Tribes, Feds Must Deal Nation To Nation

If the Republicans who dominate Congress would shoo out the corporate lobbyists for a moment, they might discover common ground with a vulnerable, frequently overlooked group that they needlessly are about to cheat.

Many American Indians agree with Republicans, that federal money and policy-making power should move from the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., to the local level where needs and services are better understood.

But federal aid to Indians should not be handed to the states, as some House Republicans propose. Rather, this unique category of assistance ought to go straight from the federal government to the tribes.

Federal aid to the tribes is among the national government’s oldest moral and legal obligations. Treaties created the obligation, and the states were not a party to it. Some states did not even exist when the treaties were signed. To the limited extent states have had dealings with the tribes, the record has not been a happy one.

In the eyes of the law, tribal governments are not subject to the states, they are sovereign entities that granted the United States their land in exchange for specific federal promises. Those promises have been kept, more or less. They have been kept so half-heartedly that reservations have stubborn social and economic problems and must consider unpopular activities such as gambling and the storage of nuclear waste to raise capital for economic development and education. They have been kept so half-heartedly that the cost of improving current federal aid is nominal and the value of trimming it is irrelevant to deficit reduction. But the value of keeping a nation’s word to a vulnerable group is not so small.

House Republicans will break that word if they repackage federal aid to the tribes in block grants, shipped to the states. Tribes then would have to lobby for their due in 50 different state capitals, where they have little power and no tradition of political obligations. Conscientious states might create new bureaucracies to learn about tribal needs - and to skim part of the funds for overhead. Less sympathetic states could divert the dollars to nontribal programs.

There’s a better way. Keep the states out of it. Continue the Clinton administration’s effort to trim the central bureaucracy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which like many agencies has had its problems. Recognize that some tribes are ready to take on more administrative duties, while some aren’t. Equip those that aren’t. Transfer funds and discretion to those that are. Keep funding at a level sufficient to place tribes on a path to economic and social selfsufficiency.

This will take time. Most of all, it requires the character to keep old promises.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board