Lawmakers, advocates say shutdown’s impact hits hardest in tribal areas
WASHINGTON – Even though she saw six opioid overdoses in recent months, two fatal, Kerry Hawk Lessard closed the medical and behavioral health clinic she runs for Native Americans in Baltimore and Boston.
She didn’t have a choice. When the government shut down, Native American LifeLines lost its funding.
Lessard’s clinics were funded as Title V health service systems under the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act, which was created to protect Native health services.
“The shutdown of IHS is directly at odds with that obligation,” Lessard said. “The money to operate our facility has effectively stopped coming in, but the patients have not stopped needing health care.
“It is unthinkable that we will not be able to assist in a time of such great need,” Lessard said during a meeting on the impact of the shutdown on Indian Country.
The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing brought together experts to discuss new challenges faced by urban and rural tribal communities on health, accessibility and land management under the shutdown.
The hearing came on the 25th day of the government shutdown, now the longest in history, with no apparent solution in sight.
“We’ve just been trying to reopen government but now that we seem to have hit an impasse, we’re going try to figure out other ways … to make sure that very isolated communities in Indian Country have some level of sustainability,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix.
While more than three-quarters of people who identify as American Indians live in urban areas, those living in rural areas – like the reservations in much of Arizona – can face particular challenges because of their isolation.
Gallego pointed to recent snowstorms in northern Arizona that left some tribal members cut off from services they need, after funding for road maintenance dried up.
He said the shutdown came “without really regard to some of these areas of our country that are so remote” and “everyone’s being impacted.”
“I think our role in Congress is to figure out a way to mitigate this for the future and to try to get the open as fast as possible to stop the hurt that’s occurring,” he said.
Also affected by the shutdown are public lands, both on and off reservations, that are neglected due to a lack of federal maintenance.
“We have laws in place and justifiable laws to protect cultural resources, historic resources, sacred sites and to put value into that and much of that is in public lands,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson.
“What is going on now with the degrading of our parks with the shutdown with the vandalism with the looting,” he said. “Those protections are not there.”
The shutdown began Dec. 22 when President Donald Trump refused to sign a budget bill for a number of federal agencies because the bill did not include $5.7 billion for a wall on the Mexican border.
That budget covers around 800,000 federal workers, in the departments of Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security, among others. Slightly more than half of those workers have had to work without pay because they are deemed “essential” employees, like Border Patrol agents or Transportation Security Administration screeners. The rest were sent home without pay.
Trump has repeatedly called illegal immigration a “crisis” and has insisted that criminal and drug activity would diminish if a border wall was in place.
But Lessard sees a different reality at her job.
“The drugs that my community is most abusing is not coming from the southern border,” Lessard said. “They’re coming from prescription pads. It’s easy to go to pain management clinics … and get a prescription that people abuse or they sell.”
- Navajo Nation presidential candidates announce their choices for vice president
- Update: SUV drives into Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial parade, causing injuries
- Pope in headdress stirs deep emotions in Indian Country
- Navajo mystery series "Dark Winds" seeks true storytelling
- Pinon man arrested for alleged murder of missing Navajo woman and acts of domestic violence
- Coconino County makes leading effort to bring Starlink to Navajo Nation students
- ‘Prey,’ the latest movie in the ‘Predator’ film franchise to be released in full Comanche
- Monsoon flooding hits Hopi and Navajo Nations, other areas across northern Arizona
- Piccadilly craze hits Navajo reservation
- Navajo Nation mails 110,000 hardship checks
- Phoenix man drowns in Oak Creek
- Navajo mystery series "Dark Winds" seeks true storytelling
- Ex-Ganado football star’s career goes South — in a good way, as coach at Georgia Tech
- Election season in full swing on the Navajo Nation; five candidates announce run
- Three contestants vie for next Miss Navajo Nation
- Navajo Nation mails 110,000 hardship checks
- Navajo Code Talkers honored at National Finals Rodeo
- ‘Dark Winds’ TV series based on Tony Hillerman books to film on Navajo Nation in October; extras being sought
- Piccadilly craze hits Navajo reservation
- ‘Prey,’ the latest movie in the ‘Predator’ film franchise to be released in full Comanche
SUBMIT FEEDBACK
Click Below to: