[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
                    INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED
                     AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2024

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 HEARINGS

                                 BEFORE A

                           SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                         HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                     ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                              FIRST SESSION

                            ________________

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES

                   MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho, Chairman
                   
                   
                                                CHELLIE MAINE MAINE
  CHRIS STEWART, Utah                           BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
  CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine                        DEREK KILMER, Washington
  MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada                        JOSH HARDER, California
  GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
  MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
  RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
  JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
    

         NOTE: Under committee rules, Ms. Granger, as chairwoman of the full 
         committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full 
           committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.

             Kristin Clarkson, Victoria Allred, Sarah Peery,
                    Courtney Stevens, and Maggie Earle
                            Subcommittee Staff



                                       PART 1

                                                                   Page
  American Indian and Alaska Native 
Public Witness
Day 1_Morning Session...................
                                                                    
  American Indian and Alaska Native 
Public Witness
Day 1_Afternoon Session.................
                                                                   

                        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]           
                        -------------------------------------- 



          Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations


Part 1--INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 

                                  2024
                                  

                    INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED
                     AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2024

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 HEARINGS

                                 BEFORE A

                           SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                         HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                     ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                              FIRST SESSION

___________________________________

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES

                   MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho, Chairman

  CHRIS STEWART, Utah                      CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
  MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada                   BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
  GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania          DEREK KILMER, Washington
  MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas                     JOSH HARDER, California
  RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
  JAKE ELLZEY, Texas

              NOTE: Under committee rules, Ms. Granger, as chairwoman of the full 
              committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full 
                committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.

                    Kristin Clarkson, Victoria Allred, Sarah Peery,
                          Courtney Stevens, and Maggie Earle
                                 Subcommittee Staff


                                  PART 1

                                                                   Page
  American Indian and Alaska Native 
Public Witness
Day 1_Morning Session...................
                                                                      1
  American Indian and Alaska Native 
Public Witness
Day 1_Afternoon Session.................
                                                                    215

                      [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]             



          Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
  53-445

                            WASHINGTON : 2023


 
                      COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                                ----------                              
                     KAY GRANGER, Texas, Chairwoman


  HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky                             ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
  ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama                         STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
  MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho                           MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
  JOHN R. CARTER, Texas                               SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
  KEN CALVERT, California                             BARBARA LEE, California
  TOM COLE, Oklahoma                                  BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
  MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida                          C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
  STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas                              DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
  CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee         HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
  DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio                                CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
  ANDY HARRIS, Maryland                               MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
  MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada                              DEREK KILMER, Washington
  CHRIS STEWART, Utah                                 MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
  DAVID G. VALADAO, California                        GRACE MENG, New York
  DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington                            MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
  JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan                         PETE AGUILAR, California
  JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida                         LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
  BEN CLINE, Virginia                                 BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
  GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania                     NORMA J. TORRES, California
  MIKE GARCIA, California                             ED CASE, Hawaii
  ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa                                 ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
  TONY GONZALES, Texas                                JOSH HARDER, California
  JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana                             JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
  MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas                                DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
  MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi                          LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
  RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana                              SUSIE LEE, Nevada
  ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia                            JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
  JERRY L. CARL, Alabama
  STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
  C. SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
  JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
  JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona

  
 

              Anne Marie Chotvacs, Clerk and Staff Director

                                   (ii)


     DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
                        APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2024

                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

         TESTIMONY OF INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS

                              ----------                              


AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE PUBLIC WITNESS DAY 1--MORNING SESSION

                                WITNESS

LARRY WRIGHT JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICAN 
    INDIANS (NCAI)
    Mr. Simpson. The committee will come to order.
    Good morning, and welcome to the first of our public 
witness hearings dedicated to American Indians and Alaska 
Native programs.
    On a personal note, I am thrilled to return as chairman of 
the Interior Subcommittee. It is back to the future again for 
me, but I am proud to be here for the 118th Congress.
    The critical issues of this subcommittee are near and dear 
to me and my home State of Idaho. I look forward to working 
with the Ranking Member Pingree to advance programs that help 
conserve and protect our Nation's most critical natural, 
cultural, and environmental resources and strengthen the 
committee's longstanding effort to increase Federal commitment 
to honor our treaties and trust responsibilities to American 
Indians and Alaska Natives.
    I am proud that our first hearing for fiscal year 2024 
appropriations focuses on these very important tribal programs. 
Indian Country has been and will continue to be a bipartisan 
priority of this subcommittee.
    I also want to welcome all of the distinguished tribal 
elders and leaders here today. Thank all of you--for our 
witnesses for appearing before the committee and sharing your 
concerns and personal perspective on these important topics.
    In terms of hearing logistics, I will call each panel of 
witnesses to the table one panel at a time. Each witness will 
have 5 minutes to present testimony. Your full written 
testimony will be included in the record. So please don't feel 
pressured to cover everything in 5 minutes.
    We will be using a timer to track the progress of each 
witness. When the light turns orange, the witness will have 1 
minute remaining to conclude his or her remarks. When the light 
turns red, I will ask the witness to stop.
    And please don't feel offended if I do that. We have to 
keep it to 5 minutes in order to get through all of the 
different witnesses that we are going to have. I think in the 2 
days we have over 65 tribes that are going to testify before 
us. And so to keep it on schedule, I will tap the gavel at 5 
minutes and stop. So I appreciate that.
    We will hear from every witness on each panel before 
members will be provided an opportunity to ask questions. 
Because we have a full day ahead, I request that we try to keep 
things moving in order to stay on schedule and respect each 
other's time.
    I also want to note that committee rules prohibit the use 
of outside cameras and audio equipment during these hearings. 
The hearing can be viewed in its entirety on the committee's 
website, and an official hearing transcript will be available 
at gpo.gov.
    With that, I thank you all for being here today, and I am 
happy to yield now to our distinguished ranking member for any 
remarks she may wish to make.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Chairman Simpson.
    I am very excited to be here with you today, and 
congratulations on your return as chair of the committee.
    I know we are going to have a lot of areas of interest that 
we want to work together on, and this, today, is one in 
particular. So thank you for organizing and holding this 
hearing.
    I echo all of the chair's remarks. I appreciate all of you 
taking the time to come all the way to Washington. It is 
wonderful to be back in the committee hearing room again, but I 
know for many of you, it is a challenge to travel all the way 
here, and so thank you for doing that.
    I look forward to hearing from you, look forward to hearing 
one of our chiefs from Maine, who is also the president of USET 
and always delivers a lot of important issues to us about the 
tribal issues in my State, but so many apply to many of you.
    I particularly enjoy these hearings. I hear we have over 65 
different tribal witnesses, and each of you bring unique 
challenges, unique areas of interest, and I always learn so 
much. So I will be a good listener today. Look forward to 
hearing from all of you. Thank you for taking the time.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, for having this hearing. And with 
that, I will look forward to getting us started.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. And I do appreciate your comments, 
and I would like to say that Ranking Member Pingree has been 
chairman of this committee for the last 2 years, was it, or 4 
years?
    Ms. Pingree. It might have been 4.
    Mr. Simpson. Four years. She has done a fantastic job, and 
I have always enjoyed working with her on this committee. It is 
one of those committees that actually works in kind of a 
bipartisan fashion, particularly on Indian issues. So we will 
continue that, trying to make sure that we meet our treaty 
obligations that we have.
    So I will call the first panel up to the table. Larry 
Wright Jr., executive director of the National Congress of 
American Indians; Tesia Zientek, the National Indian Education 
Association; Laurie Harper, board president of the Tribal 
Education Departments National Assembly; and Tom Miller, board 
president, the Association of Community Tribal Schools.
    Welcome, and thank you all for coming.
    Larry, you have the floor. Please pull that microphone 
toward you and turn it on by pushing until the green light is 
on.
    Mr. Wright. We are on? Can you hear me?
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Wright. All right. Good morning. My name is Larry 
Wright Jr. I am the executive director for--I guess that works 
better. I am the executive director for the National Congress 
of American Indians. I also served 11 years as tribal chairman 
for the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska.
    On behalf of the National Congress of American Indians, 
thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on fiscal 
year 2024 funding for the Department of the Interior, the 
Indian Health Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
    The funding request that NCAI has written and oral 
testimony are rooted in the promises made by the U.S. 
Government in treaties and agreements with tribal nations. The 
2018 Broken Promises report from the U.S. Commission on Civil 
Rights found that Federal funding for Native American programs 
across the Government remains grossly inadequate to meet the 
most basic needs the Federal Government is obligated to 
provide.
    Congress and the administration have recently taken some 
initial meaningful steps toward making good on the Federal 
Government's promises to tribal nations. However, there is much 
more to be done by the Federal Government to fully--to truly 
fulfill the promises made to tribal nations.
    The BIA is one of the primary agencies responsible for 
providing services throughout Indian Country, either directly 
or through compacts or contracts with tribal nations. The 
operation of these programs and services is essential for the 
health, safety, and social and economic well-being of tribal 
and surrounding communities. Unfortunately, chronic 
underfunding of tribal programs perpetuates systemic issues in 
Indian Country that could be reduced or eliminated by funding 
tribal programs in amounts that meet the Federal Government's 
treaty and trust obligations to the tribal nations.
    NCAI recommends nearly $20.7 billion for Indian Affairs 
programs in fiscal year 2024, consistent with the official 
fiscal year 2024 recommendation of the Tribal Interior Budget 
Council. Specifically, this request includes funding increases 
necessary for public safety on tribal lands. The inadequate 
funding for tribal criminal justice and public safety has 
resulted in staggering rates of violent crime and victimization 
on many Indian reservations.
    As just one example, a DOJ study recently found that more 
than four in five American Indian/Alaska Native adults have 
experienced some form of violence in their lifetime. The 
underfunding of tribal law enforcement and justice systems is 
well documented and contributes to these types of statistics. 
Empowering tribal nations and tribal justice systems to end 
this cycle of violence is critical, which is why NCAI 
appreciates Congress' reenactment of the Violence Against Women 
Reauthorization Act of 2022.
    VAWA has made our community safer and will continue to do 
so and only if robust funding for VAWA-related programs, tribal 
police departments, and justice systems occurs. That is why 
NCAI supports $2.924 billion for public safety and justice 
funding, with approximately $1.766 billion for BIA law 
enforcement and $1.155 billion for tribal courts.
    As place-based peoples, tribal nations have sacred 
histories and maintain cultural practices that tie them to 
their current land bases and ancestral territories. As a 
result, tribal people directly and often disproportionately 
suffer from the impacts of environmental degradation. For that 
reason and others laid out in our written testimony, NCAI 
recommends $100 million to be appropriated for the EPA Tribal 
General Assistance Program and $30 million for the Tribal Air 
Quality Management Program.
    It is no secret that the Indian Health Service is 
chronically underfunded. It is estimated that the full IHS 
funding--need-based funding aggregate cost estimate for fiscal 
year 2024 is approximately $51.4 billion. NCAI supports full 
funding for IHS and strongly urges Congress to ensure IHS 
funding is provided as mandatory spending, with a mechanism to 
automatically adjust spending to keep pace with population 
growth, inflation, and healthcare costs.
    Until such time that IHS is provided mandatory direct 
appropriations, advance appropriations for the IHS is 
consistent with the trust and treaty obligations reaffirmed by 
the United States in the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act. And 
while NCAI applauds the advance appropriation enacted in the 
fiscal year 2023 omnibus bill, adjustments need to be made 
moving forward to account, at a minimum, for fixed costs and 
staffing of newly completed facilities.
    Finally, I want to be clear. Relative to the overall U.S. 
budget, the Indian Affairs and IHS budgets are very small. 
Spending cuts or other budget control measures that affect 
tribal programs can have devastating impacts on tribal nations 
and their citizens but would have little impact on overall 
Federal spending. To the extent Congress considers funding 
reductions in fiscal year 2024, programs for the benefit of 
tribal nations, including those mentioned here today, must be 
held harmless.
    Thank you again for this opportunity, and I look forward to 
answering any questions you might have.
    [The statement of Mr. Wright follows:]
 [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Larry.
    Tesia, you are next. Is that--how do you--is it Tesia?
    Ms. Zientek. Tesia.
    Mr. Simpson. Tesia, okay.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                 NATIONAL INDIAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION


