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Native American Radio Network

Boarding Schools

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Are the United States and Canada ready to reconcile their national myth with a brutal truth of history? 
This is Trahant Reports.

That brutal truth surfaced in Canada with the discovery of new graves at residential schools. Indigenous children were murdered and tortured. 

 

In the last several weeks hundreds of unmarked graves have been found.

 

Yet this is not a new story. As Leena Menifie told me on Indian Country Today the survivors have been telling this story for a long time.

 

Leena Minifie: 

 

“Well, I have to say that everybody has been absolutely, um, impacted and our lives have kind of been, um, uh, brutally changed forever with the findings of Kamloops and the 215 children there. But then now there’s been Brandon Manitoba. And now that there’s, um, finally people paying attention to the Regina Industrial, uh, Indian School with their grave findings as well. Uh, everybody is been completely impacted by this, especially talking to residential school survivors who now have to, um, that brings up all of this, these issues again. 

 

So, um, I, I don’t think it’s going to, as I said, we’re not having, uh, Indigenous day celebrations in the same way right now. I think a lot of people are doing ceremony and sort of acknowledging and taking time to deal with this kind of work, which is, um, emotional, spiritual, um, work. 

 

Minifie said Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation report estimated that some 4,000 children were killed or missing from schools. 

 

Last week Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, said the United States must face up to its own history.

 

She wrote in the Washington Post the stories from Canada made her sick to her stomach. 

 

“But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of the government were not limited to that side of the border,” she said. “Many Americans may be alarmed to learn that the United States also has a history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era. I am a product of these horrific assimilation policies. My maternal grandparents were stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13. Many children like them never made it back home.”

 

Around the world a number of countries have been forced to reckon with these histories. New Zealand, South African, and yet the United States has yet to account for its own history, let alone offer an apology or help bring about community healing.

 

Perhaps this is a first step. 

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Supreme Court

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A recent Supreme Court decision made clear that police officers from tribal nations can hold non-Indians if there is a “reasonable belief” that state or federal law has been violated.

This is Trahant Reports.

 

The good news is that it was a 9 to 0 decision — unanimous. And it overturned a lower court ruling that defied common sense, a decision that a Crow police officer should not have held a nontribal member who had drugs and weapons in his truck.

 

As Indian Country Today’s Kolby KickingWoman reported: The case, United States v. Cooley, involved Joshua James Cooley, a non-Native man parked on the side of Highway 212 that runs through the Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana. Crow officer James Saylor approached the truck and found “watery, bloodshot eyes” and two guns lying on the front seat of the vehicle.

 

After ordering Cooley out of the truck and a subsequent patdown search, Saylor saw a glass pipe and plastic bag containing meth inside the truck.

 

A federal grand jury indicted Cooley on drug and gun offenses but he moved to have the evidence found by Saylor suppressed claiming that it was found during an illegal search.

 

The Supreme Court said that the lower courts’ rulings would “make it difficult for tribes to protect themselves against ongoing threats.”

 

The Supreme Court said previous rulings support “the general proposition that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe … yet, it said, it is not an absolute rule.”

 

Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the opinion for the unanimous court, noted that there are two exceptions to that rule, one of which “fit like a glove” in this case. Those are actions to protect the health or welfare of the tribe.

 

“To deny a tribal police officer authority to search and detain for a reasonable time any person he or she believes may commit or has committed a crime would make it difficult for tribes to protect themselves against ongoing threats,” Breyer wrote. “Such threats may be posed by, for instance, non-Indian drunk drivers, transporters of contraband, or other criminal offenders operating on roads within the boundaries of a tribal reservation.”

 

There is a lot of complexity in criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country. That’s because when federal policy changes … the law often does not. So some laws support tribal sovereignty while others undermine that same idea. In the 1950s a number of laws that Congress passed undermined tribal jurisdiction over to state governments, because Congress wanted tribes to go away. That policy, called termination, ended more than 50 years but many of the laws that were passed in that spirit never went away. 

 

And that’s how a common sense decision is a “bare minimum standard” for law enforcement in a tribal nation.

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Inflation

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How big a deal is inflation?
This is Trahant Reports.
The country has been through a long period of stable prices. Yes .. the cost of things always goes up. But for most of the past fifty years there have  also been significant price decreases, the costs of computers is a good example of that.
You have to go back to the 1970s to look at how inflation impacts people in really difficult ways.
 
