARD OF EDUCATION, INC.
LORENZO PLATERO, SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER, CANONCITO COMMUNITY SCHOOL BOARD OF EDUCATION, INC.
Mr. SKEEN. At this point, I would like to insert into the record the testimony of the To'Hajiileehee Canoncito Band of Navajos of New Mexico. Since we are not able to give them a spot, we will insert their written statement into the record.
[The statement of Margaret Platero follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Page 137 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. SKEEN. Thank you all very much.
We are recessed until 1:30 p.m.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
CALEB SHIELDS, EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER, ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX TRIBES OF THE FORT PECK RESERVATION
Mr. REGULA [presiding]. We will now hear from Caleb Shields from the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation.
Mr. SHIELDS. Good afternoon.
Mr. REGULA. If you were not here this morning, I said all the statements will be made part of the record. We only have five minutes per witness. So, we are going to have to keep pushing. Okay, you may proceed.
Mr. SHIELDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I start my testimony I would like to express my personal thanks to the distinguished ranking member of this committee, Congressman Sidney Yates for his unending dedication to improving the lives of Indian people. His dedication and support of Indian people is a model for all members of Congress to follow and on behalf of all the Tribes, we wish Congressman Yates all the best in his retirement.
Page 138 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. He is a fine person.
Mr. SHIELDS. So, if you could pass that along.
Mr. REGULA. We will tell him.
Mr. SHIELDS. Mr. Chairman, on the testimony of the Fort Peck Tribes we have, on the last page, an attachment of the budget requirements that are needed by the Fort Peck Tribes. Fort Peck is a two million acre reservation that is spread out to 100 miles long by about 45 miles wide. So, our people are spread out over 100 miles.
Mr. REGULA. What State are you in?
Mr. SHIELDS. Montana.
Mr. REGULA. Yes.
Mr. SHIELDS. Since we are situated up in Northeast Montana, along a 100-mile highway, stretched across the reservation, it poses a lot of problems especially with law enforcement and the health care needs of the people. The budget that is presented to you as—we have it highlighted of Tribal priority allocations, the law enforcement needs, and the health needs.
Mr. Chairman, the last session of Congress and this session, as you are aware, we have had a lot of criticism and efforts to waive sovereign immunity of Tribes. There is criticism of the law enforcement, the Tribal courts, and we are talking about public safety and due process.
Page 139 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
As my testimony points out, in the TPA budgets, our law enforcement is under-funded by at least $1.3 million, from the budget we have now, the Tribal courts are really under-funded. So, until we can address those concerns and criticism of law enforcement and the courts, we need those monies to improve the public safety and due process issues on the reservation.
We have all those highlighted and we also include our concern and increased need for education. Because of welfare reform we have more and more clients that are applying for higher education and work programs. So, we have an increased need in that.
Also the welfare assistance, in Montana, we have what they call the FAIM, Families Achieving Independence in Montana. And under the FAIM program the Tribes, especially at Fort Peck, are under the State welfare program. But that only serves families with children. So, we still need increased welfare assistance through the Bureau of Indian Affairs because that program serves single people for welfare concerns. We have increased needs of welfare assistance.
We have also some water resources concerns. The Tribal courts, we have to improve for providing due process and one of our major problems also is the renovation of our detention facilities on the reservation. We have our needs outlined in our testimony.
So, Indian Health Service, as you know, there is no increase in the Indian Health Service Budget. In Fort Peck we have only two clinics. We contract out to the cities, 300 miles away, for any serious surgeries and all that. We have a short fall of over $1 million in contract health care for surgeries of those in need.
Page 140 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So, we would appreciate the staff of the committee looking at the testimony for the Fort Peck and see what can be done.
Mr. REGULA. We sure will. Thank you for coming.
Mr. SHIELDS. We appreciate your help.
Thank you.
[The statement of Caleb Shields follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
BOB WHITENER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SQUAXIN ISLAND TRIBE
Mr. REGULA. Next is the Squaxin Island Tribe.
Mr. WHITENER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Page 141 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I am Bob Whitener, and I am standing in for David Whitener, our chairman today and I am the Executive Director of the Squaxin Island Tribe.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. WHITENER. I would like to focus on a couple of things. First off, some of the general increases for TPA, IHS, and the contract support. The first thing is, that I think as you are aware, the Congressional Budget Office came out with a report a number of years ago that showed how Tribes had become basically quite a bit under-funded compared to other non-Indian sources and that unfortunately is continuing.
We are concerned that on TPA that we are falling behind versus keeping up, I think as you are aware of. On IHS and the medical stuff we are really concerned that when you compare the Indian Health Service's budget and our access to Medicare and Medicaid that we are consistently falling behind and that is a concern.
And then, last, it seems like this is sort of my issue. Every year I come and I talk about contract support and the problems that contract support causes for the Tribes. As an administrator for the Tribe, it is amazing that we are asked to manage a budget without actually knowing what the budget is until probably, last year I think we knew 30 days before the end of the Fiscal Year. It is simply not an appropriate way to run any Federal contract.
Mr. REGULA. No. I would agree. I agree with you and I would like to go to two-year budgets if we could.
Page 142 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. WHITENER. Yes. Anything or something to stabilize out on contract support and I think we have been looking, along with NCI, at some methods. There are some methodologies that could fix that problem versus an estimate and then not finding out where you are at until the end of the year.
We have heard anywhere from 75, 80 percent is all we will receive of contract support and it just makes it very difficult to manage a Federal program.
Mr. REGULA. I understand that.
Mr. WHITENER. The last thing is we have come before you today with really only one specific request for the Squaxin Island Tribe and that is in shellfish management. There was a shellfish case that is quite controversial in Washington State but has now gone through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and basically was upheld in the Tribe's favor.
And that just takes us one step down the road to where we are picking up all of the management costs associated with that and we have a request in for $97,500 for Squaxin Island Tribe but that is combined with all 20 Tribes and really represents a request of $1.950 million. A stand-alone request for the Squaxin Island Tribe would not make sense, but in a group that is what that would be for.
That would basically fund a biologist and one enforcement officer. I think the rest of the testimony is here. We have a lot of national issues and a lot of other concerns.
Page 143 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. You are in the State of Washington?
Mr. WHITENER. In the State of Washington.
Mr. REGULA. How many Tribal members do you have?
Mr. WHITENER. We have about 650.
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you.
Mr. WHITENER. Great, thank you.
Mr. REGULA. Are you on a river? Is salmon fishing important to your Tribe?
Mr. WHITENER. Well, yes, salmon and shellfish. Of our 600 members we have like 175 shellfishers and fishers.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, is that right?
Mr. WHITENER. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Is this in a river that you do this?
Mr. WHITENER. No. We are a marine Tribe and the reservation was formed on an island. It actually was a prison but it is a reservation and since then we have moved back to the inlets around the island.
Page 144 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you.
Mr. WHITENER. Thank you.
[The statement of Dave Whitener follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESSES
GERALD J. JONES, TRIBAL CHAIRMAN, PORT GAMBLE S'KLALLAM TRIBE AND DIANE PURSER, MEMBER
Mr. REGULA. We will now hear from Port Gamble.
Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. There are a lot of Tribes in the State of Washington.
Mr. JONES. Yes. That is true.
Page 145 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay, summarize what you want to tell us.
Mr. JONES. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman——
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
Mr. JONES [continuing]. For the opportunity to——
Mr. REGULA. What is that made out of?
Mr. JONES. It is made out of ivory.
Mr. REGULA. What animal is it from?
Mr. JONES. Walrus.
Mr. REGULA. It is what?
Mr. JONES. It is walrus tusk.
Mr. REGULA. Walrus tusk. Oh, it is different.
Mr. JONES. Hand carved. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss some of the funding needs of the Fort Gamble S'Klallam Tribe of Washington State and I would like to introduce my co-worker, Diane Purser who is going to go over the needs of our Tribe.
Page 146 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Thank you.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Ms. PURSER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am honored to be here today. First of all, we are requesting funds for additional police officers so that we can have 24-hour surveillance on our reservation. Like many Tribes, we are battling with the gang element and illegal drugs and have been committed to——
Mr. REGULA. Is this within your own people?
Ms. PURSER. Yes, yes. And we are committed to a no-tolerance attitude in that area as well as working with other State and local and Federal agencies to——
Mr. REGULA. Why do you think that those problems, and I have heard them before today, why are they greater now than they used to be? Is it the influence of what, television or the influence of——
Ms. PURSER. Well, our youth are lured in by, I think the glamour and, they really do not have serious input in that area but it is alluring to them in certain areas and by the time that they realize what they get into it is too late. They are already actively involved.
Page 147 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And maybe commit crimes or crimes of violence is what we are——
Mr. REGULA. You need more help on your law enforcement program?
Ms. PURSER. Definitely. What we are looking at is we would like to have 24-hour surveillance that would require six officers which we do not have at this point. And also the nearest jail facility that we have is nearly two hours away and is usually full. And, so, we are in the planning stages and would like to request——
Mr. REGULA. Is this a county jail that you use?
Ms. PURSER. It is a Tribal jail.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Ms. PURSER. It is an all-Tribal facility. It is quite a distance away from our Tribe and when it is full then that poses a safety threat to our community as well as our police officers.
So, we are seriously needing to get a jail facility which would also bring revenue and employment to the Tribe which we would be able to facilitate for six other local Tribes.
Second, we are requesting, like many Tribes, full funding for the BIA and the IHS indirect costs as required by law. Last year, we were short 25 percent which posed a very tremendous hardship on direct services to our people because we are mandated to cut direct services which directly affects our day care center, our education for our college students as well as senior citizens housing.
Page 148 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And when it comes to our children and our beloved elders, you know, we really seriously would like to request that we be allowed to service them as we should be able to, as required by law.
And if our indirect costs are not restored then we will also lose our newly established food bank. Under the Indian Tribal Justice Act, we would like to request that these funds be authorized. They have been authorized but not appropriated at this point and we are only receiving $29,000 to conduct our court and we are very proud of our court services, but it is very limited and so we would like to request your attention in that area.
Finally, our other area is in shellfish and salmon. We recently had two of our species of salmon were put on the Endangered Species List and, so, we would like to join the efforts in re-enhancement in that area. I am also a geoduck diver and we recently established a geoduck harvesting program where geoduck divers are managing that program through a taxation back into the Tribe of $130,000. However, this just meets the bare minimum and with the newly established ruling in the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, establishing our rights to harvest shellfish, we would like to meet the requirements for management in this area. In addition, this would allow us to get two biologists and three technicians and support services and equipment needed to carry this out.
And finally, I would like to voice our support for the Northwest Indian Fisheries request for fish and shellfish.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
Page 149 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. PURSER. Thank you.
[The statement of Gerald Jones follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, FISHERIES SERVICE
WITNESS
BILLY FRANK, JR., CHAIRMAN, NORTHWEST INDIAN FISHERIES COMMISSION
Mr. REGULA. All right. We will now hear from the Swinomish Tribal Community.
No one is here.
Okay, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning. I am Billy Frank, Chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. We are back again another year and thank you for being here for us.
Page 150 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. We do the best we can.
Mr. FRANK. And Congressman Norm Dicks, as you know, is our Representative.
Mr. REGULA. He is a good member.
Mr. FRANK. Oh, yes, he is a long-term member. But today, I am just here with Jim Anderson, Executive Director, of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission; and Jim Harp, one of our Commissioners, and——
Mr. REGULA. Do you deal with the problems of fishing, generally?
Mr. FRANK. Fish and shellfish.
Mr. REGULA. In the whole area?
Mr. FRANK. Yes. I will end our talk in a little bit talking about shellfish.
Jim, would you?
Mr. REGULA. How do you harvest the shellfish? Is it netted or is it really a fish?
Page 151 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. FRANK. We dig shellfish from the beaches, they are under the ground. And in the deep water we have geoducks and crabs and all other species.
Mr. REGULA. Shellfish is literally in a shell?
Mr. FRANK. Yes. It is in a shell, a hard shell.
Mr. REGULA. I am sure it is very edible. You produce them for retail trade or just for yourselves?
Mr. FRANK. We harvest them for commercial and ceremonial and subsistence uses. Yes. We manage thousands of miles of beaches on the Pacific Coast, as well as in Puget Sound.
Mr. REGULA. So, the shellfish are on the coastal beaches as well as the beaches of the Sound.
Mr. FRANK. Inside the Sound, yes.
Mr. REGULA. How about the rivers, anything there?
Mr. FRANK. No.
Mr. REGULA. I am sure there is a good market for them.
Page 152 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. FRANK. Yes, there is a great market for them. And it allows us to work with the local governments and cities and community ports and to keep the water clean.
Mr. REGULA. Do you drop them in hot water, is that the way that they are prepared?
Mr. FRANK. There are different ways that we process them. You know, we put them on a fire and hot rocks and then they open up and they just bake like that. We cover them with a big sacks and different things and let them steam and pretty soon they just open up and they are ready to eat. And they have got juices in them and everything. We will bring you some. [Laughter.]
Mr. ANDERSON. Better yet, we would like to have you come out to the Northwest.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. We are going to run out of time if we keep going here. Tell me quickly what you have in mind.
Mr. HARP. Quickly, Mr. Chairman, we have a couple of things that we would like the committee to consider addressing. One is the technical correction to the Western Washington Boldt Implementation and the Pacific Salmon Treaty——
Mr. REGULA. The Boldt decision.
Page 153 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. HARP [continuing]. Funding shortfalls that the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission receives. It is about $185,000. Secondly, is the contract support funding. We would like to see that we request the committee to be sure that it receives 100 percent funding. Previous testifiers have commented about the contract support shortfall. For the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, that is about $250,000 shortfall.
Mr. REGULA. This commission manages the whole State of Washington?
Mr. HARP. Of Western Washington. There are 20 Tribes that is in the Western Washington under the Boldt Decision.
Mr. REGULA. Is that right?
Mr. HARP. Yes, that is right. So, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission serves as a coordinating body for all 20 member Tribes. It was established back in 1974 after the Boldt Decision.
So, those are two budgetary issues that are of concern to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and its member Tribes.
Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of quick points, with regard to the Endangered Species Act and some of the concerns that the Tribes have for restoring and protecting the Pacific Salmon. I, as a couple of the speakers previously mentioned, there have been several listings under the Endangered Species Act for the salmon in the Northwest that greatly affect the Tribes and the largest one is the Shinook listing, that is the largest——
Page 154 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. You are concerned about the impact on their environment.
