Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies – American Indian and Alaska Native Public Witness (Day 1, Morning Session)
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House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 3
Good morning, Chair Simpson and rest of the panel here. All of our friends are here. My name is Daryl G. Sikhi, senior chairman of the Red Lake Nation. For this opportunity to testify today.
I have testified before this subcommittee many times, and I'm proud to say that you have always worked in a bipartisan way to do the best you can to uphold your trust and treaty obligations to Indian country. And I believe all of you to continue this tradition. As I do every year, I bought the Red Lake treaties in the United States Constitution outlining the trust responsibility of the federal government to our tribe. This is not to be an attack on anyone, but a friendly reminder that it is your responsibility to uphold these agreements together that was done in by your commissioners of state of Minnesota with our chiefs. I am here to remind you of the unique needs of our community, that you must work tirelessly to provide robust funding for Indian affairs and to again reject the president's proposed cuts to these critical agencies.
Mandatory funding for tribes, not discretionary. I have five requests that support the basic needs of Red Lake's 17,000 plus men tribal members. First, I ask that you fully fund BIA, BIE at $32,600,000, as supported by the Tribal Interior Budget Council. This funding reflects the actual cost data for 31 programs essential to promoting public safety, education, well-being for our tribe. Second, I ask you to continue to support the initiative.
Tewai is critical to ensuring that Red Lake and 65 other tribes can keep their tribal members safe, reunify families to give them a chance to heal together, provide education, job training to make productive citizens, and, more importantly, give them hope and a desire to be healthy contributors to this country. In the last seven years, Red Lake has had a 70% reduction in our home replacement of our kids. We have no suits on youth suicide in five years. We are making the meaningful change our members need. For this reason, we ask you not to only continue funding Tahuaihi for Red Lake and the other pilot tribes, but to make Tahuaihi permanent, expand so all tribal members, no matter where they live, have the same opportunities to heal and become change makers in their communities.
When we have full funding for these efforts, everyone is better off. This is how we break the intergenerational trauma. This is how we heal. This is how we become better partners. Third, we need your help to keep our community safe.
I feel like a broken record on this ask, and it sounds to me that no one is listening. Non-Indian drug dealers are taking advantage of our jurisdictional gaps on our homeland simply because we are troubled governments. They know that with our lack of jurisdiction over them, coupled... Excuse me. Papers are stuck together here.
With shortfalls in BIA funding that they can get away with, they can kill our family members and simply walk away. No one here should feel good about this. We have to look at our family members, our citizens in the eyes, and tell them we are doing everything we can. I wish you were there every time we are with these families, because I know we can do more. This is no longer a ask.
I need you to support us in expanding special criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. I need fully funding our BIA public safety programs. When we keep Indian countries safe, everyone else is safer. That example, that is why so many of our people, native people, enlist in the military to keep Americans safe. Let us Indian people fight at home to make our people safe, too.
Overturned the Olefon Law of 1978. This would allow tribes to prosecute nonmembers who violate our tribal laws, bringing in dangerous drugs, especially fentanyl, also abusing our women and our children. Fourth, we ask you to continue supporting advanced appropriation, fully funded Indian Health Service at 74,000,000,000 to support efforts to expand self-governance and non-IHS programs. Education as well, tribal colleges are very important to our people pursuing higher education. Fifth, I want to discuss annual pay cost additions.
For the last 25 years, administration budget requests have often failed to include the full amount of pay costs. This subcommittee is on record calling these hidden decreases and warning about the need to enact full pay costs in all future budgets to stem the staffing and program declines experienced by Interior agencies and tribes. To make matters even worse, Congress froze all pay costs in FY '24 and '25, causing irreversible damage and denying tribes' ability to provide cost of living. Adjustment for critical position, including our police, five fire departments. I am calling on you to put a stop to this 2027, to enact full and robust pay cost, whether or not the administration requests.
Jimmy, grace for allowing me to say a few words for your, for my, for our constituents. But I want to remind you again the treaties and The United States constitution. It says that you'll take care of us, health care, welfare, education, and housing. But for decades, the United States government has promised these, and they have failed. It's time for all of us, no matter if you are Republican, Democrat, independent, to do the right thing for tribes that are in the United States Constitution and do the right thing.
Uh-huh. Thank you, Darío. Michael?
Speaker 4
Migwetch. Miggwetch, Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pengure, and also the members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity for testifying, for letting me testify regarding White Nation's federal funding priorities. You know, Whitehorse Nation is established in the treaty of 1867 and is comprised of 36 miles by 36 miles of land within Northwestern Minnesota. Our homelands remain central to our identity, culture, and economic future, the future of our children and our people.
You know, one of the things I wanted to, you know, say thank you to is, you know, my chiefs that sit alongside me here, you know, we meet quite a bit, know, these things, these priorities that we put in place, you know, that it kinda just echoes to all the nations too, Minnesota. And, I just I'm really grateful to be out here and to sit in front of you and to let you know that we're we'll work with everyone like Chairman Sikhi says. One of the first priorities we have is the tribal stewardship and the Tamarack National Refuge. You know, the top priority of Whitehire Nation is restoring tribal stewardship of the Tamarack National Refuge, which lies within the original boundaries of the Whitehire Reservation. The Tamarack Refuge is established under the 1935 Collier Agreement between Biological Service and now the U.
S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Throughout these lands within the reservation, contains culturally significant areas used by our people for generations. The White Oak Nation currently has limited authority of their management. And one of the things I wanna stress is we've been meeting with the Fish and Wildlife on this, and it's been really good talks.
You know, I know that, one of the things that was, that we, I can recollect back to this is our wild rice beds that sit back in those areas, and those are our original wild rice areas that we used to have our rice camps and our fish camps. And, you know, as Anishinaabe people, we would paddle. We would be nomads. We would go from our camps to camps, our fishing camps, our fall camps, our berry picking camps, our maple sugar camps. So this area is really significant to us, and it sits within our borders.
You know? And the refuge has been doing, don't get me wrong. The refuge has been doing a great job of managing it, but with the, you know, I'm gonna get into this as, like, the shortfalls that that's being today is the cuts, you know, and meeting with their staff and meeting with the Fish and Wildlife out here. Last time I was out here a couple weeks ago and talking to the head of Fish and Wildlife, is like, you know, there's more cuts coming. And one of the things that we stress here in White Earth is, you know, co stewardship and management.
That's where we're good at because we manage our own forest within our nation, which is the White Earth State Forest. You know? So we manage that. We have a robust DNR, the natural resources department. And we feel like it's our time, you know, after all these years that, you know, helping and working with and being good partners and neighbors with these agencies and also the state.
You know, I feel like it's, you know, it's gonna be time here very soon to ask for these original lands back to White Earth. You know? So I think the main thing here is stewardship and working towards this with, you know, with this administration, next administrations in the future, and hopefully that, you know, that these, that we'll be able to manage all these areas one day within our borders so we can, you know, offer these for our children and the public that they can come utilize these beautiful areas. You know? So, thank you.
And, next up the next priority we have is our transportation infrastructure. This is one piece too that, you know, that we the team and I, you know, we sat down in Congress to authorize the national surface transportation programs before 09/30/2026. We urge that robust funding be for all tribal transportation programs. This is one area too where, you know, we're so big, and, you know, we have such rural communities out in the, you know, it takes like an hour from one corner to the other corner of the reservation. So transportation is a must, you know, and the jobs that we're producing, the jobs that we do on our reservation require employees to get from point A to point B to their work.
So these are things that are really, really important to White Earth is our tribal transportation. And we've been working with the transportation department too on that. So that's one area where we really wanna see that program be fully funded. So the other thing that I wanted to talk about was environmental justice and protection of our treaty resources. And these are things, I guess, that continue to face environmental challenges affecting our treaty, protecting our lands and waters.
One example is Enbridge Line three replacement project, which now runs through our treaty territory, and our watersheds connect our headwaters of the Mississippi River. And I guess as Ogama's here, as chiefs and leaders here, that's it at this table with congress is, like, we're here to fight not only for the our water, but the future of our children. You know, these are things that we look at. It's not only our children that I'm talking about. I'm talking about everyone's children that were, that we're, I'm talking about is, like, how do, you know, myself and the other tribal nations that we represent, you know, that we're water protectors, and, you know, we do everything we can to save, our need be.
You know? And I think this is something that I think is really important that at least, you know, when you're looking at doing these projects or looking at cutting into the ground, you know, you think about, you know, think about your grandkids. So I think these are things that I really feel like it's really important, especially to myself and, you know, to all of us here that sit at this table that, you know, take in consideration the next seven generations. You know? And I think that's something that I'm really kind of I'm glad and I'm glad to get to sit up here and sit with you and express this to you.
So something I'm not, you know, reading off the paper, but something I really, I'm really honored to be here and to let you hear me.
Speaker 5
Good morning. Good morning. My name is Virgil Wind. I currently serve as a chief executive for the Molox Band of Ojibwe, serving roughly 5,100 band members in Central Minnesota, employing nearly 3,200 band and non-band members throughout all of our enterprises and organizations. First off, thank you so much for having us here today.
You're going to hear a lot of repeats, right, and going over, I think, doubling down on some of the things, right, treaty and trust obligations. I mean, you're going to hear that all day, right, when it comes, and really just hearing and listening to it's really about the people that we represent, right? Its people, its mothers, its fathers, its aunties, it's everybody that we represent. So first, the U. S.
Department of Interior, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, IHS, really just pushing for that, you know, treaty and trust obligation to be upheld. Second, fully fund the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education at 27,100,000 billion, sorry. Indian country programs are critically underfunded. This results in reduced health care services, weakened public safety efforts, and fewer educational opportunities for our members. Our well-being depends on robust funding for programs promised in our treaties with the federal government.
Third, continue providing resources for Native American languages in BIE schools. It really is tied to our identity. When you look at our kids in our BIE schools, when you look at the importance of our language, without it, we're gonna cease to exist. It's a very difficult thing to fill and find right now in Mille Lacs. We've had a number of, you know, our elders pass here recently.
Some of them are the most inspirational people that you could ever have. Right? And they're not with us anymore. So, really, a critical time to be able to carry that out and figure out how we can work together to carry on the language and the culture. You know?
I got a whole list. Second, or third, sorry, fourth on my list: tribal police parity. So these people oftentimes become members of our communities. Right? They become families.
I think one of the things that we really look at at MLACs is how do we engage these individuals? How do we treat them like they're one of our own? And it's really difficult. So at MLACs, we spend nearly $6,000,000 a year on our tribal police programs, with only 3% of that being funded outside of the Mille Lacs band. These police officers don't only provide, you know, public safety for our reservations, but they also provide it for the surrounding community.
Again, just how do we take care of them as they're taking care of us? And then last on my list, fully fund the Indian Health Services at $63,000,000,000, continue to provide advanced appropriations. Indians experience greater health disparities than any other group in the United States. We see that our life expectancy is short, right? It's a lot lower than everywhere else, facing some of the hardest things, right?
Our elders, I think we struggle, right, with how we take care of them. It's one of the things that we hold in high regard. And it's really hard to take care of them and figure that out, especially with these disparities that start at a younger age. We're at a critical time. Malaxas at a critical time.
We have a growing number of elders coming to that age. And it seems like as times past, those problems have become worse. And we just need to help. We need help figuring it out. We all know the Midwest Region is one of the most underfunded IHS programs everywhere, right?
And with that, how do we figure out exactly how we're going to help these people? It's people, right? I mean, you're going to hear again, hear from a number of tribal leaders here today. But I would urge you to think about the people and the children that it's really going to affect. Right?
So sometimes we get focused on numbers. Sometimes we get focused on, you know, this problem or that problem. But please, just remember that it's people, it's children, it's family members that we really care about, and that's who we're here representing. So I do appreciate it, and that's the first time I've ever stayed under fire.
Speaker 1
Thank you. We appreciate all of you being here today. We didn't know if everybody's gonna be able to get out of Minnesota the way the weather was handled gone, last week and stuff. We didn't know if we were gonna get in, but glad to see that you made it. Thank you for your testimony.
I'm gonna turn to the ranking member if she has any questions.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. Well, thank you so much for being with us here today, I really appreciate your testimony. We appreciate that you come to visit. I know Betty is the true Minnesotan here, but I always like to remind everyone that I was born in Minnesota.
Yeah. Sure. You betcha.
Speaker 2
Yeah. We dress alike, of course. And my family has a lake cabin in Glen, so I've been to visit some of the facilities at Mille Lacs. And wonderful. And just really appreciate all that you have brought to us today.
And so many critical issues, you know, many of them we hear year after year, but I hope we can take some action on some of them this year, particularly, you know, the ones that we hear over and over again about police protection and making sure we're funding, you know, education, hearing about your roads. I mean, there's just so many fundamental things, and I appreciate you, chief, bringing the mister chair, bringing the treaties with you because we have to be reminded all the time that this is our obligation, and we should be making much more of this funding permanent, and making sure that we don't have to ask you to come every year to beg for it, that it's actually something that's allocated and comes forward. So really do appreciate you bringing all that up to us. And it's a long list. I won't repeat everything that you said, but I was making a lot of check marks and saying, yeah, well, this year, we gotta get on this and do more with that.
So, thank you. And I, you know, I make it a strict policy in my house to never get wild rice from anywhere but in Minnesota. So, thank you for that, and I hope we can help keep that. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it's a good place to locate it. So, and
Speaker 2
Well, yeah. Yeah. You do have the best wallet, but that's because we don't have walleye in New England, so how do we know? But, yeah, no, it's a treat to be there. So, anyway, I will turn it back, but thank you so much for being there.
Speaker 1
Always love these discussions on wild rice and walleye when I'm from Idaho and potatoes or what matter. No. I would mister Elsie. I suspect, Betty, you have some questions or comments.
Speaker 6
I have some comments and some ideas or concerns I'd like. I know that you and ranking member Pingrea will be working on as we go forward. First off, you know, talk about leaving things for the next generations. The elders who helped bring me to where I am today with being open, with being a lifelong learner. Our two elders, Marge Anderson from Mille Lacs and Stanley Crooks from Shakopee.
And so they're with me in spirit, as I ask and make a few statements. EPA is coming up in a lot of the testimony. I won't be here for all of it this afternoon. Jake, you're my alibi because we'll be in defense in a secured room getting some testimony. But, in particular, I'm picking up that you've got two issues that we need to look at within the EPA.
One is, how they work with you regulatorily to protect the wild rice. And I know Minnesota's working on some current laws right now at home. And the other thing is, the grants and the backlog that you're starting to see for your water infrastructure. And there's no set aside. So you have to compete with everything.