Inflation is a general increase in the prices of everything … so the dollars you are earning are worth less. It’s especially tough on people living on fixed incomes, such as retirees, because they cannot compete for new better paying jobs the same way a younger person can.
I recently asked Patrice Kunesh about inflation. Kunesh, who is Standing Rock descent, is a former Federal Reserve Bank official and she now runs her own consulting firm, Peȟíŋ Haha Consulting.
Kunesh:
“You know, more spending leads to higher prices and it’s a supply demand issue. And, uh, what we really want to be careful is that we’re spending prudently, we’re spending on necessities. We’re not spending beyond our means. Um, and, uh, I do think we’re going to be able to manage inflation, but it’s always a concern when we have a surge of spending.”
“You know, what we’re prices are going up is like lumber for building materials, building homes, and so forth. Uh, we cannot find the microchips that, you know, that, uh, you know, power, everything we do from our cars to our refrigerators, there’s a scarcity. And when you have scarcity prices go up and that creates inflation. So I think we’re going to, uh, balance out. Uh, but personally we need to be concerned …”
The data from the US Department of Commerce and the Federal Reserve Bank are already showing signs of inflation, the price “basket” of certain goods increased by 4.2 percent in April when the ideal goal is closer to 2 percent. 
There are two ways that inflation will change how we do business, post-pandemic. Think of the impact on people who want a job. Employers will have to pay more to recruit talent. Already there are signs in some industries, such as food service, that there are not enough workers to fill key jobs. 
A second impact will be increasing the cost of replacing and investing in infrastructure. Every bridge, road, and tunnel will cost more both in terms of materials and people who do the work. That means tribes, and other governments, will have to raise more money just to produce the same amount of work. 
Fifty years ago inflation was a real problem, running as high as 13.5 percent per year. In the last decade the numbers have been close to the ideal at or below 2 percent per year. That’s why this is a history that is not worth repeating. 
I am Mark Trahant.

Medicaid

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Last Friday the Biden administration announced a plan to spend $4 billion from the American Rescue Plan for pandemic relief in Indigenous communities. And of that amount half, or $2 billion, would be used to supplement third-party billing within the Indian health system.

 

This is Trahant Reports.

 

Two billion dollars for Medicaid and other third-party insurance programs is a really big deal. So Indian Country Today’s Aliyah Chavez asked about that at a White House briefing. 

 

This question did not have an answer from the White House.

 

The Indian health system is a combination of the federal Indian Health Service, tribal and nonprofit hospitals and clinics, and urban facilities that serve 2.5 million American Indians and Alaska Natives in 37 states. About 60 percent of that system is run by tribes or nonprofits; the federal government’s direct services — the Indian Health Service we think about — is the shrinking part of the system. 

 

This is where Medicaid and other third-party insurance programs come in. Officially third-party billing is $1.3 billion of a $6 billion budget (in fiscal year 2020). But there is an asterisk. And that’s because that  budget line only includes federal facilities. Tribes, nonprofits and urban programs — the majority of the system — are not included. There is no reporting mechanism for 60 percent of the Indian health system. 

 

That’s why Chavez’s question was so important. Medicaid is officially a state and federal partnership. The federal government pays each state a share of the cost and each state sets the rules for who is eligible and what services are covered. But the federal government also pays a 100 percent match for American Indians and Alaska Natives.

 

So a patient might go into a tribal facility in say, North Dakota, and be eligible for Medicaid insurance coverage and the clinic would be able to bill for those services. This is because North Dakota expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But a family member who lives a few miles away, in South Dakota, would not get the same insurance coverage because the rules are different. 

 

Yet in either case the federal government will reimburse the state Medicaid program at 100 percent. 

 

This makes no sense. 

 

But what if tribes, not states, set the rules for eligibility? This could happen by treating tribes as states (saving a lot of bureaucratic steps) or by issuing specific waivers or a managed care system that directs full Medicaid funding to the Indian health system as a direct entity. 

 

Indeed, Medicaid reform could change the nature of funding in the Indian healthcare system. 

 

There are questions still waiting to be answered. But one thing we know for sure is that a tribal expansion of Medicaid would reduce the number of uninsured in Indian Country — and provide a permanent funding boost for the Indian health. 