                                WITNESS

TESIA ZIENTEK, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INDIAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
    Ms. Zientek. Miigwech. [Speaking Native language.]
    On behalf of the National Indian Education Association, the 
oldest and most inclusive organization founded to advance 
comprehensive, culture-based educational opportunities for 
American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, 
miigwech for this opportunity to provide testimony on fiscal 
year 2024 funding for the Department of the Interior, the 
Bureau of Indian Education, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 
The spending within the subcommittee's jurisdiction is some of 
the most critical for Native youth.
    The fiscal year 2023 budget demonstrated an intentional 
effort to uphold the promises made to our people in exchange 
for life and land by ensuring funding levels for BIE-funded and 
BIE-operated schools not only met inflation rates, but 
increased towards reversing decades of underfunding. We urge 
the subcommittee to maintain this trajectory so Native students 
will have access to the resources they need to thrive in a 
global economy.
    As tribal nations represent central economic engines for 
many rural areas in the U.S., it only makes sense for the 
subcommittee to maximize your investments by providing critical 
resources for our Native youth. Tribal communities are unique 
in that even during times of economic downturn, Natives 
frequently remain their traditional communities. To give tribal 
nations the necessary foundation for economic success and 
prosperity, the Federal Government should support a culturally 
relevant, high-quality education for all Native students that 
uplifts community-based approaches to education.
    The core funding for BIE elementary and secondary schools 
comes from the Indian School Equalization Program. These funds 
cover salaries for teachers, aides, principals, and other 
personnel but are often reallocated to cover program cuts in 
other areas of education. For ISEP, we are requesting $532.6 
million, but we also would highlight the official Tribal 
Interior Budget Council recommendation of $967 million, which 
represents the minimum funding needed to offer a parity 
investment in public schools across the country.
    NIEA also requests $109 million for BIE facilities 
operations and $100 million for BIE facilities maintenance. BIE 
schools use operations and maintenance funding to cover such 
costs as electricity, heating fuels, and other operating 
expenses for both preventive and routine upkeep. Underfunding 
of maintenance continues to be an issue, as a number of 
buildings are in poor condition and cannot maintain proper 
standards.
    NIEA strongly urges the subcommittee to increase the amount 
of funding for BIE education construction. We request $371.2 
million for fiscal year 2024, even though the need is much 
greater. Interior has estimated that more than $639 million 
would be needed to fix only the most pressing deferred 
maintenance issues for BIE schools.
    NIEA requests $23.8 million for the Johnson O'Malley 
Program to assist with the unique educational needs of the 
other 93 percent of Native students in public schools. JOM 
programs provide critical educational resources for afterschool 
programs, academic support, and a number of other Native 
cultural and language enrichment. JOM is supported by its 
parent committees that determine the needs of Native students 
in their communities.
    Tribal education departments and agencies are responsible 
for administering and implementing education priorities in 
tribal nations and are equal partners with State and Federal 
education entities serving Native students. However, as tribal 
nations lack parity with States, local governments, and the 
Federal Government within the tax code, TEDs and TEAs do not 
receive tax revenue to fund their programs. Instead, TEDs and 
TEAs use tribal education department funding under BIE. NIEA 
requests $5.8 million for this account.
    There is a direct link between cultural identity and the 
cognitive success of Native students. It is critical to our 
communities that fight harder than ever to protect our Native 
languages. NIEA requests $25 million for language immersion 
grants for BIE schools. These grants allow tribal communities 
the ability to protect and preserve their unique cultural and 
linguistic heritages.
    NIEA also requests $25 million for Native language 
revitalization under Interior economic development to provide 
funding for tribally run Native language programs, ensuring 
students have language and cultural instruction available to 
them regardless of which school they may attend.
    In fiscal year 2023, this subcommittee and the rest of 
Congress made a major step towards fully upholding its trust 
obligations by providing mandatory spending for the Indian 
Health Service. If healthcare is a major pillar in upholding 
the Federal trust obligation to tribal nations, then 
immediately next to it is the obligation for Indian education.
    NIEA strongly recommends all of Indian education be 
provided for as mandatory spending. This ensures there is never 
a threat of funding halts during critical times, and never will 
a crumbling school facility worry about if construction dollars 
will continue to come.
    The Federal trust responsibility to all Native students is 
an example of the promises that makes this country unique. This 
subcommittee should honor its first promises and support the 
above recommendations to provide only the highest-quality 
education to Native students across the country and provide the 
essential supports for the future of our communities.
    Miigwech. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Zientek follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Laurie.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

         TRIBAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS NATIONAL ASSEMBLY (TEDNA)


                                WITNESS

LAURIE HARPER, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF THE TRIBAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS 
    NATIONAL ASSEMBLY (TEDNA)
    Ms. Harper. Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, and 
members of the committee, my name is Laurie Harper, and I am 
the president----
    And I am the president of the Tribal Education Departments 
National Assembly, a national nonprofit organization for the 
tribal education departments and agencies. Thank you for the 
opportunity to speak today about funding through the U.S. 
Department of Interior for TEDs.
    First and foremost, our sincerest gratitude for 
appropriating funds continually since fiscal year 2015 to 
support TEDs through Title 25 United States Code Section 2020, 
also known as Section 2020 grants. For continued and increased 
funding, TEDNA respectfully requests $10 million to support 
TEDs in the Department of the Interior, Environment, and 
Related Agencies appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024 so 
that we can continue to serve and serve better our students.
    Tribes have educated their citizens from time immemorial, 
and education continues to be a tribal sovereign right, a trust 
obligation, an issue of local control, and a sacred 
responsibility of tribal and nontribal governments. That we 
have trusted, as memorialized in treaties and other official 
sovereign and inter-sovereign acts, a part of the formal 
education of our students to the Federal Government via BIE-
funded schools and States via public schools speaks to our 
expectation of the Federal and State governments to honor their 
end of the bargains and promises made.
    And we should all be concerned. Educational attainment 
rates for tribal students in the United States today are not 
good. Recent Federal reports show that our students have the 
lowest high school graduation rates of any group for whom 
numbers are maintained. While the high school graduation rates 
of whites, Asians, blacks, and Hispanics are at 80 percent or 
higher, 1 in 4 of our students will not graduate from high 
school.
    Federal funding precipitates the abilities of TEDs to help 
address this. TEDs are in a unique position to direct and 
coordinate the resources, management, and provision of 
education for tribal students.
    For example, I serve as the director of education for Leech 
Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, a Section 2020 grantee and a 
TEDNA member. The tribe is developing a program under Section 
2020 to address our inherent authority over all areas of 
education. I served as the board chairwoman for the tribally 
operated Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig BIE-funded school. I am the director 
of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe's Tribal Ed Department, which 
administers Johnson O'Malley funds for public schools on and 
near our reservation.
    With Section 2020 grant funds, we have taken a community-
based approach to improving education, utilizing community and 
youth input to shape priorities that will be developed into a 
tribal education code and a comprehensive education plan that 
will be culturally specific to our tribal needs.
    We also realize the importance of data sovereignty and have 
recently partnered with the Minnesota Department of Education 
on a data sharing agreement for our K-12 students, in addition 
to a longitudinal early childhood study. Through these 
agreements, we can both identify our students in early 
childhood and follow them through their educational journey 
within the State of Minnesota.
    The Section 2020 grant has been a catalyst for Leech Lake's 
involvement in areas beyond its grant and is making sovereignty 
in education a reality. Many more tribes than the 16 tribes 
currently funded serve the 183 BIE-funded elementary and 
secondary schools and dormitories located across this country. 
They need TED funding. TED appropriations should be increased 
to serve more tribes and more students.
    With increased Section 2020 funding, tribes like the 
Pyramid Lake Paiute in Nevada, for example, could develop a TED 
to support Pyramid Lake Junior Senior High School, a tribal 
secondary school in Nixon, Nevada, on the Pyramid Lake Indian 
Reservation. With increased Section 2020 funding, tribes like 
the Navajo Nation, where many BIE-funded schools are located, 
could train new school board members when the schools convert 
from being BIE operated to being tribally controlled.
    With increased Section 2020 funding, additional tribes 
could decrease their dropout rates, like the Rosebud Sioux 
Tribe in South Dakota did with its Truancy Intervention Program 
administered by the Rosebud TED.
    TEDNA respectfully requests sustained funding of $5.889 
million plus additional funding, for a total of $10 million for 
TEDs in the Department of the Interior, Environment, and 
Related Agencies appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024 to 
continue the vital and excellent work being done through the 
Section 2020 grants.
    Miigwech [speaking Native language].
    [The statement of Ms. Harper follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Tom.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

             ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY TRIBAL SCHOOLS (ACTS)


                                WITNESS

THOMAS MILLER, BOARD PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY TRIBAL SCHOOLS 
    (ACTS)
    Mr. Miller. Good morning. I would like to thank you for 
this opportunity to testify on the 2024 Interior 
appropriations.
    And again, my name is Tom Miller. I am the Association of 
Community Tribal Schools board president. We formed in 1982. We 
represent a pretty good cross-section of the tribally 
controlled schools, and the organization has been around long 
enough that we went through three name changes, basically 
contract, controlled, and now community tribal schools.
    And we represent each year a variety of these schools, but 
the needs are always the same. I am not going to get into the 
actual particulars of the dollar amount because they are in the 
written testimony. But we are running into many, many problems 
now as a result of our recent COVID pandemic.
    Our population has underlying health programs, a large 
percentage of them and in a disproportionate amount. We have 
isolation factors. We have our schools are not next door to a 
Walmart or in that area. We don't have that luxury with many of 
them.
    Many of our schools do not have the Internet connections. 
We have had problems as we have come into trying to get out of 
this separation distance learning thing, as we couldn't do it 
in the first place because of our lack of technologies and 
such.
    We each year come in and we ask for the basics. We ask for 
increases in ISEP. We ask for increases in transportation, 
facility operation and maintenance, tribal grant support, and 
this is to get us holding ourselves even with the water. We are 
not going under this way.
    What we would like to start doing is that we would like to 
see some kind of parity, and one of our ideas that now when I 
started this, all my hair was black, 1980. I believe it was 
there. But right now, we are looking at trying to get parity 
with the Department of Defense schools on salaries, on salaries 
and school construction.
    One of our problems is not only do we have a problem of 
getting teachers--teacher shortage? Oh, it is three times as 
bad on the reservations because, first off, you have to 
recruit, retain. So when I say about the dollars that I am 
going to address right here are those in addition to our 
testimony, that is getting Congress to either forward fund some 
of our areas, maybe all of our areas that we get more funding 
in, so that we are not in the ping pong effect of politics.
    We try to get out of that. We did it once in 1988. It took 
a little bit of a sting then with Congress to forward fund a 
full year. Some of that would take another sting.
    The other big sting would be for facilities. I don't care 
what you do, if you take old schools and maintain them, you 
have an old school maintained. That is all you get.
    Our thing is if Congress were to plan, use a $3 billion 
base, take the schools, the 83 that need replacing right now--
we are doing 2 a year. I will be dead and long gone by the time 
these schools get addressed. And I am just trying to get--our 
students deserve the same thing that has been done with DOD. 
That is, over 10 years, a couple billion dollars, bring them 
up.
    And they should be supported. The military and those 
schools should absolutely be supported, but so should we. And 
we have been at this--in fact, the last time I testified in 
front of this committee about 6 years ago, I told the chair at 
that time that I could probably have recorded this in 1980 and 
played the same thing again and come pretty close. But that is 
what we are getting now. We are trying to get to a point where 
not only do we get the funding that we normally get in a year--
and that varies on the percentages--but we have to address some 
of these things in a drastic method because it is not getting 
any better for our kids.
    And our Native students deserve to have enough teachers to 
teach. They need to have enough money to operate, and they 
certainly deserve the ability to have a safe and adequate, up-
to-date environment, school building. So that is what we are 
pushing this year. If we could get that started, we know it is 
not a one-time shot and it is going to happen overnight, but we 
have got to start somewhere. And to this point, we have always 
been settled with our yearly increases.
    Last year, we would like to thank for the fiscal year 2023 
was good, but we would like to see that every year. And again, 
forward funding would take care of a lot of the problems and 
the instability of our--when the money is coming. And then, if 
you give us a good house to live in, it is a little bit easier 
to make things happen. Those kids deserve that.
    And with that, I thank you for your time.
    [The statement of Mr. Miller follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Tom.
    I appreciate all of your testimony. Let me just say keep 
pushing, Tom. It sometimes takes Congress a long time to do 
things, you know? That is generally the way we operate around 
here, yes. But it is something that we need people like you to 
continue to push on that, people like all of you.
    Larry, you mentioned law enforcement and the challenges you 
face. Do you find that--well, let me put it this way. I was out 
at the Fort Hall Reservation and talking with them about 
firefighters and new fire station we are building and the 
police officers that were there and stuff.
    And what we find is that we got a town of 50,000 on south 
of Fort Hall Reservation and a town of 10,000 on the north of 
the reservation, and the reservation police officers, they send 
them to training. They come. They get all trained up. And as 
soon as they do, they get hired by Pocatello or Blackfoot, and 
I mean, it is like the training ground for the other 
communities.
    Do you find that across the country, or is this unique in--
--
    Mr. Wright. No, I think it is across the country. And when 
you compound that with some reservations are bigger than many 
States.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Wright. And you have a police force that is a fraction 
of that and lack of funding to make it so they can train and 
retain a police force, it makes it very difficult.
    And just like teachers, they are going to go where there is 
opportunity and salary that is reflective of what they do and 
their training and education. And police departments are no 
different.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes. Reservations, a lot of the reservations 
are very big. And I have talked to some--I can't remember if it 
was Pine Ridge--that they get a call of domestic abuse, it is 
an hour before a police officer can get there.
    Mr. Wright. Absolutely.
    Mr. Simpson. Well, you know, the problem has gone away one 
way or another then pretty much. That is a challenge. It is 
something I would like to work with you on and how we address--
I don't know how to address that, but it is something that I 
think needs to be addressed.
    And Tesia, I appreciate your testimony. And Tom mentioned 
the difficulty of finding teachers. How do you keep teachers on 
the reservation?
    I mean, when we have gone to the Navajo reservation and 
stuff, the problem is housing, trying to get doctors there and 
to stay on the reservation. I mean, you don't want to live 50 
miles from where you work, and that is a challenge. How do you 
do that with teachers?
    Ms. Zientek. Absolutely. Housing is a major, major concern. 
So providing we are looking for funding for housing for 
teachers. Also, of course, as mentioned with law enforcement, 
the pay is a huge issue. If teachers are able to get paid 
elsewhere and in a more--where the living is more convenient, 
then they are likely to do that.
    So funding, increased funding for teacher pay to get that 
equal to Federal teaching----
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Ms. Zientek [continuing]. Pay, as well as housing, would 
help with that issue quite a bit. Also, programs to help grow 
your own teachers is extremely helpful. Then if teachers decide 
to stay in their own communities, they might be more likely to 
stay for a long time.
    Mr. Simpson. Do you work at all with TRIO?
    Ms. Zientek. I--I do a little bit in my job, as the 
education director for the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, partner 
with some of our local community colleges.
    Mr. Simpson. I would encourage all of you to start working 
with TRIO because TRIO can be a great asset in what they do. 
That is for people that have never gone to college, never 
thought of going to college or anything like that. But it helps 
mentor them through high school to get them ready if they 
decide they want to go to college.
    Ranking Member Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    Thank you, everyone, for your testimony. Really appreciated 
all the themes, and I know we will hear them more today, 
certainly the law enforcement and your statistic about four in 
five members of a tribe have had some form of violence in their 
family or themselves. That is really shocking and another 
reminder of how important it is to fund tribal courts.
    And as you mentioned, the distance in so many of our 
communities is so far, that is really critical. And I have 
worked with one of my schools on school replacement and seen 
just what a challenge it is. And one tiny school, one State, 
and realize if we could just get rid of the backlog at some 
point, as you recommended, and start even. We are never going 
to get there, and I really appreciated your remarks that kids 
need to have the feeling of the respect of going into a 
beautiful building that is dedicated to them, and they can 
comfortably learn.
    And so I just want to say how dedicated I am to that and 
really appreciated the remarks about culturally sensitive 
education. I think the more we can support kids understanding a 
Native language and learning more about the history of their 
tribes, when I have been able to witness those programs, they 
just seem so beneficial. And I hope we can continue to do more 
of that.
    And of course, I am fully supportive of all the funding 
concerns. We are so far behind to not meet our treaty 
obligations. It is so disrespectful of the lack of funding that 
our tribes receive in each and every area that you mentioned. 
So I hope we can do everything to make sure there are no cuts 
and that we can increase that.
    And while Betty is the true Minnesotan here, I was raised 
in Minnesota and spent a lot of my childhood in one of the 
lakes near Brainard. So still go back there to visit my family. 
So love the place you are from.
    I don't have any questions because you just all did such a 
wonderful job, and the chair has asked some good questions. But 
thank you so much for being with us today.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Mr. Zinke.
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize for 
being late. I had a Montana coffee.
    So, drugs. So on the law enforcement and drugs in Montana 
seems to be they spend a lot of time on drugs, mental health, 
and civil action, mostly domestic violence. And from what I 
understand is all three are related oftentimes.
    Can you talk about the drug problem on the reservations, 
what you are seeing? And my understanding is in Montana, most 
of it is coming from the southern gut. It is coming straight up 
from the border. And in Montana, we have Fort Peck Reservation, 
which is near the Bakken, or many times, great expanses of 
territory. It means that there is opportunity for storage 
lockers of drugs and transportation, and there is a vulnerable 
population.
    So how concerned are you on drugs on the reservations?
    Mr. Wright. Indian Country is very concerned, and we see 
this across the board, and fentanyl is a big issue. And I think 
the things that you hear here today, they are all 
interconnected, and one begets the other. When we have lack of 
law enforcement, it is going to be hard to--if you have a 
reservation that has high crime and drug issues and doesn't 
have the police force to help police that and take care of 
that, it is going to be hard to retain good teachers to come to 
the reservation and live there.
    If we don't have adequate housing, we can't recruit and 
keep our own people on reservations. And so when we have 
underfunding in our housing programs and we have our own wait 
lists for our own tribal citizens to get into housing, it is 
going to be hard to recruit people to come from the outside to 
do that.
    But I think to your specific question on drug issues in 
Indian Country, with, again, the lack of--with the distance and 
the geographic size of our reservations, lack of cross-
deputization and those kinds of issues, it makes it very tough 
for a small police force to have--to cover that expanse and not 
have some of the same equipment and different things, 
opportunities that other law enforcement agencies have, whether 
it be drug dogs, whatever that might look like.
    But I think we see that, we are seeing it more and more, as 
more of a concern. But again, there is lack of funding and lack 
of the infrastructure there from police departments to help 
adequately address that.
    Mr. Zinke. And Tom, just I am not going to hold you to 
statistics, but would you say that the law enforcement spends 
most of their time on either drug enforcement or mental health 
that are related? That is what I am hearing and across the----
    Mr. Miller. I would say a good question, but the exact, not 
expert enough. I would say this. As far as in our area, the 
Sault Ste. Marie with the Chippewa tribe, recently--just 2 
weeks ago--we had about five overdose, one died. And that was 
in a week.
    So it is--it is a problem, and we address it as best we 
can, but one of the major things that we are short of, funding. 
You can see a problem, but you can't do anything about it if 
you don't have the people to do it, and we don't have the 
people to do it.
    Mr. Zinke. Lastly, inflation. What I have seen across in 
Montana, inflation runs higher because you have distances are 
further. The fuel costs are further. Bus to get the kids around 
costs more because we are using more fuel, and inflation. Would 
you say that inflation is hurting the tribes 
disproportionately?
    Mr. Miller. Oh, I would say that, yes, because we are short 
already. The fact is if you are doing well and you are getting 
inflation, eh, you can kind of adjust to it. But if you are 
already on the short end and inflation comes out, it can hurt 
you.
    Hopefully, things will get better. I am kind of an 
optimist. But I think right now, yes, it hurts everybody. And 
the tribes that don't have the money--and there are some that 
are set fairly well, are handling it a lot better than those 
that aren't. It definitely is, yes.
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Ms. McCollum.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    First and foremost, thank you for your testimony. For those 
of you who are going to testify later, I am the ranking member 
on Defense, and so I have a conflict, and I have to be there, 
but I have staff here getting the testimony.
    The mandatory funding, we hear Indian Country loud and 
clear on that. The advance appropriations is for 1 year, 1 year 
only. So that is going to have to be re-rolled into any 
legislation that we do. And that was a bipartisan effort on 
behalf of this committee and the White House, and we got the 
Senate's attention. So, hopefully, we can take care of 
healthcare and start the--and really have a serious discussion 
about what we could do for educational funding this year. So I 
appreciate you bringing that up.
    Also, bringing up that there are two accounts that you are 
looking for $25 million for, for the languages was very 
helpful. So thank you for that. That made me take an extra note 
on that.
    I am going to just make a couple of general comments, and 
then I have a question for you all, because I think you are all 
impacted by this. We are going to hear more about, I think, 
drugs and what is happening, especially with tribes that are in 
280. We just had a serious discussion with our U.S. attorney. 
Andy Luger has been meeting and talking with the tribes in 
Minnesota what we can do about, as they describe it, ``catch 
and release.'' And there is no other way to summarize what is 
happening. So I will save that for later and been working with 
Red Lake on that.
    But Minnesota, if you could take a second to talk about 
what Minnesota is uniquely doing to make sure that all of our 
students have the best education possible, and under the 
leadership of Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, this has taken a 
real impetus. And I think the fact that we have tribally 
enrolled members serving in our State legislative body is 
exciting.
    If you would just take a second for that, and then I have a 
general question about broadband.
    Ms. Harper. So, a real quick question. With having 
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan in that seat, what it has 
helped tribal nations do in the State of Minnesota in education 
specific is identify the need for us to be at the table, 
instead of on the table. And it has opened up discussions that 
include us, and it is not uncommon for not just the Governor's 
office and the Lieutenant Governor's office to reach out to 
tribal leaders, but also to tribal department heads such as 
myself to be asked for our specifics in the field of education.
    In my role, as an education director, I also oversee human 
services. So, MFIP, SNAP-Ed. So, Minnesota Family Investment 
Program, anything having to do with training and education. So 
a lot of our--in Indian Country, a lot of our responsibilities 
are intertwined throughout various funding agencies.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you. Well, we have started a journey, 
and we hope other States emulate that.
    And it is important that we educate students because they 
are our future not only for the tribe, but for the Nation. And 
as I am leaving to go to a DOD hearing, the fact that Native 
Americans percentage wise serve highest enlistment really makes 
a case for why we need to make sure that they have the adequate 
education.
    Mr. Chair, I know broadband is going to come up a lot. We 
need to figure out not only how to do it in the schools, but to 
get it in the home when they have the homework coming home. So 
thank you all for bringing up broadband.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Ms. McCollum, former chair of this 
committee.
    We have got on this committee two former chairs and one 
current chair that was a former chair.
    Ms. McCollum. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson. There are a lot of chairmen on this committee.
    Ms. McCollum. And we all work together.
    Mr. Simpson. Anyway, thank you. And thank you all for your 
testimony. We appreciate you being here today and look forward 
to working with you on this year's budget.
    Mr. Wright. Thank you. I will get you that statistic, okay?
    Ms. McCollum. Absolutely.
    Mr. Wright. All right.
    Mr. Simpson. Next, we would call--I am going to massacre 
names. Maybe that is the wrong word. [Laughter.] How do you 
pronounce that? Do you know?
    The Muscogee Creek Nation, who is--and Oliver Littlecook, 
chair of the Ponca Tribe.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Where would you like us?
    Mr. Simpson. Right up here. We got nameplates. [Pause.]
    Mr. Simpson. Okay. Pronounce that name for me.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Jonodev Chaudhuri.
    Mr. Simpson. Jonodev Chaudhuri. Well, when you say it, that 
is what it looks like now. Thank you.
    Jonodev, you are up.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                         MUSCOGEE CREEK NATION


