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When tomorrow comes for Indian Country Today

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Today I have some news about the news.

This is Trahant Reports.

Last fall Indian Country Today went on hiatus.

This is a newspaper with a rich history.

It was started in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, by Tim Giago on July 1, 1981, as The Lakota Times. The newspaper soon became the largest weekly in the state. As Giago wrote: “For the first time in the history of the state an Indian-owned newspaper began to take a close look at the lives of the Native people.” He said as the newspaper grew into a national publication and his staff held a contest, and Avis Little Eagle came up with the name, Indian Country Today.

The paper was sold to the Oneida Nation in 1988 and the publication was moved to New York, eventually landing in New York City. Indian Country Today was a newspaper, a magazine, and a media network.

Last year the Oneida Nation said the changing media landscape meant it could not continue its operations and Indian Country Today went into hiatus. Then the Oneida Nation donated the assets to the National Congress of American Indians.

Now, I have been tasked with rebuilding this news organization.

Here’s the thing: When Indian Country Today was not producing content, writing stories, posting photographs, and such, there remained huge interest from readers. A lot of readers — some 500,000 a month online.

That’s amazing to me. And it’s a solid reason to gear up again. We have much to report.

So on June 4 Indian Country Today will officially unveil a new digital platform and an updated logo. We will do this at the National Congress of American Indians’ Mid-Year Conference and Marketplace in Kansas City, Missouri.

The new Indian Country Today is public media. That means our task is service, so we will be working even closer with other media organizations such as Native Voice One. You should expect more content.

Indian Country Today is ready for its next chapter too, leading in the digital, mobile space.

I remember as a young man mailing tribal newspapers to readers across the country. And, I also waited at the post office for other papers. I’d get a clump of papers, sometimes rolled up as tube, but full of news.

Now the “paper” is digital, multimedia and instant. Our primary focus will be the mobile phone, a platform where our readers are already migrating.

But in the end it’s about the stories we tell. Stories about people doing interesting things. Stories about elections — there is a big one in Idaho this week — and about public policy choices that impact our lives. There are so many stories that will not be told by the national media. No matter. Indian Country can do our own. And we will. Stay tuned.

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Wild Rice: A Governor’s Decision

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Wild Rice Beds with Open Water

Water is life? Not so much in Minnesota. This is Trahant Reports.

The Minnesota Legislature, supported by the mining industry, last week voted to weaken water standards for sulfates in areas where wild rice grows.

Wild rice is the essential Ojibwe food.

The legislation is not final — and Gov. Mark Dayton has not said whether he’ll sign or veto the measure.

Last month when the bill was before the House, Rep. Peggy Flanagan spoke against weakening the water standards.  “If wild rice no longer exists, we no longer exist,” she said. “This is our home. We can’t go anywhere else. So if manoomin goes away, we go away. Maybe that’s the point.”

Flanagan, White Earth Ojibwe, is a Democrat-Farm-Labor candidate for Lt. Governor.

Mining companies, as well as Northern Minnesota communities, complained that the standards were too stringent and expensive.

PolyMet Mining Corporation has proposed a copper-nickel mine near Hoyt Lake. The mining permit has not yet been issued, but under the old rules, the company would have had to treat the open pit mine and tailings indefinitely to remove sulfate from the water. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune that would have cost the company about $1 billion.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency had already said it would bring together scientists and policymakers “to determine an alternative path forward.” And other critics have said that an outright repeal of the water standards could violate the federal Clean Water Act.

One problem is that the old water quality standard was never enforced. “Up until now, the standard has maintained that sulfate should not enter wild rice waters in higher quantities than 10 parts per million,” according to a blog post from Honor The Earth. “The new proposed rule would make a different standard for every lake and wetland with wild rice – an unbelievably complicated and costly rule to implement.” That is the rule that the Senate proposed be withdrawn.

An op-ed by Kevin Dupuis, president of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and Kathryn Hoffman with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy called the legislation ‘a sell out to the very identity of Minnesotans.’

They wrote: “Tribes and environmental advocates might be the most vocal protectors of wild rice, but we know that the great unifier of Minnesotans is our water. Water is who we are. It is not too late. Minnesotans — lovers of wild rice, lakes and all waters — we must unite to protect our very identity.”

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Candidates Seeking Early Votes in Primary Contests Across the Country

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Tatewin Means is running for the Attorney General of South Dakota. (Campaign photo)

It’s already time to cast ballots in the 2018 election season — a cycle with more Native Americans running for Congress or to lead state governments than ever before. The first election tests are in Idaho, South Dakota and New Mexico.

This is Trahant Reports.

Paulette Jordan, Couer d’Alene, is looking for those early votes now in her bid to be the first Native American woman to lead a state. She is currently touring all of Idaho’s 44 counties before the May 15 Democratic Primary for governor.

Primary elections are an odd fixture in American politics. Any small dedicated group of voters, such as Native Americans, are better positioned to win a primary election because the turnout is so low.  In Idaho’s last primary election only 22 percent of voters turned out for the primary — and most of them were Republican voters.

South Dakota is another state where absentee, or early voting, has begun. The primary is June 5. But South Dakota Democrats will pick their statewide candidate at the party convention on June 15 and 16. This means delegates, not voters, will pick the statewide candidates.

Tatewin Means, a former Attorney General for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is running for Attorney General against former U.S. Attorney Randy Seiler.

The challenge is similar to the Jordan race in Idaho because South Dakota Democrats are faced with a choice of a picking an establishment candidate or a younger Native American woman who has the potential to bring new voters into the process.