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Language

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This is a story that starts with someone who wanted to learn more about his language, Qeuchan. Along the way he ran across a name that’s not well known, a man who devoted his life to documenting Indigenous languages.

 

This is Trahant Reports.

 

Last week I interviewed Daniel Golding for Indian Country Today. He has a new film coming out this month on American Public Television, “Chasing Voices.” It’s the story of John Peabody Harrington. An ethnologist and linguist who spent more than fifty years conducting exhaustive research that preserved some 150 languages (including detailed notes with more than 1 million pages).

 

Daniel Golding:
I was involved years ago with language. I wanted to do master apprentice language learning to speak my language from my Quechan on language. I was doing that master apprentice stuff. And during my learning the language, I came across Harrington who had documented our creation story from a man named Joe Homer back in like the early 1900s, 1907, somewhere in there.”
“And so I just kind of researched him a little bit and I was kind of fascinated by his story. I thought it was just this really kind of interesting story of what he had done and the fact that nobody has really ever heard of him. He’s this eccentric linguist ethnographer who documented all these different languages over million pages of notes on over 150 different Native American languages.”  

 

In the film Golding talks about how some tribes have used the collection to rebuild languages that could have been lost.

 

Or even compare notes. Imaging knowing how a language sounded in the 1920s and comparing that to what we hear today. That’s extraordinary information about a culture. Other tribes have used this collection to document sacred sites. Or even to make their case for federal recognition.

 

Golding says the amount of time that Harrington spent with elders is an important part of the story too. He did not just record the language as it’s supposed to be, but chronicled how people actually spoke it. He got the nuances right.

 

We hear the phrase a “dying language” all the time. And it’s true that many languages are losing fluency. But then again you never know when you’ll run into a million pages of notes that’s an unexpected bonus.

 

“I encourage everyone to make an effort to try and learn a little bit of your language. It’s such an important part of who we are as Native people.”

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Infrastructure

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Water projects will be a high priority for infrastructure spending. (Bureau of Indian Affairs photo)
This is the ideal moment for infrastructure projects across the country and the need remains particularly great in tribal communities.
This is Trahant Reports.
Infrastructure is one of those words that has broad support across politics. (The only dividing line is how to pay for stuff.) Everyone knows we need to rebuild so many structural parts of our society. Then again in tribal communities some of these infrastructure projects are not rebuilds … but being done for the very first time.
What do we mean when we talk about infrastructure?
There are roads, rails and bridges. Water systems. Energy transmission — such as electricity. Ports and waterways. And even pipelines. 
The shared idea is that these projects are extraordinarily expensive and to be successful there has to be a partnership with the federal government.
John Tahsuda III, who was a deputy Interior assistant secretary for Indian affairs, said that roads and bridges will be high priorities for many tribal communities. He told Indian Country Today’s newscast last week about a “horrific accident in South Dakota where a culvert had washed out.” That’s and example of the kind of projects that need to happen
Across the country there are a lot of aging systems, roads, water pipelines … and that’s why Congress is considering spending the $2 trillion as a downpayment. 
In addition to the money there are other challenges for tribal leaders.  In testimony last month, the chair of the Colorado Indian River, Amelia Flores, said “The first thing you need to know: you don’t need to just throw money at the problem. It helps of course, but it’s not the only thing holding tribes back.” She cited a number of legal and policy barriers that make it nearly impossible to maintain a water system.
She said routine maintenance often goes unfinished because the Bureau of Indian Affairs fails to charge water users enough to cover the basic costs of maintenance. Flores testified: “The tribe asks the BIA year after year to raise these rates — essentially taxing ourselves—so that the work can get done. But we have had minimal success even as the maintenance backlog grows.”
None of this is new.  A few years ago a Senate report pegged the unmet infrastructure needs in tribal communities at $50 billion.
Indeed two areas where there will be a lot of discussion are about safe water delivery and waste water management. Both of these were important weaknesses in the transmission of the coronavirus and essential going forward. A report four years ago by the National Congress of American Indians found that nearly 10 percent of American Indian and Alaska Natives do not have access to safe water at home and the backlog of sanitation systems had grown more than 80 percent to $3.39 billion worth of projects. 
So, yes,  the federal government is about to spend a lot of money … but there is still a much longer “to do” list.