You have to compete with the state dollars and all of that. So, I noticed that as I was looking through things. And then before I make my closing statement, Tawaii, I believe, chairman, that the reason why Tawaii is as successful as it is, is from the tribes up to the federal government. Working you worked with your tribal nation at Red Lake, and then the counties and the other support services that the state offers, and then what the federal government office had said, this is how it would work for our tribal nation. And that's been repeated now, to fit the mole, to fit the nation's needs in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Montana, Idaho, and Maine as well as there's a total of 14.
But Red Lakes is to be commended for your perseverance and for your openness to work to make that happen. Mr. Chair, I think that the challenge that I'm really seeing, and I think we start you and the ranking member dealt with it great in our bill, with the allocation that we had. As there's cuts made to other agencies, whether it's in Commerce, State and Justice, or if it's in health, the health and education bill, we have some pieces of the funding, but they're in other bills as well. And as those cuts are being made, we don't know how they're going to impact the tribal nations.
And so if there'd be some way that we could encourage or figure out how to monitor when a cut to EPA happens, what happens to tribal nations, but also when there are cuts in education because some of the language programs are in the education bill as well. If we could figure out what that is, because I think we'll see that tribes are hurt more disproportionately than, you know, some of the areas that I directly represent in the state of Minnesota. So if you, leaders in the community, have anything to kinda guide us on that and how you're feeling them, and we can see how the cuts are, I think we could have discussions in the appropriations committee with the others. And with that, you're going, Prairie Island didn't make it? Oh, they're from southern Minnesota.
You know? They're not from the no. I'm teasing. But, yeah, I know you're gonna be putting their testimony into the record, and I thank you for doing that.
Speaker 3
Congressman Peter McCullough, I got a comment for you on infrastructure, because water is life. Our water lines are, they've been there over sixty years.
Speaker 3
Our lagoons are overfilling. And some of these water lines cause cancer. And, we need about $40,000,000 throughout our reservation to fix our water lines. So we brought that up before, and we'll continue bringing it up.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I just wanna representative McCullum reminded me of something I was thinking about, and that is particularly because we've seen so many cuts in other agencies, and I think it is helpful when we can keep an eye on that. And one that I was concerned about and meant to bring up, and you mentioned indigenous languages. And I hear that from so many tribes, the worry about, as you lose the elders, the people who have that knowledge, we have to work hard to make sure we pass it along to the next generation. And the NEH canceled the indigenous language grants.
I wonder if you might join me in just encouraging them to put them back in, because it's really the perfect place to access that funding. And I think it was kind of shortsighted to take it away. So, anyway, just wanted to bring that up.
Speaker 1
We'll work on that. Preserving the indigenous language is very important to me. I've been out and visited some of the schools and watched them teach bannock to the young children there, and stuff, and they're trying to expand it into Shoshone and stuff. But I do appreciate you being here. I don't have to tell you that you've got a great representative that fights for you every single day here.
Betty does a fantastic job when she chaired this committee, and then she decided to move on to other things. I don't know. No. But she does a great job representing you. You did mention one thing, Daryl, when you were testifying.
You said that we need to overturn the Olefin Law of 1978. 1978. What exactly is that?
Speaker 3
It doesn't allow tribes to prosecute nonmembers. That violates our tribal laws. They bring in drugs. Now they bring in Vietnam. Although our law enforcement fights big time, but lack of funding because we're short a million dollars every year on our law enforcement.
Speaker 3
Prosecute none. Okay. That's why I'm saying you guys gotta overturn it, so we can prosecute it.
Speaker 1
We had some testimony on the murdered missing Indigenous women, and that's something that really bothers me.
Speaker 1
That we haven't done. And I know it bothers you. It bothers all of us, but the general public doesn't know that we lose six thousand people every year. And during the hearing we had, I came away from the hearing saying our main issue here is this jurisdictional issue, whether it's the tribes have jurisdiction or the counties have jurisdiction or the state has jurisdiction or the federal government has jurisdiction, and things get lost. And so I think tribes ought to be able to do what they wanna do on their reservation, and you ought to be able to prosecute people on your reservation who violate the laws.
But somehow, we've got it's a more difficult task than a lot of people believe. I've read a lot about the rights of tribes in Indians, written by different authors and stuff like that. And I'm always pretty good when they get to the water rights and when they get the property rights, etcetera, all this kind of stuff. And then I get to law enforcement, and it is just confusing as hell. And we've got to straighten that out if we're gonna somehow address this issue of murdered missing indigenous women.
It is a disaster. I'll give
Speaker 3
You an example. Three years ago, we had a non-member. He kept coming back to our reservation. So I finally told law enforcement, keep him in jail. You know what?
Two, three, we had him in here two, three months. Three months later, BI told us they're gonna take our money, law enforcement funds, away if we didn't release the car. Yeah. Because of all the fraud law.
Speaker 1
And that's just crazy. We said last year we knew we were having reduced budgets across the board, that we weren't gonna balance this budget on the backs of tribes. And consequently, in our interior bill, every other area got cut substantially as we tried to increase funding for health care. We all recognize health care is a big issue. If you don't have your health, not much else matters.
That's where most of the funding goes, but we have not done a good enough job in Indian education. We got tribal members going to schools that, frankly, I wouldn't send a kid to, and we need to address that. And, also, with Indian justice, we've got to do something about tribal members. And I suspect it's the same in your areas where you have a tribal member that comes out. They send them to police training, same training that your state officers go to or your local police officers go to.
They come, they work on the tribe, work with the tribe on the reservation. And then pretty soon, the community down the road hires them away because now they have the training and they can pay them more. They have better retirement, and all sorts of things like that. They have a hard time kicking both policemen and firefighters on the tribe on the reservation doing the job.
Speaker 3
When we kept that guy for 3 months, they were gonna charge me for obstruction of justice. They were gonna arrest the chairman. But our law enforcement said nobody's gonna arrest the chairman.
Speaker 1
We got to solve this. Anyway, thank you all for being here today. I know it's a long trip out here, and especially in this weather, but we appreciate the fact that you come out. It's very important to us. Thank you.
You. Thank you. We now have the next panel, Bruce Savage. Austin Lowe, how do you pronounce that name? Winnegauzi?
Winnegauzi? And John Johnson.
Speaker 1
Was gonna say, yeah, I just didn't want to mispronounce it. Bruce, you're first.
Speaker 11
Well, let's see here. We're on. Well, good morning, Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pangary, and the respected members of the committee. I am Chairman Bruce Savage of the Fond du Lac Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa in Northern Minnesota. Thank you for inviting me to speak.
We have submitted written testimony, detail of our federal funding priorities for the fiscal year 2027. It is vital that Congress pass a budget that provides federal agencies that are historically underfunded with increased funding to support the tribes. Today, I want to emphasize a few specific areas. One example is fire safety. Bureau of Indian Affairs funding for fire preparedness has been far too low for over 20 years, and that puts lives at risk.
We also need to increase funding for our forest inventory so we can expedite timber sales and make informed forest management decisions. A second example is environmental protection. The Fond du Lac band relies on EPA funding to protect our air and water resources. The band has established treatment as the state's status under both the Clean Water and Air Acts. Any cuts to the EPA's budget will have a negative impact on our ability to continue to protect these resources.
We ask that Congress continue to support and increase this funding. Another example is food security. The band retains the right to hunt, fish, gather within our reservation and across over 30,000,000 acres of land that we've ceded through territories with treaties with the United States. This means we have the right to feed ourselves. We manage these resources to promote healthy living.
Health care is very important, and it starts with your food. We need increased funding to protect treaty rights. This is also why the band is a leader in food security and why requesting more funding to support tribal foods' access to historical foods. We ask that Congress provide funding to expand these programs, like the indigenous food hubs programs, so that more tribes are able to feed themselves. These programs help incubate small business, restore our language, and also provide increased knowledge of food systems to tribal members.
We also know that the administration is working to consolidate federal programs across agencies. We urge Congress to make sure when programs move, the funding moves with them. Indian tribes get funding from many federal agencies. If programs shift like the Indian programs of the Department of Education moving to the interior, the tribe should not lose funding. Finally, federal agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, and Indian Health Services have long suffered understaffing.
We ask this committee to fund the staffing that will allow these agencies to fulfill their trust responsibilities. Lack of staff creates a backlog that impedes our ability to effectively govern and run our tribes. I recognize my time is limited. However, before I conclude, I want you to know, as tribal leaders, we know you have a difficult road ahead of you. We urge you to continue your work in upholding the trust responsibility and protecting federal funding and resources in Indian country.
We truly appreciate all that you do. I'm happy to answer any questions the subcommittee may have. That's all I have for today. But I.
Speaker 11
One of the things that I stress in our communities is to limit the privatization of public lands. The state of Minnesota is beautiful, and a lot of people utilize the public lands. And when we privatize them, it directly impacts the tribal members. Thank.
Speaker 12
Chairman and member of the subcommittee. My name is Austin Lowe, chairman of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe at Chippewa Indians in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. My tribe serves over 50,000 members, with over 16,000 in our seven-county service area. We administer 23 governmental divisions with more than 75 programs.
We steward over 4,000 acres of trust land and exercise treaty-reserve rights to hunt, fish, and gather throughout our ceded territory. We operate eight health clinics providing comprehensive, culturally grounded services, and this includes community and behavioral health, medical, pharmacy, optical, dental, and traditional medicine. As a social worker who has served in multiple tribal communities, I know firsthand how critical it is to invest in qualified professionals who support our children and our families. These investments strengthen Indian country for generations. While we appreciate the subcommittee's efforts to preserve BIA social service funding, current levels remain far below what is needed.
BIA funding must cover children's services, elder services, general welfare, and burial assistance. Although nominal funding has increased about 23% over the past decade, inflation and population growth have raised those gains. Tribes now operate essential programs such as child welfare protection, welfare assistance, and housing repair with effectively less real funding than we had 10 years ago. And the consequences are absolutely clear. A 2020 Casey family study found that Native American children represent 15% of children in care nationwide, despite only being 3% of the total US population.
At the same time, major investments have been made in BIA's criminal justice programs. While public safety is absolutely essential, we must invest equally in social services. The systems that teach parenting skills, help families manage stress, and strengthen cultural identity. Without this balance, the criminal justice system will remain overburdened and unable to support healthy families. Protecting our treaty territory is also central to our people's well-being.
The Sioux tribe accounts for roughly half of all commercial treaty fishing and the majority of subsistence harvest in the 1836 treaty ceded territory. Because of this, we request that funding for our natural resource division reflect this. Our tribal court, which is an essential expression of our sovereignty, is also severely underfunded. Federal support covers only 3.76% of our base need, and funding has increased by less than $3,500 over the last 21 years. We urge Congress to fully fund tribal court-based budgets consistent with the BIA's own model.
We also operate the JKL Bawating Anishinaabe based school, which is a K-eight BIE funded school that provides both culture and academic excellence. Yet BIE operational funding has remained stagnant despite rising costs for salaries, insurance, transportation, and food. Investing in native schools is one of the most impactful choices that Congress can make. I'd now like to change gears towards substance abuse. As this subcommittee knows, substance abuse and mental health conditions pose one of the greatest threats to our future.
According to the 2021 national survey on drug use and health, nearly 35 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives experienced either mental illness or a substance abuse disorder. Meanwhile, access to inpatient treatment remains extremely limited. Better coordination among the BIA, IHS, and DOJ, consistent with the Tribal Law and Order Act, is absolutely essential. We urge the subcommittee to direct these agencies to report on their efforts to coordinate and improve programs related to public safety, justice, and behavioral health in Indian country. For the opportunity to present my testimony today.
Thank you.
Speaker 10
Annie. Maggiezie moguang kwa indizh nakas. Mash ghost odem. Chinggabing mena singh e donjabah minua waganaksing. Odawa Endao.
Thank you, Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingri, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I am Wane Wemaguas, Chairperson of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and for your continued commitment to Indian Country. My tribe's funding priorities are as follows. First, more federal funding to support the Indian Health Service and tribal health care programs is critically needed.
Little Travers provides health care services to its members through contracts with IHS entered into pursuant to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Our clinic serves members and descendants of any federally recognized tribe within a 27-county service area. Given the critical need in our area for providers that participate in the Medicaid program, we also provide services to some of our underserved, non-native neighbors. In v. San Carlos Apache Tribe and Basara v.
Northern Arapahoe Tribe, the Supreme Court determined that IHS must pay contract support costs incurred by tribes that utilize funds from third-party payers, like Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers, to provide services under their self-determination contracts and compacts. Like many other tribes, Little Traverse is currently pursuing claims with the IHS for unpaid contract support costs arising from the Becerra decisions. In fiscal year 2027, we ask that Congress provide mandatory funding for contract support costs so that IHS may continue to meet its obligations under BACERA without negatively impacting the broader IHS budget. In addition, we are deeply concerned that IHS is chronically underfunded and often falls short of meeting the health care needs of Native people. We urge Congress to increase funding for IHS above fiscal year 2026 levels and continue to provide advanced appropriations to fully meet the federal government's trust obligation to provide health care services to Native Americans.
Second, additional federal funding to meet public safety and justice needs in Indian Country is urgently needed. Because Little Traverse suffered termination, our original land base was lost. Since our restoration, we have had no choice but to rebuild our reservation by acquiring parcels of land over time from willing sellers. As a result, today, our reservation consists of small, noncontiguous parcels scattered throughout Emmett, Charlevoix, and Sheboygan counties. Our law enforcement officers must patrol and serve within the large geographic reach of all three counties.
Our police department relies heavily on federal funding to support daily operations. But for fiscal year 2026, the tribe's BIA law enforcement contract provided only $150,471, enough to cover only one officer's salary and benefits, and a portion of a patrol vehicle. We also struggle to recruit and retain police officers due to the rural nature of our reservation and the lack of affordable housing. According to a February 2024 report released by the BIA, the funding needed to provide for public safety and justice services in Indian country in 2021 was approximately $3,500,000,000. Appropriations have lagged far behind this amount, and the continued underfunding of public safety and justice services has led to higher rates of violence in Indian country. We appreciate that Congress appropriated $570,000,000 to support BIA public safety programs in fiscal year 2026, a $14,500,000 increase, but a much larger increase in funding for BIA public safety programs is urgently needed in fiscal year 2027.
Third, since housing is a foundational component of the health and safety of our people, additional funding to support tribal housing is needed. The tribe's headquarters and many of our members live in the cities of Petoskey and Harbor Springs in Emmet County, Michigan. Both cities are summer resort destinations in which housing prices have increased due to people buying properties for vacation homes. This has caused a severe affordable housing crisis. While we understand that this subcommittee does not have jurisdiction over appropriations for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, we respectfully urge you to share with your colleagues on the subcommittee on transportation and housing and urban development the need to increase funding for tribal housing programs.
The lack of affordable housing is a significant barrier. The significant barrier to the recruitment and retention of physicians, law enforcement, and other professionals who we need to serve our community. Jimmy Gwetch for your time today.