Mr. ANDERSON. We are concerned about that as well as a desire to see those populations raised to levels that they need to be so that harvests can be sustained at a high enough level.
What we are suggesting is three things towards that end. One is a previous funded item, we would like to continue that kind of funding that we received from this committee for the past several years. It is a wildstock restoration initiative.
Secondly, we are supporting a new initiative within the Bureau of Indian Affairs proposal. It is a $1 million line item for Endangered Species Act support for the Indian Tribes, very important to us. We would anticipate that we would get a fair amount of those monies because of the current problems in the Northwest.
And, finally, we are seeking additional support for a monitoring and evaluation effort that would help us help the Federal Government fulfill its obligations under the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and several other mandates that they have to do monitoring in the context of some of these natural resource issues.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. FRANK. The final on the shellfish, we are asking for $1.95 million on shellfish management and enhancement throughout our—you have heard some of our member Tribes talking—but Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, again, allows us to speak with one voice as we come in front of you.
Page 155 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I understand.
Mr. FRANK. And we appreciate what you are saying and what you are doing.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
Mr. FRANK. Thank you.
[The statement of Billy Frank follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
NATURAL RESOURCES
WITNESSES
PATRICK NORMAN, JR., VICE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS, CHUGACH REGIONAL RESOURCES COMMISSION
PATTY BROWN-SCHWALENBERG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHUGACH REGIONAL RESOURCES COMMISSION
Page 156 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Chugach Regional Resources Commission.
They must be from the State of Washington.
Ms. BROWN-SCHWALENBERG. Alaska.
Mr. REGULA. Alaska, where in Alaska?
Mr. NORMAN. On the Kenai Peninsula, Port Graham.
Ms. BROWN-SCHWALENBERG. Prince William Sound. We represent seven Native villages in Prince William Sound in Alaska.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. You are interested in natural resources, you are Patty Brown, are you?
Ms. BROWN-SCHWALENBERG. Yes. I am the Executive Director and this is Pat Norman, the Vice Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. What do you want to tell us?
Mr. NORMAN. We want to thank you for your past support for our hatchery program that we are developing. We had a fire in our cannery facility in Port Graham where the hatchery was located. And it burnt to the ground in January of this year.
Page 157 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. In Alaska? Canned salmon?
Mr. NORMAN. Canned salmon. It was in the cannery that we can salmon and then the hatchery was in the second floor of the building. We are requesting a one-time request of $1.5 million to assist the hatchery in rebuilding that program.
Mr. REGULA. The hatchery is operated by the Tribe or by the Government of Alaska?
Ms. BROWN-SCHWALENBERG. It is a Tribal facility.
Mr. REGULA. A Tribal facility.
Mr. NORMAN. My village corporation is rebuilding the cannery part of the complex which is $5 million. This $1.5 million will help us to rebuild the hatchery portion of this complex.
That is a one-time request that we are looking at. For this coming year, we are looking to get money from the State to assist us in our ability to take eggs from the summer's return, we will be able to handle those in another building that we have. But for the future, we are needing to rebuild what we had before.
We have three other requests. These would be add-ons to our base funding. And that is $225,000 for traditional natural resources program. We are trying to assist our seven member villages in developing natural resources management capabilities. We feel the State is over-burdened with doing its duties for the whole State. We would like to assist in a co-management type capability in managing our local area. And this money would help in that regard.
Page 158 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We also have, as a part of our program, a shellfish hatchery. It is in Seward, Alaska, and we would like $170,000 add-on, continuing add-on, for that project. This is to assist with the shellfish program. They are continuing with the program of being able to grow-up clam spat and they have seeded three of our villages' beaches already from this program. But they want to expand into other projects which will be oyster spat, which currently we are having to buy from outside, I think Washington State.
And they have been able to raise some but we want to increase their capability to provide oyster spat for the whole seven other villages in our region, plus the other——
Mr. REGULA. Seven hundred villages just in your region?
Mr. NORMAN. Seven villages.
Ms. BROWN-SCHWALENBERG. Right. And then in addition we would be selling to the other shellfish farmers in Alaska.
Mr. NORMAN. Yes. Currently everybody is buying their oyster spat from outside.
Mr. REGULA. A shellfish farmer would have a lagoon or something or would they just use the beach?
Page 159 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. BROWN-SCHWALENBERG. No. They have lantern nets in a lagoon.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. NORMAN. It is in bays, yes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Is that covered?
Mr. NORMAN. That one there, there is one more regarding the hatchery, we would like $205,000 for continuing operations. Now, with the fire it is knocked us back to a beginning and we need the assistance in getting the program back up on its feet for an additional three years.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Patrick Norman follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
Page 160 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
LORENA ZAH BAHE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREASEWOOD SPRINGS COMMUNITY SCHOOL, INC.
Mr. REGULA. Greasewood Springs Community School, Inc. It sounds like a movie set.
Tell me about Greasewood.
Ms. BAHE. We are not about fish but we are about education.
Mr. REGULA. Education?
Ms. BAHE. Education. My name is Lorena Zah Bahe and I am the Executive Director at Greasewood Springs, and I have with me our School Board Vice President and Greasewood Springs Community School Incorporated is a grant school from Arizona, the Navajo Nation. We have 309 Navajo students, kindergarten through eighth and we are into our second year as a grant school, formerly a BIA-operated school.
First of all, I would like to thank the subcommittee for their assistance, their approval of our new gymnasium construction at Greasewood. In Fiscal Year 1998 it was $3.14 million. And next time——
Mr. REGULA. Already done?
Ms. BAHE. Already done and we are into the construction phase right now and the construction will begin this summer. So, hopefully next year, when we come, we will show you a picture of the new gymnasium. And, so, we are excited about that and we appreciate it.
Page 161 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. This is an Indian school, it is not a public school?
Ms. BAHE. It is an Indian school, a grant school.
Several issues I want to bring up this afternoon, Mr. Chair. First, is the Indian Student Equalization Program, funding for basic education in BIA-funded schools. The budget increased the ISEP funding by $14.8 million this year. This only meets a lot of the teachers and counselor and staff requirements at the local level, including the 3 percent increase in the student enrollment.
The WSU, which is the formula weighted student unit, for school year 1999 and 2000 is estimated at $3,128 per WSU. Our kids need more programs, they need quality teachers, we need more specialists and specialized counselors, and we cannot use that money. We just barely meet the requirements as I have said. So, we are requesting a $30.13 million increase over the current ISEP funding. So that our WSU could go up to $3,394 and that would provide a lot of educational opportunities for our Navajo students.
We have two public schools nearby. We are not as pretty as a public school because they get lots of funding.
Mr. REGULA. You have good teachers. That is what counts, more than the building.
Page 162 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. BAHE. Yes. One of the major problems that we have had in BIA Indian education for a long time has been in the area of student transportation. We are just so under-funded in student transportation.
Mr. REGULA. You have to move your kids quite a distance?
Ms. BAHE. Yes. Yes, we are covering a lot of unimproved miles out there. A lot of our roads, 80 percent of our roads at Greasewood is still dirt roads. And there is a pavement that runs through from one city to the next and that is the only pavement that we have in the community. So, we have six buses. And we put a total of close to 1,000 miles a day to pick up students and take them home.
And since our roads are all dirt roads, that is a lot of wear and tear on our buses.
Mr. REGULA. That serves just the Navajo community?
Ms. BAHE. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. But there is what, 10,000 in your Tribal group, or are there far more?
Ms. BAHE. Students?
Mr. REGULA. No. The total Navajo Tribe.
Page 163 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. BAHE. The latest figure that we heard was 260,000.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, it is really large.
Ms. BAHE. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Are you all in Arizona?
Ms. BAHE. Yes. Kolbe is representing us in this committee.
And so, with our buses it is really expensive to buy four-wheel buses.
Mr. REGULA. Yes. I understand.
Ms. BAHE. And we only have one that we use to cover all the dirt roads, especially when it gets muddy. So, I really——
Mr. REGULA. Does it get muddy in Arizona? You get rain down there. [Laughter.]
Ms. BAHE. That is down South, we are up North. So, we are really under-funded in our transportation budget by at least $100,000. So, I am requesting the committee to take a look at it. The attachments that I have, I have mileage charts, our daily transportation expenses and I will attach them to the testimony here.
Page 164 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We have a trading post out there, an old trading post and we buy diesel fuel. Diesel fuel from them and it is costly for the six buses. And we are in a real remote area. Holbrook, Arizona, is the closest town we have which is about 50 miles. So, we have to drive that many miles to——
Mr. REGULA. Do you have K–12?
Ms. BAHE. K–8.
Mr. REGULA. Where do the students go to high school, or do they not?
Ms. BAHE. We are a feeder school to Nadado public school and to Holbrook public school. Real good public schools in the State of Arizona.
Mr. REGULA. Very good.
Okay. Anything else?
Ms. BAHE. The other thing that I have, Mr. Chairman, is the health clinic at Greasewood. We have a health clinic there. We would like to help Sage Memorial Hospital which is a private hospital and they subcontracted that health clinic from IHS and the school is really interested in helping them out to extend services to our students. We do not have an ambulatory care ambulance in that community. We are so remote that we need an ambulance out there.
Page 165 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Last year, one of our teachers had a stroke in the classroom and because we are so remote and the closest ambulance service is about 50 miles he was gone by the time the ambulance got there. Real good traditional teacher, cultural teacher.
So, things like that happen and I think when you are out there you are aware and since you are so remote there is a lot of services, additional services that need to be provided.
As the other person that testified on law enforcement, our law enforcement in Indian Country is very, very critical. I want to also commend the Administration for the increase in law enforcement, but a lot of those increases are just to increase the Tribal headquarters, Tribal police stations and all of that. We would like to have some of those services down at the local area, at the grassroots level, so we need to expand the security services.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
Ms. BAHE. And that is all I have.
Thank you.
Mr. REGULA. You have a beautiful broach, I like it.
Ms. BAHE. Thank you.
Page 166 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. It is some of your Native work?
Ms. BAHE. Yes!
Mr. REGULA. It is very nice, thank you.
[The statement of Lorena Zah Bahe follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
FAYE BLUEEYES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SHIPROCK ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS, INC.; SCOTT HANSINGER, BUSINESS MANAGER; AND ROY TSO, PRESIDENT
Mr. REGULA. We will now hear from Shiprock Alternative Schools, Inc. Okay, tell us your story.
Ms. BLUEEYES. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, my name is Faye BlueEyes, and I am the Executive Director for Shiprock Alternative Schools.
Page 167 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. HANSINGER. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, I am Scott Hansinger, I am the business manager.
Mr. REGULA. That is for the school or the Tribe?
Mr. HANSINGER. For the school.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, for the school, okay.
Mr. TSO. I am Roy Tso, Jr., and I am the President of the board of directors at Shiprock Alternative Schools.
Mr. REGULA. Well, tell me about Shiprock, is this an Indian school?
Mr. TSO. This is a Navajo Grant school
Mr. REGULA. Navajo, K–12?
Mr. TSO. K–12.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. What do you mean by alternative school?
Mr. TSO. Our program is alternative because they offer nontraditional programs to serve Navajo Indian youth who have dropped out of school and have become pregnant and are in need of child care to continue studies or have disciplinary problems in other schools.
Page 168 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. You have vocational programs, to give them skills?
Ms. BLUEEYES. We would offer that but we do not have the funding to accommodate those needs.
Mr. REGULA. How many students do you have?
Ms. BLUEEYES. A total of 420.
Mr. REGULA. Are they bussed in?
Ms. BLUEEYES. Yes, they are and we also have a boarding program which houses 85 students and 50 students of those who attend are high school.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. So, this is a school for at-risk youth rather than just the normal curriculum?
Ms. BLUEEYES. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. And you need more money?
Mr. TSO. We sure do. [Laughter.]
Mr. REGULA. I am surprised. [Laughter.]
Page 169 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. TSO. I believe we are competing with other Indian leaders here today for the pot of money.
Mr. REGULA. Well, the problem is that you compete not only with them but you compete with the parks and the forests and the——
Mr. TSO. I understand.
Mr. REGULA [continuing]. And the BLM, and that is our problem. We have all these responsibilities, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center. Everybody is on our radar screen and we have to try to divide it up as best we can.
Okay. Give me your needs.
Mr. TSO. Okay. To continue, my prepared remarks here, Shiprock Alternative Schools is currently managing——
Mr. REGULA. Just summarize it for me because we do not have enough time for you to read it.
Mr. TSO. All right, I can do that. We have an alternative high school as mentioned, an elementary program, a special education program that serves severe and profoundly disabilities students. Our main concern is our facilities. Our buildings are old dormitories converted for educational use through the removal of nonsupportive interior walls to create classroom space.
Page 170 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
These spaces are fire and safety hazards, as evidenced by the 1988 Facility Code of Compliance Survey and the BIA Inspection Validation Report and I quote from that report. It states that, ''Buildings were originally designed for BIA dormitories——''
Mr. REGULA. You do not have to tell me. I am sure that you have problems with them. What do you need?
Mr. TSO. Okay. We come to you today to ask you two things which are very imperative to our program as well as other programs across Indian Country. We ask that the subcommittee fully fund the Administration's Education Construction Budget request of $37.4 million, and this is a critical step.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. What else?
Mr. TSO. Our next in line is over the next two years 22 BIA schools will convert to contract grant status and without additional funding this will create a shortage in administrative cost grants. And we humbly ask you to fund the administrative cost at 100 percent.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Well, we have your testimony and we will take a look at it. We understand your problems.
Thank you very much for coming.
Page 171 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. TSO. Thank you.
Mr. REGULA. Now, you serve the Najavo Nation?
Mr. HANSINGER. Yes, we do.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
[The statement of Roy Tso follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
VINCENT TOYA, GOVERNOR, PUEBLO OF JEMEZ
Mr. REGULA. Pueblo Jemez.
You have some visuals with you?
Mr. TOYA. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Page 172 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
My name is Vincent Toya, and I am the Governor of the Pueblo Jemez and thank you for the opportunity to testify before you and this committee.
Mr. REGULA. Just summarize your concerns.
Mr. TOYA. Okay. What we have is several. I have got some testimonials in front of me.
Mr. REGULA. Yes, we will put your statement in the record.
Mr. TOYA. Yes. And what I would like to do is just cover maybe three of the most important.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Please highligt them.
Mr. TOYA. The first one is an irrigation project that we would like to request which is at a phase three level. We have some photos here that kind of talk about phase one, phase two and phase three.
Mr. REGULA. Is this for agriculture, irrigation for agriculture?