 

I am Mark Trahant

Independent

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Indian Country Today’s broadcast studio. (Photo by Tomás Amaya Karmelo, Indian Country Today)
Indian Country Today is on a new path.
This is Trahant Reports.

 

The 40-year-old newspaper is no longer owned by the National Congress of American Indians. In fact, the Associated Press’s headline was particularly cool. “News outlet Indian Country Today has new a owner: itself.”
So after four decades of publication ICT is not owned by an individual, a tribe, or NCAI. Our enterprise is now operated by journalists and our cause is simple, report the news and make sure the Indigineous voice is reflected in the public square. 
This is a chapter in a long story. 
Cherokee Chief John Ross summed up the contradictions in one speech in 1828. He called the Phoenix “a public press” that “should be cherished as an important vehicle in the diffusion of general information … Then he warned “to guard against the admission of scurrilous productions of a personal character, and also against cherishing sectarian principles on religious subjects. The press being the public property of the Nation, it would ill become its character if such infringements upon the feelings of the people should be tolerated. In other respects, the liberty of the press should be as free as the breeze that glides upon the surface.
Free as the breeze is a high calling for press performance. This was the goal of ICT 40 years ago when Tim Giago founded it at Pine Ridge. It was a similar idea for Howard Rock and the Tundra Times in 1962 in Fairbanks when he wrote that the paper is “here to express your ideas, your thoughts and opinions on issues that vitally affect you. With this humble beginning we hope, not for any distinction, but to serve with dedication the truthful presentation of Native problems, issues and interests.” 
Our mission statement: “Indian Country Today is a spacious channel that serves Indigenous communities with news, entertainment, and opinion.”
“This is a new day for ICT, which has a long history as a premier source of news for and about Indigenous communities, written and produced by Indigenous journalists,” said Karen Michel, Ho Chunk, president and CEO of IndiJ Public Media. “As IndiJ Public Media’s name implies, our focus remains on Indigenous journalism while emphasizing our expansion into broadcasting.”
NCAI President Fawn Sharp called the change an “exciting time for Indian Country Today to become fiscally independent and to continue its tradition of an autonomous free press.”
Free press is the key words. Even now many of us still call ICT a “newspaper” even though it’s a digital site and a daily broadcaster. 
The new company IndiJ Public Media has some challenges ahead. And the prospects are amazing. As the comic book possum, Pogo once said. “We are faced with insurmountable opportunities.”
I am Mark Trahant.

Washington

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Tears. Joy. Amazement. These are words that are rarely associated with the act of governing. Yet last week they flooded social media coming from Indigenous communities who rarely see power as “ours.” 
One measure of the week: Hundreds of thousands of people watched Interior Secretary Deb Haaland put her moccasins on before taking the oath of office.
This is Trahant Reports.
Last week Vice President Kamala Harris ceremonially gave the oath of office to Haaland. Then she said: “Congratulations, Madam Secretary. History is being made, yet again.” Haaland is a citizen of Laguna Pueblo.
Madam Secretary has an extraordinary portfolio, managing millions of acres of public lands (far more than any governor). She has direct oversight or significant responsibility for some 60,000 federal employees, U.S. territories around the world, fish and game, geological survey, water management and, of course, the federal government’s relations with tribes.
This history would be amazing all by itself. But the thing is … Haaland is not alone. The administration of President Joe Biden has made a number of key appointments, including, most recently, Janie Hipp, as the general counsel for the Department of Agriculture. 
Hipp is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Much of the Department of Agriculture is focused on the industry of food; not food itself. Hipp will bring her experience rethinking how important food, good food, is to society and consumers. I expect her to be at the forefront of reform.
Another reformer is Jamie Pinkham. He’s Nez Perce. His new job is a mouthful. He has been appointed principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. He will have a lot to say about the operation of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The role of the Army Corps cannot be understated for tribal nations. This is the agency that grants permits for pipelines to cross rivers. It works on reclamation and dam projects. And this is where Pinkham’s expertise is so significant … he is an expert on salmon. This is the ideal job to try to use the levers of government to restore a healthy salmon environment.
And I should mention that all of these jobs will give Indigenous communities a voice in a way that has not happened ever before. 
President Biden has said that climate change is an existential threat. So the government should react in order to make decisions based on that danger. These appointments are clear steps in that direction. 
As Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan tweeted last week: “I can’t stop crying, happy tears.”
I am Mark Trahant.