Speaker 8
Good morning, Chairman Simpson, ranking member of Penguin, and distinguished committee members. I'm John Johnson, senior president of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. I am serving my third term, and we do have members of my tribal council who have joined me here today. We thank the subcommittee for your continued advocacy to increase federal appropriations for the tribes of 638 and other programs we contract and perform, are vital to the health and safety of our members. Our request and those of other tribes today arise from our treaties with The United States.
Ojibwe tribes ceded our aboriginal lands and reserved the right to hunt, fish, and gather in our ceded territories, in return for the protection of The United States. The United States is again at war. Tribal members serve in the nation's armed forces in great numbers. They have fought and died for The United States in all wars. The funds we discussed today represent just a portion of the United States' trust responsibility to Indian tribes and their citizens.
I summarize this in my written testimony. First, we ask the subcommittee to write President Trump and urge that he lift any remaining hiring freezes at the Department of Interior, DHHS, and EPA positions that are critical to the tribes carrying out our programs and services under 638 contracts and compact and other agreements. Vacant federal employee positions often result in delayed receipt of federal funds. Second, we ask the subcommittee to address the disparity between the $3,000,000,000 estimate NCAI identified in congressional testimony last session to fully fund law enforcement, corrections, and tribal courts and current funding levels of $570,000,000 to these programs. Tribes are losing their trained police officers after a few years of service.
They take better-paying jobs in towns nearby, counties, and state sheriff departments. 11 police officers patrol our 144-square-mile reservation. In nearby towns and county sheriff's offices, they have three times as many officers and a third of the caseload that we have in Lake Flambeau. Since I testified last year, we lost five members of our community to fentanyl and fentanyl-related overdoses. We simply lack the manpower to handle investigation, surveillance, and intervention.
Fellow representatives introduced, co-sponsored the parody of Tribal Law Enforcement Act. The legislation died last congress until congress enacts the legislation. Please increase significantly funding for the tribal police, safety officers, and tribal courts. Third, please double the current Taiwan program budget. The flexible Taiwan program improves the ability of tribes to provide alternatives to incarceration, social service programs, counseling, job training, parenting classes, and other programs to at-risk community members in a culturally appropriate manner to keep Indians' families together.
Fourth, education is critical to the nation's future. We appreciate there were no cuts to the BIE programs in the fiscal year 26. Please increase the Johnson and O'Balley assistance grants program by at least 25% to give our students culturally appropriate classroom activities. These increased at least 25% post-secondary scholarships and adult education program grants. We fund with tribal general revenues, BIA scholarship funds with an additional 50% subsidy, and we continue to fall short of our students' needs.
Increased funds for Native American language immersion programs help us build strong, confident Native youth. Tribal youth will return tenfold to the United States your $1 investment in them. Fifth, we continue to provide advanced appropriations to the Indian Health Service Council. Tribes and health care advocates for NIHB believe that the appropriations to the IHS should be three to four times the current funding levels. We request that Congress increase funding to the sanitation facilities construction accounts so that aged septic sewer and waterline serving reservations can be replaced.
IHS policies prioritize new home sewer, septic, and water hookups. IHS has not responded timely to our request to assist us to replace 150 tribal home septic tanks that are at capacity or replace a three-mile water line that is leaking. Please consider dedicated funding within IHS facilities account to assist tribes replacing aging water, sewer, wastewater, and water systems. Last, the BIA Trust Natural Resources Management account. We request that Congress increase the Rights Protection Implementation Program and Tribal Management Development Program by at least 20%.
These accounts, together with EPA's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and EPA's state and tribal assistance plans, are critical to the band and to the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which serves 11 Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin in our ceded territories. This concludes my remarks. Beegwetch.
Speaker 1
Thank you, John. Before we go to questions, I'd like to recognize the full committee chairman, Tom Cole. I'm sure someone that needs no introduction to everyone here. And thank him for joining us today as the first Native American to serve as chair of the appropriations committee and a member of the Chickasaw Nation. He continues to be the biggest champion for Indian country.
I'd like to yield to Chairman Cole for any remarks on that.
Speaker 13
Well, thank you very much, Mister Chairman and Ranking Member Pingree. Good morning to everyone. Thank you all for being here this week and taking the time to testify on important issues affecting your communities. This is actually my favorite set of hearings to get to attend, because we hear from all of Indian country. And I'm always struck by the diversity and, frankly, the quality of the testimony.
It really helps us as we make our decisions. As an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, tribal issues have always been extremely important to me and continue to shape my work as a member of Congress and chair of this important committee. I have been and will remain committed to ensuring the federal government upholds its trust responsibility to Native Americans. We have champions of Indian country and the chair and ranking member of this subcommittee who care deeply about the issues you all are here to discuss. They've proven that tribal issues are not Republican or Democratic.
They're truly bipartisan. I'll continue to work closely with them to ensure we provide the services, resources, and advancements needed throughout Indian country. I'd like to thank all of you for taking the time and traveling all the way to be here today. Your voices directly shape this subcommittee's legislation each fiscal year. I want you all to know that every year we hold these tribal witness days.
These members and staff hear you and listen to you. I look forward to hearing testimony from each of you and working with my colleagues to advance our commitment to tribal communities across the country. With that, mister chairman, thank you for the time, and I yield back.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Tom does a great job, and he is one of the busiest people in Congress that you can imagine because he not only deals with just this issue, but a gazillion of them. I don't know how he does it all, but thanks for being here.
Speaker 1
I wanna first ask a couple questions. Just you'd think I'd know this, but I don't. How many bands of Chipawa Indians are there? And how closely are you affiliated?
Speaker 11
In Minnesota, we have a total of seven Ojibwe tribes. Okay. And four Lakota tribes.
Speaker 11
Six of the bands are members of the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, and we are very closely affiliated with each other, mostly over the competition of who has the best wild rice. And I personally invite you to Fond Du Lac, and I will guarantee you, I will have the best wild rice prepared for you. I can feel in the world.
Speaker 8
We have six Ojibwe tribes in Wisconsin right now, apparently. And, throughout our Glipwick staff, there are living Ojibwe tribes in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin that share our treaties.
Speaker 1
Has do you each have separate treaties with the federal government each band, or was it one treaty? We have multiple ones.
Speaker 1
Okay. Thanks for clearing that up for me. You brought up something, Bruce, that is interesting that's going on. You mentioned fire safety. We had really five wildfire-fighting agencies in the federal government.
Big one in the forest service, obviously. And then we had the BLM, the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the BIA. They've combined those that were in interior into one firefighting agency. What are your thoughts on that, how's it working out? Or what's your concerns if you have any?
Speaker 11
I was a wildland firefighter. Myself, my dad was, and our youth is. So the biggest thing is the equipment. Equipment failure is unacceptable in a situation like that. So equipment is a big part of it, and we have to have a living wage.
In our tribal communities, we've been removed from all economic centers. It's very difficult to maintain good employment with the added cost of living in rural Minnesota, lack of infrastructure. I could go on for hours. That's why I invite you to Fond Du Lac, because I will gladly sit with you and explain all of these different disparities that prevent tribes from moving forward in this world of 2026.
Speaker 1
Well, it is, you bring up some good issues, and it is this movement that's going on in the wildfire agencies and maybe the best move in the world in terms of getting things done. It may not be. I don't know. But I, we're looking, we're watching very closely about how this works. And it may be that it's better to coordinate.
You might have more coordinate, but you might lose some control.
Speaker 1
Put it under a central agency like that. You brought up something that I mentioned in the first panel that is, of concern to me, and that is I know that when I've gone and talked with the Chauvin tribes on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation that they train their officers. They train their firefighters. And as soon as they get trained, they get a better salary in Pocatello or Idaho Falls, which is just down the road. So how do we keep those people on the reservation doing the job that they were trained to do and are qualified to do?
I mean, that's a huge issue throughout Indian country.
Speaker 8
Sir, I'd like, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'd like to mention that each one of our respectful tribes here sitting at the table today. We have to look at the economics provided for each one of our communities and surrounding communities, and this is what keeps our nations together, I guess, per se, in our territories. We're the biggest employer in like five counties right now, and we produce like 900 and some jobs where we're at. But when they cut funding, they're actually not cutting just funding to the reservations. They're cutting funding to the surrounding communities.
So I just wanted to mention that while I'm here today because that's a big part of our lifestyle back home.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much. Just wanna thank you again for your testimony and the many issues you brought up, and thank you, mister chair, for bringing that one up. I feel like you're right. We hear that every year, and some year we have to be able to tackle this idea of parity within the police forces because it's just such a long standing issue, as well as the court systems. I know you brought up a lot of other things that we'll hear about today, but I really appreciate hearing more about housing and substance use disorder, mental health, all the things you're working on.
So thank you for bringing that firsthand information. It really is helpful to us. Appreciate you being here. And I'm gonna take you up on the wild rice thing.
Speaker 1
We'll go up, we'll have a competition between all of them, and she'll be there. Anytime.
Speaker 13
First of all, I apologize for missing most of your testimony. So I don't know if I'm in a very good position to ask a very intelligent question. I only caught the last of John's testimony. But I will ask you this, just quickly. You laid out a number of needs, obviously, where the federal government comes up short.
If you had to pick the biggest infrastructure challenges you have, the thing that is stopping you from moving forward, what would that be?
Speaker 11
If you're asking us, sanitation is a big problem. We have to adjust our housing guidelines. And as far as in rural Minnesota, if you make $15 an hour, you can't even afford to drive to work. And most of our tribal housing programs, you're no longer eligible for tribal housing. And so then most of our reservations, almost every one of us, we were removed from the economic centers, but we chose to be around beautiful landscape.
Any of us that are checkerboard reservations, Americans are moving out to the rural areas, too. They love their recreational homes. Counties are pressuring to increase property taxes. It makes it really hard to have employees that aren't tribal members find affordable housing around the reservations. And so they have to travel long distance, and sometimes the infrastructure is just not there.
And like I said, if you come to Fond Du Lac or the Duluth, Minnesota area, big tourist area, I will gladly go over this inextensive. I grew up there. I live there.
Speaker 10
I wasn't sure if I could bring up the housing issue, but it's actually connected to everything else. So in my area, I always use my Michigan map. I live right here. We have the good fortune to live in a beautiful location right on Lake Michigan, but that also brings a lot of resort. It brings a lot of folks up there to vacation, and it's been happening for generations.
And because our reservation is checkerboarded, we are always competing for land with those that have a little bit more to spend. And for us in trying to attract and retain employees for our tribe, we really see the struggle with affordable housing for them, for the workforce. We've partnered with the local community. We just built workforce housing in partnership with the city of Petoskey, Michigan, so that we could have housing for doctors and nurses and law enforcement officers and fire staff. And it's really a continued issue.
I can echo what Mister Savage had just said about the difficulty with even our own citizens who want to move back home and work for the tribe. With the pay that they are receiving in our area because of the high cost of living, they're finding it hard to find housing so that they can even come back home and contribute in a positive way to our community. Because the caveat is then they also don't qualify for our tribal housing programs because they make too much money. So I hear probably on a daily basis from at least one citizen who doesn't understand why that's the case, and they want me to fix it tomorrow. So, any kind of help in that respect would be wonderful. Thank you.
Speaker 12
And I agree completely with what everyone has said here about housing. We have a large membership, and right now, we're unable to meet their needs housing-wise. And housing is one of the most precious gifts that our tribal governments can provide to our citizens. You know, the Sault Ste. Marie tribe experiences the same things that the other tribes are experiencing in terms of housing costs.
We're home to the Sioux Locks, which is undergoing a massive renovation. We have a lot of well-paid workers that are coming into the area from out of town, out of state. It's driving the cost of housing up. And when I talk about housing, I talk about all forms of housing: emergency housing, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, homeownership opportunity, low income housing, elder housing, all the above. A close second would be health care in terms of infrastructure.
You know, our people are disproportionately impacted by a myriad of different health issues. You know, and increased resources are one of the few ways that we can correct that.
Speaker 13
You know, we actually, this committee, to its credit, about two years ago made a substantial increase in housing. And what we found is we looked at this, I actually chaired the committee at the time, Indian Housing is actually in transportation, housing and urban development. It's not in front of this committee. So much as they're sympathetic with you, they can't do much for you here. They can on the health care issue.
This committee has a great record of increasing that. But we went back and looked all the way back to when NASA, the basic program was passed for Indian housing. How much were we spending at HUD on Indian housing in the late eighteen, excuse me, late 1990s? And we found we're spending about 2.8% or 9% of the total HUD budget on Indian housing. By the time we looked at it, it was down to 1.4%.
Hadn't been cut. It just hadn't kept up with the increase in every place else. I asked my committee, when's the last time we had a hearing on tribal housing? We went back 20 years. There had not been a hearing under either party, so it's not a partisan issue.
And it was just, out of mind, outside of out of mind. And so we raised it back to 2.8. And I think Steve Walmak, who chairs that, could be has kept it there, actually had a modest increase last year. So we're going to do that, but that doesn't make up for 20 years of not investing. You can't do it overnight, and we have a long way to go.
So this housing thing really interests me because it is terrible on most reservations. Really, most Americans need to go see what it's like to live, in some cases, twenty and thirty people in a house, literally in shifts in some places out in the Midwest. What this income thing is, is also an interesting problem. So tell me what the income level you need is, and what would happen if we raise that income level so more people would be eligible?
Speaker 8
So in Wisconsin, we have a wage median that really hurts us because south of 29, it goes all the way across the middle of Wisconsin. The median down there, a good living is $75,000 a year, but you get to the north of that where most of the tribes are, it's $50,000. And most of our tribal members earn between 20 and $30,000 a year. So this is where the housing shortage comes in. And I'd also like to say something to Mister Simpson two years ago.
You asked us to use the language when we came in front of you. And I think we were on the second day, and you said you hadn't heard the language yet. And when you sponsored our language, you said two, I think it was 2 years ago, in the tune of $13,000,000. Well, how much is that really between the tribes? You'd have 575 tribes.
It's a little over $2,000. And, you know, who are we without our treaty rights and our language? You know, we have all of these things that we have here sitting at the table. Yeah. They're all wants and needs.
But if we lose that language and we lose our culture, who are we then as Native Americans? And this is why I'm testifying on behalf of Lac de Flambeau.
Speaker 13
She, yeah, she sometimes quotes you because I've heard McGwich before. Mhmm. But you're very lucky to have her. There's not a better advocate for Native American issues on either side of the aisle than my friend who used to chair this committee herself. And so, again, this committee will, if we give them the money, they'll get the job done.
It's always a matter of what their allocation is, but their emphasis will be on the things you like. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know when along, yield back.
