Inequities in Indian funding: `rich get richer'
Story-Date: 10:04 a.m. PST Monday   , September 1, 1997

Inequities in Indian funding: `rich get richer'BY PHILIP BRASHER
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- By any measure, the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa in
Minnesota is one of the most successful tribes in America. Casinos trimmed
unemployment and welfare rolls and helped build new schools and a clinic.

Yet the tribal government still gets $1.4 million a year from the Bureau of
Indian Affairs -- roughly $1,000 for every tribal member.

Meanwhile, a few hundred miles west, some of the poorest Americans, South
Dakota's Oglala and Rosebud Sioux, get about $200 per member from the BIA.

An AP analysis of the Indian agency's arcane funding systems shows wide
disparities, with the richest, best-located tribes frequently the best
funded, up to $2,000 per member, while some tribes get less than $100.

And the gap between tribes grows as annual funding increases are made at
the same rate for every reservation.

BIA officials say it's politically impossible for them to redistribute the
money. And distrustful tribes -- rich and poor -- don't want any change.

The Senate, nevertheless, will debate legislation this month that could
lead to relatively wealthy tribes getting less of the BIA money flow.

``All tribes have needs but the tribes with the greatest needs and poorest
situations should be, at the least, given some level of preference,'' said
Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash.

Gorton inserted a provision in the Interior Department's 1998
appropriations bill that would require tribes to begin reporting their
income to the BIA. It's a first step toward requiring the federal agency to
fund tribes according to need.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has said he would recommend a veto of the
appropriations bill if Gorton's provision stays in.

Opponents such as Ron Allen, president of the National Congress of American
Indians, explained: ``You can't come in and fix a problem like this
overnight in such a blatant and callous way. It's fundamentally wrong.''

Tribal leaders argue that the federal government is obligated to care for
Indians in perpetuity and that basing funding on need would discourage
tribes from trying to improve themselves.

`I don't think they could guarantee us we wouldn't be hurt by this,'' said
William Kindle, president of the Rosebud Sioux, whose barren reservation
has one of the nation's highest poverty rates. ``They've never kept their
word with us.''

More than 200 Indian leaders are coming to Washington this week to
lobby against Gorton's provision and a second, equally unpopular, measure
that seeks to strip tribes of their immunity against lawsuits.

The BIA funds almost every function of tribal government on reservations,
including social services, law enforcement, land management and road
maintenance. This year the bureau distributed $681 million to 554 tribes.

When the BIA started funding tribes in the 1930s the money was apportioned
according to population, but that changed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tribes with influential representatives in Congress, such as former Sen.
Warren Magnuson of Washington, longtime chairman of the Senate
Appropriations Committee, got more money. So did tribes that took over
management of BIA services or won rights to water and other natural
resources and needed federal money to enforce them.

That extra money subsequently was built into the tribes' annual funding
base regardless of whether the tribes' needs changed.

The result: tribes that have been the most successful in developing natural
resources, starting casinos, resorts and other businesses, or in lobbying
Congress are also among the best funded by the BIA. Often that means tribes
rich in timber or those located near major cities.

Tribes in the Pacific Northwest receive nearly twice the amount per capita
that tribes in the Dakotas get on average and nearly eight times the share
for the Cherokee and other tribes in eastern Oklahoma.

In Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, which has one of the
lowest unemployment rates in Indian country, an estimated 12 percent,
received $3.6 million in BIA funding this year. That's more than $1,230 for
each of the 2,900 tribal members living on or near the reservation.

New Mexico's Mescalero Apache tribe, which operates a popular mountain
resort and has virtually no unemployment, got $941 per tribal member.

The small Mille Lacs tribe, located on one of Minnesota's premier fishing
lakes less than two hours north of Minneapolis, operates casinos that draw
130,000 gamblers a week.

``It was hard to control and keep the per-capita allocation system going,''
said Michael Anderson, the Interior Department's deputy assistant secretary
for Indian affairs. ``To right that in the 1990s and to try to achieve
equity ... is going to be very difficult.

``It's a political process. For us to come in and reduce a tribe's baseline
is something the tribes would strongly object to.''

Even when Congress has tried to address the funding disparity it hasn't
always hit the mark. BIA was given $2 million this year to distribute to
tribes deemed ``small and needy.'' All the tribes that shared the money
were small -- under 1,500 members -- but not all were needy.

About $28,000 went to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux, a tribe that makes so
much money from its casino in the Minneapolis suburbs that it gives up to
$80,000 a year to each tribal member.

But wealthy tribes like the Shakopee are an exception.

A study by the General Accounting Office found that 40 percent of the
Indian gambling revenue nationwide goes to just eight casinos.



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