Mr. TOYA. Irrigation for the natural resources from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We are requesting roughly about the same as on phase one, we have got a previous $1.4 million that we never completed the phase three and that is what we are requesting this time at about $3 million.
Page 173 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Would this provide for deeper ditches to bring in the water?
Mr. TOYA. The ditches and then also some leveling for maximum use of the water for the pueblo.
Mr. REGULA. Right.
Mr. TOYA. What we want to do is really complete the last phase. We also want to thank and commend the appropriation committee for allowing us for the two phases that were completed and those are really successful and we want to look into the phase three and we want to complete that as well.
Mr. REGULA. What do you grow in the areas that are irrigated?
Mr. TOYA. We grow traditional corn, chiles, all the vegetables that we can grow that is allowable within the season, you know, traditional corn, chiles, wheat, and alfalfa.
Mr. REGULA. I understand. Do you market any of the products, or do you just use them for your own consumption?
Mr. TOYA. Well, right now, for our own consumption. Commercializing some of these could probably be an opportunity that we would like to also look into as well.
Page 174 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. If you had more irrigation, you could grow excess—
Mr. TOYA. Yes, we have——
Mr. REGULA [continuing]. To take to the market.
Mr. TOYA. We have the land base to do so, and all we need to do is to improve our systems to incorporate that.
Mr. REGULA. Do you use tractors, modern machinery?
Mr. TOYA. Now we do because of the fast changing paces of times.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. TOYA. And then the next one here is the United States versus Abousleman, a stream adjudication thing that we are in right now, and there is a very good project that we have got right now that has done a lot of efforts and progress in this. And in order to get to the negotiation table with the non–Indian ditch associations, three of our tribes—you know, Jemez, Zia, and Santana—all have successfully come together to work a rotation schedule in the drought stages when the water is low. We were able to succeed with that, at least the rotation schedule, and sharing the Rio Jemez Basin during the drought stages, and this is what we are trying to do in efforts of negotiation as the Federal court has recommended for us to do instead of going to a litigation mode, which will take, obviously, lot of number of years to complete this.
Page 175 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Negotiation has been going real well, and I think we are really improving on that. If we can perhaps increase our funding, I think all of us could really sit down again and really improve on the rotation schedule, and even the principles of agreement to avoid the litigation process, perhaps, and negotiate and really get somewhere with this adjudication process on the water rights.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Any other point you want to make? We have about a minute left.
Mr. TOYA. Okay. The law enforcement, again, obviously a lot of people are mentioning it about Indian country, and it is on there. And the last one is the highway bypass that runs to the right of Jemez country. We want to do that and move that over to the east end, and then the testimony really explains in detail for the following reasons why——
Mr. REGULA. How many members are in your tribe?
Mr. TOYA. There is a little over 3,000 right now.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. TOYA. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Vincent Toya follows:]
Page 176 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
ROBERT BROWN, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, SOUTHERN INDIAN HEALTH COUNCIL, INC.
JOSEPH E. BULFER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN INDIAN HEALTH COUNCIL, INC.
MICHAEL GARCIA, EWIIAAPAAYP BAND OF MISSION INDIANS
DENNIS TURNER, MANZANITA BAND OF MISSION INDIANS
JAMES HILL, LaPOSTA BAND OF MISSION INDIANS
KENNETH MEZA, JAMUL BAND OF MISSION INDIANS
Mr. REGULA. Next is the Southern Indian Health Council. As I understand it, you represent seven tribes. Is that right?
Mr. BROWN. The last time I was here, you were going to come out. You couldn't come out, so we brought some of the tribal chairmen with us.
Page 177 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I am sorry I was unable to come to visit.
Mr. BROWN. We brought some of the tribal chairmen from our area. Do you remember last time when we testified you were worried about areas? So I brought some of the tribal chairmen up and some of the representatives that we represent in the health clinic.
Mr. REGULA. Yes. For the reporter, let's get your——
Mr. BROWN. We will do it right now. Michael?
Mr. GARCIA. My name is Michael Garcia. I am a representative from the Ewiiaapaayp Band of Mission Indians, a member of the Southern Indian Health Council.
Mr. TURNER. I am Dennis Turner. I am asked by the chairperson to be here today, Frances Shaw, who just got out of the hospital from an extensive operation, for the Manzanita Reservation.
Mr. BULFER. Joe Bulfer from the Southern Indian Health Council, Executive Director.
Mr. HILL. James Hill from the La Posta Reservation.
Mr. MEZA. Kenneth Meza, tribal chairman for Jamul Band of Mission Indians.
Page 178 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Tell me why you are banded together. There are seven of you.
Mr. BROWN. Okay. We are going to do that right now, Congressman.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. BROWN. The health clinic serves—this is what we call a consortium in our area, and we serve 8,000 Indians, and these are all of the different tribes that we serve—8,000 Indians that we serve. I am sorry about that. But the last time we were here, you wanted—so we brought some with us this time.
Mr. REGULA. How do you serve them?
Mr. BROWN. Okay. At this time I will let you turn that over to Joe. Go ahead, Joe.
Mr. BULFER. I want to thank you, Chairman Regula for letting us make the presentation. As our Chairman Robert Brown said, we serve 8,000 people. We serve the health needs of the people on seven reservations in the San Diego County area. Of course, you just had an introduction of the people that are here.
Mr. REGULA. You have a central clinic?
Page 179 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BULFER. Right. We have a clinic that the seven reservations banded together to form to operate because not one reservation can provide the services, and it is sort of an economy of scale.
Mr. REGULA. Are you in Arizona?
Mr. BULFER. California, the San Diego area.
Mr. REGULA. San Diego.
Mr. BULFER. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. BULFER. About 70 miles east of San Diego. In the rural area of San Diego.
Mr. REGULA. Right, right. You band together for schools, too?
Mr. BULFER. No. The individual reservations serve their individual needs.
Mr. REGULA. You just do health?
Page 180 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BULFER. We do health. And we are here representing the two items. One is the Indian Health Service budget, and the second item is a specific Youth Regional Treatment Center. I wanted to get into maybe that area, and then we could sort of have a couple of the other tribal representatives and chairmen speak.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. BULFER. Basically, what we wanted to do is to—obviously there are a number of issues that we could talk about, but we wanted to get it down to the two most important, we felt.
The most important one overall is the fiscal year 1999 Indian Health Service budget. As you are probably aware, the IHS budget has a service and a facilities component. The total budget is $2.118 billion that was presented. That is—you know, the testimony is being submitted. There are a lot of details in there. But, in essence, the problem, it really comes down to almost like a breach and a violation of trust. The tribes, throughout the fiscal year last year and early this year, have gotten together with Indian Health Services, and we were of the understanding that $2.271 billion, a difference of $153 million, would have been submitted. And yet it came out to be only $2.118 billion.
What happened, we tried to find out where the differences were, and we were not given any explanations whatsoever. When we got the budget, we got into it. We tried to figure out what they did do. They basically cut out a lot of the mandatory cost increases, pay increases and so on and so forth.
Page 181 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
That has been going on for the last 7 years——
Mr. REGULA. That is about the administration in submitting their budget in these areas.
Mr. BULFER. Yes, yes. And no one knows who did it. We just know that it was done.
What we are very specifically here to request is that the $153 million be added back in. I am sure you have had testimony from the people about this, and I know that, for example, the Susanville group gave a detailed breakdown of the $153 million in their testimony.
Mr. REGULA. You think it would be at least at 1998 levels.
Mr. BULFER. At least. And what has happened over the last 7 years is it has been estimated that $1.12 billion has been cut out of our budgets, and we have had to absorb in terms of cost increases and things.
The real problem that is a result of all this is our mission, we are being able to serve less people. In IHS documents and everything, it is very apparent that the budget, as of last year, was only able to serve 36 percent of the people, 36 percent of the need.
Mr. REGULA. You are talking about generally, not just your group.
Page 182 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BULFER. Generally, yes.
Mr. REGULA. Generally, 36. So the tribe has this problem.
Mr. BULFER. Yes. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of this, 36 percent, it is also estimated that an Indian person receives only $1,382 per year in health services versus $3,261 a year for a non-Indian. So the point of this is that if there is such a difference, discrepancy, why are cuts being made to the Indian Health Service budget.
Mr. REGULA. Well, I can't answer that because we didn't write it.
Mr. BULFER. So what we are asking for is the $153 million to be added back in.
Mr. REGULA. We are going to have to ask the administration when they appear here as to what their rationale was.
Mr. BULFER. It is extremely urgent. It is even different in the BIA budget. The BIA budget had cost increases and stuff added in there. Why are they hitting the IHS budget?
Mr. REGULA. Well, that is a good question, and I don't have an answer.
Page 183 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BULFER. The next item was the Youth Regional Treatment Center. I think for the last few years, the last 10 years that I can remember, we have been coming back; we have been trying to get a Youth Regional Treatment Center started in California. In fact, we have been trying to do that all across the country.
Mr. REGULA. You want to get one for your seven members.
Mr. BULFER. Right.
Mr. BROWN. It will actually serve all of California.
Mr. BULFER. All California.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, to serve all of California. Would this be for youth at risk?
Mr. BULFER. Any substance abuse treatment. We want an inpatient treatment center. There is not one in California, and what has happened, there was a breakthrough last year with California Indian tribes. An act was passed in 1986 that mandated the establishment of Youth Regional Treatment Centers. The other 11 areas—there are 12 in the country. The other 11 areas were able to get one started up.
California is so big, has over 100 tribes. The territory is diverse. We were not able to get it started because the funding is woefully short. So what we did is we all got together and decided, how can we get two or three programs to get it going? We did.
Page 184 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Well, you need more than one for California.
Mr. BULFER. We do.
Mr. REGULA. It is too big.
Mr. BULFER. We do. So that act was amended, and we got two. We wanted one in the north, one in the south. But we were able to get two or three different programs initially going.
The Southern Indian Health Council went out on its own and decided we are going to build a facility. One of the problems is another program went and, you know, got an Army base. We are doing things way above normal to try to get something started. The problem is the YRTC funds can only be used for——
Mr. REGULA. Extra time because there are so many of them.
Mr. BULFER. Okay. The YRTC funds can only be used for operations. We had to build a facility. We went out and borrowed money, loans. We have almost a million—we are building a million dollar building.
Mr. REGULA. Do any of you have casinos? Do you have a casino? Does that help?
Page 185 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BROWN. With health, no.
Mr. BULFER. No casino revenue goes to the health consortium.
Mr. BROWN. No casino revenue goes to us.
Mr. REGULA. Where does it go?
Mr. BROWN. It goes back to tribal enterprise. Remember, the health organization is a corporation. The tribe—it is not part of a tribal line item budget, so they do not help. They donate money to the clinics if they want to, but that is not——
Mr. REGULA. It seems to me if you have profits from your casino——
Mr. BROWN. We have two——
Mr. REGULA [continuing]. You would want to help them.
Mr. BROWN. We have—another member of our board is Barona. They have a casino. They donate a lot of stuff in programs, but they do not have—you don't have a moral thing to give us back if you are a corporation. It is like outside and inside, even if we are Indians. It is just a business enterprise, just like outside.
Mr. BULFER. I think it goes back to the treaty obligations where health is——
Page 186 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Well, I understand that——
Mr. BULFER [continuing]. An obligation of the U.S. Government and should not be based upon means.
Mr. REGULA. I understand all that, but the reality is it is not happening, and it would seem to me that you would be concerned to the point that you would want to use some of those proceeds to help.
Mr. BROWN. Yes, I know, but as a tribal member from that reservation, when we put our budget together, there is not a line budget for Southern Indian Health Council in the budget. There is everything else the tribe operates. You know, that tribe does our own insurance and stuff like that, and that is how we meet the tribal needs. The other stuff is done by donations outside.
Mr. REGULA. One of the seven has a casino?
Mr. BROWN. Two of us.
Mr. REGULA. Two of you?
Mr. BROWN. Right. And so how that will help the casino, we get insurance and we use the casino. Then that becomes third-party revenue. But that is how we do it, but they don't—and when they do the budget, tribal budget, we do not have a line item in the budget for these things.
Page 187 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. What else do you have? We are running out of time here.
Mr. BULFER. The two requests we are looking for are that there is in that budget that is $153 million short, there is an increase of $9 million to the substance abuse line item. What we would like to see is half a million dollars go to each one of the 11 different other areas with $3.5 million going to California. The reason for $3.5 million is because we are behind the game with everybody else in getting a Youth Regional Treatment Center started. If we had that additional money in California, we could get something going.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. What else?
Mr. BULFER. And the second thing is to get $1.13 million allocated to Southern Indian Health Council. We would like to have you write or, notify the Director of the Indian Health Services to support $1.3 million of that $9 million to go to the Southern Indian Health Council.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. TURNER. May I have one minute?
Mr. REGULA. Yes, one minute.
Mr. TURNER. On behalf of the tribal chairpersons that are not here, they wanted to thank you for especially last year's appropriations for the smaller needy tribes, and they very greatly appreciate that, especially those tribes that are not gaming. As you know, they want to move on to the next step, which is program, but, sir, I have seen the letters sent to you and the other committee members. We really appreciate that. That is going to——
Page 188 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. We do the best we can. It is just that we are constrained by the amount of money that is allocated to our committee, and this is the third day of hearings. Yesterday we had the same number of people that wanted energy projects, and the day before we had the same number of people that wanted parks and forests. You know, it is difficult to spread the money around with all the needs.
Mr. TURNER. Certainly. It is a historical issue, though, in Indian country because you have changed the Bureau's policy on their funding pro rata history.
Thank you.
Mr. REGULA. We are trying. We are trying.
Thank you very much. Did you want to say anything?
Mr. GARCIA. I am a member of the Ewiiaapaayp Reservation and a member of the Council, and I just think it is an urgent concern. The clinic is housed on the reservation, on our reservation, and we have a wonderful thing going.
Mr. REGULA. I will congratulate you for working together.
Mr. BROWN. We work together.
Mr. REGULA. At least by working as a team, you are going to do far better by your people than if you each went off and tried to do your own. That makes a lot of sense to me for you to cooperate.
Page 189 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BROWN. Can we get that in writing? Can we get that thing in writing? [Laughter.]
Mr. REGULA. It will be in the record. The young lady is taking it all down over here.
Mr. BROWN. Thank you.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. BULFER. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. REGULA. You are welcome.
[The statement of Robert Brown follows:]
Offsett Folios 348 to 352 Insert here
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
Page 190 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
LORRAINE P. EDMO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INDIAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
JOHN CHEEK, LEGISLATIVE ANALYST
Mr. REGULA. National Indian Education Association.