Speaker 6
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm gonna take a second to set the scene here because a lot of what we're hearing, whether it's house, health care, housing, infrastructure, water, and everything like that, is something that was caused by a law that the federal government passed after many of these tribes signed their treaties. Just recently, it's breaking news in Northern Minnesota and in the Northern Tier. One point, $2,000,000 from the Lloyd Johnson Foundation helped Grand Portage put its part of the reservation back together. And here's the history of this and why it's even more expensive to do transportation, everything else, especially in this part of the United States.
And this is I'll use the example of Grand Portage. In '19, excuse me. In 1854, Grand Portage signed a treaty with the US government along with Fond du Lac and Boyce Fort. They ceded more than 5,000,000 acres to the federal government. Grand Portage ban, got, it's at the tip of what when people look at Minnesota, it's at the tip of Minnesota.
But they did preserve their rights to hunt, fish, and gather in the ceded territory, which they constantly had to fight for, but that was in the treaty. Just a few decades after signing that, the federal government allowed land to be divided up along the reservations and sold off to timber and mining interests. The federal land allotment laws also took land out of community-held tribal ownership and assigned it to individual band members. And I'll tell you, the grifters came in. They came in.
The only tribe in Minnesota that didn't get caught up in this is Red Lake. And, if you see the chairman of Red Lake in the hall, ask him the story. It's mind boggling what their folks did, but they saw what was happening to the south of them, so they were able to react. And here's a quote from one of the elders of a council member of Grand Portage, John Moran. When they did that, they began carving away the spirit of our people, our culture, piece by piece.
It created a lot of trauma within us as human beings, and we're still trying to deal with that today. The Grand Portage tribe thanks the Johnson family for doing what they did. And this is a quote, kind of from the chairman. The Johnson name carries with it a complicated history with our people. Many of our band members know this history well.
It's still written as felt. So who was Kurt Johnson? Lloyd Kurt, K. Johnson was a prominent lawyer and businessman from Grand Marais, who died in 02/2006. His father and uncle held positions in the Cook County land department at the time that federal allotment policies began to split up the Grand Portage land.
That put him in a prime position to scoop up the land or in some cases, they did it because they were past due on taxes, which was never really explained that they were going to have to pay taxes on the land that they lived on. So, the foundation now has started digging into the hard truth of how they acquired so much of their wealth. They learned that a related family trust still held three parcels of land in Grand Portage last month, and then that's when the money came to be. So when you're not fully connected to one another, it's even more expensive to provide schools, health care, transportation, sewer, water, police, and everything else. So and we're not the only ones that were affected in allotment, but I kinda know the Gwyfflick nations the best, the mass nations the best.
And this is why it is so difficult for these tribes, even with the support we give them, to kind of put all the pieces back together again. And so, we've done a lot to Chairman Cole's benefit. You know, thank you for all that you did for being able to purchase land back and all, and we're still working on that at the federal government, allowing that to happen. But this is part of a traumatic thing that that's not that many generations removed. And this is why it's so expensive for these tribes.
And I've overtaken my time, but being a social studies teacher, I had to give one little history lesson. And some people might call it woke. I just call it the truth.
Speaker 8
Quick. Get in. Okay. Yeah. So what I was told, you know, from our treaties, and, you're talking about Grand Portage here, that the tribal lands that butted up to our reservations were put there for a reason, because we were going to outgrow them.
So this is why I wanted to ask, when are some of those lands going to come back? Why should we have to buy something that was originally ours? That's all I have. Thank you.
Speaker 11
Chairman, I got one thing. With this, what she, what Miss McCollum mentioned about the land taken by what I call illegal tax forfeiture still affects the tribes. When you try to use the land within the reservation that you privately own as collateral, it can turn up on a claims list, and the USDA won't use it as collateral, which makes us have to go seek other higher interest rate money to participate in agriculture.
Speaker 14
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I didn't know that. I liked it. And that's wrong. We could do this for hours.
Like I said, we're behind the timeline. I just wanna take thirty seconds to say I did some homework about the wild rice thing, about Manoomin. And it's the Internet says it's the Menominee tribe that has the best. Is that and they're called the wild rice pea. I'm just saying what the internet says.
That's all I'm pointing. Anyway, sometime, Mr. Chairman, I would love to come up with you and Betty, come see you and see how this is done and get in the canoe and fall into the water. But see the traditional ways in which you harvest something that's clearly very important to you and is a source of pride for you and your people. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1
Thank you. And thank you for your testimony. We appreciate it very much.
Speaker 1
We have Whitney around. Going once, going twice. Jason, you're up first.
Speaker 15
Good morning, everybody. I'm Jason Schlunder, the Executive Administrator for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. And I just want to kind of break from some of the formality here this morning by just expressing my extreme appreciation for being here. Yesterday, I started driving from Milwaukee at 07:30 this yesterday morning and drove through a blizzard all the way through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. So my hands are a little sore from ripping my steering wheel of my vehicle.
So I'm really appreciative of everyone being here. And my motivation for doing that is that when tribes have a seat at the table, we wanna make sure that we fill that seat, and, also, that we also it's also our determination to be here to represent the tribes, especially for the Great Lakes Indian Fishwala commission. And so I will provide my part, the testimony on behalf of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. So the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Trust Natural Resources Management, rights protection implementation, no less than 66,000,000 for FY '27. The amount calculated by the five intertribal commissions to meet their basic needs of that amount, no less than 17.71%, to be directed to the Great Lakes area resource management.
Regardless of overall RPI funding, Glyphwick has identified a need of at least 8,927,000 to be directed through the Great Lakes area resource management. The area of trust, natural resource management, and at least 19,044,000 enacted by Congress in FY '26, and the TMDP requests of Gulf Wicks member tribes. The Trust Natural Resources Management fish wildlife parks program, at least 23,751,000, be enacted for FY '26. For EPA, $369,000,000, including no less than 7% to the distinct travel program or DDP, which is approximately $25,000,000. So the Great Lakes Senior Official Walef Commission has been active for over forty years and is in a federally recognized governmental institution that, for the implementation, the comprehensive conservation natural resource protection and law enforcement programs to ensure compliance with federal court orders that provide the framework within which member tribes exercise their treaty rights. And so, Glyphwick was established in 1984.
We represent 11 tribes as President Johnson had mentioned earlier, 11 tribes in three states. So Glyphwick's FY27 funding request highlights our, as mentioned, dollars point or $8,927,000 for Great Lakes Area Resource Management, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding of no less than $369,000,000, and full funding for contract support costs as required by ISDEA Act. Sufficient funding in the tribal management and development line item for Glyphix member tribes to fulfill the needs of reservation-based natural resource programs. More specifically, Glucfuck has been chronically underfunded for, know, our buying power has decreased over time. So with the requested increase, we will see an opportunity for our wages to be increased so that we can be competitive.
And it is specifically for our law enforcement, our conservation wardens, that provide services as well. That's where we remain underfunded. So those are some of our priorities for FY7. So thank you for listening.
Speaker 16
Chair Simpson, ranking member, Pengeri, members of the subcommittee, and chairman Cole. What was that? Hold.
Speaker 16
Okay. Let me start again. Chair Simpson, ranking member Pingree, members of the subcommittee, and chairman Cole, thank you so much for this opportunity, and also, thank you for the ongoing support that protects and restores our treaty resources. My name is Asia Dakota. I am the executive director of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, and we are the fisheries management support agency for the four Columbia River treaty tribes, which include the Umatilla, Warm Springs, Yakima, and Nez Perce.
Our combined homelands cover more than 66,000 square miles of the Columbia River Basin, an area slightly larger than the state of Florida. Today, the rivers and streams in our homelands are also 88% of the area still accessible to Columbia River salmon above Bonneville Dam. In 1855, our tribe ceded tens of millions of acres that would become part of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. And in return, the United States made a promise that we would always have the right to fish in our usual and accustomed places, and that promise has not changed. This work continues to be critical and ongoing.
Today, 12 salmon and steelhead populations are listed under the Endangered Species Act, and many populations have been extirpated. Pacific lamprey have declined 95% from the historic numbers. These are not just species at risk. They are the foundation of our culture and an economic backbone of fisheries, stretching from the Interior West to Southeast Alaska. Our tribes are internationally recognized leaders in salmon restoration, managing one of the largest fishery recovery efforts in the nation.
To continue this work for fiscal year 2027, we request the Rights Protection Implementation Program, or RPI, to be funded at $66,000,000, which covers a broad range of goals, responsibilities and projects. Specific portions of RPI that fund critical priorities include: $6,400,000 for fisheries management. Managing Columbia River fisheries is increasing in complexity, requiring more technical expertise, collaboration, and enforcement. The BIA's Columbia River fisheries management budget supports core fishery program efforts at CritFic and our member tribes. The overall management responsibilities of the tribal programs have grown significantly and need appropriate increases in BIA-based funding.
Second is 2,059,000 for fishing access site operation improvements. Critfik oversees operations, maintenance, and improvements at the 31 federal fishing access sites established by Congress to ensure tribal member access to the river after the development of the federal Columbia River power system flooded our fishing grounds. Thanks to funding with bipartisan support, significant improvements to the aging infrastructure are already underway, and we will complete the first phase of improvements this fall. This funding request will keep these critical sites operational and also continue the safety improvements Congress called for in public law 116-99. Next is 7,420,000.00 for tribal support for the US Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty.
This keeps our tribes at the international table and protects our fishers' equitable share of the harvestable resource while also supporting fisheries and communities from Idaho to Alaska. Next is 555,000 to support a range of youth program initiatives. Our middle school salmon camp, workforce development efforts, and college internship program are training the next generation of tribal scientists, policy specialists, and natural resource leaders who will be entrusted to do our work in the future. And finally, 2,180,000 of our request is for the Columbia River in lieu sites law enforcement. Our officers patrol 150 miles of the river across remote, multi-jurisdictional terrain and often without immediate backup.
Two programs that are included in this enforcement request I would highlight include 200,000 in recurring funds for a victims' advocate program for tribal citizens along the Columbia River. A Department of Justice temporary grant helped us to start a victim advocate program. And due to its value, we want to create a permanent program to keep our community safe through trauma-informed, culturally grounded services to crime victims across all 31 fishing access sites. And last is a 130,000 one-time appropriation in FY 2027 to establish a canine unit that will meaningfully improve officer safety across this challenging operating environment. On behalf of our four member tribes, I want to sincerely thank you for your time today, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Asia. Thank you, Jason, for your testimony. Asia, we could have a discussion for the next several hours on salmon. As you know, I've been somewhat involved in trying to restore those, and it's not just the four tribes that represent that you represent. It's also other tribes in the Pacific Northwest that, in fact, without the work that all these tribes have done in trying to save the Pacific salmon and salmon that come into Idaho, which is the spawning ground for most of these fish, for a lot of these fish.
They will go extinct. You can, if we don't do something, you can have the best reserve fishing rights in the world, doesn't mean anything if there's no fish. But, if it wouldn't have been for the work of the tribes, those fish up there would be extinct now. That's just a reality. And they're gonna go extinct if we don't make some hard decisions.
That's why I put out a proposal concept of what could be done, but it's dramatic. The people of the Pacific Northwest are gonna have to make some decisions. And it's not about what we've got now, but it's what do we want this place to be 50 years from now? Do we still want salmon? I have not seen one person raise their hand and say, ah, just let them go extinct.
Everybody wants to save them. So far, we spent $17,000,000,000, hasn't done a job. They're declining, and they're going to go extinct if we don't do something. So I appreciate all that you do. I know it's tough work.
We'll get it done. We'll keep working on it. But thank you both for being here and your testimony. You do important work. Mister Bengri?
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you very much. And thank you, mister sheriff, for bringing up the importance of keeping the salmon from going extinct and restoring them. I'm on the East Coast, but in Maine, we've spent a lot of time trying to mostly do dam removal and other things to bring back our salmon populations. And it is really critical, but it's expensive and coming.
Speaker 2
Of course, would never have to happen until, but you know, we've already seen a significant return in the alewives, which were also a very important native species but are critically important to our fishermen as baitfish. So we have seen the changes. And while salmon's a little bit slower, and we have issues where our salmon often migrate over to Greenland and other places, and we're never sure we're gonna get them back. So we've got other kinds of challenges, and I'm not a fish scientist, but I deeply appreciate the work that you're doing. And you as well, Jason.
Thank you for putting in that long drive. That really shows a lot about your commitment, but we're grateful for that and really benefit from your presence here and the important things you're talking about. I know how important funding these natural resource entities are to the tribes, but really benefit all of us, particularly with the changing weather and disappearing species. It's really more important than ever. So thank you for your work, and thank you for the time you spent with us.
Thank you.
Speaker 13
Anybody from Oklahoma has much to say about salmon, other than I like it. Let me ask you. If you had to, you laid out, is it Asia?
Speaker 13
You know, kind of your needs, budget by budget. If you had to pick, you know, two or three of the most important things that would make a material difference here, and I would ask you the same question, Jason. What would they be?
Speaker 16
You know, that's a really tough question just because our priorities are so expansive, and they're very different from each other. You know, we have a lot of enforcement needs. We have these treaty fishing access sites that we have. We, you know, the federal, it's federally owned, but we do all the O and M on them. And the issue to kind of think about the previous panel is we have peep those sites were created for seasonal use to access the river.
But because of the lack of housing in the Columbia River Gorge and the lack of, you know, affordable housing, we have tribal citizens living on these sites year round, without the infrastructure to really support them. So I think although the housing is not in my court, it's within individual tribes. Until we get that figured out, the use of these sites and the maintenance of these sites will continue to increase as the enrollment and the citizens kind of take in the area. But, you know, for us, really, the biggest is the Columbia River fisheries management. That just doesn't go specifically to CritFig.
That goes to our member tribes. That really supports all of the work at the baseline of what we do in terms of advocacy, but also policy and science.
Speaker 13
Jason, I know the Great Lakes are very different from the Northwest, but if, you know, for the things you work on, what would be the most important thing?
Speaker 15
Well, the most important thing, obviously, is to maintain our funding. So RPI is our kind of, is our, know, our bloodline, I would say. And then I would also just equally prioritize more buying power for our specific organization so that our staff, so that we can increase. Our pay scale hasn't been updated in years. And so our staff have been the one fortunate thing for Glyphwick is that we have our staff are long-tenured.
So we have many people that have been there for a long time. And so their dedication and expertise needs to be rewarded. But at the same time, we lose, you know, the opportunity to compete with state agencies and our counterparts because we'll train them. We'll train our people in, but then they end up leaving for agencies like yourselves or even state agencies as well. So, we need to be able to be competitive so that we can maintain the excellence that we provide, the services that we provide to our tribes.
And we know that states and people that recreate in those areas where we live, they benefit from that as well.