                                WITNESS

JONODEV CHAUDHURI, AMBASSADOR, MUSCOGEE CREEK NATION, ON BEHALF OF 
    CHIEF DAVID HILL
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Oh, okay. Well, [speaking Native language] 
Jonodev Chaudhuri. I am honored to serve as ambassador of the 
Muscogee Creek Nation.
    Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, and members of 
the subcommittee, let me thank you for the invitation to our 
nation to testify here today.
    Let me start by saying how grateful we all are for the 
additional funding this subcommittee has provided in the past 2 
years as a down payment on the permanent commitment going 
forward by the Federal Government to provide the resources 
necessary to uphold its solemn trust and treaty obligations to 
the Muscogee Nation and other tribal nations throughout Indian 
Country.
    As you know, over 100 years of usurpation of the rightful 
authority of the tribal law enforcement on Oklahoma 
reservations has left tribal nations with great needs for 
public safety infrastructure, as particularly the case with the 
Muscogee Creek Nation. As we implement restored jurisdiction, 
$80 million are required for the construction of 8 regional 
tribal jails on the reservation.
    And just a little background, our nation covers eight full 
counties in eastern Oklahoma and parts of three more counties. 
It covers over 3.2 million acres, with well over 1 million 
people within our borders. And we are doing our part to keep 
people safe, and we appreciate your support.
    Additionally, $80 million are required for the construction 
of 8 regional tribal courthouse facilities on the reservation. 
Like most jurisdictions, we have seen an explosion in criminal 
mental health cases, and $27 million for the construction of 2 
mental health facilities for the incarceration of individuals 
requiring mental health evaluation and treatment, both pre-
trial and post-conviction.
    Finally, $24 million are required for the construction of 4 
juvenile detention facilities on the reservation that will 
appropriately separate young offenders from older, hardcore 
criminals and to focus on the rehabilitation youthful inmates.
    In addition to significant infrastructure needs, our 
current Federal trust funding for ongoing operations is far 
below the rightful amounts. According to the BIA standards, the 
Muscogee Nation must maintain a police force of 312 full-time 
equivalents for our population size, law enforcement FTEs. This 
requires $34.4 million on a recurring basis for increased 
personnel, equipment, and other operational costs.
    Just as law enforcement needs have grown, so, too, have the 
needs of tribal courts. Using the BIA Office of Justice 
Services report, Creek Nation estimates that an additional $40 
million is required to support expanded responsibilities for 
tribal courts.
    In fiscal year 2020, Muscogee Nation's ICWA program 
provided services to more than 1,800 Indian children, placed an 
average of 253 Indian children in homes per month, and 
investigated 1,452 reports of child abuse and neglect, a 
sixfold increase in 5 years. We calculate that $30 million in 
additional funding will be needed to provide tribes in Oklahoma 
sufficient ICWA services.
    The Muscogee Creek Nation's Center for Victim Services 
served 636 victims and survivors in 2022, 575 of which 
experienced VAWA-related crimes. Additional funding of $60 
million would allow for the construction of facilities that 
would allow us to fully administer VAWA and protect our women 
and children from violence.
    In other self-governance needs, the nation performs a 
number of functions related to self-governance, and these 
functions have grown. One exciting area that I would like to 
highlight is natural resources management. We are currently 
working with several members on legislation that would enable 
Muscogee Nation to bring cultural and historical management 
expertise in the co-management position with the National Park 
Service. We believe we can help NPS save taxpayer dollars while 
simultaneously improving the experience of park visitors.
    In closing, we greatly appreciate the opportunity to 
present these views of our needs to you as part of the fiscal 
year 2023 appropriations process. Reaffirmation of the Muscogee 
Nation reservation following the McGirt decision once again 
called our nations together to make decisions for the greater 
public good. We stand ready to assist in providing the core 
public safety services that will protect our reservation and 
the United States, Muscogee Nation citizens, and all our 
friends and neighbors living within our jurisdictions.
    We believe in prosperity for all, and we are doing our 
part. Again, we appreciate your support.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Chaudhuri follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Oliver.
    Mr. Littlecook. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Simpson. Turn on the mic.
    Mr. Littlecook. Is that on? Okay. All right.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                   PONCA TRIBE OF INDIANS OF OKLAHOMA


                                WITNESS

OLIVER LITTLECOOK, CHAIRMAN, PONCA TRIBE OF INDIANS OF OKLAHOMA
    Mr. Littlecook. Yes, sir, Chairman Simpson and Member 
Pingree, my name is Oliver Littlecook. I am the chairman of the 
Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, and I am glad to have this in front of 
me because listening to the other panel there, I almost forgot 
what I was going to talk about because I have the same concerns 
that they have also.
    But I am here, and I am honored to submit a written 
statement to the subcommittee and testify in person. I am a 
lifelong member of the Native American Church, which is a way 
of life that is also described as the ``Peyote Religion.'' And 
as a practitioner of the ceremony and a tribal leader, I am 
compelled to express to this committee that you also have a 
role in the protection and perpetuation of the Native American 
Church and in the continuance of this religion and fulfillment 
of the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the 
policy declaration Public Law 95-341 as contingent upon the 
survival of the peyote habitat.
    Without sufficient peyote habitat, the peyote plant, which 
we call peyote, would no longer exist in the wild. The entire 
Native American Church ceremony is dependent on peyote, which 
is used as a sacrament. So what I am here to request is $5 
million for a peyote habitat conservation initiative 
demonstration project.
    And we are in you might say a crisis situation now because 
we have probably over 300,000, 400,000 members all across 
Indian Country, and speaking of those of us at home in Oklahoma 
and my reservation, Ponca, it is getting more difficult to 
obtain peyote. And so it is really important that we find some 
way, we are asking you all for help and some way for we can 
initiate some type of a conservation project to work with the 
farmers and ranchers down in Texas so we can preserve it.
    And--a little slow here. To counteract the peyote habitat 
destruction, we request $5 million for a peyote habitat 
initiative to establish a separately funded grant program 
within the U.S. Department of the Interior and administered by 
the Department of the Interior's Office of Assistant Secretary 
of the Interior.
    And so the National Congress of American Indians recently 
passed Resolution 2209 affirming support for the American 
Indian Religious Freedom Act, as amended, and calling for 
Federal preemption as it pertains to the legalization and 
decriminalization of peyote. And the resolution was endorsed 
unanimously by member tribes in NCAI.
    And again, just personally speaking on behalf of my tribe, 
Ponca, when we were removed from our homeland, original 
homeland up in Nebraska and South Dakota, and when we came to 
Oklahoma, like most tribes, we were devastated with the move. 
We had no really nothing left. Everything was taken away from 
us. And especially our way of life, our religious way of life.
    And so because of that, there was a lot of you might say 
turmoil within our tribe, no direction. And so when the peyote 
religion came to us, I would say it actually saved us, gave us 
all a sense of belonging, a sense of direction, and a sense of 
prayer, which changed our lives and continues.
    And so I, myself, am a lifelong member of this Native 
American Church, and it has done wonders. My tribe was one of 
the six original tribes to incorporate in Oklahoma, to make it 
into a church. So it now is called the Native American Church. 
So I represent all of our members in Oklahoma, speak for all of 
our members across the country, who we really need this.
    So what we are asking of you, just a small lump compared to 
what the rest of the tribes are asking for. So we would really 
need your support and help in helping us save it. It needs to 
be saved. It is protected, but now it needs to be saved.
    So, thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Littlecook follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. And thank you both for being here 
today.
    Just out of curiosity, what is the--I mean I support the 
Native American Church just like I do any other religion.
    Mr. Littlecook. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Simpson. What is the natural habitat of growing peyote? 
You know, like potatoes grow in Idaho, and outside of Idaho, 
there is a lot of tubers grown, but potatoes are grown in 
Idaho. So there is a certain climate for that kind of stuff, 
for Maine and Idaho and stuff.
    Mr. Littlecook. Yes, yes.
    Mr. Simpson. What is the climate like or habitat that 
peyote grows in?
    Mr. Littlecook. It grows in southwest Texas. Right now, 
there is only probably four counties in southern Texas, and it 
is called--it is a shrub brush deal. And so, today, because of 
the ranchers and farmers, they are leasing out their land. And 
of course, with windmill pads and then also the climate change 
and all of that, so it is getting more scarce.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Littlecook. It is getting scarce, and so that is why we 
are requesting so we can try to do something to save it. Our 
life--the way we see it, our life depends on it.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Littlecook. And it is sometimes I say all on pirate 
land because it is up to the renters. It is their land. So we 
are trying to find a way to work with them.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you.
    Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you. Thank you both for your 
testimony.
    And I was curious about that, too. Is it--is peyote grown 
as a cultivated plant, or is it only--are you saying it is just 
wild and native in those areas?
    Mr. Littlecook. It is a native plant, yes.
    Ms. Pingree. Yes, okay.
    Mr. Littlecook. It grows wild, and it has been destroyed 
all the way up to now. It is just condensed to maybe like, say, 
four counties.
    Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, I am happy to learn more about 
that, and I appreciate your describing it as a ``small lump of 
money.'' That is a new technical term on the committee. 
[Laughter.]
    Mr. Littlecook. In comparison, I guess.
    Ms. Pingree. Absolutely. No, I mean we talk a lot about big 
numbers, and so----
    Mr. Littlecook. And I think this would be a good start, a 
demonstration project where we can work with them and let it 
grow it into----
    Ms. Pingree. Great. I will--yes.
    Mr. Littlecook [continuing]. Grow into a $100 million grant 
one day.
    Ms. Pingree. Yes, I will be interested to learn more about 
that. So thank you for your testimony.
    And thank you, Mr. Ambassador. My partner is actually from 
Muscogee. He was born there and grew up in Gore. So I have 
spent a little time visiting Oklahoma, and last summer, I got a 
chance to meet with the five--the chiefs of the Five Civilized 
Tribes and talk a little bit about McGirt.
    So I understand some of the unique challenges there and 
particularly in the law enforcement. So thank you for bringing 
that to our attention and happy to continue working with you 
because it is definitely some big challenges there. And you 
described the area and the need and the amount of funding, we 
really need to pay more attention.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Thank you, Ranking Member. The Principal 
Chief Hill gives his regards. He was taken away on critical 
national business today, but he specifically mentioned that 
meeting, and we were very happy to host you when you came down.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. And we really appreciate you taking the time 
there.
    A little bit outside of the scope of today's discussion, 
but connected still is our ongoing efforts to implement McGirt 
in the face of kind of these countervailing cases that have 
come our way, including the Castro-Huerta case.
    So we are in a point in history right now where we are 
trying to develop infrastructure that was denied to us for 100 
years because of the unlawful exercise of nontribal 
jurisdiction on our lands. We are very thankful that the court 
affirmed our reservation, but we are concerned that within a 
year after affirming, the very same court placed limitations on 
the inherent sovereignty of our tribe to exert jurisdiction on 
our lands but, by extension, the inherent sovereignty of tribal 
nations throughout the country.
    So our battles truly are Indian Country battles. We 
appreciate the personal attention that you gave to these issues 
because they certainly impact the entire trust relationship 
between the Federal Government and tribal nations throughout 
the U.S.
    A related note. We support a call for Congress to act and 
voice its support of tribal sovereignty in the wake of the 
Castro-Huerta decision because we think that is absolutely 
fundamental to supporting our efforts to protect people within 
our borders, be they Native or non-Native, and protect them 
both in the law enforcement arena, but also in the economic 
development arena.
    And so having Congress signal its support of tribal 
sovereignty, we think not only benefits Indian Country, it 
benefits everybody in our borders. So thank you for the 
personal attention and time that you took to visit our nation.
    Ms. Pingree. Absolutely. I appreciated your hospitality, 
and we will continue this conversation.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. I got to tell you, Tom Cole keeps 
us advised of everything that is going on in Oklahoma. So, 
great member, a great friend.
    But I was just wondering, you mentioned in your testimony 
that law enforcement standards would be you would have 312, I 
think it was, law enforcement people.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Simpson. How many do you currently have?
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Oh, I knew you would ask me that. And you 
know, I am not----
    Mr. Simpson. You don't have to be exact. Is it even close?
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Yes, I am not--I want to say we are--we have 
got a lot of cross-deputization agreements. I want to say we 
are well over 100 now. We are 80 or so for a while, but I don't 
know if that--that sounds right.
    Mr. Simpson. That is good enough. I just wondered if you 
were at 200 or 250 or 100, you know?
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Well, we are getting there. But I mean, 
again, we have never been able to develop the infrastructure 
because of these complications created by kind of the unlawful 
exercise of nontribal jurisdiction.
    Now that that has been affirmed, we are using our limited 
resources to the greatest extent possible to build up our law 
enforcement and courts and social workers, but we have got a 
long way to go. And we have been actively engaged in 
intergovernmental agreements since day one from the McGirt 
decision.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. But funding is always--is always critical to 
those efforts.
    Mr. Simpson. Do you have issues with cross-deputization of 
tribal police officers?
    Mr. Chaudhuri. I think it depends on the county. As I said 
before, we cover eight full counties and three partial 
counties. And our relationships are very strong with a number 
of sheriff's offices in a number of counties, but I am not 
going to throw anybody under the bus. There are a couple 
counties that we could have better relationships with.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes, okay.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Relationships are work, and we are committed 
to doing the work.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep. And when counties--what I have found out 
in Idaho and other places is that when county elections come 
around, you get a new sheriff, sometimes that relationship goes 
good. Sometimes it goes bad, you know?
    Mr. Chaudhuri. And that is an excellent point, and that is 
why the need to have permanent funding allocations is so 
critical. Because a lot of the relationship breakdowns often, 
unfortunately, fall along political lines.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Whether or not there is a political 
calculation to cooperating with the tribe or not, that 
shouldn't impact law enforcement----
    Mr. Simpson. No, it shouldn't.
    Mr. Chaudhuri [continuing]. Concerns. It shouldn't impact 
funding concerns. So the idea of having permanent funding and 
permanent appropriations is critical.
    So, as I said before, and you mentioned Tom Cole. He has 
been a great advocate for McGirt-related funding, and when I 
mentioned the initial down payment of this subcommittee towards 
law enforcement funding at the start, Tom Cole was a champion 
of that. But that is just a major step forward to everything, 
everything else that needs to be done.
    Mr. Simpson. Just----
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Our nation--oh, I am sorry.
    Mr. Simpson. I was going to say it seems to me that 
everybody who has testified so far, just six, everybody wants 
either forward funding, permanent funding, whatever for these 
programs. What you really all want is stability.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Absolutely.
    Mr. Simpson. To know what is going to happen, and that is 
really important. I wish we had stability here in Congress. 
That doesn't always work.
    But anyway, listen, I appreciate your testimony and all 
that you guys do, and we will work with you on these issues and 
try to address them.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Thank you.
    Mr. Simpson. Try to move us forward.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Thank you, and I am sorry for scaring off 
all the other chairs once we sat down. [Laughter.]
    We had a full room of chairs, but they are all gone now.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes, it is because they are chairs.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. There you go.
    Mr. Simpson. And they have got other committees that they 
have to step into, and a lot of them will step into them and 
come back. And so it is kind of--it is the way it works around 
here.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Yep.
    Mr. Simpson. Anyway, I appreciate it.
    Mr. Chaudhuri. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
    Okay. Buu Nygren. Is that how you pronounced that? Okay. 
Jeez.
    Dr. Nygren. Good.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes. Kirk Francis and Frank Star Comes Out.
    [Pause.]
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                             NAVAJO NATION