“I am an atypical candidate,” Means told KOTA News. “I am an indigenous woman. I am a single mother and this is my first political campaign. And so that brings a fresh perspective to a criminal justice and law enforcement system that doesn’t typically have that point of view at the table.”

There are several races with Native candidates for the state legislature in contested primaries.

In Utah, a congressional candidate won his party’s nomination for the third district over the weekend without a primary. James Singer, Navajo, earned 77 percent of the delegate vote and will face the winner of the Republican primary in November. Singer is running in the district that includes Bear’s Ears monument as well as Ute Mountain and the Navajo Nation.

New Mexico’s voters can cast ballots beginning May 8.

Democrat Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, is one of six candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in Albuquerque. This promises to be a close race, but Haaland easily won support from the state Democratic Party’s delegates at a pre-primary convention.

Further south, in the second congressional district on the Republican ticket, Gavin Clarkson, Choctaw, is in a four-way contest. He’s campaigned on support for President Donald J. Trump and “draining the swamp in Washington.”

The people are voting — and  the 2018 election is underway. I am Mark Trahant.

A Race of Medicaid Policy

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New Medicaid rules by the Trump administration undermine the treaty right to health care.

The Trump administration is supporting a major policy shift on Indian health programs which could result in a loss of millions of dollars and sabotage treaty rights.

This is Trahant Reports.

A story in Politico Sunday raised the issue, saying the Trump administration contends the tribes are a race rather than separate governments, and exempting them from Medicaid work rules would be illegal preferential treatment.

The new policy on Medicaid work requirements “does not honor the duty of the federal government to uphold the government-to-government relationship and recognize the political status enshrined in the Constitution, treaties, federal statutes, and other federal laws, said Jacqueline Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians.

Medicaid has become a key funding stream for the Indian health system — especially in programs managed by tribes and non-profits. Medicaid is a state-federal partnership and public insurance. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid eligibility, but the Supreme Court ruled that each state could decide whether or not to expand. Since the expansion of Medicaid some 237,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives in 19 states have become insured.

Officially Medicaid represents 13 percent of the Indian Health Service’s $6.1 billion budget (just under $800 million).

But even that number is misleading because it does not include money collected from third-party billing from tribal and non-profit organizations. In Alaska, for example, the entire Alaska Native health system is operated by tribes or tribal organizations and the state says 40 percent of its $1.8 billion Medicaid budget is spent on Alaska Native patients. That one state approaches the entire “budgeted” amount for Medicaid.

Those Medicaid (and all insurance) dollars are even more significant because by law they remain with local service units where the patient is treated (and the insurance is billed). And, unlike IHS funds, Medicaid is an entitlement. So if a person is eligible, the money follows.

Medicaid is the largest health insurance program in America, insuring one in five adults, and many with complex and long-term chronic care needs. The Trump administration and many state legislatures controlled by Republicans see Medicaid as a welfare program. While most Democrats view it simply as a public health insurance program.

Work rules are particularly challenging for Indian Country. Unlike other Medicaid programs, patients in the Indian health system will still be eligible to receive basic care. So stricter rules will mean fewer people will sign up for Medicaid and the Indian Health Service — already significantly underfunded — will have to pick up the extra costs from existing appropriations. That will result in less money, and fewer healthcare services, across the board.

I am Mark Trahant.

Ryan’s Big Idea – Closing out the Term

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Speaker Paul Ryan greeting President Donald J. Trump at the State of the Union.  (Photo via Speaker.gov)

Paul Ryan came to Washington to blow up Washington. He was first elected to represent his Wisconsin district at 28 years old. He campaigned over his career for a federal government that should shrink dramatically, spend far less, that taxes should be low, and that the Republicans should be the party of big ideas.

This is Trahant Reports.

Ryan announced last week that he will not run for re-election. He says he will complete his term as Speaker, but even that’s not certain. He faces pressure to step down early, so another Republican can lead the party’s team into the November election.

Speaker Ryan leaves behind a legacy. He did get his tax cuts and substantial changes in the regulatory framework. But he also delivered more federal spending than ever. The deficit will hit $804 billion this year (a jump of 21 percent in a single year) and exceed $1 trillion by 2020. A new report by the Congressional Budget Office, says that a decade from now the total debt will be larger than the entire economy.

The problem for Ryan, like Speaker John Boehner before him, is that the Republican majority is nearly impossible to govern. The only way for Congress to function, to actually pass a budget, is to build a coalition that includes most Republicans, some Democrats, and work with a similar coalition in the Senate. That often means spending more money. That’s not the Congress — and the party of big ideas — that Ryan had once imagined.

President Donald J. Trump has made that process worse. He caters to the bloc in Congress that cares little about actually governing. Chaos is fine. Big ideas, not so much.

Ryan wanted to reform government. A couple of years ago he proposed a reform of the Indian Health Service by “giving choices to American Indians.” His idea was to have the government issue vouchers for Indian health, outside the system. “Not only will this give American Indians more choice in where they receive care,” the Ryan plan promised. “It will challenge Indian health facilities to provide the best care possible to American Indians.”

Of course that voucher system would have cost less. The Ryan plan also included a provision for a Native American Health Savings Account so individual tribal members could buy their own healthcare services (Never mind that healthcare is a treaty right).
Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican from Oklahoma and a Chickasaw Nation citizen, said Ryan will be missed in Congress. “He is not only the best Speaker I’ve had the opportunity to serve with, he’s also the finest person. Even Paul’s political opponents readily concede that he’s a person of absolute integrity, deep sincerity and of profound decency.”

I am Mark Trahant.

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