Speaker 6
Because you're charged with the intertribal commission. You use your funding to ensure the fulfillment of court orders.
Speaker 6
So you have a real important role in making sure that federal orders are fulfilled. I appreciate what you said about what happens to staff, whether they're scientists, warrants, or just community outreach people on how to do what we need to do to protect this environmental resource. I'd like you to just take a few minutes and maybe tell the committee, especially in light of what's happened in EPA Region 5, which is the region you pretty much sit in. What has happened with the US Forest Service, the US Geological Survey, and other federal agencies because of the cuts that they've had throughout your ceded territories? Either what you're and you can provide us written testimony later, but either what you're not able to do or things that could do better if those support staffs were there.
When you lose a lot of people in EPA Region V, it affects you because it's everything that touches the EPA also touches the work that you do for tribal organizations.
Speaker 15
Yes. So the well, obviously, I would just say plainly just say with the lack of staff, we don't have people there that are responsive to any issues that come that arise for our tribe. So that's the biggest thing is this. It's the, you know, the delay as far as communication and correspondence. And so those are, that's the, I would say that's the most prominent thing as far as when we lose staff or in any organization or their staffing levels are reduced, the services are delayed or even responses or correspondence is delayed as well.
Speaker 6
Thank you for that. So, mister chair, I think in light of the fact that their one of their priority roles is to see the fulfillment of court orders. And I know from talking to tribal members and from things the White House said when it first came into office that tribal nations were not going to get caught up in their attacks on DEI. I have some concerns from some individuals that I've heard both at a federal level, state levels, and other than Minnesota and at travel levels that the original statement from the White House might not be happening the way in which we all had hoped it would work out because with the cutting of that, it impacts them very different from the roles that they have. So any conversations we can also have with the White House to make sure that the things that the president originally said about honoring trust and treaty responsibilities, and that that also includes what GWFLOC does.
And I hope that is possibly reflected in the president's budget. With that, I yield back.
Speaker 1
Miss Chelsea, George, thank you for your testimony and for being here. And I know it was a challenge to get here. We didn't know we were gonna make it flying in, but I appreciate it very much. It's very important, and we'll continue working on these issues.
Speaker 1
I'd get a hotel room till it gets to about 70 degrees. Anyway, thank you very much.
Speaker 13
Nobody needs it more. What's that? I said nobody needs it more. I shit. That's right.
Speaker 1
Think you guys never see each other? You're most familiar. Only 500 miles apart. We don't. Ashton, you're first.
Speaker 21
Alright. Representative Simpson and members of the committee. My name is Picard. I'm a vice chairman of the Nespurs tribe executive committee. And, just wanted to start off by saying I appreciate the opportunity to come before you and testify, not only for Nespurs tribe, all the tribes and the tribal representation that'll be here to testify today.
One of the things that we appreciate from NESPurs is this committee's response to the missing and murdered indigenous peoples, inherent testimony from our past neptic member, Mary Jane Miles. We know that this educated the broader American public about this issue that has impacted Ness and other tribal communities. We hope that in FY 27, the subcommittee will continue to make efforts to address missing and murdered indigenous persons through targeted funding to the BIA for a missing and murdered indigenous women initiative and the facilitation of sharing of law enforcement and public records data as well, through the domestic violence prevention initiative of the IHS. We also hope the subcommittee will use the insights you gained from the powerful testimony in working with other committees of Congress to address issues of jurisdiction in Indian country. Like any government, the Nez Perce tribe provides a variety of important services to the tribal membership as well as the community at large.
The tribe has a health care clinic, a tribal police force, a social service department, and a comprehensive natural resource program. We also operate one of the largest fisheries departments of any tribe in the nation, working on recovery of listed species under the Endangered Species Act. Each of these programs is necessary to preserve and protect the treaty rights of the Nespirés people. All the tribe's actions and decisions are guided by this principle. The tribe works extensively with many federal agencies, and proper funding for those agencies and their work with, for, and through tribes is of vital importance.
We appreciate that the appropriations committee rejected many of the substantial reductions to Indian program funding proposed in the president's FY 26 budget request and provided specific directives in the explanatory statement about how Congress intends for FY '26 appropriations to be allocated, as well as regarding proposed staffing reductions at federal agencies. The tribe has experienced several delays in funding, especially related to fish restoration activities that hinder our governmental operations. We appreciate that Congress stepped in with federal agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service funding for Kuske hatchery and the Nespis tribes' insistence to prod the release of FY '25 funds that were being delayed. The United States' obligations to tribal sovereign nations should be honored, upheld in a timely fashion based on the treaties and federal statutes that clearly define the trust relationship between the United States and the tribes. The tribe provides a full service law enforcement justice program and recently completed construction of a correctional facility.
And currently, our tribe provides about 80% of that funding, which is roughly $4,000,000, while the BIA covers about 20% or roughly 1 million dollars. The jail facility is necessary to house tribal inmates, but comes with increased operational costs. Money that pays for these services come from tribal taxes on goods and fuel, as well as from our tribal gaming revenue that could otherwise be used for other tribal government services for the tribe to fulfill its law enforcement obligation on the Nespis Reservation. The tribe needs increased funding from the BIA for staffing, administration, operational costs, and operations of the detention facility. For these reasons, the tribe recommends the BIA public safety and justice account be increased by 75,500,000 over what has been enacted for that account.
Regarding the Indian Health Service, the tribe supports the 13,000,000,000 provided before the IHS in FY '26, which includes 5,300,000,000 advanced appropriation. The tribe operates Nymipu Health. It's one of our clinics, and we would say that it provides service to approximately 4,000 patients each year to help continue providing these services. We recommend maintaining FY '26 funding levels going forward for FY '27, but it must be noted that funding should be continually adjusted to keep pace with medical and non-medical inflation with population growth. Finally, the tribe operates a community development financial institution, Nimi Pufan, that is an invaluable resource for the tribe in assisting with small business development on the reservation. To aid the effort, the tribe recommends 35,000,000 for the BIA Office of Indian and Economic Development for jobs, training, and technical assistance, support for the Indian business incubator grants, and support for the Native Act grant, and 25,000,000 for the Indian loan guarantee program to expand the program to incentivize banks to finance projects in Indian country.
We appreciate your consideration of the tribe's recommendation for public safety and health funding, as well as our request to properly fund other areas such as economic development and for the EPA and the Forest Service. I just wanna, again, thank you for this opportunity, and it's been an honor.
Speaker 9
Tried, but he was busy reading his book. Good morning. My name is Donna Thompson, and I am the Chairwoman of the Fort Hall Business Council, the governing body of the Shoshone Bannock tribes. And first, I want to thank Chairman Simpson and this subcommittee for your efforts to help Indian country. And it's also an honor to see Chairman Cole here today.
So today, I will focus on one advanced appropriations and mandatory funding for IHS and BIA. The IHS realignment and hiring and BIA staffing and services. The tribes appreciate that you have included advanced appropriations for IHS over the past few years. As we saw this fall, it was very much needed. I've got my paper screwed up here, you guys.
This provision is critical to maintaining operations, and we request that this continue. We also request a similar provision for the BIA. Although advanced appropriations for IHS is key to upholding the trust responsibility, the larger issue remains the annual discretionary approach to healthcare that is still less than 50% of the level of need. As a result, the Indian Health System relies heavily on Medicaid to make up for this shortfall. Approximately half of our tribal members on the reservation are enrolled in Medicaid.
However, this reliance on Medicaid has several problems. First, the federal government has a trust responsibility to provide health care, but Medicaid is run by states who do not have a trust responsibility. As a result, tribes in different states face different rules for eligibility, services, and benefits. This forces tribes to negotiate with states for health care. And these days, there is pressure from Congress and the state of Idaho to limit Medicaid spending.
Funding for IHS should be made fully mandatory to truly uphold the trust and treaty responsibilities. CMS should work directly with tribes, not states, on health care funding. Turning to IHS realignment and hiring. IHS proposes centralizing administrative functions and shifting other functions to new regional offices. However, we are deeply concerned that while IHS is focused on realignment, it is failing to address basic issues like hiring that would actually improve services.
With a 35% vacancy rate, it is critical that IHS fix the broken hiring process. The lack of providers is a huge problem. The hiring process takes too long. Job candidates can't wait months as IHS reviews the applications. They move on to other jobs.
Further, more effort must be made to retain the providers. The loss of even one doctor, dentist, or nurse can have a massive impact. We request the subcommittee conduct oversight to ensure that IHS is focused on actually improving health care services in Indian country. Finally, BIA staffing. Last year, the BIA carried out two deferred resignation programs, resulting in more than half of the employees leaving our already understaffed Fort Hall agency, causing significant disruptions, especially with realty and probate.
Our agency remains short-staffed with just six of 17 positions filled. Deferred resignation programs carried out in the name of efficiency have only resulted in less capacity to provide basic services. This is extremely frustrating for our tribal members. Many have received late lease payments or have not received lease payments. Tribal members rely on these payments to put food on their tables.
I hear from tribal members daily about this. Despite recent department efforts to prioritize the probate backlog, the BIA has not hired anyone to address these issues, and there is a lack of judges to resolve the cases. Currently, we have a five-year backlog in probate cases, which equals about over 200 cases. We need more people working at the department to work on probate and leasing issues. We also request oversight on how the BIA can approve these services for the tribe.
Thank you.
Speaker 7
Chairman, ranking member, can you repeat? Chairman Cole's honored to meet you. And it is on now?
Speaker 7
Sorry. And, rank and members of the committee. My name is Chief Allen, and I've, before you guys add, that is my name. My mom had high expectations. She named me chief as a and I've had the honor and privilege to be the chairman for my tribe for twenty years.
I've been on council for 23 years, and I don't want to talk to you guys about numbers and all that stuff. You guys have already heard that. You guys have my testimony. I just wanna talk to you guys about what, you know, what Indian country is and what Indian people are. We're just like you.
We have the same goals, the same things. We want safe communities. To have safe communities, you know, we gotta have the funding for law enforcement. We want to protect our national resources. Chairman, thank you for mentioning, you know, yeah, we're not part of that organization, you know, but salmon is a big part of what defined us as cordless people.
We don't have a treaty. We were executive order tribe. I always tell everybody, we just didn't, we never gave up. So, but a lot of people don't understand what difference there is between executive order and treaty tribes. Congress just quit doing treaties with tribes after a certain date, and so we had to do an executive order tribe.
But I also wanted you guys to know who I am. I'm, when I took over we don't know what the budget is. We don't have we haven't seen the president's budget yet, and, we can guess in the little darts at, you know, how much it's gonna be and what it's gonna be and what's not gonna be. What we know, what is fact, is that Indian country has always historically been underfunded in everything.
Speaker 7
So I've known that my whole career. And so what I've always done is try to not only just want you guys to be, you know, when you guys help Indian country, you're helping everybody. You know? And our reservation is a checkerboard reservation. I'm, you know, I come from this great state of Idaho, and it's beautiful.
And, you know, we had a lot of people moving in. You know, we contracted our IRS and, with our, and that allowed us to help everybody. We're all, if you guys understand, rural America struggles with health care, and we need to, all, you know, work together. And that has been my goal from day one, is always to work together. So we have about 6,000 patients in our thing, and it's not all native.
It's, you know, we help everybody in, you know, North Idaho. We are able to provide really good doctors, dentists. When I was growing up, we saw the doctor once a month. The dentist came out once a month as well. It was in a little trailer.
Our ancestors, our elders at that time had the vision to build a facility. I used to think, you know, as a young man, I thought my arrogant cocky self used to think, oh, gaming was end all be all. You know, that really provided funding for the tribes and gave us money to do a lot of things. But when COVID hit, I understood ancestors gave me slap beside the head. My elders gave me a slap.
It was health care. Health care was what really saved us and what really, think, you know, we were the first in the country to open back up. You know? And the reason why we were able to do that was because we had strong health care. We had a strong thing.
And so funding, so we really appreciate the advanced funding that we have for in-house services and that we will continue to support that. And like I said, we all know that the funding is always not what it is. And so, but we have to be creative in ways how we can work together as communities. And that community, me, also involves my non native brothers and sisters, and we open that. And, as chairman Simpson knows, he's visited.
He's been to our facilities. I'm always willing to host anybody that has time. I know you guys are also busy. And, you know, but please come up and see what we're doing and what some of the things that we've done to really help bridge that gap between that lack of funding and what we can do to be creative. And with that, I will open up for questions, and happy Saint Patrick's Day.
Just a side note, my brother and sisters, they have a different father, and they're half Irish. So I got so they're half native and half Irish. It's kinda funny. Was kind of just funny.
Speaker 1
Thank you all for being here today. It's a long way from Idaho. But, I appreciate your testimony. I've I go down and visit with Donna and the business council periodically and talk about things. And if I don't get up to North Idaho at least once a year, I don't feel like it's been summer because it's so beautiful up there and stuff.
But, I appreciate you taking the time to be here today. It is, chairman Cole, that taught me several years ago when we both served on this committee, and that he went through and showed me a chart of how much we spend on veterans' health care. And you'd expect that to be higher because there's a lot of injuries and war, etcetera, etcetera, stuff. And then how much we spend on everybody else's health care, average person across the United States, and then how much we spend on Indian health care per Indian. And the differences are stunning.
And we wonder why the lifespan of Indians is going down rather than going up, like everybody else. This is a challenge, and that's why this committee has been focused on this for a number of years. And I asked this question during hearings last year because I was hearing this from several tribes that would come in and visit with me and stuff. And I haven't gotten an answer yet. It's something that I'm not proposing.
I'm just, this is what people are talking to me about, is that some tribes will come in and say, you know, we would get better health care. We would be able to deliver better health care to our community members if we got the middleman out of the middle of this, that being Indian Health Services, and directly funded the tribes to deliver their service. Because it, you know, I just take some off the top. It's just the more you go through, and I don't know if that's a smart thing or a bad thing. And I suspect for some tribes, it probably would be beneficial.
Others might not have the infrastructure to be able to do that themselves. But it's something that I would like the tribes to look at and see if it makes sense, to do something like that and what it would take to do it. But I agree that the advanced appropriation, as you know, it was recommended that we not do that in the last appropriation process. I know Shelly fought very hard for that when she was chairman of this committee and got it done. We're not going back on that, but we need to make it mandatory funding.
I think Indian Health Services is the only health care program that is not mandatory funding in this program or in health services delivered by the federal government. You mentioned the number of tribal members in Fort Hall that get Medicaid, that I know the state of Idaho is looking at cutting back because they have a budget problem right now. They're looking at cutting back on Medicaid. They're looking at cutting back on the Medicare expansion program and other things. How's that going to affect your members?