                                WITNESS

DR. BUU NYGREN, PRESIDENT, NAVAJO NATION
    Dr. Nygren. Perfect. Good morning. Good morning, Chairman. 
I appreciate you extending the invitation to be here. And 
Ranking Member Pingree, it is good to see you again as well. 
And then the rest of the committee, some of you might be 
listening or some of you might be making your way this way.
    But first of all, I just wanted to start my testimony off 
with the Navajo Nation actually lost one of its iconic leaders 
last night, Dr. Peterson Zah. He was the first president of the 
Navajo Nation, and I understand that he was a good champion 
here on the Hill in the 1990s and the 1980s. So that is a big 
loss for the Navajo Nation, and I just wanted to let Indian 
Country know as well, too.
    I know that he was a huge tribal advocate across Indian 
Country and America. So thank you to his family for letting us 
having him lead the Navajo Nation.
    But my name is Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation. 
I am honored to be here as the newly elected president of the 
Navajo Nation.
    The Navajo Nation is one of the largest tribes in the 
country. It provides critical services to over 400,000 members, 
half of whom reside on the reservation. The Navajo Nation spans 
27,000 square miles across 11 counties in Arizona, New Mexico, 
and Utah. Our nation has approximately one-third of the on-
reservation Indian population in the United States.
    Indian healthcare. Tragically, the Navajo Nation lost 
nearly 1 percent of its on-reservation population because of 
COVID. This is a high mortality rate, is directly connected to 
ongoing deficiencies in Indian healthcare because of limited 
funding. If further inroads are to be made to address this 
healthcare deficiency, this committee needs to boost IHS 
funding by a factor substantially greater than the inflation 
rate.
    The IHS received an advance funding for fiscal year 2024. 
This is very important for planning purposes, but we ask that 
this committee support making advance appropriations for 
permanent for both the IHS and for the BIA. This is especially 
for critical programs and services such as public safety, 
housing, disaster relief, social services, welfare assistance, 
and self-governance.
    Assuring public safety. For every 1,000 Navajos, there are 
only 0.85 public safety officers. This is far below the FBI's 
recommendation of 3.5. With so few officers available, calls 
for services are delayed because of the distances between 
communities from the law enforcement stations. The Navajo 
Nation requests an increase of $26 million for its public 
safety services.
    Protecting our children. The Navajo Nation's Indian Child 
Welfare Act program is critical to our ability to protect 
Navajo children and the future of the Navajo people. 
Unfortunately, Navajo ICWA has only 15 team members who must 
coordinate and collaborate with tribal, State, and Federal 
partners in 24 States, with 354 active ICWA cases, including 
655 Navajo children. Current funding is less than $1.6 million. 
The Navajo Nation needs $5 million annually.
    Improving housing. The Navajo Nation asks for $23 million 
for BIA's Housing Improvement Program. This program provides 
much-needed housing resources to Indians residing in Indian 
Country who cannot meet HUD's excessive program income 
thresholds.
    Abandoned uranium mine clean-up on the Navajo Nation. 
According to the EPA, more than half of over 523 abandoned 
uranium mine sites located on our nation lack Federal funding 
for clean-up and monitoring. These sites subject our members to 
substantial ongoing cancer and health risks. Approximately $5 
billion is needed to address these sites.
    Fulfill Federal obligations for Navajo Indian Irrigation 
Project. The Navajo Nation agreed to exchange water for a 
Federal promise to build the Navajo Nation Indian Irrigation 
Project. However, approximately 35,000 acres of the promised 
farmland remains undeveloped. The Navajo Nation asks that the 
Federal Government finish its work, which will cost 
approximately $1 billion.
    Navajo relocation. The Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian 
Relocation was created to carry out the forced relocation of 
approximately 15,000 Navajos. That began in 1970. This 
committee knows well the harm and trauma this relocation has 
caused to many people, as well as related multi-decade 
construction freezes imposed over 1.6 million acres of land. 
This harm is felt down onto the second and third generation of 
relocatee families.
    The Navajo Nation requests include an immediate transfer of 
$15 million in excess of ONHIR funds to the Navajo 
Rehabilitation Trust Fund; funding for the Navajo Thaw 
Initiative; funding for studies, analysis, and reports 
concerning Navajo relocation and the construction and repair 
freeze and their ongoing impacts; support for Navajo technical 
amendments legislation that would authorize ONHIR to work with 
the Former Bennett Freeze Area. This would eventually lay the 
groundwork for closure of ONHIR in a humane fashion through a 
multi-agency program of rehabilitation put in place over the 
next 10 years.
    In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to consider 
the Navajo Nation's needs. We look forward to working with you 
all to enact the 2024 appropriations package that you have.
    [The statement of Dr. Nygren follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Kirk.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                        PENOBSCOT INDIAN NATION


