Federal agencies don’t always get graded — but when they do, it’s usually not a good thing. Federal agencies dealing with Native Americans have repeatedly earned bad marks for the conditions of schools and health facilities, for staffing, for lack of training of agency personnel, and for cumbersome regulations and procedures. Now new reports grade some of these programs as “high risk.”
The year begins with assessments. The General Accountability Office (GAO) has added “programs that serve tribes and their members” to its “High Risk List.” This biennial report lists 34 areas of substantial risk to public health or safety, service delivery, national security, economic growth or privacy. This year, the report assessed Indian health services and Indian education as “ineffectively administered” and Indian energy resources as “inefficiently developed.” The GAO has issued previous recommendations in these areas; it now reports that only 2 of 41 GAO past recommendations have been implemented.
Early last year, the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of the Interior issued its own assessment on energy resource development, focusing on the frustrating and time-consuming experiences of the Southern Ute Tribe with federal government requirements and processes. In September, the same Inspector General’s Office issued its “Final Evaluation Report on the Condition of Indian School Facilities.” The report cited deficiencies in BIE schools including condemned buildings; the presence of asbestos, mold and radon; electrical hazards; deteriorated roofs; plumbing, corrosion, poor drainage, and moisture damage; fire safety systems either missing or improperly installed; and overreliance on temporary structures.
These problems are not new to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) or Congress. Catalogues of unacceptable Indian school conditions have been in play since well before the 2011 publication of Broken Promises, Broken Schools, a report of a joint tribal-federal consortium documenting the same kinds of problems in BIE schools. In the 114th Congress, Senate and House Committees held numerous hearings on these issues, including field hearings in the most affected areas. But solutions, including adequate funding and comprehensive plans for repair and replacement, have not followed.
Health care and health facilities challenges, particularly in the Great Plains region, have also been thoroughly explored in the last session Congress, and that inquiry dates back to hearings in 2009 and before, and a 2010 report entitled “In Critical Condition: The Urgent Need to Reform the Indian Health Service’s Aberdeen Area,” commissioned by Senator Dorgan, then-chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The problems are old and well-documented. What we need is solutions.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has received the new GAO report, and its subcommittee on Interior, Energy and Environment focused specifically on the findings related to tribes and their members in a hearing held February 15. This committee may bring the right emphasis to these problems. Solutions do seem to be buried in bureaucracies.
But the answers belong in the relationship between the federal government – currently represented by certain bureaucracies and procedures – and tribal governments. In answer to a query posed by the subcommittee chair, Representative Farenthold of Texas, states have no direct role in this relationship. States do not have a trust or treaty responsibility toward tribal nations – these are federal obligations that cannot be left to other governments or to the private sector.
Whether the problems lie in the almost inevitable growth of complexity in bureaucracies, or in unacknowledged paternalistic attitudes toward tribes built into bureaucratic procedures and requirements (as suggested by Tyson Thompson of the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council in his testimony to the subcommittee), they can be addressed. A fresh look, built on a bedrock of respect for treaties and promises given, and developed in consultation with tribal leaders, could yield an effective model for repair of this inter-government relationship.