Speaker 9
It affects us very deeply because, as I mentioned, over 50% of our tribal members are on Medicaid and rely on Medicaid, and so does the IHS to help fund their program, relies on that as well. So it would impact us very deeply because it's programs that are very much needed not only by our community, but by Idaho as well. Behavioral health, you know, we all have those problems in our communities. And, you know, by cutting those, we're looking at, you know, having some not so good things happen in our home health care. So we need to really keep those. Many of our elders depend on that, not just on Indian reservations, but everywhere, you know, in the state of Idaho.
So cutting Medicaid would really impact us.
Speaker 1
Okay. I was glad we were able to get the fish hatchery issues solved. Sometimes when new people come into administration, they do things that they don't know the impact of in the long run. So I was able, I was glad we were able to work that out. You can't do a fish hatchery and fund it three-quarters of the year.
It's just kind of crazy. Anyway, Miss Pingry?
Speaker 2
Great. Thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to see everyone from the Idaho tribes. We know how much the chair works closely with you and thinks, you know, about the importance of his home state. So I'm glad that you have a real champion there, and it's good to hear some of the issues that you're here to share with us.
And, chief Allen, thank you for chairman, chief Allen. Love that name. We have a young man in our town whose mother named him King, and his last name is Arthur. You'll figure. My children have many things they're angry about, but luckily, I didn't misname them.
No. But I think Chief Allen is an appropriate name and wonderful, and, obviously, you were destined to this role. So thank you for sharing that story with us. And I really did appreciate it, often we hear that, but just emphasizing once again about how tribes impact rural communities around them and the great benefit that you provide. And when you're underfunded, it just makes it that much more challenging for rural communities.
And I represent a very rural state in Maine, and we know how important it is to have input into the rural economy. So thank you for that. And, Chairwoman Thompson, I'm glad the chair picked up on that because I think that is really critically important. I'm also very worried about what will happen when these Medicaid cuts kick in. But already, as you mentioned, there are so many issues because we've gotten very dependent on having tribal members covered by Medicaid.
And I don't know how we should be thinking about that in this year's appropriation cycle. But if there's ways we could write some language in there to help protect that, you know, whatever we can do to sort of prevent disaster when there's suddenly a huge pool of unfunded people. Because it's been a benefit in a sense for us to not have to provide so much for IHS if people are funded through other ways, but if there's a moment that this is gonna be a cliff or if it's already an issue or if it's something to do with how you work with CMS, you mentioned that. Anyway, I just hope we can continue to talk about that, as we move on. We will have IHS before us.
I don't know if we have BIA before us, but I think we should also be talking about the many vacancies that were created last year and just getting a real accounting of what has been. Sometimes there were vacancies created because we didn't need that position, but I think the majority of them were retirements or probationary people who really were important. And I know it's been hard to fill those positions at BIA. So that's an important point for you to bring up, and thank you too for being here. It's really been very beneficial to hear your testimony. Thanks.
Speaker 13
Thank you. Mister chairman, again, I wanna join my colleagues. Thank you for being here. It's helpful. I can never see that light.
Okay. I know it's better. It's very hard to see. So, thank you for your testimony. I can assure you, I think I made this statement last year, whatever the presidential budget says, this committee will not be eliminating advance funding, just not going to happen.
It's a bipartisan commitment. We worked very hard. Mr. Cullum was here earlier. And as the Chairman pointed out, Mr.
Pingrix works hard on this, and he's worked hard on this. And I didn't think we were going to need it so quickly. Yes.
Speaker 13
But last year's shutdown is a critical example of why we are not going to touch that. So that is going to stay in place regardless. And we will try, look, we all realize this system is underfunded. And I think it's largely underfunded. And Mr.
Simpson made this remark that it ought to be mandatory. Indian Health Service is older than all the mandatory programs we have. And I think it was just sort of out there on its own. Was one of the few areas the federal government actually had an obligation to provide health care because of treaty and trust responsibilities before Medicaid, Medicare, and all those programs. So it never got pulled into the system.
That's something I think we should look at because I don't know how you get there given the size of the budget and the range of responsibilities this subcommittee has, although it's done pretty valiant efforts to do things. And I'm very fortunate. My tribe has a lot of outside income. So we contract and then we add money on top. Not every tribe has the opportunity to do that.
And so our health care is actually very good, but it's because it's not all provided by the federal government, because we have additional income. And there are some programs that actually help you in terms of if you build the facilities, the federal government will start funding, etcetera. Again, we have the ability to take advantage of that. Many other tribes do not. So there's inequities built into the system.
I do think Secretary Kennedy has made some interesting proposals about making extra money available for infrastructure in hospitals. And we'll see if he can do that. I certainly would be supportive of it, and we'll see what else we can do. But the health care challenges aren't going away. It's gonna take long-term sustained effort.
This committee has done that. I think it's steadily increased health care expenditures, but we're so far behind. And again, the demands on this budget outstrip the size of the budget. That's just the truth. So we'll continue to work on this, try to make progress.
But the other challenge we have here is getting the personnel we need to a lot of these facilities. I had the opportunity to take a tour of what I call First World Indian Country and Third World Indian Country with Mr. Simpson a number of years ago. And that was tribes that had the ability to spend money and tribes that didn't. There's no difference in the need or the want or the ability, but it makes a big difference when you have extra revenue.
But I noticed every place we went, they found out Simpson was a dentist. They wanted him to retire from Congress, and they would hire him immediately. Job offer after job offer out there. So I'm not worried about your retirement. You know, I think you're gonna be okay.
But, again, those kinds of things are hard to get in remote localities and hard to retain. Housing is an issue as well. Folks have to have housing near where they're going to work, and sometimes that is not available. So you get such incredible turnover at a lot of these facilities. It's hard to get continuity of care.
Anyway, thank you for being here and advocating. We will do the best we can. But I will assure you, advanced funding will not be in jeopardy no matter what the president's budget says when it rolls out, probably later this month. You'll be back. Chelsea?
Speaker 7
Sorry, Mr. Chairman. One last, just to you posed a question, and I just kinda wanted to not all tribes are the same, and, you know, it is a double edged sword. But under my tenure as chairman, I welcome cutting the red middleman out of the thing. And just like, you know, Idol just was recently awarded 185,000,000 for rural health. You know?
That kind of stuff, that would really help Indian country. You know? Cutting the middleman out, you know, letting the tribes, you know, control their own destiny and do that. And that's what Coral Lane has done. And I've been very blessed to really move in that direction.
Like Chairman Cole said, not all tribes are equal, and some have the resources, some don't. And, you know, but like I said, I think it really if you take that parental, you know, way of thinking out of the mixture, I think it would be helpful because the Indian country has become more and more sophisticated.
Speaker 13
So, can I make a point here? Go ahead. Actually, towards some reservations, actually, it was the same trip I was talking about when Mister Simpson and Mister Colin were on that trip. And some of the tribes we visited did not want to get out of it. Because I asked that question everywhere I went.
Why aren't you running this yourself? We made that decision as a tribe back in the 1970s. It was before we had gaming revenue, a lot of other things have helped us. And our head of our medical system at the time, who's now the longest serving chief in our history, Governor Anatsuby, you know, made the decision that, look. He said it's pretty simple.
He said a lot of our own people wondered whether or not we could do it, but nobody looks after your own people like your own people. And he said the biggest first place they saw a change was wait times, because, you know, you could sit there for hours. Nobody knew how to get a hold of IHS to complain, but they certainly knew how to get a hold of their tribal legislator. And those phones start ringing, and wait times started changing pretty dramatically. So then we found in our tribe, it helped us train, honestly, a whole generation of administrators and budgeting and things that are when you're running a complex system that we later as we moved into more commercial activity, that expertise was brought in there and helped us.
So again, I'm a it's always a tribal choice. We have an obligation as the federal government here to provide the service. So I would never wanna take away the choice, but I would encourage most tribes that you ought to think about running this yourself because at the end of the day, you'll run it better than the federal government, almost certainly, even if you have no additional resources to bring. So, anyway, it's my view.
Speaker 1
but their decision. Yep. You'll bet. Appreciate it. Well, for all of you that don't know, I get a kick out of Chief Allen, and I always now is he a chief or is it Chief Allen?
I've gone through that over the years. But I don't know. Chief, you see when you see the title. When you see him smiling, I've never seen him that he doesn't have a smile on his face. So great a guy to be around.
Donna, it's always good to see you again. Always love to get up to the Desperse Reservation. They do a great job up there in a lot of areas. So thank you all for being here today, and we look forward to it. I'm proud to work for you all. So, thank you.
Speaker 1
Yep. It is. Pronounce your last name for me, Hat. Satoq. Satoq?
Mule. Mule. I got the mule part. The Satoq was kind of, and also Vivian Cortes and Christina Andrew. If you all excuse me for a minute, I've gotta run up to a different hearing for a few minutes because I got a couple of questions I need to ask up there.
Mister Elsie is gonna take over the chair here. So I appreciate all of you being here today. Doctor 20, you're first.
Speaker 18
You just press it down? Okay. Well, good morning, esteemed members of the committee. My name is Toni Satoque Mule. I'm a citizen of the Kiowa tribe and currently serve in the role of executive director of the Kiowa Education Agency.
I'm here today speaking on behalf of the Kiowa executive branch and at the request of our chairman, David Padlety Sullivan. I'm here to be a voice for Kiowa students of all ages and share about our essential needs within the Kiowa tribe and the Southern Plains region as a whole. Today's hearing provides a way for tribal nations, no matter how large or small, to exercise tribal sovereignty, reaffirm the federal trust responsibility, and honor the firm foundation of treaty law as the supreme law of the land. Securing and prioritizing funding for the Department of the Interior and all related agencies are not only foundational, but are dollars well spent that meet some of the greatest needs and dire conditions that exist in our country. These critical funds make a difference to real people like myself and the students I serve.
No resources better spent than to progress the pursuit of education and improve the quality of life. Throughout our history, we have endured and survived, and today is no different. In these very uncertain and ever changing times, I sincerely appreciate each one of you. We're listening to all the testimonies given during this hearing. Today, I'm speaking before this body as a product of a tribal college education. Haskell Indian Nations University, located in Lawrence, Kansas, is a six-hour drive from Carnegie, Oklahoma.
Today, Haskell prepares native students for career paths and leadership roles, but not at the expense of native identity. In tribal colleges, our identity is a strength, not a weakness or a challenge that hinders academic success. When I entered Haskell, the only educational experiences that I carried with me were in mainstream public schools. That is very common for many. By that time, I only knew what it felt like to be unseen, unheard, outnumbered, small, and excluded.
As a child, I could not articulate the imbalance of power and the marginalization that was so evident to me. Our Kiowa Education Agency is located in Anadarko, Oklahoma. That is the home of Riverside Indian School, which provides a safe and quality education for many students in need. To the people who work and teach there, and for the students that attend there, it is much more than a school. It's a family.
Also, in the town of Anadarko, our Kiowa Education Agency serves children and youth. From our babies that enter childcare so parents can contribute to the workforce or pursue education. Our Johnson O'Malley and youth leadership development program promotes academics and leadership development. We have Kiowa students in schools all across Oklahoma and the United States. We celebrate their achievements and create protective factors to support and encourage them.
Our higher education, vocational training, and job placement training help facilitate self-sufficiency among our Kaiwa citizens. Who understands our students' challenges? Many challenges originate from a history marked by land displacement, resource exploitation, and war. The implications of our shared history manifest every day in the social problems that we all witness and experience in native communities, in the form of poverty and violence. Despite all of these things, our students seek knowledge armed with the possibility and desire to make a difference for themselves, their families, and the tribal nations that they inherently represent.
American Indian educational programs and institutions have been affected most recently by drastic propositions and abrupt cuts in funding. Programs that primarily affect native students have been subject to arbitrary moves, changes, and consolidations with no meaningful tribal consultations to guide these actions. To our native students, this feels like a direct threat to the future of our young people everywhere. Our students are persistent, hardworking young people who dare to aspire to something greater. Many demonstrate mighty resilience, and against many odds, they contribute and continue to pursue their studies under a constant cloud of insecurity.
It is very difficult to conceive that education of any matter could be a target. We must safeguard the BIA and BIE systems that have the potential to right so many wrongs in the history of American Indian education, including the boarding school era, which separated children from families and their parents, and disrupted our ability to transmit language and cultural knowledge. The only path for tribal self-determination is education. Unfortunately, I don't sit on the appropriations committee. We must inform others who have the power to protect our students, our teachers, and our learning institutions.
Advanced appropriations and increased support for BIA and BIE fuel educational opportunity. It is because of these vital programs that I sit here today fully equipped to confront the educational challenges of our people. The infrastructure needed to grow the capacity of each tribal education department or agency, also called a TED or a TEA, is crucial in our educational journey. The role of TEDs assists and eases navigating the intersections of local, state, and tribal education agencies to remove barriers. The core values of persistence, strength, and purpose that are instilled through Kiowa wisdom have guided my steps from the Kiowa headquarters on the Southern Plains in a small town known today as Carnegie, Oklahoma, to the front steps of the Rayburn Building here in Washington, DC.
Like many of our Kiowa leaders of the past, we make this journey to assert ourselves as the indigenous people of the very land that we stand on. The mission and work of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education are not DEI. We affirm the government-to-government relationship. We acknowledge that the basic and fundamental provisions of education and health care were of primary importance in binding treaties signed by our ancestors, which established the Federal American Indian Trust responsibility. So today, I present this oral testimony before you as an example of educational opportunity afforded through resources appropriated to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
At times, the decisions that we make have an impact that we never see in our lifetime. The mission and work of the BIA and the BIE can and does make a difference in the lives of Kiowa citizens every day. I want to extend my appreciation to the subcommittee for allowing me the time to present testimony in support of program funding that is so critically important to Indian country. And in the Kauaiwan language, we say, which is thank you.
Speaker 19
Morning, chairman and members of the subcommittee. My name is Christina Andrew. I'm the third chief of the Chaluran Tribal Council from Dillingham, Alaska. I appear today to ask for an exemption for my tribe from the Alaska moratorium. Moratorium.
The moratorium bars Indian health services from contracting directly for the delivery of services with tribes in Alaska that were not already contracting prior to 2006. The non-contracting tribes are instead served by regional intertribal health care entities. Our regional entity is the Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation. BBHC provides health care to 28 tribes in the Bristol Bay area. Chaoyang is the largest user population in the region, over 30%.
Under the current moratorium provision, only BBHC can compact for the delivery of health care in the Bristol Bay Region. At BBHC's inception, our tribe supported BBHC with the understanding that as the largest tribe of this intertribal organization, we would continue to have a strong voice in health care matters while also improving the quality of health care for the entire region. However, BBHC has now created an organizational structure that freezes out Chiangang from any decisions related to the delivery of health care in our community. Specifically, BBHC has a 28-member board with only one seat designated for Changyang, but BBHC created a nine-member executive committee, which does not include any representation from our tribe. This executive board makes all the operational decisions for BBHC.
