Law | Opinion

Clara Caufield: Ramah settlement offers hope to Indian Country

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Attorney Michael Gross discusses the $940 million settlement in the Ramah Navajo contract support costs lawsuit at the National Congress of American Indians annual convention in San Diego, California, on October 19, 2015. Minus attorney fees, tribes will receive nearly $855 million from the settlement. Photo by Indianz.Com

Indirect costs lawsuit brings nearly $1 billion to Indian Country
By Clara Caufield
A Cheyenne Voice

The purpose of P.L. 93-638 is to encourage Indian Tribes to take over Federal programs (such as BIA, BIE, IHS) to provide services in a manner which is more responsive to the tribal community. However, the Federal government has often failed to provide the same level of funding for those tribally contracted programs.

I use Northern Cheyenne as an example, most familiar with that as I was on the Tribal Council when in the 1990’s our Tribe contracted law enforcement. Soon both the core funding and indirect cost dried up. It became so bad that the Tribe was financially hard pressed to even fix flat tires on the police vehicles and could not offer comparable wages or benefits to police officers. That is when the governing body decided to “retrocede” or turn the program back over to the BIA.

It didn’t take too long for the new BIA police force to receive a much larger budget, obtaining all kinds of new vehicles and equipment (police cars, including a BAT Mobile, mobile DUI unit, boats, ATVS, lasers, tasers, radios, many new guns…) and to offer higher wages and benefits to police offices. Then we got ‘Federal' officers under very strict qualifying standards beyond reach of many tribal officers, who are now a rarity in the reservation police force.

As a result of the Ramah settlement, hope is on the horizon. Maybe now that adequate funding for contracted federal programs is guaranteed, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe can once again contract the BIA Law Enforcement to develop a tribal and community based police force. That is only one small example of how significant the Ramah victory is to all Tribes.

We can only hope that the $2,603,453 coming to the Northern Cheyenne as a result of the settlement will be used wisely. The Tribal Council could set that money aside to re-contract local law enforcement and establish a community-based Law and Order Law Commission, over sight long promised by tribal politicians to give our local tribal citizens a voice about law and order in our community. That would make a lot of our people happy