Ms. EDMO. Good afternoon, Congressman Regula, chairman of the committee, and Joel Kaplan, staff member. I want to introduce myself. I am Lorraine Edmo. I am the executive director of the National Indian Education Association. Our president, Yvonne Novack, couldn't be here. She is from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and couldn't be here today. But I wanted to acknowledge our past president, one of our past presidents, Ms. Lorena Zah Bahe, who just testified, who is seated right behind me. She was our president from 1995 through 1996 and did a great job in advocating for the interests of Indian people nationwide.
I also wanted to introduce John Cheek, who is our legislative analyst, and he is a member of the Creek Nation. My tribe is the Shoshone——
Mr. REGULA. Figure out what we are doing, is that the idea?
Mr. CHEEK. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. You read it. Does it make sense?
Mr. CHEEK. I wrote it. [Laughter.]
Page 191 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. EDMO. No, what they are doing.
Mr. CHEEK. Oh.
Mr. REGULA. You are the legislative analyst, so I assume that means you try to analyze what we are trying to do.
Mr. CHEEK. I try.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Ms. EDMO. Our organization has been in business for over 30 years, and we represent American Indian and Alaska Native educators throughout the United States.
Mr. REGULA. The whole country.
Ms. EDMO. The whole country. We have over 3,000 members. There are program administrators, educators, students. There is a whole range of Indian educators that we represent. They are dues-paying members, so we are not government funded. But we try to advocate for the concerns of Indian educators nationwide.
You have a detailed testimony here of all of the——
Mr. REGULA. It will be part of the record.
Page 192 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. EDMO. Yes, all of the programs that we are recommending. We reviewed the President's budget and we support all of his recommendations for education funding, especially the school operations funding.
Mr. REGULA. Let me ask you, is the Indian education system overall improving?
Ms. EDMO. Yes, it is.
Mr. REGULA. You are becoming more relevant to the students' needs?
Ms. EDMO. Yes, I believe so. We have—about 12 percent of the Indian student population is in the Bureau school system, and the other 80—what is it?—88 percent is in the public school system.
Mr. REGULA. You only cover the 12 percent with people that are part of your organization?
Ms. EDMO. No. We represent all, the students, too, in the public schools.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Ms. EDMO. We work directly with the Office of Indian Education, Dave Bolio's office, over at the Department of Education, and all of those set-asides that are—like Title I and other set-asides for Indian education.
Page 193 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. You would represent schools that have public students—non-Indian students as well as Indian students; is that correct?
Ms. EDMO. Right. Right.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Ms. EDMO. And there are about an estimated 12,000 of those public schools that have Indian students in them.
Mr. REGULA. 12,000?
Ms. EDMO. 12,000 public—right, John, 12,000?
Mr. CHEEK. Public school, 1,200.
Ms. EDMO. Oh, sorry. It is 1,200.
Mr. REGULA. Are you getting more students that go on and finish 12 years of school?
Ms. EDMO. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Are students staying in school longer?
Page 194 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. EDMO. Well, the dropout rate is still a problem. I don't think it is as high as the Hispanic rate. Their rate is around 30 percent dropouts. Ours is about, I think, 26 percent. But of those that do finish high school, there are, I think, about 20 percent—20 to 30 percent of those that finish high school go on to college, and then those that do finish college, of that 20 to 30 percent, about 7 to 10 percent actually complete college.
Mr. REGULA. Are you getting those that go on to college to come back and be teachers?
Ms. EDMO. I think there is an increasing trend in that. But I just wanted to say that we do need—just one of the major points in my testimony is that we need more money for graduate scholarships, and in the Bureau's budget, they only included $1.3 million for graduate scholarships. And I used to direct that program, and they need more funding for graduate education.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Ms. EDMO. And we do support the IHS health professions funding as well. And I wanted to also point out the Institute of American Indian Arts, we would like to see that funded beyond 1999, if at all possible.
But we do have all of these programs outlined in detail, and if you need any more information, we can provide that to you.
Page 195 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. You have the community colleges, too.
Ms. EDMO. Well, we work with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, and we support their funding level. I think it is—$5.5 million more is requested for 1999 in the Bureau budget.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Ms. EDMO. Thank you.
[The statement of Lorraine Edmo follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
NATURAL RESOURCE PROGRAMS
WITNESS
SAMUEL N. PENNEY, CHAIRMAN, NEZ PERCE TRIBAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Mr. REGULA. Next is the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee.
Dan.
Page 196 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER [presiding]. Welcome. Congressman Regula has to step outside. I am Congressman Dan Miller. Welcome.
Mr. PENNEY. Thank you. Good afternoon. On behalf of the Nez Perce Tribe, we appreciate this opportunity to testify here today. We have several items.
First of all, we have a wolf recovery program in which the Nez Perce Tribe contracts with the Fish and Wildlife Service to implement grey wolf recovery within the State of Idaho, and we believe this is the only effort in the Nation in which a tribe has taken a lead on the recovery of an endangered species.
Last year, Senator Kempthorne, among others, helped us get $300,000 for our wolf recovery program, but we are in the third year of a 5-year cooperative agreement, and there is a need for recollaring many of the wolves that have been released. So we believe there is an additional need for this coming year, upwards to $400,000, to continue the monitoring efforts in the recovery program for the grey wolf reintroduction in the State of Idaho. It has been a very successful program up to this point.
Also, it has been, compared to other areas, the project is badly underfunded, and we need to do the work over an area of almost 15 million acres in which we monitor now upwards to 70 wolves, and some of the offspring need to be collared as well. So it is an important project, and we request through the Interior to the Fish and Wildlife Service that $400,000 be provided for continued effort on the grey wolf reintroduction.
Page 197 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The second issue is called a cadastral survey. On our reservation, because of the way that the reservation is checkerboarded, there are many disputes over land ownership. What a cadastral survey does is it goes back in and re-establishes the correct boundaries. There have been some disputes both ways. We have found that the tribe, the Nez Perce Tribe, has even trespassed onto non–Indians' land on a timber sale in which we had to compensate them for that trespass. But the whole intent of the cadastral survey is for land management purposes, that we know exactly where the lines are so that we can effectively manage those resources.
The BLM has established a cadastral survey station on the Nez Perce Reservation, and we have an agreement with them over, I believe, 5 years. But at the current rate, it only will meet about 10 percent of the need for those re-surveys on those areas of concern. So we are going to request that at least an additional $200,000 be provided for that effort.
Also, regarding the Indian Health Service, we are very disappointed with the administration's fiscal year 1999 request which includes no increases for inflation, population growth, or staffing of new facilities. Most of the programs are severely underfunded, and I think that many of the reports that are available to Congress will show that the Indian Health Service budget has never kept pace with inflation as compared to other health programs within the Federal system. So we feel it is vital to provide the necessary funding to continue those vital services for Indian tribes.
Also, I would like to mention law enforcement. There are many new initiatives not only within the Department of Interior but the Department of Justice for additional funding for Indian tribes. And there is an interesting statement that has been developed. It says that while the overall murder rate in the Nation has dropped 22 percent between 1992 and 1996, the murder rate in Indian country increased by 87 percent during this same period.
Page 198 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
In August of 1997, President Clinton issued a memorandum to Attorney General Janet Reno and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt directing them to improve law enforcement and criminal justice in Indian country.
For example, our tribal law enforcement currently only has a full-time staff of seven—excuse me, six officers that are required to be on 24 hours, 7 days a week, and there is a need for probably 12 officers just to meet the basic needs within our reservation. So the initiatives regarding increased law enforcement I think are very well founded.
I would like to also mention about what they call IHS joint venture projects in which the tribes would basically construct a new facility and IHS would provide the staffing and equipment for those facilities. For example, the Nez Perce Tribe, on the criteria used for new facility construction under IHS, we have found over the years that we will never get on that list. So the joint venture project is important to us, if we expend the funds for construction, that the funds be available through IHS to staff with equipment and so they will be there for many years to come.
I would like to conclude my comments with the Snake River Basin adjudication, commenced by the State of Idaho in 1987, and it has been 10 years up to this point regarding the negotiations. This is—we believe and have been told that this is the largest adjudication in the entire country, which covers the entire Snake River Basin.
In years past, we have been funded through the BIA Indian Rights Protection account, Water Rights Negotiation and Litigation Program for the tribe's work and participation in the Snake River Basin adjudication. We feel that in fiscal year 1999 there is a definite need and a request of about $710,000 to be made for our full participation in the Snake River Basin adjudication.
Page 199 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The administration has also requested an increase of $3.5 million for the Water Rights Negotiation and Litigation program, and we hope that Congress will approve this increase because of the vital nature of the water rights on behalf of the tribes.
I would like to thank you for this opportunity and I would be happy to answer any questions.
[The statement of Samuel N. Penney follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. MILLER. Let me just ask one question about the wolf recovery program. There is a wolf program in Yellowstone. Is this a similar program?
Mr. PENNEY. It is a similar program. As I mentioned, I think the Nez Perce Tribe covers upwards to 50 million acres and I think the effort in Yellowstone is about 3 to 5 million acres, so we cover almost twice, almost three times as much area with much less funding than the Yellowstone.
The goal of the program, the goal for delisting would be that there be 10 breeding pairs for three consecutive years, but in the delisting effort, the Idaho program, which is administered by the Nez Perce Tribe, along with the Yellowstone program, they will be evaluated overall on their success for eventual delisting.
Page 200 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER. Are you seeing any benefits from the wolf reintroduction?
Mr. PENNEY. I think there has been. We have made a tremendous effort to work with the ranchers and other people in the community. Education is part of the effort of the tribe, along with the monitoring, so we can tell people that the wolves are in their area and that if there are any problems, we will come in and try to address those concerns.
There have been reports that there were statewide 16 depredations that they attributed to the wolves, but after the initial investigation they found that only two were attributable to the wolves.
Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much for being here today.
Mr. PENNEY. Thank you.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
KENNY MALLORY, CHAIRMAN, WINNEBAGO TRIBE OF NEBRASKA
Page 201 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER. Next we have Kenny Mallory, chairman of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Welcome.
Mr. MALLORY. Mr. Chairman and Committee, first of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity and the occasion to address some of the concerns of the Winnebago Tribe. It is with some regret that I even seek the Committee's assistance and support in some of the funding programs we have needed in the past and in the future. I feel that in some ways it really diminishes the meaning of sovereignty to Native Americans, but the need continues to be there, so the requests continue to come.
There have been occasions where I have found that being brief has gotten me my most mileage and impact, and I am going to try that today.
We have written testimony. We have presented nine concerns in regards to Winnebago people. I would like to address the three most important because without the three most important, the other six are really meaningless. Those concerns happen to be in the area of our hospital, law enforcement and education to Native American people.
As you may or may not know, we have been waiting 10 years to build a hospital in Winnebago. It seems like we get so close, only to be denied, for the last six or seven years, anyway. Today we are at a point where we have a shortfall of $650,000 to complete the first phase of this project. If it had gone on on a regularly scheduled basis, that shortfall probably wouldn't even be there.
Page 202 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
We are experiencing the same cost problems when we, and should we ever get to the construction part of it, this facility at one time was going to cost $20 million. Today, with the delays of nine years, we are looking at a $43 million facility.
Our number one concern is that somehow we get over the final hurdle and the construction of that hospital begin. Our testimony will identify the impact and the need for such a facility.
The other area I would like to—and it is an old facility. It was built in the 1930s. It has served its purpose and we need to go on from there.
The other issue, Mr. Chairman, is law enforcement services to Native American people. I am sure many people before me today have brought up that same concern, so I won't dwell a lot on it. We urge the Subcommittee to support the Administration's request for $25 million to the BIA law enforcement program. And the Winnebago Tribe is seeking an $8 million request to build our own detention law enforcement facility in Winnebago.
The costs that we incur for sending prisoners 100 miles away to be incarcerated and the costs we pay for having juveniles held in detention facilities is almost prohibitive. It really uses up the resources we do have. We feel that there is a great need for that on our reservation and we certainly request this Committee's support in that type of funding. We think, as a tribe, we can do some cost-sharing if that was made possible to us.
The third and final concern that I have is for the education of Native American people all over America. I am speaking about our college but it affects the 26 of the 30 Indian colleges that are in existence today. I would request that this Committee support a $5.5 million increase in funding for Indian colleges throughout the United States. I believe that is important.
Page 203 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Sir, I think that takes me to the end of my report. I just hope that the brevity has been enough to impact you to where you will take a closer look at the Winnebago Tribe's testimony.
[The statement of Kenny Mallory follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. MILLER. I have a question about your hospital. How large a hospital do you have?
Mr. MALLORY. It is probably a 15-bed facility at this point. It is old. Many of the services are just not practical there anymore.
Mr. MILLER. How many physicians?
Mr. MALLORY. We have three physicians and two practicing physicians.
Mr. MILLER. As you know, throughout the country hospitals have been closing all over the United States because people spend fewer days in a hospital than they used to 10 or 20 years ago. Health care is so different.
Mr. MALLORY. Well, our hospital probably serves maybe 20,000 Native American people in the urban areas of Sioux City and Omaha. The Omaha and the Winnebago Tribe, the Santee Tribe and many people come from the western part of the state. It is really the only Indian Health Service hospital in that area. It serves a lot of people. The set-backs that we continue to face are really a disappointing situation to those 20,000 people.
Page 204 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER. Where would the nearest hospital be for those 20,000 people?
Mr. MALLORY. For Native Americans?
Mr. MILLER. For anybody.
Mr. MALLORY. Well, there is good medical services in Sioux City, Iowa.
Mr. MILLER. How far away would that be?
Mr. MALLORY. About 15 miles away, but that is not necessarily available to Native American people, who can't pay for most of their medical services. If we went to a facility that would accommodate our needs and recognize the type of money we make, I think we would have to go to Rapid City or Pine Ridge, which is 300 or 400 miles away from Winnebago.
It is the only public health hospital within, I would say, a 300-mile radius of the Sioux City area.
Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much for being here today. We appreciate your testimony.
Page 205 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
ROBERT CHICKS, CHAIRMAN, STOCKBRIDGE-MUNSEE COMMUNITY BAND OF MOHICAN INDIANS
Mr. MILLER. Next we will have Mr. Bob Chicks, chairman of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians. We'll see if I pronounced everything correctly.
Mr. CHICKS. You did.
Mr. MILLER. Thank you. Welcome.
Mr. CHICKS. Good afternoon. My name is Bob Chicks. I am the chairman of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians and I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to present testimony on behalf of my people.
