New Report: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Broken Promises: Continuing Federal Funding Shortfall for Native Americans, USCCR.gov, December 2018.
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In this report, the Commission updates its 2003 report, A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country, which evaluated budgets and spending of federal agencies that sponsor Native American programs, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Education. Despite some progress, the crisis the Commission found in 2003 remains, and the federal government continues to fail to support adequately the social and economic wellbeing of Native Americans. Due at least in part to the failure of the federal government adequately to address the wellbeing of Native Americans over the last two centuries, Native Americans continue to rank near the bottom of all Americans in health, education, and employment outcomes.
The Commission majority approved key findings including the following: Federal programs designed to support the social and economic wellbeing of Native Americans remain chronically underfunded and sometimes inefficiently structured, which leaves many basic needs in the Native American community unmet and contributes to the inequities observed in Native American communities. The federal government has also failed to keep accurate, consistent, and comprehensive records of federal spending on Native American programs, making monitoring of federal spending to meet its trust responsibility difficult. Tribal nations are distinctive sovereigns that have a special government-to-government relationship with the United States. Unequal treatment of tribal governments and lack of full recognition of the sovereign status of tribal governments by state and federal governments, laws, and policies diminish tribal self-determination and negatively impact criminal justice, health, education, housing and economic outcomes for Native Americans.
The Commission majority voted for key recommendations, including the following: The United States expects all nations to live up to their treaty obligations; it should live up to its own. Congress should honor the federal government’s trust obligations and pass a spending package to fully address unmet needs, targeting the most critical needs for immediate investment. This spending package should also address the funding necessary for the buildout of unmet essential utilities and core infrastructure needs in Indian Country such as electricity, water, telecommunications, and roads. Congress should ensure that these funds are available and accessible to all tribal governments on an equitable need basis.
The federal government should provide steady, equitable, and non-discretionary funding directly to tribal nations to support the public safety, health care, education, housing, and economic development of Native tribes and people. Congress should provide funding to establish an interagency working group to share expertise and develop and improve systems and methodologies that federal government agencies could replicate for the collection of accurate and disaggregated data on small and hard to count populations such as the Native American and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander racial groups
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