                                WITNESS

KIRK FRANCIS, CHIEF, PENOBSCOT INDIAN NATION
    Chief Francis. Good morning, Chairman Simpson; Ranking 
Member Pingree, always great to see you as well; and members of 
the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to provide 
testimony.
    My name is Kirk Francis. I serve as the president of the 
United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund. I 
am also the chief of the Penobscot Indian Nation in the great 
State of Maine, where we have terrific potatoes, by the way, 
Mr. Simpson. [Laughter.]
    Mr. Simpson. Oh, yes. I like to tease a lot.
    Chief Francis. And so we are here today as an organization 
to continue to remind you all that the Federal Government is 
failing to deliver upon its obligations to tribal nations and 
Native people. This failure has persisted regardless of changes 
in administration or Congress, despite numerous reports, 
investigations, recommendations, and consistent advocacy from 
Indian Country. It has been evident in the 2002 Quiet Crisis 
report, the 2018 Broken Promises report, and continues in spite 
of the recent funding allocated to tribal nations via the 
COVID-19 relief and infrastructure packages.
    This is not a question about addressing poverty and needs 
across Indian Country. Our relationship with the United States 
is ultimately about honor and fulfillment of commitments and 
promises. The solutions we offer involve a fundamental shift in 
Federal Indian policy and funding. They will allow Indian 
Country to realize its great potential and create lasting, 
positive change for tribal nations and our people.
    With this in mind, we underscore the importance of 
continued increases for tribal lines in the Federal budget. We 
recognize there may be plans and conversations to reduce 
discretionary spending and remind you all that deficit 
reduction must not be accomplished to the detriment of 
obligations to tribal nations.
    Deep and chronic failures require bold systematic changes, 
some of which have recently been proposed under the 
administration. However, because these hearings are being held 
prior to the release of the President's request for fiscal year 
2024, we are unable to react to any specific proposals for this 
appropriations cycle in this testimony. We request the 
opportunity to provide additional written testimony to this 
body after the President's request is released and that maybe 
you might consider holding a future hearing after that request 
is issued.
    It is critical that the administration propose and Congress 
demand budgets containing full funding for all Federal Indian 
agencies and programs. Given our history and unique 
relationship, this funding can no longer be subject to the 
instability of discretionary spending.
    We extend our gratitude for the work of this subcommittee 
in achieving advance appropriations for IHS. It is our 
expectation that this will be included in every appropriations 
bill going forward. In the long term, we must achieve fully 
mandatory funding for all Federal Indian agencies and programs.
    The processes under which OMB develops budgets and policies 
that impact us require reform also. In concert with its newly 
established Tribal Affairs Adviser, OMB must be required to 
produce a full, detailed accounting of funding distributed to 
Indian Country, including only what Indian nations have 
accessed, not funds for which we are technically eligible. 
Congress should also work with OMB to hold States accountable 
for any pass-through dollars that are intended for tribal 
nations.
    While we are appreciative of the inclusion of funding for 
tribal nations in the recently enacted infrastructure packages, 
this level of funding is insufficient to address centuries of 
unmet infrastructure obligations. A much greater Federal 
investment is necessary to rebuild tribal nation infrastructure 
and economies. Similar to the U.S. investment in rebuilding 
post World War II Europe via the Marshall Plan, the legislative 
and executive branches should commit to the same investment to 
rebuild tribal nations.
    As we await details on the President's budget, we provide 
our regionally identified priorities for IHS and Department of 
the Interior in our written testimony. We continue to support 
mandatory funding proposals for IHS as well as the 105(l), CSC 
lines of the IHS budget, BIA, and BIE.
    We would also like to highlight the following additional 
priorities--payment in lieu of taxes for trust land 
acquisitions, increased funding for tribal historic 
preservation, interagency transfer authority for tribal 
funding, $80 million for the Native Behavioral Health Resource 
Program--and dedicated funds and permanency for the following--
Treasury's Office of Tribal and Native Affairs, OMB's Tribal 
Adviser, and the White House Council on Native American 
Affairs.
    We now call upon Congress, and this subcommittee in 
particular, to work with tribal nations and the administration 
to fulfill the Government's trust and treaty obligations 
through the Federal budget. While each Member of Congress 
shares equally in these obligations, you have a unique 
understanding of this charge, including the unmet funding 
obligations and, more importantly, the opportunity to drive 
historic change.
    In closing, we implore you to lead this change within 
Congress to improve how the United States views, honors, and 
fulfills its promises to Indian Country.
    Thank you very much, sir.
    [The statement of Chief Francis follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Frank.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                           OGLALA SIOUX TRIBE


                                WITNESS

FRANK STAR COMES OUT, PRESIDENT, OGLALA SIOUX TRIBE
    Mr. Star Comes Out. Yes, good morning, Chairman, Ranking 
Member, and members of the subcommittee. I greet you all with a 
warm handshake.
    My name is Frank Star Comes Out. I am the current and newly 
elected president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. I am also the 
newly elected chairman for the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's 
Association.
    I will be brief. A little bit about my history and why I am 
sitting here today is I served in the United States Marine 
Corps. I am a proud veteran. I served in the Gulf War and in 
Mogadishu, Somalia, during my tour of duty as a machine gunner, 
and I truly believe--I have always been boots on the ground 
from that day forward, as a young man to this day.
    So I just wanted to mention that, and my fight for my 
people, our people in Indian Country. So, with that, I also 
served as--I started out in the districts, serving my 
communities, and then now as a president of my tribe. And I 
come before you to urge you to fulfill your treaty 
responsibilities.
    We face a lot of challenges on our Pine Ridge Reservation. 
We have the lowest life expectancy in the entire United States, 
high unemployment, and lack of business development, just to 
name a couple. I could spend hours talking about issues, but I 
will try to keep it under 5.
    We suffer a lot of challenges. Law enforcement. We are in 
dire need of manpower, equipment, resources, to meet our 
challenges against violence and drugs.
    Social services. We lack sufficient wages and housing to 
attract staff. We are short social workers. We lack the basic 
transitions to follow-up resources for reunification. Our youth 
need emergency shelters, counselors, nutrition support, and 
services.
    Our healthcare. We have inadequate staffing, long wait 
times, and very few providers because of our geographical 
location and the situation on the reservation.
    Our BIA roads. We lack qualified personnel, equipment, and 
road maintenance. We have a lot of unimproved roads, and the 
location of our reservation is huge. It is a huge land base.
    Telecommunications. We lack coverage. We lack the BIA 
towers, and they are old and outdated. So we have our Internet 
access is limited.
    Education. Schools need facilities upgrade, competitive 
wages, counselors, and school resource officers. We have very 
little funding for school resource officers. But our chief of 
police will be testifying, I believe, tomorrow, and he can 
cover all that, and we submitted our paperwork here. So it 
covers a lot.
    Indian Country formulas do not work for us. Prioritized 
tribal allocations also do not work for us. True, meaningful 
government-to-government consultation and coordination needs to 
happen. I hear talks of leadership here in Washington, D.C., 
since I have been in--the short time I have been in office. I 
have heard talks of treaty obligations, and I am going to be 
looking forward to that, to having more conversations about 
that.
    I have highlighted important issues in our written 
testimony like I just said, but there are many other equally 
important needs, and it is not fair to prioritize--I feel it is 
not fair because we are in desperate need of all funding in all 
departments, programs.
    So, with that, let me wrap it up. You know, the Oglala 
Lakota are resilient. We are a proud people in culture and 
spirituality, and that is what keeps us strong. We survived a 
lot under harsh conditions, and we will keep going. But we need 
your help to fulfill your treaty obligation.
    I urge you to help us, fund us at the highest possible 
level to ensure the money is being fairly distributed to all 
tribes. Keeping in mind the unique challenges of the Great 
Plains tribes like my tribe, the Oglala Sioux Tribe. For us, it 
is not a policy question. It is life and death.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Star Comes Out follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. I thank you all for your testimony, and as I 
am sitting here listening to you, and I have been to Pine Ridge 
several years ago when I was chairman of this committee before. 
And enjoyed the trip but also was, I think, amazed at the 
needs.
    Mr. Star Comes Out. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson. And we visited other reservations. We went to 