This will be the third year in a row that we have appeared here seeking assistance with two specific projects. One is a waste water treatment facility; another is a new health facility.
Page 206 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I want to address the waste water treatment facility first because that is really the most serious of the needs in our community. In the three years since we have been appearing here, we have some good news and some bad news, I guess. The good news is that we were able to achieve a joint venture with HUD and IHS to help upgrade our lagoon system, which is going to help service a small area of homes in one of our housing areas. So that is the good news.
The bad news is that during the course of the three years the residential areas that are serviced by individual septic systems have grown a lot worse. They are aging systems that are now contaminating the water supply and in one area where our tribal offices are located, the water systems have been contaminated to the point where they are nonusable, nondrinkable. And IHS is telling us that this is going to repeat itself in the adjoining residences.
So really replacing those individual systems is not an option. The only way that we are going to alleviate that problem is to construct the master waste-water treatment facility, and that is one of the reasons that we are here today, is to seek assistance in the building of that.
And that follows into the second thing that I want to talk about, is the development of a new health center. We do have a health center currently. It is about 25 years old. However, since about 1992 it has been failing the IHS deep look surveys, and adding onto it is not an option any longer.
One of the reasons we don't want to add onto it in its present location is that it, too, is located in this corridor of groundwater contamination, so it would just continue to add to the problem. We want to move it away from that area and reconstruct it in an area that we feel will have a better water supply, as well as the need to really double its size.
Page 207 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
The Stockbridge Tribe is located on an adjoining border with both the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin and within 15 minutes of a Hochuck settlement. So we really service three pockets of Native Americans in our area, as well as other tribal people who live in our reservation, as well as a number of local residents who use our facility simply because we are in a very rural area and they really have no access to primary medical care, either.
We were successful in obtaining a $300,000 CDBG block grant from HUD that would go towards the partial construction of this new clinic. However, we still are about $2.8 million short. The only way that we will really be able to construct that facility is if we are able to get some additional assistance.
The third and final thing that I want to discuss today is, as you have heard from some of the tribes earlier this morning, one of the tribes from Wisconsin were here, the Oneidas, and talked about the IHS joint venture project. Our tribe, as well, wants to pursue that. We have found in the past that joint venture projects have worked well for us.
Obviously building the facility is one thing but staffing it, maintaining it and operating it is quite another. I think for us, as well as for the tribes that are in this joint venture project, it is probably one of the only ways that we will be able to maintain and operate our facilities in the manner that is going to provide the type of health services to our people that is appropriate and needed. Thank you.
[The statement of Bob Chicks follows:]
Page 208 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. MILLER. You don't have a hospital?
Mr. CHICKS. No, we don't. Our people must travel upwards to an hour or maybe more to seek the in-patient care. And really that is one of the problems with our health centers is that they are not large enough to provide all the kinds of services like prenatal care. It is particularly difficulty for the elderly and in the winter we have to travel these great distances. If we were able to construct a larger facility, we probably could offer physical therapy, prenatal care, things like audiology services, things like that, and that would be of great assistance, particularly to our elders. Driving is always a hardship but in the winter it really presents another danger.
Mr. MILLER. Regarding your gaming operation, do you run it or do you contract that out?
Mr. CHICKS. No, we run that.
Mr. MILLER. Is it on the reservation itself?
Mr. CHICKS. Yes, it is. We do employ a great number of our tribal members. The tribe itself is the largest employer in our area, so we do employ people in areas like health services, housing, tribal administrative services. But really about two-thirds of the employees are nontribal members.
Page 209 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much for being here today.
Mr. CHICKS. Thank you.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
BRUCE WYNNE, CHAIRMAN, SPOKANE TRIBE OF INDIANS
Mr. MILLER. Next we will have Bruce Wynne, who is chairman of the Spokane Tribe of Indians. Welcome.
Mr. WYNNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity and the honor to come to testify before you today. I will keep it as short as I can.
Actually, we support the $34 million increase in the President's budget for the tribal priority allocation. We have, at the Spokane Tribe, at this moment a $2.5 million unmet need in our tribal priority allocation and specifically about $116,000 for tribal courts. And as you know, tribal courts are under scrutiny right now and tribal courts do need to be upgraded so that they can make sure that people are given due process within the laws of the tribe.
Page 210 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Also, we are asking for $588,000 for the Midnight Mine clean-up process so that we can provide oversight from the tribal point of view and make sure that that mine is cleaned up properly. We have a very strong concern about whether or not the federal agencies and the company are going to treat the clean-up of Midnight Mine properly, so we need to provide that oversight for the tribe.
Also, we are asking for $1 million from the Rights Protection Office in the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the governance process that is taking place within the Columbia Basin. That process is a process that the tribes, the 13 Basin states, the fir states in the Northwest and the federal agencies that are concerned with the Columbia Basin are working in conjunction to provide a governance mechanism for the Columbia Basin because there has never really been a formal mechanism to make sure that that basin and the dam system on the basin operate correctly. So we are asking for $1 million for the 13 tribes to participate in the process of implementing our governance for the whole region.
We are very concerned about the implementation of the strategic plan for the Office of Special Trustee. This is in the area of policy. We think that the tribes do have to have their input and their input has to be recognized in how that office should operate. So we are very concerned about that.
We also support the $5.5 million increase for tribal colleges. Actually we believe that $2 million more would be necessary and the reason for that is on a per-student basis, tribal colleges are underfunded, under the level of community colleges and other agricultural colleges throughout the country. It is a very sizable amount that the Indian colleges are underfunded in that area. So we would ask for that.
Page 211 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Also we support the $25 million increase in the Bureau of Indian Affairs allocation for law enforcement because, as everybody has probably already testified up to now, the law enforcement agencies on reservations are very, very unfunded and understaffed and they have to cover a very large area, so that is necessary.
We are concerned about the Indian Health Service budget. Actually within the last 10 years or maybe longer, Indian Health Service budget has been essentially level, but it has never met the needs in terms of inflation, in terms of population increases and in terms of medical inflation, actually. So by staying level, it is $130 million actually underfunded because of that lack of increases over the years. So health services for Indians has suffered accordingly.
Representative Nethercutt will be asking the Committee for a $500,000 add-on for the purpose of providing modular units for the increased capacity for the IHS service unit clinic from Indian Health Service, so I would strongly support Mr. Nethercutt's efforts.
I also want to applaud and offer our thanks for Mr. Nethercutt's efforts in the area of diabetes prevention, so we support that fully. We also want to support the Northwest Indian Health Board testimony, which will be coming later, and the National Indian Education Association testimony. Thank you again for the opportunity. I would like to keep the record open so that we can provide more information about the governance process in the Columbia Basin. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Bruce Wynne follows:]
Page 212 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. MILLER. First of all, the Administration hasn't requested any increase for Indian health, so we have to work on that. Mr. Nethercutt is a fine member of this Committee. I am sorry he was unable to be here today.
Would you comment briefly? Are you starting a tribal college?
Mr. WYNNE. We have one. We have a tribal college that is a branch college from the Saylor Scutine College in Montana, and we have a campus on our reservation from that college.
Mr. MILLER. How many students are enrolled?
Mr. WYNNE. About 200 students, I think, primarily part-time.
Mr. MILLER. And how is that funded?
Mr. WYNNE. The tribal college? It is funded through the Bureau. Somebody else might be able to help you with that area.
Mr. MILLER. The state doesn't provide the money?
Mr. WYNNE. No.
Page 213 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much for being here today.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
MERVIN WRIGHT, JR., CHAIRMAN, PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE
Mr. MILLER. We have Mervin Wright, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Welcome, Mr. Wright.
Mr. WRIGHT. Good afternoon, Congressman Miller. I want to thank the Committee for allowing me to take the time this afternoon to address our concerns related to the Interior appropriations bill.
For the record my name is Mervin Wright, Jr. I am the tribal Chairman for the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe in Northern Nevada. We are a fishery tribe. Our traditional name is based on a prehistoric indigenous fish that is only found in Pyramid Lake and nowhere else in the world, which is called a cui-ui. We are known as the Cui-ui Ticutta, which is the cui-ui-eaters.
So everything we do is linked to the water. All the things environmentally, water rights, all the struggles that are going on in the river basin are tied to our water. Traditionally speaking, we cannot treat that water in a bad way. We cannot make fun of it. We cannot speak in anger over it. We cannot do these things because that water is what we are.
Page 214 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
When we speak on behalf of a lot of the natural resources, our water is the staple of what we believe in.
Also, just to back up a little bit, I did submit the written testimony, so I will be summarizing some of the items in there, and more so talking about the principal aspects of why we are here in Washington, D.C. to testify before the House Committee.
We appreciate the Congress appropriating $1.8 million last year through the 1998 Interior appropriations bill for our high school construction. We are requesting the remaining balance of $8.7 million to complete that construction. We have done everything by the rules. We have worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and we have met the obligations that were put upon us.
I want to talk a little bit about the health care social services part of this. We do have a serious problem with the Indian Health Service on our reservation. A lot of the services are not being met. A lot of the funding cuts and the deficits that we are facing as a result of the bureaucracy and the high-paying jobs from the headquarters office in Maryland all the way to the area offices in Phoenix.
I do not appreciate to the least my own children, as well as other children, and elderly suffering by the result of misdiagnosis and prescribed drugs that do not treat the illnesses and diseases that we face on the reservation. Especially when prescriptions are brought home and questions are asked, ''What is this antibiotic? What is this type of drug that is being prescribed?'' and the response we get from the IHS doctors is, ''Well, it is a new drug. We are trying it out.''
Page 215 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
You know, we, as a people of this nation, should not be subjected to any kind of experiment. It is one thing to test it on animals and things like that but if they cannot produce the science and the research and the studies and the results of those studies, then put that in front of us so that we can see it.
When we meet with our area director, IHS area director, they make comments like, ''Well, I wish I could put myself in your shoes.'' My response to that is, I wish that he could see his children suffer, see his people suffer the way we suffer. I am not afraid to say it because I am here on behalf of those people and a lot of times they cannot speak for themselves and that is what I am here to do.
Mr. MILLER. To use experimental drugs they need to disclose everything. Isn't that correct?
Mr. WRIGHT. We don't have that right now. We don't have that back-up information showing that these are safe new drugs that are——
Mr. MILLER. Are you sure they are testing new drugs?
Mr. WRIGHT. Well, we get the little sample bottles. That is what they tell us. They tell us that they are trying something new here and if it works, come back and we'll give you more, or whatever. But you cannot treat pneumonia with Dimatab. You cannot treat certain diseases with aspirin, and that is what we are dealing with.
Page 216 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And when we have the Phoenix area budget cut to a point where our service unit, which more or less would be the agency, has to transfer money from our contract health services to buy pharmaceuticals, our people in those situations where there are emergencies cannot be treated and hospitals are turning them away because right now we are still receiving bills, our patients on our reservation are still receiving bills from last year that the service unit is not paying because IHS in the Phoenix area office are too worried about paying these high-salaried positions, rather than funneling that money to where the care is really needed.
So when we take a look at IHS, and the same principle could be applied to the BIA, it is the bureaucracy that absorbs all the funding.
Mr. MILLER. How large of an Indian Health Service program do you have on your reservation?
Mr. WRIGHT. We have a budget of about a half of a million dollars.
Mr. MILLER. Do you have a physician?
Mr. WRIGHT. We have commissioned doctors from the service unit that come on and provide that service. But a lot of the money ends up staying at the area. And when our service unit is cut funding, the service unit is more or less forced to make those changes within its own budget and the parameters there.
The last thing I just wanted to talk about was the BIA reorganization. I know that Congress has worked on this in the past and we have dealt with it in a way of trying to mainstream the duties and the responsibilities. A lot of times again that money ends up at the agency and those folks—I can speak for the Western Nevada agency—they rarely come to the reservation, and they are the ones that are supposed to represent us on a lot of these issues at times when there are federal team meetings but yet they don't tell us anything. They don't talk to us before the meetings and they don't tell us what happened after the meeting. They don't talk about the issues they are deciding on.
Page 217 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
A lot of times they make decisions as a recommendation from one other agency that may have more authority or power in that room and they leave us holding the bag.
I just want to say that Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe will object to any anti-Indian riders that will be added to this bill. So if the Committee can work through all possible avenues to avoid these anti-Indian legislative riders, we would really hope that you guys can move in that direction.
Mr. MILLER. Thank you. Thank you for being with us today.
Mr. WRIGHT. Thank you.
[The statement of Mervin Wright follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
VERNER DUUS, CONSULTANT, NAVAJO AREA SCHOOL BOARD ASSOCIATION, INC.
Page 218 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MILLER. We have Verner Duus of the Navajo Area School Board Association. Mr. Duus, welcome.
Mr. DUUS. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I am glad that the Committee has continued these hearings.
I am representing the Navajo Area School Board Association today. They are having a conference out in New Mexico and so they gave me the nod to go ahead and present their testimony today.
My name is Verne Duus. From 1974 till about 1988 I was the director of that association and these last 10 years I have been employed with the Department of the Interior, most of that time as a negotiator with the Office of Self-Governance.
Now I am back in the consulting business, so I will move forward with the testimony.
Generally the Navajo Area School Board Association supports the '99 budget as it relates to BIA education. The testimony that I will give today points out some of those things but also deals with some long-standing and what we see as systemic problems that need to be acted on and at some point they are going to need creative fixing.
The first one is school facilities. The school facilities budget with regard to school construction and facilities improvement and repair, we think is very constructive, very positive. It is not a one-year problem. We think that this level of effort, which is an increase over previous years, particularly 1998, needs to be sustained for several years. But it is certainly a step in the right direction.
Page 219 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Back 10 years ago when I was real actively involved with BIA education matters, I remember the number of $600 million as being the backlog for BIA facilities overall. In the 1998 budget it was reported as $890 million.
That reminded me of a personal experience of mine when I moved back to D.C. I got the bright idea that we should live on a boat. So we went ahead and bought an old boat. It was a 1968 57-foot wooden boat. It had a lot of things wrong with it. I worked on weekends. I worked after I came home from work. Almost every minute that I had to spare, I spent sanding that boat or painting it, doing something like that.
It reminds me that no matter how hard I work, the boat deteriorated faster than I could fix it. And that is what is going on generally with BIA school facilities. They are deteriorating at a more rapid rate than the appropriations will allow fixing.
And that brings us to the second part of the school facilities issue; that is, facilities O&M. The operations and maintenance funds are simply not adequate to do the job.
We have a study that was done out of Navajo—this is a Navajo-based study that went back to 1990 and then tracked the funding through 1998. In 1990 the need level and the appropriation level was about the same. In other words, it was adequate at that time or at least somebody at this point in time regarded it as adequate back then.
