Haaland and Warren battle for tribes in Congress

Friday, September 27, 2019  

• Honoring Promises to Native Nations Act. [Legislative Proposal | Outline | Full Bill]

RAPID CITY— In December 2018, the United States Commission on Civil Rights released a 300-plus page report entitled “Broken Promises: Continuing Federal Funding Shortfall for Native Americans.”

Broken Promises was a comprehensive study that began with explaining the Federal Trust Relationship, and the structure of the federal budget in regard to Native American programs. Five chapters dealt with Criminal Justice and Public Safety, Health Care, Education, Housing, and Economic Development.

Since that time, tribes have been curiously indifferent to Broken Promises, and the media, including this newspaper, have dropped the ball in adequately addressing the study and explaining the implications.

Rapid City’s Gay Kingman, an enrolled member at Cheyenne River, and Director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association, has been the exception to that rule, touting the recent legislative proposal by Representative Deb Haaland and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The Haaland-Warren proposal was released on August 16, 2019. Haaland explained that, “We are developing legislation that will aim to fulfill the federal government’s responsibility to Indian Country, and address the chronic underfunding of federal programs critical to the success and well-being of all Native American communities.”

The United States Civil Rights Commission is an independent, bipartisan agency established by Congress in 1957. The Commission has a six-part mission statement, all six missions at one time or another applying to Indian tribes, but especially the fifth mission, which is to “submit reports, findings, and recommendations to the President and Congress.”

Originally, Indian tribes had no civil rights, as they were designated “Indians not taxed,” and there can be no representation without taxation. Tribes had a treaty based relationship with the federal government, guided, in principle, by the federal trust responsibility. The Indian Freedom Citizenship Suffrage Act of 1924, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to issue certificates of citizenship for Native Americans, but also allowed them to keep their tribal membership.

The federal government has a responsibility to write a new chapter in the story of its government-to-government relationship with tribal nations. Read my and @SenWarren's OP-ED in @IndianCountry: https://t.co/6dmxGrzswm

— Rep. Deb Haaland (@RepDebHaaland) August 16, 2019

Scholars and legal experts can debate how much this has influenced the subsequent interaction between tribes and the federal government, but in the main, Broken Promises determined that there has been ongoing federal funding shortfall for Native Americans, that they have not met, and are not meeting, their federal trust responsibility. Although a debatable topic for Congress, this underfunding is the harsh reality for tribes and tribal members.

Jefferson Keel, President of the National Congress of American Indians, wasted no time in issuing a statement on the very day the Broken Promises report was released, stating: “This report confirms what Indian Country knows all too well— federal programs designed to support the social and economic wellbeing of American Indians and Alaska Natives remain chronically underfunded, leaving many basic needs unmet.”16 years

If the American public has any indifference or hostility to the federal trust relationship with tribes, it is generally based upon the idea that Indians are being regularly given things, things hard working Americans are seldom given, and that nanny state support of tribes only leads to dependence and sloth.

This attitude is summed up by Senior Editor Jay Nordlinger, writing in the National Review in 2016: “…I wonder whether Indians would be better off if reservations were simply abolished. Broken up. Dissolved. For too long they have been incubators of misery, emasculation, and perversity.” He continues: “…let the Indians get on with their lives, without this charade of sovereign nations within a big sovereign nation.”

While President Trump has never said anything openly racist about Indians, beyond his Pocahontas slurs of Elizabeth Warren, he has a contentious casino and gaming history in opposition to tribes, and it is reasonable to assume attitudes like Nordlinger’s are no strangers to White House discourse.

In June 2019, Washington Representative Derek Kilmer hosted a congressional panel discussion involving tribal leaders and federal officials. Panel participant Kirk Francis, President of the United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty and Protection Fund, summed up the counter to Nordlinger’s position: “Tribal nations ceded millions of acres of land and natural resources to the United States, often involuntarily. As part of this exchange, promises were made that exist in perpetuity.”

Even Nordlinger concedes that the tribes were historically wronged by the federal government, but the argument from the right is that, even so, the relationship cannot be one of perpetuity, and must end, for the good of the tribes. This, then, will be the battleground on the floor of Congress.

James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today