What’s Next – Not quite Post Pandemic

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Temporary studio at the Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center was the home of Indian Country Today. This week the news program moves into a regular studio at Arizona PBS. (Mark Trahant photo)
Sometimes a call for patience can be tough.
This is Trahant Reports.
In Phoenix, Arizona, the team that produces the television version of Indian Country Today has been eager to get into the studio to produce a better version of the show. 
This whole enterprise is a pandemic special. 
Last March we started producing Zoom calls and Facebook live reports and discovered that we had a significant audience. At the time ICT was a digital publication but we had also planned on a weekly broadcast. So we started to interview key people about what was going on … the first episode was asking reporters what was going on what they saw. Then Dean Seneca, an expert in infectious disease. Then we started doing it everyday. 
Within a week the programs were 26 minutes and 46 seconds … this is the PBS standard for a half-hour show. The program was carried by FNX: First Nations Experience … and we were producing a daily news report. Last summer we created a temporary studio at the Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center. 
A lot has happened since then. We never could have pulled this off without the pandemic. Normally we would have needed millions of dollars in equipment and people in order to produce a broadcast quality program. But the pandemic was an excuse to do it differently. We could interview people on Zoom. We used a home office or living room as a studio. We showed that the content, Native American stories, was worthy of a national audience.

Today we are carried daily or weekly by many public television stations across the country (and in Australia.) As they say … check your local listing. More are being added regularly. 
March 15 was supposed to be our first day in a new studio at Arizona PBS. But late last week there was a COVID-19 report in our building. So we all went home again. I recorded Monday’s show in my living room, a full circle.
The good news is the test was a false positive — our show will debut in the studio later this week. 
That’s really cool because there is so much news going on now. Soon we will be able to say, Madam Secretary, as Rep. Deb Haaland is confirmed as the Secretary of the interior. And the new American Rescue Plan Act has so much to unpack because it’s the most significant investment in tribal communities in the history of our country,
But the lesson here is worth heeding. Even though we have plans … even though we want life to return to normal … we still live in a moment of caution. 
When the pandemic began we did not let going home limit our imaginations. We can still balance innovation with safety. 
As we begin the “what’s next?” portion of this story, this experience, is a lesson here for us all. 

 

I am Mark Trahant.

Families

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The latest coronavirus relief package has a couple of more steps before it becomes law. But that path is now clear.
This is Trahant Reports.
There is a clear distinction between the way Republicans govern and how Democrats operate the levers. The Trump administration’s first act was for a $1.9 trillion tax relief bill,  a bonanza for the wealthy. Now the first major piece of legislation from the Biden administration also costs $1.9 trillion and its impacts are more focused on working families and the poor.
The plan pumps money into the economy through all sorts of mechanisms, including $20 billion that will go directly to tribal nations and another $6 billion for Indian health programs. The plan has money for quicker vaccine distribution, expanded unemployment insurance, support for ailing businesses, funding for schools, and, of course, a check of $1,400 to most Americans. 
This legislation does more to address poverty, especially child poverty, than any law since the 1960s and the Great Society or 1930s and the New Deal. 
The most important provision may be the expansion of Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. These laws currently lift 5.1 million children above poverty, and the new proposal would lift another 4.1 million children above the poverty line, cutting the remaining number of children in poverty by more than half, according to a study by Columbia University,
One of the odd things that has happened to our tax code over the past decade is that most people play more in payroll taxes than income taxes. Income tax is supposed to be progressive, make more, pay more. But it has not worked like that. The most famous example is Warren Buffett revealing that his tax rate was lower than his secretary’s rate. The Democrats’ plan addresses this inequity by making the Earned Income Tax Credit fully refundable. That’s money back in working families’ pockets. 
The Biden plan also increases the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $3,000 per child, adding an additional $600 per child under the age of 6 (phasing it out for single parents making $112,500 and couples earning $150,000). 
The money spent on families will have the quickest impact on the economy. 
We also know that the tribal nations have significant challenges ahead.
As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities put it in a recent report … “the pandemic has stretched tribal nations’ finances and health systems to the breaking point.”
National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp said that “direct relief and other aid which is critical to the health, safety, and well-being of our communities and necessary to build back our distressed governments and economies.”
This bill will be a huge relief. For tribal nations. And for the families in those tribes.
I am Mark Trahant.
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