Following through with the new square footage, the new allocation, et cetera, that amount is now regarded as 67 percent of need. The constrained budget, in other words, is now 67 percent, a reduction there in buying power of the dollars out there of 33 percent. That is hard for a school to deal with, that type of reduction.
Page 220 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
I tried to think, well, what is going on here? Why is this deficit occurring? Is the BIA not asking for the dollars? Is the Congress not appropriating them? I suspect that the answer lies that people aren't believing the numbers, perhaps. Maybe there is a lack of credibility in the numbers, both on the part of the Department and the Congress.
And one of the things that we are going to do in the Navajo Area School Board Association is do an analysis that looks at the cost that the BIA is spending on its facilities, operations and maintenance and then comparing those costs to the public schools that are operating in the same general vicinity. So we will look at New Mexico BIA schools, for example, and then New Mexico school districts on the public school side and try to draw some comparisons from that.
There are a lot of reasons why those numbers might not be comparable. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, for example, the janitors and maintenance workers are wage grade employees and they are paid on a scale that is mandated by law, and that scale happens to be quite a bit higher than the public schools pay. But that is a factor that we can build into that analysis and explain more fully.
Mr. MILLER. If you could bring it to a conclusion; we are getting a little bit behind schedule. I am sorry.
Mr. DUUS. Okay. A second thing—I will try to deal with the second one quickly—out on Navajo there are a lot of schools that are moving from BIA-operated status to grant school status. There are still 49 BIA-operated schools on Navajo and a lot of them have already made that decision. They are moving forward.
Page 221 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
It brings up two line items that are problems: administrative cost grants and what is called employee displacement or severance costs. We suspect and we fear that the amounts that are in the 1999 budget in these two categories are inadequate. The amounts are just about enough to pay for what will happen when these schools go grant status on Navajo, but what happens then in the rest of the country if a couple of schools are going to grant status and the Dakotas are excepted and then there is too little money again?
It is a systemic problem related to where are on a two-year budget cycle on the one hand, and we have a very short time frame for authorizing and letting contracts and grants on the other. And so when they start the process and plug a number into the budget, they have no idea; the Bureau can have no idea what is going to happen in the ensuing two years before there is an appropriation.
The 1998 budget that was taken care of——
Mr. MILLER. Is this included in your statement here? Because of the time, I am sorry to have to bring your testmony to a close—we have lots of people waiting, if you don't mind.
Mr. DUUS. I am taking too long. Okay, I will wrap it up.
Mr. MILLER. I feel bad. I wish I could learn more about this. Thank you very much.
Page 222 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
[The statement of Verner V. Duus follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
CLARENCE ANTIOQUIA, CHIEF OF BUSINESS OPERATIONS, CENTRAL COUNCIL OF TLINGIT AND HAIDA INDIANS OF ALASKA
Mr. MILLER. We have Mr. Edward Thomas, Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska.
Mr. ANTIOQUIA. Congressman Miller, I am Clarence Antioquia, the chief of business operations for the Central Council. I am delivering the testimony for our president, Edward Thomas. He is sorry that he couldn't be here today but his written testimony has been submitted for the record. He has asked that I highlight a couple of the items that he has in his testimony.
First of all, our tribes, we have a membership of about 23,000 tribal members throughout Southeast Alaska primarily. We are one of the early self-governance tribes and as such, have a high dependence on the tribal priority allocations that are made available through the federal government. We are very pleased and thankful for the efforts of this Subcommittee in increasing Indian program dollars over the past years and particularly we are pleased with the recognition of the small and needy tribes allocation that was put in place recently. So that is something that is important to us.
Page 223 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
One of the things that the Tribal Reorganization Task Force recommended was that a standard assessments methodology be developed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and that has not been done yet. As a result of that, we are concerned about how dollars are allocated. Looking at an example in the 1998 budget, there was a surplus left in January. A recommendation was made to divide that $23 plus million, one-twelfth to each of the area offices. That is, in our opinion, just not a rational way to make division of funds.
With that decision, we hope that this Subcommittee will question the Bureau as to that rationale and hopefully overturn that and ask them to come back with a more equitable way of dealing with that surplus. That is important because as we look at the 1999 allocations, again we don't want this to be done on just a mathematical basis but the needs need to be identified, and we think that that would be much more appropriate, so we hope that that is part of your concern as you talk to the Bureau.
We are concerned also about the indirect costs as it relates to the Ramah Navajo case that is coming close to settlement. We are concerned that that judgment, when it is completed, not be funded through the appropriations to the Interior Department to make up that judgment fund. It would be like taking money out of one hand of the tribes and putting it in another hand and, in fact, cause suffering by those who aren't part of that settlement. So we think that is very, very——
Mr. MILLER. We are very concerned about that, too, by the way.
Mr. ANTIOQUIA. I am glad.
Page 224 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
One area we are also concerned about, and I only have two left, but one area we are deeply concerned about is implementation of welfare reform in Alaska. Welfare reform requires a partnership between the federal government, the state government and tribes to be effective in implementation.
In Alaska, our governor has requested about half of the dollars that were available to him for welfare reform and onto the legislature, the legislature took his figure and cut that in half, meaning that the state's participation is very minimal.
Publicity shows that welfare reform is going great guns in Alaska. People are going to work, getting off welfare. That may be true in the urban areas but in the areas that we are deeply concerned about, in villages, welfare reform is a serious, serious problem and we have no means as a tribal government ourselves to take on that responsibility with not enough resources available.
In this case we are asking that there be consideration for a $2 million pilot program for states, not just Alaska but other states that may be having state governments that don't view this as a serious concern so that pilot programs can be done where tribes can, in fact, deal effectively with welfare reform and we hope that you seriously consider that.
Finally, we are supportive of the budget that has been prepared for the special trustee. We are very pleased about that. However, we also hope that any funding of that not come off the top of other Indian programs and that they suffer.
Page 225 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify here today.
Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much for coming here today.
[The statement of Edward Thomas follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
ROBERT GUENTHARDT, CHAIRMAN, LITTLE RIVER BAND OF OTTAWA INDIANS
Mr. REGULA [presiding]. Okay, our next witness is Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. I notice you didn't try to tackle that last name.
Little River Band is a small tribe in Western Michigan that was restored by Congress in 1994.
Page 226 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I remember that. We took you apart and put you back together again.
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Correct, and we appreciate it very much.
The first year that we were able to receive funding was 1996 because of the late time that we were confirmed and there was an error made in calculating the tribe's membership for the purposes of BIA funding. The tribe submitted a number of membership applications that had actually been approved by the BIA, which amounted to 650, rather than the projected enrollment that we were supposed to have done, which was something over 2,000.
Well, the other tribes that were restored at the same time did put in projected enrollments. In fact, the tribe's enrollment right now is 2,200.
Because of the error, which we pointed out to the BIA as soon as we realized that it had happened, we now receive far less TPA on a per capita basis.
Mr. REGULA. Well, why don't they correct it? Won't the BIA correct the error?
Mr. GUENTHARDT. They say they can't do it.
Mr. REGULA. Why can't they?
Page 227 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GUENTHARDT. We have asked them. We have worked with the local and they——
Mr. REGULA. What count are they actually using?
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Right now we have it bumped up last year to I believe it is 900.
Mr. REGULA. And you really have 2,200?
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Correct. Yes, we do, and it has put us in the hole ever since.
Mr. REGULA. I can understand that. We will look into that.
Mr. GUENTHARDT. We receive about half of what the other tribes receive.
Mr. REGULA. I can understand that. Okay.
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Because we had some carry-over money left over from the late start that we had, we were able to start up some new programs and without an increase that we really do need, we are not going to be able to——
Mr. REGULA. What else do you have? We will check that.
Page 228 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GUENTHARDT. We have a community center established for our government staff offices. We have a learning lab for the children, health clinics.
Mr. REGULA. Are these needs or are you just describing your programs?
Mr. GUENTHARDT. These are programs we have started with the little funding that we do have. Literacy programs, cultural and history programs, as well as court and law enforcement programs, social service programs and education. So we have done a lot with the little bit of money that we have had but these programs, most of them will all be eliminated because they are almost all on carry-over money right now.
Mr. REGULA. Do most of your people work outside the reservation in the local economy?
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Yes, they do. About the only thing we would have left if we don't get additional funding is about $4,500 for Johnson O'Malley, and that is for 196 children that we are serving right now and about $30,000 for higher ed.
Mr. REGULA. Your children use the public schools?
Mr. GUENTHARDT. Correct. Yes, we do. We are in the process right now of taking some land into trust for housing and economic development. What we are asking for is either to correct this with the BIA or an add-on or the Committee's assistance in making sure the BIA corrects this funding problem so that we can receive our fair share. We are not asking for anything more.
Page 229 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I understand.
Mr. GUENTHARDT. And that is pretty much what I came here today to say, so I am going to get you back on schedule again by being brief. I sure do appreciate the time.
[The statement of Robert Guenthardt follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Well, thank you and we will check out the issue of your enrollment number, because you should be treated fairly. It sounds like it was a mistake that has been perpetuated.
Mr. GUENTHARDT. It has. It is just a deep hole that we climbed into and we have to get out of it.
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
Page 230 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
WITNESSES
BENITO F. VALENCIA, CHAIRMAN, PASCUA YAQUI TRIBE OF ARIZONA; FERNANDO ESCALANTE, VICE CHAIRMAN; AND ALMA LESPRON, TRIBAL SECRETARY
Mr. REGULA. The Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona.
Mr. VALENCIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Benito Valencia and I am the chairman for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. Beside me is Vice Chairman Fernando Escalante, Dr. Fernando Escalante, and over here is tribal secretary Alma Lespron.
Mr. REGULA. How many members do you have?
Mr. VALENCIA. Currently we are about 9,700 and we are expected to grow to about 14,000 to 15,000.
Mr. REGULA. What is your economy? Mostly agriculture? What supports your tribe?
Mr. VALENCIA. Basically gaming.
Mr. REGULA. Gaming? Do you have a casino?
Mr. VALENCIA. We have a casino on the reservation.
Page 231 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Yes, they do pretty well, I guess.
Mr. VALENCIA. They have been doing all right, or it has been doing all right.
Mr. REGULA. So you don't need any money; is that right?
Mr. VALENCIA. I am here to request additional funding.
Mr. REGULA. Wow.
Mr. VALENCIA. Certainly it goes to prove that some of that money, the revenues generated by the casino——
Mr. REGULA. Are you near a city to draw an audience?
Mr. VALENCIA. We are located southwest of Tucson.
Mr. REGULA. So people come from Tucson and that area to use your facilities?
Mr. VALENCIA. Yes, they do.
Mr. REGULA. Is your casino on the tribal land?
Page 232 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. VALENCIA. It is.
Mr. REGULA. Do you operate it or do you contract it out?
Mr. VALENCIA. We contract it out. We contract the manager out but it is our casino.
Mr. REGULA. So they don't take a percentage. You hire a manager to run it.
Mr. VALENCIA. That's right.
Mr. REGULA. Good. Okay, what do you need?
Mr. VALENCIA. Basically we are here again to address the situation with the HMO, which we addressed last year, and the lack of funding to fulfill the mandates by Public Law 103–357.
Basically in the HMO situation is a constant thing, year after year, where we are always running out of money by June and always seeking other fundings for it. Thanks to Congressman Kolbe, he was able to find some funding last year which carried on the HMO towards the end of the fiscal year, but it is a constant thing year after year, where we don't have the resources to provide adequate services for tribal members.
Page 233 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay. We will look into that, and I assume Mr. Kolbe will, too. Go ahead.
Mr. VALENCIA. The second thing we would like to address, and I am sure other tribal leaders here have addressed it is the lack of funding for law enforcement.
Mr. REGULA. That seems to be a growing problem.
Mr. VALENCIA. It is very hard for us to address this issue and the fact that we have no BIA facilities in our reservation. Every person——
Mr. REGULA. No jails?
Mr. VALENCIA. Jails. Every person that is convicted there in our tribal courts has to be sent out of state.
Mr. REGULA. Out of Arizona?
Mr. VALENCIA. Out of Arizona. There are no facilities near or around where we can contract with.
Mr. REGULA. How about Tucson?
Mr. VALENCIA. We have tried that. We have tried Maricopa County, Pinal County, areas nearby that we have not had the fortune to finding bed space there.
Page 234 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Where do you take them?
Mr. VALENCIA. They have gone as far north as Nevada.
Mr. REGULA. I know. I am on the committee that funds the Justice Department, Commerce-State-Justice, and the Justice Department is requesting money for jails. I don't know if we will have enough to do it, but that is pending in another committee and I presume you will apply for one.
Mr. VALENCIA. Hopefully if it gets funded, we will.
Mr. REGULA. Keep an eye on it.
Mr. VALENCIA. Basically the BIA funding that is all over. For us, on that area, we have been funded the same level for over 20 years, so nothing much has advanced in that area for us. We have supplemented where we can out of the revenues from the casino to law enforcement, and that is why we are here, to seek additional funding for that.
[The statement of Benito Valencia follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Okay. It is a challenge to do all that needs to be done, but we will do the best we can.
Page 235 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. VALENCIA. There are a lot of unmet needs that we have failed to address here but for the record we will submit——
Mr. REGULA. We have your testimony. Thank you very much.
Mr. VALENCIA. Thank you, Chairman Regula.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
STANLEY HERRERA, PRESIDENT, ALAMO-NAVAJO SCHOOL BOARD
Mr. REGULA. We'll go to the Alamo-Navajo Community School.
Mr. HERRERA. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. My name is Stanley Herrera. I am the Navajo School Board president and I have my executive director here in the audience.
We are located about 250 miles off the main reservation, the Big Res.
Page 236 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Are you on a reservation?
Mr. HERRERA. Yes, we are on a small reservation.
Mr. REGULA. It is part of the Navajo Tribe?
Mr. HERRERA. Yes, it is part of the Navajo Tribe but we are isolated. The Big Reservation is about 250 miles away.
Mr. REGULA. Is that right? And you serve the students, though, in your area?
Mr. HERRERA. Yes, we run about seven different programs.
Mr. REGULA. Are you K through high school?
Mr. HERRERA. Yes, we are K through high school and we contracted last year for Head Start.
So basically we have two issues here that one of the gentlemen covered almost, which is facility operation maintenance that was funded at $103 million. We have another issue, administrative costs, funded at $48 million. We would like to have a bill deleted from the Secretary of the Interior. We would like to restrict the bill language proposed by the Secretary of the Interior.