Standing Rock and to the Cheyenne River Reservation and Lone 
Pine, and we were down in Oklahoma, too, and visited those 
tribes down there. The differences between tribes is great.
    But I got to tell you--and I think Chellie would probably 
agree with me, having worked on this committee for years--it 
will--it will be years before we can honestly say we have met 
our treaty obligations. I mean, we have been so lack in it over 
the century that it will be years before we can all stand up 
and say we are where we need to be.
    Our goal here is to move us forward and to continue moving 
us forward to address just what you said. And I tell people in 
Idaho all the time that if you really want to see poverty in 
America, let us go visit a few reservations. Because it is 
terrible. I saw schools at some of these reservations that I am 
not proud to say, but I would not send my child to. But that is 
what they had.
    And so it is important that this committee get out and 
actually see on the ground what works. And I can tell you our 
visit to the Navajo reservation was fascinating. That is a 
beautiful reservation down at Window Rock and other places. We 
really--we really enjoyed that, and there are challenges there, 
as you mentioned.
    And while I know that these funding requests that you have 
all asked for are significant, our goal is to move us, as I 
said, in the right direction and not take a step back. Never 
take a step back.
    Yes, Frank.
    Mr. Star Comes Out. Sir, if I may? I know, earlier, you 
mentioned something about stability, and I would like to add on 
to your comment there on stability. And that is the ultimate 
goal of most of us--treaty tribes, I should say, because we 
lack the--we had a formula that wasn't working for us, and it 
is that formula, they have been using it for decades, and it is 
slowly, slowly choking us out.
    And all our programs can attest to that. We had no choice 
to minimize some of the needs there and prioritize, where it 
turns into a life and death situation. And right now, our 
police force is feeling it.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Star Comes Out. We have 5 to 7 officers a day 
patrolling 51,000--over 51,000 plus membership. The crime is 
extremely high, the violence, the drugs, the alcohol. And it is 
also affecting our families because the families are--because 
of lack of funding, resources, who do we turn to?
    I look outside our reservations and I see all these 
organizations helping people overseas while you got a Third 
World country right here in America, and we are not even 
addressing it.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Star Comes Out. Our people suffered a lot. Our people 
serve this country. I am also a proud veteran, a combat 
veteran. And now I am fighting for my people, my tribe, and I 
will continue to do that.
    But I just want to make you, everybody aware here it is 
time that we are heard. We need to be listened to. We are not 
sitting here begging for help. We are asking you to hold up to 
your end of the bargain with our treaty obligations because 
that has definitely choked us out.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Star Comes Out. Thank you.
    Mr. Simpson. I appreciate that, Frank.
    Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Yes, and thank you so much. Thank you for your 
service. And as Representative McCollum mentioned, tribal 
members serve at a much higher rate than the general population 
and that, too, should be considered, this complete lack of 
respect and sufficient funding. And I really appreciated your 
remarks.
    And also your comment that when people suggest you 
prioritize, there is really no way to prioritize because each 
of these you are talking about fundamental basic needs that 
aren't being met. So I hope we can continue to do more and 
certainly not--not go in the wrong direction.
    Congratulations on your new position. I guess you are both 
fairly new here. And I didn't realize just--you brought up a 
lot of important points, of course, but on the uranium mine 
clean-up, is there current mining going on on the reservation? 
And also just on the clean-up point, is that an EPA 
responsibility that we need to be working on, or how does that 
impact you?
    Dr. Nygren. Currently, uranium mining is banned on the 
Navajo Nation since the mid 2000s. But I also believe that 
there is no clean-up happening at the moment, and there is EPA 
involved. But just the lack of actually getting mines cleaned 
up is the holdup. So definitely if we want to hold a hearing, 
maybe a meeting with EPA, we are definitely open to that, to 
try to figure out how do we streamline that.
    Because I know, as of a month ago, there is a school out 
in--Cove Day School. So kids are actually in school over a year 
ago, and just from the uranium mines and all the weather, water 
did come down the mountains, and it actually contaminated the 
school site. So that is halting the BIA construction of the 
school.
    So just as of a year ago, kids were actually in that area. 
So definitely over 500 mines, whatever we can do to really 
collectively address that, that would be great because I think 
that the safety and the well-being of our Americans should be a 
top priority, and that is one of the things that I always like 
to say is that we are Americans as well and also Native 
Americans. But let us try to work collectively together so that 
people can feel safe. So----
    Ms. Pingree. Absolutely. And this committee also has 
jurisdiction on the EPA's budget. So if we can facilitate a 
meeting like that, we would be happy to do it.
    And thank you, Chief Francis. We are all so proud of you in 
Maine and the work that you do for all of the Maine tribes, 
particularly in our legislative challenges that we have in 
Maine, but also what you said in really representing so many 
interests out there and supporting that with all of us.
    I just want to remark that I thought your suggestion that 
we create a Marshall Plan for the tribes kind of goes along 
with your suggestion that we--you know, we just have to at some 
point step back and take a look at this bigger issue that we 
never catch up. We don't come close to meeting our obligations. 
And while I know the chair is really dedicated to keeping us on 
track and keeping the funding going, we are just never going to 
get there if we don't, in a sense, just like we looked at the 
infrastructure bill for the United States, saying what do we 
need to do to have the infusion here to support our obligation?
    And any other thoughts you have about that, I would be 
interested to hear.
    Chief Francis. Well, USET has really worked over the past 
few years on this Marshall Plan theory for Indian Country and 
approach. And as we looked at different--different things, it 
is not just post World War II, but what we see going on in 
Ukraine and different places, how can--and not saying those 
decisions were wrong, by any means. But just that how can we 
get to a place where we are having that type of conversation?
    And so, so USET really has developed a step-by-step thought 
on how to accomplish this. We have put it, I think some of it 
in our written testimony and be happy to provide that to you 
all as well going forward.
    Ms. Pingree. Great, great. Well, I would really be 
interested in working on that. So I will look for it in your 
written testimony, and I can be in touch about talking about it 
more.
    Chief Francis. And it is great to see you, Mr. Zinke. I 
think the last time I saw you, you were paddling the Penobscot 
River.
    Mr. Zinke. You know God has got a sense of humor. I am 
back. [Laughter.]
    Ms. Pingree. You can come back to the Penobscot River 
anytime, Mr. Zinke.
    Mr. Zinke. [presiding]. Well, thank you. Mr. Ellzey, would 
you have any comments?
    Mr. Ellzey. [Indicating no.]
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you for your testimony. I will look 
forward to working with you, and good to see new friends and 
old. I have been to the reservations, and there is a lot to do.
    Up front, I didn't realize how bad the BIA was until I was 
in charge of it. I get it. At the end of the day, we also need 
consensus among the nations on what to do. It is complex 
because it is very difficult. It is hard in Congress to get 
consensus. The nations and the points that I learned, that 
every nation is different.
    It is easy to combine and say, well, the Indian issue 
problem. Well, each nation is a sovereign nation, and they are 
different. And so how we go forward probably to empower the 
front line. If there is one thing I learned as a SEAL--and 
thank you for your service, sempre fi--is that you have got to 
look at the front line.
    It is how the E-5 is--what is his conditions in life? You 
don't learn a lot from the headquarters. You learn when you go 
to the front line. And more resources in the front line, how we 
can make sure that resources get there without being caught up 
in regulations.
    In Montana, a little different. But the counties that are 
adjacent to the reservations, if the counties had the same 
amount of regulation, they wouldn't put up with it. But the 
nations have far greater amount of regulatory oversight 
problems and just trying to get to the first base. So I get it, 
and I look forward--and this is a bipartisan committee. We work 
with the nations. We work together. But we recognize the issue.
    So, thank you, gentlemen.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Zinke. In D.C., as you know, it is interesting. I am 
still a Reagan optimist. I still think it is fixable. So that 
is good, but it is important here. It is important to hear the 
voice and to identify what we can do. So we look forward to 
your testimony, and I look forward to working with you on it.
    And I do remember my given name is [speaking Native 
language]. So I do remember, sir.
    So, with that, sir, we will begin with you, Jeffrey. 
Jeffrey Stiffarm.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                     FORT BELKNAP INDIAN COMMUNITY


