Congress’ Budget Cuts Worry Tribes Bureau Of Indian Affairs Targeted By Senate For $255 Million Reduction

Senate proposals to cut many federal Indian programs have left many Native Americans wary and apprehensive as they wait for Congress to return from its August break.

“No matter what the issue - Indian gaming, welfare reform, environmental protections - they are all under siege,” said Ada Deer, the assistant secretary of Interior.

Deer supervises the Bureau of Indian Affairs at a time when the agency faces some of its deepest cuts in 40 years.

The House wants to cut some $48 million from bureau programs that range from administration to community development and human services.

The Senate would cut even deeper. Just before the recess it took $255 million out of the bureau’s $1.7 billion budget.

Northwest tribal leaders said they are most alarmed by a proposed cut of $220 million in Tribal Priority Allocations. Those programs help Indians govern and sustain themselves on the reservations, covering such programs as child welfare, college scholarships, police and fire protection and road maintenance.

“I’ve been here for 22 years and these are the biggest cuts we’ve ever looked at,” said Gene Nicholson, a BIA superintendent at the Colville Indian Agency in Washington. “The sad part about it is that the bureau funding is already inadequate.”

Speaking to the National Council of American Indians this summer in Spokane, Deer denounced conditions on the reservation as the “poorest quality of life in America.” Census data tend to back her up.

Fully one-half of all Indians on reservations live below the poverty level, compared to 13 percent of the total U.S. population. In Washington state, 40 percent of those on reservations are in poverty, compared to 11 percent of the entire state. In Idaho, 41 percent of reservation Indians and 13.3 percent of the state are in poverty.

“This is a most critical time for tribes,” said Donna Matheson, communications director for the Coeur d’Alene Indian Tribe. “This means life and death for tribal nations and people.”

Indian leaders worry that Congress is attempting to break a sacred trust and a legal responsibility to the tribes. Some make comparisons to the “terminationist” days of the mid-1950s when the last Republican-controlled Congress eliminated funding for some 100 small tribes.

Those tribes were converted into county governments, subject to state jurisdiction. The change effectively put them out of existence, said Michael Chapman, special assistant to the deputy commissioner in the Interior Department. Many tribes had to fight to be restored some 20 years later, Chapman said.

Bruce Wynne, president of the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest, called the cuts a direct attack on tribal sovereignty. He sees them as the beginning of the end of the programs, which could lead to a new round of terminating tribes.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who chairs the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, is seen by many Indians as the chief architect of this assault on their programs. The Lummi Indian Nation in Western Washington is incensed by his attempt to curtail their water rights on the reservation.

Gorton inserted a provision on Lummi water rights in the Senate spending bill. He also included language to cut federal funding on reservations that operate gambling facilities - an increasingly important producer of revenue for many tribes. That language was stricken from the bill at the subcommittee level.

“They want us to be independent, but they don’t want us to be self-sufficient,” said Matheson.

Gorton not only guided the BIA and other Interior Department cuts through the Senate where the bill passed by a 92 to 6 vote, he voiced the loudest opposition to an amendment that would have restored $200 million to the BIA.

Responding to protesters who held a vigil outside his Seattle office Monday, Gorton denied targeting Native Americans for excessive budget cuts.

“While the total Interior budget was reduced by 11 percent, we worked to see that Indian programs received a smaller reduction of only 8 percent,” he said in a written statement. “We increased funding for Indian elementary and secondary education, and we fully funded Indian health programs. Reductions came only to administrative functions.”

Indian leaders argue that any cuts are unjustified because they are guaranteed money under treaties.

Wynne said that in exchange for land, the United States agreed to help Indians sustain themselves and that major cuts would be an abrogation of that responsibility.

“We hear a lot about constitutional rights and those types of things,” said Sam Penney, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal executive committee. “What about the tribes’ legally binding contracts and treaties?”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: BIA funds face cuts

MEMO: Cut in Spokane edition