Thus, Changyang has no voice over how the hospital or clinic intends to serve our members delivers health care. When Chukyong expressed concerns in the past, BBHC took action that negatively impacted our people. At one point, BBHC issued a directive that Chukyong tribal members were not to be provided care by BBHC. Thankfully, this directive was reversed, but BBHC continues to stifle criticism and concerns. BBHC continues to ignore valid concerns regarding its policies that impact patient care.
For example, BBHC insists that patients can be transported out of the village only for life-or-limb care. This decision results in higher costs because it means people have to pay out of pocket to access a higher level of care or be put on a medevac flight in an emergency. As a result of this treatment, Cho Kyung provided notice to withdraw from the BBHC in 2019. Because of the pandemic, we delayed. Once the pandemic was behind us, we delayed again to try to engage in mediation with BBHC.
These efforts ultimately failed due to BBHC's refusal to meet us halfway. Our concerns remain unresolved, we wish to exercise our self-determination rights. Our impending withdrawal means that IHS is going to have to find a way to deliver health care to Chongyang. This likely means IHS will have to enter into a cumbersome fire procurement agreement with Chogyong or another provider with none of the protections afforded to tribes under the Self Determination Act. In the 21st century, we should have the right to contract for this health care just like any other tribe in the Lower 48 and other places in Alaska.
Chagang's capacity to deliver quality health care has grown. We have developed an excellent behavioral health program thanks to one-time COVID funding. By contracting for our share of IHS behavioral health funding, this small program could vastly expand to better serve all qualified Alaskan natives living in the Dillingham area. Substance abuse has been tragic in our community, and no family has been left untouched. Without access to any IHS resources, we will not be able to sustain this program.
Beyond behavioral health, we are confident that we could undertake many other outpatient services in a way that better serves our members. But our tribe needs to control our local services and resources like tribes in the Lower 48. We ask that you support an additional exemption to the current moratorium so that our tribe has the maximum options available to design health care systems that provide the best quality care. Right now, Eastern Aleutian Tribes Incorporated, the Council for Athabascan Tribal Governments, and the native village of Eyak are exempt. Moreover, all tribes that were contracting before the moratorium was enacted are exempt.
Thus, we are asking Chang'eung Tribal Council to be carved out too, so we can move forward to improve services for our community. Thank you for your plea.
Speaker 17
Good to see you. I thought I recognized you. So, good morning, everyone. My name is Vivian Cortius. I serve as the chief executive officer for the Association of Village Council Presidents.
Our headquarters are located in Bethel, Alaska. Before I continue with my presentation, I'd like to recognize our chairman who is sitting in the audience. His name is Thad Tikun, and both of us flew in from Bethel, Alaska, yes, early this morning. Chairman, ranking member, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony and a written statement for the record regarding the Towahi Initiative and related social services and Indian child welfare, ICWA program investments that support tribally driven family centered services. Tuahi began in 2015 with a simple practical idea, organize services around families rather than leaving people to navigate disconnected systems.
Has since evolved into a whole-of-government framework. The framework operates at the federal, state, and tribal levels, which helps tribal nations align programs, reduce duplication, fill service gaps, and improve outcomes for children and families. Over the past decade, six original pilot tribes helped design, implement, and refine tuahi, documenting lessons learned and demonstrating the benefits of family-centered coordinated coordination across social services, equal and related programs. ABCP is one of the original six demonstration sites and was the only site in Alaska with that designation. ABCP is the largest tribal consortium in the nation, serving 56 federally recognized tribes across the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska.
Our tribes are located in 48 villages in a service area roughly the size of the state of New York. Our communities are off the road system and accessible only by plane, boat, or seasonal ice road or snow machine routes, making service access and any coordination uniquely complex. From 2005 to 2015, AVCP experienced enormous program growth without parallel investment in administrative infrastructure. By 2015, ABCP managed 157 open grant streams, supporting 26 programs, largely siloed by funding source and with no true organizational infrastructure to sustain integrated service delivery at any scale. This fragmented structure constrained our ability to serve families efficiently despite the breadth of resources flowing into the region.
Tuahi was a turning point. In 2015, AVCP's executive board and key staff developed the Tuahi proposal as a blueprint to change how we operate. Tuahi became the catalyst that enabled ABCP to move from a siloed program model towards a coordinated, family-centered system. Tuahi provided the support and flexibility needed to do the work of organizational transformation, creating a clearing space to evaluate operations end-to-end and rebuild infrastructure that matches the scale of need across our region. Through Tuahi, ABCP designed and built a service delivery model that works for us.
Our model works in extreme rural conditions, in what I call extreme rural America, and strengthened our ability to braid services. We aligned multiple funding sources and program delivery so that families experience a clearer, more navigable pathway to receive the services they need. Towahi supported ABCP's development of an integrated service delivery model with healthy families at the center, shifting the core question of how do we satisfy the grantor to how do we best serve our tribes and tribal members. This shift enabled ABCP to recognize and reengineer programs into a structured framework that improves access, reduces duplication, and expands services at the village level, not just for our families and children, but for all our clients. We went beyond just focusing on families and children and applied this strategy all across all ABCP program delivery, to form a strong foundation on which today we stand.
Just as importantly, Tauaihi helped ABCP build and deploy quality improvement as an operating discipline, supporting phased organizational change, including rightsizing and growing administrative capacity, building a braided division structure, and advancing toward wraparound village delivery and community safety. This quality improvement approach allows AVCP to continuously refine how we deliver services across a large remote region while maintaining accountability to tribes and families. Our ask today are three: increase the funding for Towahi so that demonstration sites have parity with the original pilot sites. Second is to provide resources for continued innovation under the Tahi model. And third is to preserve Tahi and make it permanent.
While I just have a little bit of time left, I wanna say that over the past 10 years at ABCP in Western Alaska, we've experienced many challenges. If we did not have towahi funding to really create that service delivery model that we couldn't even pivot to COVID, to the salmon crash, to the Arctic typhoons because those are the villages that were hit in our region, and other challenges, including the public safety crisis that we are now experiencing. One of my requests to this committee is to take a look at the GAO report on public safety, PL 280 states, and really take a look at how we can deliver better services to our regions across Alaska. And I wanna specify, during the Arctic typhoons in our region, we had 25 villages along the Bering Sea Coast that were in the pathway of a second storm that they told us was coming. Those 25 villages only had 4 village public safety officers.
What that means is that there were only four incident commanders in the 25 villages. So we are operating in a real desperate situation in our region, under PL 280, and we wanna take this opportunity to utilize the 40 years, 35 years of experience of contracting and compacting that, the All Alaska Compact in health care has provided. Because, as the chairman who left for another meeting said that, tribes learn from contracting and compacting, and we're applying those 35 plus years of experience to other arenas, including emergency response, public safety, family centered services, and other services that we're developing, based on the model that we've created in our region under the Toahee Demonstration Project. Thank you.
Speaker 13
Thank you very much. Number one, thank you for your testimony. Doctor, if I could start with you, I assume that the great majority of Kiowa students are in the public school system. Is that correct? It's hard to check the light.
It really is.
Speaker 13
And what are the programs in your experience that are the most helpful to them, a supplementary type program, like Johnson-O'Malley or whatever?
Speaker 18
Yeah. I think Johnson O'Malley and Title VI are critical programs for our students in the public school system because sometimes they are the vast majority. As you know, especially in metropolitan areas and things like that, we have a lot of students who kinda just get lost in the shuffle of things. And so their Indian education tutor, their Johnson O'Malley coordinator, whatever that position is, is their one connection sometimes. And that's the critical thing that kind of lifts up their cultural identity, and that really helps them in the public school system.
When they have a sound self-esteem, they're able to navigate those difficult situations.
Speaker 13
I remember now, it's a long time ago. My brother and I went to our school system, which was a public school system. We're both Chickasaw. Mhmm. The questions were always, are you?
And if you were, they want you to check something. But there was never any program. They just got a little extra money. But nothing ever came to us. And same thing, we were a military family.
And so if you worked on base or something, it was impact aid. That was fine. There was nothing extra for anybody. So, do you have that kind of problem? Do you see people that, like, get the money and not use the money for the intentions as it was intended?
Speaker 18
I think that does happen. I think another thing that happens that we're finding out is that some of the smaller school districts just are not equipped or they don't feel like there's enough impact or dollars to really go after those funds. And so that's, you know, detrimental to our students because they're entitled to that, and they're not getting it. So, what we have done is identified students in the school districts. And if the school is not serving them, we're able to serve them through our Kio Education agency.
Speaker 13
Terrific. That's terrific. Christina, tell me, you were talking about would this take special legislation to allow you to opt out of the system that you're in now? And how would that work?
Speaker 19
That's correct. It would be just adding our name to that legislation. I believe a copy was provided to you. And then from there, we would be able to contract according to our wishes, and decide what services we'd like to pull out from BBHC. We're definitely thinking about mental health services for sure, but I think it would give us leveraging power to be able to improve services for our people.
Speaker 13
Yeah. Well, controlling your own health care is a big deal. Yield back.
Speaker 2
Thank you. I think the chairman Cole has asked a lot of the things I wanted to ask. But, doctor, I think it would be helpful, it maybe in your testimony, I just didn't go through it. But, those areas that you brought up of concerns where there may have been changes over the past year in funding losses, whether it's the downsizing of the Department of Education or in scholarship funds or other places. It's very helpful for us to know the places that we've come to depend on for outside funding, you know, outside of the Bureau of Indian Education, but other departments.
And if that is disappearing, sometimes we're not as aware of it, but we can advocate for it. So anything else you want to provide to us? Or, like I said, if it's in your testimony, I'm happy to dig it up. But you can just think about that, you know, and get back to us about it.
Speaker 18
Yes. We can add some more, support supplemental information in the written comments. I think that the interagency agreements was a big concern, and it was very alarming for most of Indian country. And we all showed up in Washington, DC, to say, you know, we have a whole lot of questions. And we felt like the consultation happened after the agreement had been signed, so it was after the fact.
That didn't feel very meaningful. But still, you know, that's important. I think that, especially, going back to the fact that most of our students are served in the public schools, that's very different from BIE schools. So some of them don't have that option. And so, those interagency agreements and how that's gonna pan out is very concerning.
Speaker 2
you. And I'm happy to look at that legislation. So I'm sure if we have it, I'll look at it. And, it's not an issue I know much about, but I'm happy to, you know, dig in deeper. And having control of your own health care is obviously very important.
I understand that. Thank you. And, Vivian, it's hard to sort of wrap your head around the idea of a territory bigger than the state of New York, you're already inside Alaska. We really, the lower 48, don't understand the scale that you guys operate on. But thank you for that.
And, hearing you talk a little bit about the Te Wahi. We hear so much about the importance of that program. So it's certainly one of my focuses on how we can expand it and deepen it. And you gave a lot of really good examples of why it has made a huge difference for you. So thank you for that.
You're back.
Speaker 14
Thank you, ma'am. Well, Tony, I came from the Panhandle of Texas originally. And in 1930, my grandfather, Thomas VLZ, was a friend of Spotted Bird Tonaquot, who's the younger brother of Lone Wolf. So I have an affinity with the Kiowa people and look forward to coming to visit you. I still have family up in Perryton.
They, my grandfather was actually the treasurer of Kiowa County at one time. So I look forward to coming up at some point and seeing what you have going on. If there's, you have 15 seconds to tell me one last thing that you wish you could have said in your opening.
Speaker 14
Okay. Good. And, Vivian, you've come a long way from Alaska, and it's arduous. And, in fact, some of our members from Texas aren't even here yet. So I understand that you do this on your own dime, on your own time.
It's a long journey. It's not just a flight. It's a trek. It's a pilgrimage, so to speak, for you to come up here. And I certainly do appreciate it.
Same to you, either of you, with you Christina. If there's something that you missed or that you'd like to close with, please go ahead.
Speaker 19
I'd just like to say, please consider that language. It would make a world of difference in our community for our health care.
Speaker 14
Generally. Right? Shelly, so, you know, as we've talked about before, and I, and it's good to see you again, that, you know, in this panel and certainly on the appropriations committee, these days are so important. The travel days are so important up to 90 that we listen to because it's important to the chairman. It's important to the ranking member.
And it's important to, even though they're not here, this is appropriation season. So I wanna tell everybody this once. I may have to say it again. It's appropriation season. There are a number of committees that are meeting right now.
One of my other committees is meeting currently, which is where the chairman went. It's unfortunate that they overlap. But for everybody who's not here, I can speak for mister Zinke, mister Cloud, miss Malloy, mister Rechenthaler, that this is still very important to us in spite of the fact there's only two of us here. It's a bipartisan effort, and it means a lot to us. And Vivian, as to why he had never heard of that.
I just want you to know that when you're talking to me, when you were talking about ABCP, everybody in the back was nodding their heads. So I watched the crowd to see what's important and going on. And nobody's asleep. Nobody has fallen asleep, and ABCP is important. So is Tewahi.
And so, thank you. Same to you. Do you have anything that you'd like to close with? Really briefly. We're a little behind the timeline, but I wanna give you a chance.
Yes. It's on.
Speaker 17
Okay. Thank you. G, let's see. I have three requests. The first is to, of course, support Twaji in its entirety and Senator Murkowski's work on children and families, her bill.
Please support that. Second is, I'd like to ask the committee to take a look at the GAO report on PL 280 states. It's really challenging to provide public safety in an area. The size of our communities, we have 48 different communities, and we have a village public safety officer program that is contracted by nonprofits like ours, tribal consortiums, and it's really difficult. That particular report, we worked with them on it, and they did a site visit to our region.
And I think those findings will be very helpful and the recommendations. And then lastly, I wanna talk about the Arctic typhoons that we've experienced in our region recently. We have whole communities that have been absolutely devastated. And for AVCP, last week, we were in a meeting with Senator Tillis, and Senator Tillis' staff is working with Senator Murkowski's staff and Senator Sullivan's staff on a proposal from AVCP to create regional response centers, emergency response centers in Western Alaska. And we ask for you and your staff to take a look and work with the senators to come up with a strategy where we can address arctic typhoons on the northern border in the United States, specifically Alaska.
Thank you.
Speaker 14
Thank you. Thank you all three for your impactful testimony. Appreciate it. Thank you. Now we're up to Panel 8.
We're looking for Duane Jackson, Derek Leslie, and Duane Clark. Is that right? Okay.
Speaker 14
We'll try to get the train moving on time again. Thank you all for being here. Appreciate you coming from Arizona. I hope that travel was not too difficult. So, we'll go, we'll start right ahead.
Duane Clark, the floor is yours, sir.
