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Law360 (March 20, 2020, 8:56 PM EDT ) Leaders of several Native American organizations said Friday that the coronavirus pandemic is severely straining tribal health care services that are already underfunded by the federal government, with the CEO of the National Congress of American Indians saying the situation threatens "disaster" for tribes.
Officials of the NCAI, the National Indian Health Board, the Native American Finance Officers Association, the National Indian Child Welfare Association and the National Indian Education Association discussed during a conference call Friday how the groups are helping tribal governments cope with the rising demands of the COVID-19 crisis, and the need for the federal government to try to stave off the worst.
NCAI CEO Kevin Allis said Native populations suffer a much higher rate of many of the underlying medical conditions, such as heart and respiratory disease, that make the virus much more dangerous to catch.
Combined with the high rate of overcrowding on tribal reservations and the long distances tribe members often have to travel to buy food and other essentials, "the recipe is for a disaster," said Allis, an enrolled member of the Forest County Potawatomi Community.
"And there simply and frankly has not been enough attention given to this on a day-in and day-out basis by the media, the leaders of our country, and the leaders of our states," Allis said. "This is a serious situation that could have devastating effects on Indian Country."
Tribes' lack of a tax base makes them heavily dependent on their businesses to fund government services, from health care to law enforcement, and many of those — including casinos, hotels, and tourism businesses — have been forced to shut down, while falling prices have also hurt tribes in the oil and gas industry, the officials said.
"This is not going to be acceptable if the federal government forgets about Indian Country in the time of this crisis," said Dante Desiderio, executive director of the Native American Finance Officers Association.
Stacy Bohlen, executive director of the National Indian Health Board and a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, said tribal health care is "the world's first pre-paid health care system," and "we paid for these services with billions of acres of our lands and all of the natural resources on and below the Earth."
The $40 million targeted for tribes in Congress' initial $8.3 billion stimulus bill earlier this month "is still grossly under what is needed" and "tribes have not received those funds," Bohlen said.
Tribal leaders have told the NIHB that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Indian Health Service should be in charge of getting that money to tribes quickly, given its history with tribal self-governance and self-determination contracts, Bohlen said.
To address tribes' shortage of supplies, IHS should be able to access medical equipment from the Strategic National Stockpile, Bohlen said.
In addition, nearly 200 officers of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, an HHS agency, have been redeployed away from working with tribes to deal with the coronavirus elsewhere, which is "completely outrageous and needs to be reversed immediately," she said.
The IHS said on its webpage for its coronavirus response that the agency is "working closely" with HHS and the the department's Centers for Disease Control "to determine how best to allocate the resources included in" the stimulus law passed on March 6, and "has a limited reserve of existing funding that may be available to tribes through the IHS Director's Emergency Funds," which amounts to about $4 million yearly.
An IHS representative said in a statement Friday that the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on Wednesday, includes $64 million for COVID-19 testing by the agency, and "in the coming days, IHS will provide information on how to access these resources."
--Additional reporting by Danielle Nichole Smith. Editing by Peter Rozovsky.
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