Page 237 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So I would like to cover the facilities operations a little with 187 BIA schools that are in operation that need this budget line item to be maintained, an enormous inventory of federally-owned facilities like schools, dorms, office space, water towers, fire stations, whatever, that need to be maintained.
The funding for this activity has grown increasingly inadequate over the past seven years from 1992 to 1998. In 1992 it was 95.78 percent and it dramatically dropped to 67 percent and even the 67 percent figure is misleadingly low. By the time the systemwide off-the-top expenses are deducted, we, at the school level, are left with only 30 to 40 percent. We cannot maintain these buildings with how much is being cut out.
Like a homeowner, each and every one of us here is a homeowner and we need to have our facilities, our buildings, our house maintained with the utilities, water and everything. So if we cut down our costs, if we don't pay our utility bills, then it is the same thing as the school-wide——
Mr. REGULA. You are saying you need additional help?
Mr. HERRERA. Yes, we need additional help. We need some more extra funding that the BIA had allocated. We want part of the $103 million, get it back in the system so we can operate the school and maintain it because if you don't maintain the building, if you don't run the building adequately, then it will deteriorate faster.
Mr. REGULA. I understand.
Page 238 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. HERRERA. And whatever will go wrong with it, and we don't want that to happen because our school is only 12 years old and we would like to maintain it.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. HERRERA. Then the General Accounting Office had a report of 62 percent of the BIA buildings had at least one building in need of extensive repair or replacement compared to 33 percent of schools nationally. The GAO's survey showed that the BIA schools fare poorly in comparison to other schools nationally. BIA schools are generally in poor condition——
Mr. REGULA. I understand.
Mr. HERRERA. To put it in perspective, at Alamo, reducing our facilities O&M allowance by 33 percent means that we lost $196,000 in fiscal years 1997 and 1998. And like I said a while ago, we need to maintain the building; we need the extra $200,000.
[The statement of Stanley Herrera follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Okay, we are out of time but we have your statement.
Page 239 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. HERRERA. And covering the administrative costs, it is about the same thing and we need—like we lost out on some funding——
Mr. REGULA. Are you part of the school system?
Mr. HERRERA. I am presently president of the school board.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, okay.
Mr. HERRERA. We would like your consideration on these issues that we have brought out here. Thank you for taking this opportunity——
Mr. REGULA. Thanks for coming.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
DONNE FLEAGLE, BOARD MEMBER, NATIONAL INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ASSOCIATION AND DAVID SIMMONS, STAFF MEMBER
Page 240 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay, National Indian Child Welfare Association.
Ms. FLEAGLE. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. You represent the problems of child welfare throughout the nation?
Ms. FLEAGLE. Yes. The National Indian Child Welfare Association. I am a member. I am on their board. This is David Simmons, a staff member. I am from Alaska and my name is Donne Fleagle.
Mr. REGULA. Where are your headquarters?
Ms. FLEAGLE. Portland, Oregon.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Tell us your concerns.
Ms. FLEAGLE. We are asking the Committee to support the President's request to fund the Indian Child Protection and Family Violation Prevention Grant Program of $5 million. While this funding is small, it is a meaningful step to helping protect Indian children from abuse and neglect.
Mr. REGULA. Now, how would that $5 million—that's not much money—how would it be used?
Page 241 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. FLEAGLE. It would go into tribal child welfare programs.
Mr. REGULA. Would it come to you, and you would make grants out to the tribes? How does it get actually on the ground?
Mr. SIMMONS. It is like other grant programs. It will go under TPA and it will be allocated out by formula to the tribal governments.
Mr. REGULA. Oh, so it is not necessarily on an application that has certain needs. It would go by formula.
Mr. SIMMONS. That is my understanding, yes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. That concerns me because when you spread it out over the whole nation on a formula basis, the amount per tribe would be minuscule and it probably wouldn't allow them to do much.
Ms. FLEAGLE. Right, but at this point it is not currently being funded so I think that any small amount that tribal programs can get, it would certainly be appreciated and it is a start to meet some tribal children's needs.
Mr. REGULA. When you say child welfare, are you talking about abused children? What kind of problems are you talking about?
Mr. SIMMONS. You are primarily talking about children who are at risk for abuse or neglect and in some cases have been removed from homes. In other situations you are talking about services given to children who are still in the home but at risk for being removed from the home. So there is a whole cadre of services—family preservation, reunification, home-based. We are talking about foster care and adoption in some limited cases.
Page 242 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. You are already an organization. How have you been financed in the past?
Mr. SIMMONS. We are a private nonprofit and what we do is help provide assistance to tribal governments who are doing child welfare services.
Mr. REGULA. Are you privately financed at this point?
Mr. SIMMONS. Correct.
Mr. REGULA. People make donations to you?
Mr. SIMMONS. Right. We have a variety of things that we do. Some of it is grant funding, foundation funding. We get support from tribal governments, too, through fund-raising events and activities. We also do fee-for-service for some of the technical assistance that we give.
Mr. REGULA. You have a team of specialists that can go out and help a tribe with the problems?
Mr. SIMMONS. Yes, we do.
Mr. REGULA. So any tribe in the United States could call on your services and you would send somebody to spend some time helping them or setting up a program or working with the children? Is that——
Page 243 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. FLEAGLE. Absolutely. You are absolutely correct.
Mr. REGULA. So you are here to support the additional $5 million that is in the President's budget?
Ms. FLEAGLE. Yes, sir.
Mr. REGULA. To support your budget, in effect.
Mr. SIMMONS. I don't think the money is going to go to us. It is going to——
Mr. REGULA. Well, it is going to go to you to be distributed or to be used to get specialists to help tribes, right?
Ms. FLEAGLE. Well, a lot of tribes do have programs that are meeting children's needs, so I really don't see that a large part, even a small portion of this, would be accessed by NICWA because we have some really well built programs in Indian country.
Mr. REGULA. So you see it being distributed—suppose we appropriate the $5 million. Do you see it being distributed on a per child basis to the tribes?
Mr. SIMMONS. I think there was a process, a regulatory process and consultation process between tribal governments and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service, and that is where they came up with the formula, which is now in the regulations for the law that authorized us, which is the Indian Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act.
Page 244 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. So the act has a formula?
Mr. SIMMONS. That is correct.
Mr. REGULA. And all we have to do is fund it.
Mr. SIMMONS. That is correct. The law passed in 1991 but the funds have never been appropriated.
Mr. REGULA. I understand. So you are here to support the funding.
Mr. SIMMONS. Right. We also have a policy that our organization doesn't compete with tribal governments for funding, so any services we provide come from our own fund-raising activities.
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you for the information.
Ms. FLEAGLE. We have a couple more things. I don't know if we are running out of time——
Mr. REGULA. Well, you have a minute or so.
Ms. FLEAGLE. Okay. We would like you to consider restoring historic funding of the Indian Child Welfare Act Title II, Off–Reservation Grant Programs of $2 million, which was funded through fiscal year 1996 under the special projects and pooled overhead portion of the BIA budget. It wasn't identified in the fiscal year 1999 budget. It specifically goes to urban child welfare programs.
Page 245 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Okay, we will look at that. What else?
Ms. FLEAGLE. We have one more thing that we would like you to consider, to require the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service to provide more detailed information on programs that provide funding and services for children.
Mr. REGULA. In other words, to provide an information service?
Mr. SIMMONS. Well, one of the things that happens that we have witnessed over the years is that the Bureau provides very incomplete kind of artificial data. And in terms of your purposes, your Committee's purposes, to evaluate what are the needs for a program, are the requests they are giving you going to meet those needs? We have some information in our testimony you might want to look at in regards to that.
For instance, under IHS's budget you can't tell how much of the money under either mental health and social services or contract health goes to Indian kids at all. There is no way to evaluate that.
[The statement of Donna Fleagle follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. You are trying to remedy that. Thank you.
Page 246 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. FLEAGLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SIMMONS. This is a report we did on the status of mental health services to Indian children. We want you to have a couple of copies.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
WITNESS
PEARL CAPOEMAN-BALLER, NORTHWEST PORTLAND AREA INDIAN HEALTH BOARD; ON BEHALF OF JULIA DAVIS
Mr. REGULA. We have the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. I think you have been on before.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. I said I didn't get my point across this morning so I thought I'd better come back.
Mr. REGULA. So you don't need as much time, right?
Page 247 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Extra time.
Again good afternoon. My name is Pearl Capoeman-Baller. I am actually here this afternoon in place of Julia Davis, who was scheduled to testify and her mother was taken ill so she had to take a flight back home.
So this afternoon I am representing the 40 tribes from the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. It is their responsibility to take the President's budget, analyze it and see which recommendations should be made to tribes on how this budget is going to impact the tribes.
Mr. REGULA. Have you done that?
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Yes, we did.
Mr. REGULA. How is it going to impact?
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. After listening to the State of the Union Address that the President gave, while listening to that message we thought it was very exciting and we thought that there was going to be a lot of new funding coming down for tribes. But after actually getting the budget and analyzing it, we get 1.8 percent of those monies for Indian Health Services and less than 1 percent of that if new facility constructions is included.
Mr. REGULA. Frankly, we haven't figured out why the Administration chose to short-change Indian health. We just don't know, and we are going to raise that issue with the appropriate people when they testify. It is a mystery to me because Indian health should be a high priority, along with education. It seems like they made their numbers fit by taking it out of Indian health.
Page 248 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. It appears that way to us and I think that obviously you have the gist of what my testimony is about because we feel like we still face all the same problems on reservations with respect to health.
Mr. REGULA. I am sympathetic to your point of view. Loretta Beaumont mentioned this problem weeks ago. We haven't had an opportunity to ask somebody from downtown what the rationale was for short-changing you, but we will find out.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. You understand obviously and Loretta does—she has worked with our budgets before with respect to health care and what-not. So I guess if you are asking me what my bottom line is here, I would like to read for the record what our position is.
The Northwest Tribes asks this Committee to restore the funding that is proposed to be cut in hospitals and clinics, sanitation, construction and the maintenance and improvement. Additional funds must be found to fund the mandatory costs that every program must pay. This is particularly critical for the contract health service program.
The Indian Self-Determination Fund must be restored and at a level so that those tribes waiting to take responsibility for the health status of their people can do so in a reasonable period of time. New ways must be found to address facility construction needs. Congress should provide opportunities for IHS and tribes to join forces in joint venture construction projects. The facility needs of small tribes should be addressed through the small grants program and through the ability to utilize maintenance and improvement funds.
Page 249 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
So with that, I respectfully submit that and if you would like additional information on the Indian Health Service budget——
Mr. REGULA. We hear your message.
Ms. CAPOEMAN-BALLER. Thank you very much.
Mr. REGULA. Thank you.
[The statement of Pearl Capoeman-Baller follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
PRESTON McCABE, PINON COMMUNITY SCHOOL BOARD; AND PHYLLIS TACHINE, SUPERINTENDENT
Mr. REGULA. Pinon Community School Board. You probably have the same message we have heard all day.
Page 250 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. MCCABE. Basically, yes, Congressman.
Mr. Chairman, my name is Preston McCabe and this is Phyllis Tachine, the school superintendent. I am the chapter president of Pinon Chapter of the Navajo and also the school board president for Pinon Community School Board. Today my testimony will be mainly focussing on the Indian Health Service and also the BIA School Operations programs.
We would like to urge the Committee here to fully fund the Administration's $13.9 million budget request for clinic construction, which is number three on the project priority list. This will ensure that a much-needed clinic in Pinon would get a chance to become a reality.
Right now we are number four on the IHS priority list.
Mr. REGULA. I think you need to go downtown. They are the ones that sent those priorities up but we have your testimony and we will take a look at it when we start putting it together.
Mr. MCCABE. Basically that is one of the main concerns we have, is the clinic, since we operate a boarding facility. We have a new high school there. Also, we are a community that has a lot of elderly and our birth rate is——
Mr. REGULA. Going up?
Mr. MCCABE. Yes, pretty much. We are also a host community to the people that are moving out of the Hopi partitioned land. We are a host community for them.
Page 251 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
There are a lot of promises that we just heard from people that we have just never been able to substantiate any of those——
Mr. REGULA. You can see this is just part of the stack. We have a lot of challenges here. We do the best we can with what we have.
Would you like to comment before we run out of time?
Ms. TACHINE. Only that the IHS clinic has been sitting idle for several years. It was partially funded in the design phase. They have only done the schematics and conceptuals. We are still waiting for the construction documents to be developed. So we are just wondering why——
Mr. REGULA. The health clinic?
Ms. TACHINE. This is the clinic funding. It has just been sitting there on the shelf for several years and we don't know why it hasn't been funded fully the rest of the year.
And then the other thing is the transportation. We are really hurting in the area of transportation. In Pinon we only have one road coming in from the east from Chinle and all our bus routes are dirt routes so our funding is——
Mr. REGULA. Are you talking about transportation to get——
Page 252 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. TACHINE. Schools. School transportation, right.
Mr. REGULA. Probably just access for tribal members.
Mr. MCCABE. Like I said, we have a couple of issues that concern the Pinon community which is in reference to the clinic but everybody uses the clinic, so that is one of our main issues. The other one is the BIA School Operations programs, which is what she is alluding to on transportation.
Ms. TACHINE. Our maintenance council vehicle is eating up our transportation money so we really need help in that area.
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you for coming.
Ms. TACHINE. Thank you.
Mr. MCCABE. Appreciate it.
[The statement of Preston McCabe follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
Page 253 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
MARTHA GARCIA, PRESIDENT, RAMAH NAVAJO CHAPTER AND ANNA MAE PINO, STAFF
HON. BILL REDMOND, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO
Mr. REGULA. Ramah Navajo Chapter.
Are these your constituents, Bill?
Mr. REDMOND. Yes.
Ms. GARCIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Martha Garcia. I am the president of the Ramah Navajo Chapter and Congressman Bill Redmond is our congressman from our district and we certainly appreciate his support and all the efforts he has put into his district and—
Mr. REGULA. He has talked to me about it.
Ms. GARCIA. On a very short time base. We are very, very impressed and appreciate that.
And I also have with me Anna Mae Pino, staff and a long-time advocate for the efforts of our Ramah Navajo Community.
Page 254 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
My testimony today will focus on four issues.
Mr. REGULA. Just summarize. It will be in the record because we are short of time, as you can understand.
Ms. GARCIA. I am aware of that.
The first one is on providing resource funding to purchase a section of ranch land that has been offered to the Ramah Navajo Community. It is deeded land from non-native ranchers in the area.