Speaker 20
Let me try that again. Good morning, my name is Duane Clark, tribal chairman of the Hualapai tribe, and sending my greetings along with the tribe chairman and Rican member Pingri. It is good to see you once again, members of the subcommittee. Thank you once again for the opportunity to testify in support, the 312,000,000 in the Bureau of Indian Affairs fiscal year '27 budget to fulfill the United States obligation under the Hualapai Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act. Our 1,000,000-acre reservation in Northwest Arizona is arid.
It has no significant surface streams other than the Colorado River, and very limited groundwater resources. The tribe's wells are depleted, depletable resources, and water levels have been dropping for many years. Historically, we've relied on groundwater wells. The first serves our primary community of peach rings installed back in 1975. Now the piping is over 50 years old.
It has suffered multiple. Coli contamination events, leaving our community without water for days. The second well is on the east side of the reservation. It provides water to our ranchers, our wildlife, but it is not potable and cannot be used for human consumption. Now the third well serves our Grand Canyon West, the tribe's economic engine, and one of the largest employers in Mojave County, Arizona.
Due to the aquifer depletion and the well has failed back in 2018. Since then, the water for Grand Canyon West has been hauled by truck to Peach Springs daily. First, 15 miles, then pumped another 35 miles to the operation. Now this is extremely expensive and insufficient, but currently our only option. Because the East Side is non potable to the Grand Canyon West and the well failed, the entire reservation now relies almost exclusively on the single well in Peach Springs.
The one thing failing in the infrastructure and the history of the E. Coli contamination. When that well goes down, the reservation has simply no water. The Colorado River forms 108 miles of our boundary, the northwest boundary, but we cannot access it. It is the only feasible long-term solution for our people.
That's why back in 2022, with strong bipartisan support, Congress passed the Hualapai tribe water rights settlement act. Now the act secured 4,000 acre-feet of the Colorado River and authorized 312,000,000 to build the pipeline to deliver the water to the reservation. Even though Congress has not yet appropriated the funding promised in the settlement act, the tribe, we've taken on that spirit of the act seriously. Using our own limited resources, we have undertaken significant environmental compliance activities. The obligation of the federal government under the settlement, we have financed these efforts to avoid delays, hoping that the appropriations will soon come to turn and focus on the building of the water system.
But today, the promise of the settlement is in parallel. Last year, the president requested the funding, and this committee right here included it in your appropriations bill, but it was excluded in the final conference agreement. We received zero funding back in fiscal year 26. Because Congress has not yet appropriated any funding, we now have only two fiscal years, '27 and '28, to appropriate all 300, 12,000,000, with the full amount to be deposited by 04/15/2029 or the entire settlement becomes void. To date, only 79,000 have been deposited.
Now failure would only devastate our tribe. It unravels this, hard-fought settlement has been negotiated throughout the years. For all the parties in agreement, it would mark the first time in history that the United States has failed to meet its funding obligation under the ratified tribal water settlement. We're asking that the full 312,000,000 this year because we cannot know what the proper process will be next year. With only two years left, essentially, that no funding to date, we are coming to a serious close within the next two years.
With that said, we would find substantial down payment acceptable, and there is a firm, reliable commitment with the appropriations for the remainder of fiscal year 28. And we stand ready to work with you. And like I said last time, please come out and visit us. See what is going on on the ground. And once again, thank you, Anke.
Speaker 22
Okay. Can you guys hear me? Is this? Yep. Okay. Okay.
Doug Ote, and greetings. My name is Derek Leslie. I am of the red horizontal people born for the Mesquite people from Cherokee Creek, Arizona. I appear today as the director of the White Mountain Apache Tribal Education Department and as the chair for my tribe's health advisory board. As tribal education director, I oversee programs supporting education and career pathways, including the adult vocational training program, adult education, the office of higher education, Johnson O'Malley, and the vocational rehabilitation programs.
The VR program is essential for tribal members with disabilities, helping them access education, training, and employment opportunities. These programs require stable, predictable federal funding, and statutory protections like informed choice and due process. Any changes to funding, grant administration, or oversight could directly harm individuals with disabilities who rely on these services. We urge Congress to maintain continuity of funding and to preserve Rehabilitation Act principles while respecting tribal sovereignty and federal trust and treaty obligations during and after changes in administration of funds as proposed in the interagency agreement between the US Department of Education and the US Department of the Interior. Regarding the Johnson O'Malley program, we appreciate the passage of the Modernization Act and updated student count.
However, funding history shows a long-term decline in per pupil support. For my tribe, per pupil JM funding fell from $155.25 in fiscal year 1979 to $125 in 1995 and to only $64 by fiscal year 2024, even as the national student count grew from 171,290 students in 1979 to 317,102 students for school year 2025-26. More students are served, but funding has steadily decreased. To maintain our per pupil investment from 1979, it required approximately 49,200,000 for JON programs. Without increased appropriation, contractors will receive less funding while serving more students.
We support the National Indian Education Association and the National Congress of American Indians in calling for increased JOM funding. Impact Aid is a critical funding stream for the White River Unified School District. Because much of our land is federal trust land and not subject to low local property taxes, delays are deduct reductions and impact they directly affect classroom resources, staffing, and services for our Apache students. We urge timely and full funding. School facilities in the Bureau of Indian Education remain a serious concern.
This Chubico Community School in Cibique, which was built in 1991, John F Kennedy Day School in Cedar Creek, which was built in 1969, and the Theodore Roosevelt School in Fort Apache, which was built in 1877 as a military post, all need replacement facilities. Congress has previously directed the bureau to develop long-term facilities planning model on DOD school modernization processes, and recent committee reports have emphasized the need for safe, functional, and accessible school facilities. We support continued implementation of comprehensive facilities, planning, and funding to address these urgent needs. A major health priority for our tribe is the replacement of the White River Indian Hospital. The current hospital, completed in 1979, is outdated and cannot adequately support modern health care delivery or expanding medical technologies.
The Indian Health Service health care facilities construction priority list developed in the early 1990s through tribal consultation ranked our hospital replacement. We thank the committee and Congress for allocating final appropriations for our new hospital. We expect to break ground later this year. In closing, our federal trust and treaty responsibilities require that tribal communities receive predictable, adequate funding for education, health, and disability services. Please support stable appropriations for tribal vehicle vocational rehabilitation, increased funding for Johnson O'Malley, timely impact aid, BIA school modernization, and construction of the White River Indian Hospital.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Speaker 23
Good morning, chairman, Simpson and ranking member Pingree and committee members. I want to thank you for this opportunity to testify on behalf of the Hilarian community. My name is Duane Jackson Jr. I am a council representative for the Hilarian community. Before I address our specific appropriations request, I want to thank this committee for ensuring that the proposed cuts to tribal programs were rejected in the fiscal year 2026 budget, that the increases in health care, public safety, and self government funding were critically important to the community's government and our individual members.
We rely on you to honor the trust responsibilities, and you did so, even in a very difficult appropriation cycle. The community's first request concerns the Hill River Indian community's federal right of way easements and boundary clarification act. In 2017, we reached a settlement with the federal government on its breach of trust suit about twenty years ago. One remaining issue that continues to prevail prevent full implementation of the settlement is the obligation to survey all the federal rights of way on the reservation. The legislation contemplated a six-year period for completion of the rights of way, but we are now in year eight and have received 1,000,000 of the 5,700,000 needed for this work.
Mister chairman, as you know, the community's preference was to include appropriations into the bill passed by Congress, but we ended up with authorizing language, which means we are here to request the remaining 4,700,000 needed to complete this work in 2027. The next issue is the legislative language to support the sixth grade at the Casablanca Community School. This is the school we opened in 2021 utilizing the 105 L construction program. As governor Lewis has mentioned in prior testimony, there was a misidentification of the school as a K through 4 during the lease negotiation, even though the original structure built by the department was to serve a K through 5 school. The school was constructed as a K through five, which the department was aware of, but the classrooms are not being utilized for a fifth grade because we need this language in the appropriation bill to resolve this issue.
One of the issues that comes up in discussion between your staff and interior is the need for accounting of all schools that would be similarly situated. The community feels like this is a false flag. To our knowledge, the community count the Casablanca Community School is the only school that will require this funding in fiscal year 2027, appropriation cycle. And any other needed grade expansion could be budgeted for in future years. The cost for the Casablanca school is approximately $380,000, and would have a very limited impact on the overall budget.
I want to add a personal note. The cum the Casablanca Community School is in District 5, the district of councilman Kaizen, who is sitting behind me today. Councilman Kaizen is a former teacher. He can attest to the incredible difference this school has made in the lives of the students and the entire district. The community constructed this school to invest in the future of our students, and we are asking this committee to partner with us in this effort.
Our third request is that you continue to support the section 105 L program as you always have. This program has been a shining example of how self governance and self determination were intended to work. And it's just the community that has benefited. Our friends from the Miss Mississippi Band of Choctaw are on track to have a seventh through twelfth grade. Sorry.
School comes online in July. There are several 100 tribes now in the program, either through leases for existing facilities or for new construction. Ultimately, our goal for this program is to be funded through mandatory funding to match the statute, but we know this is not the time to make that request. So our request is for continued support so tribes all across Indian country can take advantage of this innovative program. Finally, as this committee knows, there is significant funding needed to address pending water settlements, which the community supports.
The Colorado River post-2026 guidelines are being negotiated now among seven basin states and the 30 plus 30 tribes in the basin, including the community. Our role in this discussion is about trying to reach consensus on what it will take to ensure the 40,000,000 water users throughout the basin are able to equitably access the water. But any consensus agreement will require funding likely in the $44,000,000,000 range, or the agreement will fall apart. At this time, we do not know if the funding will come out of this committee's budget, but this does fall within this committee's jurisdiction because of your expertise on water rights, the trust responsibility, and because of the role of the Interior Department. Thank you for the time from hearing from the community.
Speaker 1
Thank you all. Thanks for being here today. Brought up a couple issues that I'll rant about for a minute, and then you can answer them if you want to. One of them is with education. We have, as we visited different tribes and stuff, and I was a dentist in the real world before I got into politics.
And we go out and visit these reservations. And oftentimes, reservations are remote, long ways from anything, essentially. And it was, how do you get doctors or dentists or nurses or even teachers to go out into these communities? They're not gonna make a lot of money there. Oftentimes, not enough to pay off their student loans and that stuff.
So how do you know, in the housing, how do you do that and stuff? I came to the conclusion the only way you're gonna do it in the long run is to educate the tribal members. Get them to go to college. Get them to go to dental school. Get them to go to medical school because they're more likely to come back and serve their communities.
And I noticed that we're starting to do more in that. We've got try we had some testimony, a couple of weeks ago, and we had the education director, I guess, no. The chairman of the tribal school is black on the Blacklit Reservation. And it is, I think, that's the way to go. That takes time, but we've gotta invest more in education.
It's amazing that when I sat in the state legislature for years, we were always told, you know, if you really want to address poverty stuff, education is what you got. Why would that not be true with tribes? It is true with tribes. And we've gotta invest in education much more than we have in the past. So I'm on board with you on that.
Now this is the challenge, you bring up the challenge, and that is the water settlements. I will tell you, we gotta find a way to fund these water settlements. I'm not disagreeing with the settlements. I'm just saying we gotta find a way to fund them because when you look at our budget, and we're trying to do Indian health services and not cut those, trying to increase funding for health services or education or for Indian law enforcement and all of those kinds of things. And all of a sudden, you throw water settlements on top of those, and there are a multitude of them across.
I think the ones on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana totaled about $1,000,000,000. So I know the Coeur D'Alene's just did the one with the state of Idaho. It's about 600000000.
Speaker 1
That's gonna eat this budget alive if we don't find a way to fund it. I don't have the answer to that yet, but I'm looking for a way to fund it. I don't know why it doesn't come out of the judgment fund like every other judgment does, against the federal government and stuff. But that's more complicated to get done than you would think. But it's something that we're working on.
But any help you can give us on a way to get this done? If we actually funded the water settlements as we should, we'd probably have to double the interior appropriation. I don't know if that's an accurate number or not, but it would be substantial. So I agree with what you're saying. We gotta find a way to do it.
But on the Colorado River, I've done some reading and research on the Colorado River. The problem is we've overappropriated that basin for, I mean, you know, years ago when they decided that there was gonna be an upper basin and a lower basin of states. And they decided at the time that there was 18.5 million acre feet of water that went down the river every year. And people told them at the time, no. You're looking at the good water years.
You're not taking into account the bad water years. Yep. Actually, it's about 14 and a half million acre feet to go down the river every year. That means it's overappropriated about 400 or about 4,000,000 acre-feet every year. And somehow, that's gonna be a problem for years and years to come, until we get in and do it properly and stuff.
But it's a challenge, a real challenge. So it I appreciate your testimony and what you're saying, and I wanna work with you and see if we can find a way to address these issues.
Speaker 20
Most definitely thank you, chairman, and thank you to the committee. And it's once again good to see both of you.
Speaker 2
Chair covered it pretty well, but I would hate to see us, you know, back down on that water settlement. I know how important it is to you, and, happy to continue to work on ways to find that level of funding and also understand that there are challenges with the amount of water in the river. But thank you for being here to remind us and to continue this important struggle. So.
Speaker 20
And whatever way possible, come out and visit. Come out and visit each of the reservations. Yes. Thank you. Definitely come out and visit us.
Yep.
Speaker 1
Wanna do that. We were just talking, I was talking to some of my personal staff, not the staff on this committee yet, but about doing a Codell out west and visiting some of the tribes. Looking forward to that. Yeah. Anyway, I yeah.
It is. It's always, I think, it's important for committee members to get out and see what's happening on the ground in the real world. It is important that we hear your testimony and that kind of stuff. What's really important to us is to get out and see what's happening and stuff. And so I've always enjoyed those trips when we got out, and seen this.
So we'll, if we can get something scheduled, we'll let you know and get it done.
Speaker 1
But thank you for being here today, and thank you for your testimony. Thanks for all you do, both for your communities.
Speaker 20
And you're gonna remember today because not only do you have two Duanes here, all start with the name D. So have a great afternoon.
Speaker 1
So tell you the thing I like about these hearings, other than the information that we get, is I love to sit and look at the beadwork that everybody, most beautiful beadwork you ever see in the world, comes into this committee of.
Speaker 22
I think that, if you ever wanna have a field hearing out in Arizona, I think we would love to host you in Arizona. And anytime you wanna come out to the Grand Canyon State, love to have you guys there.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Jeez. We could go visit the Grand Canyon too, couldn't we? Yeah. Looking forward to that.
Anyway, thank you all.
Speaker 1
Thank you again to all the witnesses for being with us to discuss the issues that are important in Indian country. And as a reminder, we will reconvene at 1 PM for the subcommittee to continue taking testimony. With that, the committee stands adjourned.
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