Mr. REGULA. You would use this to support your economy.
Ms. GARCIA. Right.
Mr. REGULA. I assume you are an agricultural economy.
Ms. GARCIA. We are.
Mr. REDMOND. We have 72 percent unemployment in this area. The purchase of this land would greatly increase the possibility for jobs in the area.
Mr. REGULA. Your tribal members depend on agriculture for employment.
Page 255 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. GARCIA. That is right. We are going to look at tribal ranches, sheep, which is our heritage, and we are going to go into the new management of that, livestock, and we are looking at building a greenhouse. We already have some commitment from the Defense Department that are within the area that have assured us that if we put that up, that they would be buying from us. So we know that we are already doing the long work.
So this ranch would also consolidate our land. It is right in the middle of our community, as you can see.
Mr. REGULA. How much are you talking about?
Ms. GARCIA. 19 sections, which is about 1,200 acres plus.
Mr. REGULA. How much money do they want?
Ms. GARCIA. They want $1.4 million and we are asking for $1.7 million.
Mr. REGULA. I am surprised that ranch land is that expensive.
Mr. REDMOND. Very expensive in New Mexico.
Ms. GARCIA. It's $150 an acre.
Page 256 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. That's not bad. $150 an acre? What does it take for a sheep to live down there? How many acres?
Ms. GARCIA. It is like five sheep to ten acres, I think.
Mr. REGULA. Pretty dry?
Ms. GARCIA. It is very, very dry. But this is prime land that we are looking at.
Mr. REGULA. I am getting interested and we are going to run out of time here, so let's speed along.
Ms. GARCIA. Okay. So that is what we are looking at.
The second issue that we have is we would like to ask the Subcommittee to support the Administration's request for $52 million for construction and renovation of detention facilities.
Mr. REGULA. The overall amount?
Ms. GARCIA. The overall amount. And we will be trying to tap into that to renovate our own jail facilities.
We are separate from the Navajo Nation geographically.
Page 257 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. I see that you would have to be.
Ms. GARCIA. Right. So for that reason we have to——
Mr. REGULA. But you are still part of the Navajo Nation?
Ms. GARCIA. Part of the Navajo Nation but we get our funding through Albuquerque area and not Navajo area.
The third issue that we have is the way the TPA is distributed out in Indian country. We have our own base for a number of years, since 1920, starting with $5, and that has gone up to a little bit over a million to provide services to 3,000 tribal members. Our land base currently right now is about 154,000 acres of land and it is in a checkerboard area down here. And for that reason we feel like the equal funding that happened recently did not address the needs that we have looked at. And I heard the testimonies previously and I concur with a lot of them that we need to look at that funding so that it is on a need basis and that would help us.
The last one is in regard to the settlement that we are about to conclude here. We had filed a lawsuit in 1992 and sadly, that is the only way we have been able to resolve our contract dispute issue with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on indirect costs. We had filed this in 1992. We lost in the District Court and in the Tenth Circuit Court we were able to get that in our favor. And right now what has happened, that portion has been remanded back to the District Court for them to settle that particular issue.
Page 258 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
And we are now closing the settlement. The last two days, Monday and Tuesday, we were in Albuquerque working on that again with the Bureau and also Department of Justice and OIG.
And one of the difficult issues that has come before us, that is the judgment fund. We would have to dip into the judgment fund to pay the settlement. This is a class action suit and based on that, we are asking to have supplemental appropriation. Otherwise the Interior Department would have to look for funds within its own agency and more likely within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is already underfunded and to take that out of the TPA would be just like taking it out of one Indian's pocket and putting it back into the other or taking it from both pockets. That is what is going to happen and we don't want to see that happen. We respectfully request that you look at the issue and see if additional supplemental appropriations would be helpful because we don't want to pay for our own judgment costs after we have won that.
[The statement of Marcia Garcia follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. I understand.
Ms. GARCIA. I just want to say thank you and you have our full testimony.
Mr. REGULA. It will be part of the record.
Page 259 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Ms. GARCIA. I also have additional information and also testimony from the Ramah Navajo School Board, which I will submit for the record.
[The statement of the Ramah Navajo School Board follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Thank you and thank you, Bill, for coming down.
Mr. REDMOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESS
DAVID GIPP, PRESIDENT, UNITED TRIBES TECHNICAL COLLEGE
Mr. REGULA. United Tribes Technical College.
Do you serve more than one tribe?
Page 260 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. GIPP. Yes, we do, Mr. Chairman. We serve a range of tribes, right now currently 36 tribes and sometimes up to 45.
Mr. REGULA. Are you a residential unit?
Mr. GIPP. We are residential. We are campus-based.
Mr. REGULA. Where are you located?
Mr. GIPP. Up in Bismarck, North Dakota, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. But you draw from a wide area?
Mr. GIPP. That is right. We have about 17 states represented in our student population at the current time.
Mr. REGULA. Do you have two years or four years?
Mr. GIPP. We do actually one- and two-year programs, certificate and two-year technical degree programs.
Mr. REGULA. So people who leave your school have a skill that they can market?
Mr. GIPP. That is correct, yes. And we deal directly with the job market and I think this past year our placement rate was right about 96 percent.
Page 261 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. That is great. What is your enrollment?
Mr. GIPP. We are about 310 and looking at an expansion of 370 for adults, and then about 225 children, so a total population of roughly 525.
Mr. REGULA. Do you get support through BIA?
Mr. GIPP. Yes, we do, through the Interior appropriation.
Mr. REGULA. And you need a little more?
Mr. GIPP. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. Our request, and I would ask that our record statement be submitted for the record——
Mr. REGULA. It will be part of the record.
Mr. GIPP. Our current level is about $2.3 million for fiscal year 1998 and our official request is for $186,000 above that level. So that is what our basic request is.
With these dollars we do basic things such as provide the operational dollars for the campus-based program that we have at United Tribes, and that includes all of the vocational and the other adult programs that are enabled through there—the counseling and placement services, transportation. It also offsets our cost for housing that we have right on campus. We have two day cares, as well, that these funds provide for.
Page 262 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Do you have some married students?
Mr. GIPP. Yes, we do. Our focus is on the American Indian family, in fact, and that is why we do quite a bit of work with the children, ranging from eight weeks on up to grade eight, right on campus there. And then, in the meantime, the adults are pursuing their education through 20 different programs that we have.
Mr. REGULA. So you could have students in your school who have children that would be in a school you operate?
Mr. GIPP. That is correct, operated right on campus.
Mr. REGULA. You have really two tracks. You have the younger students and then the technical program for the older ones.
Mr. GIPP. That is right, early childhood and elementary, as well as the upper division for the collegiate level, Mr. Chairman. And we are owned and operated by the five tribes of North and South Dakota. And, as I mentioned, we have roughly anywhere from the low side of 23 up to 45 different tribes that are in our student body at any one time.
So we would certainly appreciate the consideration of the Subcommittee and the Committee.
[The statement of David Gipp follows:]
Page 263 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Today people need skills to get jobs.
Mr. GIPP. Yes. We are working very closely with welfare reform and with the 10F programs and with the State of North Dakota.
Mr. REGULA. Do you do anything in computers?
Mr. GIPP. Yes, we are doing beginning computer technology and entrepreneurship types of programs.
Mr. REGULA. There is tremendous demand for people with computer skills.
Mr. GIPP. There surely is and I think we are also trying to work more closely, of course, with some of the private enterprise that are involved with that kind of development in our area.
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you very much.
Mr. GIPP. We thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Page 264 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
WITNESSES
JAMES M. TUTT, PRESIDENT, CROWNPOINT INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ANNA MAE PINO
Mr. REGULA. Crownpoint Institute of Technology.
Is your message somewhat similar?
Mr. TUTT. A little bit different.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. TUTT. Mr. Chairman, here is the chairman of the board of the Crownpoint Institute of Technology and Anna Mae Pino.
Mr. REGULA. You are a technical school?
Mr. TUTT. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. And how many students do you have?
Page 265 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. TUTT. We have 426 students.
Mr. REGULA. Do you serve several tribes?
Mr. TUTT. We serve tribes in New Mexico and Arizona and some of the Pueblos near the western end of the Navajo Nation.
Mr. REGULA. Are many of your students residential? They come and live there?
Mr. TUTT. We have approximately 120 spaces available and we have a dorm facility and so forth, yes.
Mr. REGULA. You offer a one- or two-year program?
Mr. TUTT. One- and two-year program, one- and two-year programs.
Mr. REGULA. What is your placement rate?
Mr. TUTT. We have 86 percent for the last eight years and retention rate of 95 percent, so we have really been working with our students.
Mr. REGULA. Now, you get some support from BIA for your budget?
Page 266 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. TUTT. No. That is specifically why we are here, because Crownpoint Institute of Technology is the only tribal colleges that doesn't receive any Bureau of Indian Affairs funding for the past——
Mr. REGULA. Do you have any idea why you don't get some? You heard the previous witness.
Mr. TUTT. Basically we receive some under the Labor–HHS, under the Carl Perkins. Basically that appropriation is not enough, so for the past 20 years or so that the college exists, we never receive anything. Maybe on an earmarked appropriation but we never receive a dime, a penny from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Mr. REGULA. So you are here to say you would like to have some?
Mr. TUTT. Yes.
[The statement of James M. Tutt follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Okay, we will check that out. Is BIA saying since you are getting funding under HHS or the Carl Perkins that you therefore don't need any from them?
Mr. TUTT. I think it is basically the way the law, the Tribally Controlled Community College Act, is written because the tribe can have only one college per tribe. Since we have Navajo Community College that receives funding under Title II, because this is a tribal vocational school, so we are not eligible to receive any funding from the——
Page 267 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. So you are a tribal vocational school.
Mr. TUTT. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. You are not classified as a technical school, then?
Mr. TUTT. Well, we are basically into that technical school.
Mr. REGULA. Maybe you should reclassify your school.
Mr. TUTT. That is what we are doing.
Mr. REGULA. Make it a technical school. You could call it the Institute of Technology.
Mr. TUTT. Yes.
Mr. REGULA. Okay, thank you for your time and we will try to find out the answer, why you are not getting support.
Thursday, March 5, 1998.
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE
Page 268 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
WITNESS
EUGENE A. BEGAY, SR., LAC COURTE OREILLES
Mr. REGULA. Okay, the last one today, at least on my list, is Lac Courte Oreilles. You are Mr. Begay?
Mr. BEGAY. Yes, sir.
Mr. REGULA. What is this? Tell me what this is. What is Lac——
Mr. BEGAY. It is Lac Courte Oreilles. It comes from the French people who came into my area 500, 600 years ago. It means the Lake of the Short Ears.
Mr. REGULA. Lake of Short Ears?
Mr. BEGAY. Short ears, yes. I don't speak French but that is what they told me it means.
Mr. REGULA. Why is it a lake of short ears?
Mr. BEGAY. When you fly over it with an airplane and you look down, it looks like a lot of short ears.
Page 269 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Where is this located? What state?
Mr. BEGAY. Northern Wisconsin, about 60 miles south of the southern shore of Lake Superior, near Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin.
Mr. REGULA. How many members do you have?
Mr. BEGAY. 6,000.
Mr. REGULA. Where do they work on the outside? Is there a major source of employment outside the tribal boundaries?
Mr. BEGAY. The major source of employment is our casino and we have tribal commercial business enterprises.
Mr. REGULA. Okay.
Mr. BEGAY. I would say that our unemployment runs about 60 percent.
Mr. REGULA. Okay. What do you need?
Mr. BEGAY. Mr. Chairman, we have a brand new school building sitting on the reservation that is one-third completed. The 358 children in our K through 12 school are currently going to school in locker rooms, in the gymnasium, in hallways.
Page 270 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Is that the old building or the new building?
Mr. BEGAY. This is the building I am talking about now.
Mr. REGULA. The new building is partly completed?
Mr. BEGAY. Partly, one-third completed. Two years ago the Bureau of Indian Affairs condemned 13 portable modules. They gave us $2.1 million of what they call facilities improvement and repair money out of the existing budget at the time.
The program of requirements report, which is standard report to the Bureau, requires us to have 42,000 square feet to accommodate the number of children we have. The replaced square footage that was required was 17,000.
So the tribe went ahead and at the encouragement of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to raise the additional dollars, the $4.5 million that is required now over and above the $2.1 million to complete construction of the school. The Bureau led us to believe that they could guarantee a bond issue in an initial letter from the director of Indian programs. We went ahead and did that and then, about six months later, she sent us another letter saying that in consultation with the solicitor, that they could not do that. So we had to drop back on issuing the bonds to raise the $4.5 million.
What I am recommending to the Committee, if possible, is that the FI&R funds in this year's budget requested by the President is about $46 million. I would request that the $4.5 million that I am requesting here for Lac Courte Oreilles come out of that amount that is being requested.
Page 271 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Can you use some of your gaming money?
Mr. BEGAY. We have no gaming money, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. REGULA. But you have a casino.
Mr. BEGAY. Yes, we have a casino.
Mr. REGULA. Don't you make a profit?
Mr. BEGAY. Not yet. We are still paying back the amount of money we borrowed to build the building and to buy the machines and all that. I would suspect that in a year or so we would be generating some profit, but we are employing about 350 of our people in the casino.
Mr. REGULA. How long has your casino been open?
Mr. BEGAY. Four years, and we just completed compacting with the governor of the State of Wisconsin, so we are looking forward to that.
Mr. REGULA. Is your casino on the reservation?
Mr. BEGAY. Yes, it is.
Page 272 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. REGULA. Do you operate it with your own people?
Mr. BEGAY. We operate it ourselves. We have no other outside interests, yes.
So the money that I am requesting, $4.5 million, I think would be taken out of the $46 million that is being requested by the President. There is a total of $86,000, as I understand it, for new school construction. $37 million is earmarked for three new schools. This is not a new school construction issue. This is a replacement school caused by the condemnation of the 13 school modules that we were using two years ago.
That is a top priority of my tribal council and we want very much to move ahead with this. We seek your favorable response on this.
Mr. REGULA. We will look at it.
Mr. BEGAY. The other issues we have, Mr. Chairman, is law enforcement—it is in my testimony here—and the Indian Health Service contract support funds and also housing.
[The statement of Eugene Begay follows:]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."
Mr. REGULA. Okay. Thank you very much.
Page 273 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC
Mr. BEGAY. Thank you.
Mr. REGULA. Is there anyone that we have missed in the room? You have all had an opportunity.
Okay, thank you all for coming. The Committee is adjourned.
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."