                                WITNESS

JEFFREY STIFFARM, PRESIDENT, FORT BELKNAP INDIAN COMMUNITY
    Mr. Stiffarm. Good morning, everyone. I would like to say I 
am sitting before you very humbly to speak about our needs, and 
wants and needs back at Fort Belknap in Montana. Thank you for 
listening to our story.
    My name is Jeffrey Stiffarm. I am the president of the Fort 
Belknap Indian Community, home of different tribes, the Nakoda 
Assiniboine Tribe and the A'aninin, the Gros Ventre Tribe. I am 
enrolled member of the Gros Ventre Tribe, and I have been the 
president there going on year number two here. So I have a 
little bit of experience in the political arena, but my career, 
I was a law enforcement officer all in Fort Belknap, and that 
is kind of what I want to testify on and tell my story about.
    You heard a little bit of other stories from other tribes 
about the issues that they have and the problems with public 
safety and other issues in Indian Country. And the things that 
I wanted to kind of point out is I can throw some numbers at 
you here real quick. In the past, the U.S. Government sent over 
$40 billion in foreign aid to other countries. That is over 10 
times greater than they ever spent on anything in Indian 
Country.
    Afghanistan alone, they sent more money to Afghanistan than 
they have ever done to Indian tribes in the United States. 
Something to remember and think about as you guys hand out the 
funding going forward. And the Federal Government gave $2.8 
billion to farmers and ranchers in this country. They gave the 
tribes half that.
    And listening to some of the stories that the people talked 
about earlier and their issues, and that is the same issues in 
Fort Belknap. We are not asking for a handout. We are asking 
for a hand up. We are the First People of this country. Yet we 
are treated, still treated like secondhand citizens. Always 
overlooked, always stepped over, always an afterthought.
    And the issues that we have in Fort Belknap, in 1997, Fort 
Belknap 638 contracted BIA law enforcement. At that time, the 
base funding for law enforcement was $1.2 million. Here we are 
in 2023, our base funding is $1.3 million.
    Now how can you run public safety on that amount of money, 
and nothing has increased. But the yet the cost of living has 
probably increased a thousand times over since 1997. At that 
time, we were funded to hire 10 officers at $10 an hour. We 
have a reservation of over 600,000 acres. We have six officers 
to cover that. So one officer per shift.
    And in my years and experience in law enforcement, the lack 
of funding, whether it was in housing, public safety, or IHS, 
we didn't have an ambulance in the southern end of our 
reservation. So our officers would have to respond to medical 
calls and transport with their police units, and I remember 
transporting people and them dying in my police unit because we 
couldn't get there in time. We didn't have the medical 
training. You know, a heart attack. We would pull over to the 
side of the road, do CPR, things like that.
    What we are asking for is to help us with the bare 
necessities of life for our people. Most of the money that this 
Government sends overseas is to help with wars, and that is to 
help kill people. We are asking for money to help save our 
people, and it is not a very hard thing to think about when you 
talk about life.
    Our children are always sent off to foster care. We don't 
have enough homes. We got five families living in one home at 
Fort Belknap, and I am sure the other reservations, the other 
people have the same issues that we do. I know we all do. And 
the hard times that we are having, like I said, it is the bare 
necessities that are all we are asking for to survive and to 
live on.
    It is a very hard situation, and I know some of the people 
that spoke before me said you guys visited their reservations. 
And I don't know if you guys have been to Montana, except my 
friend here, Mr. Zinke. He has been a champion for our people 
back home, and I want to you for that and what you may do going 
forward. And I want to congratulate you again for being re-
elected to take good care of us and to help us, and we will 
work together with you to do that. And I mean that from the 
bottom of my heart.
    And a family from Fort Belknap adopted him because he was 
their commander that went over SEALs. That was part of his 
command that was killed. So he had enough compassion to reach 
out to that family back in Fort Belknap, and he is part of our 
reservation now. And I want to thank you again, Commander 
Zinke, from the bottom of my heart.
    That is part of our story that we have. And a lot of that 
funding that we ask for is not just for law enforcement. It is 
for social services. It is IHS, housing. Like I said, the basic 
necessities that we have. We are trying to live.
    We got homeless people. People still live off--you guys 
remember the days they hand out rations. A lot of our people 
still live off of rations, general assistance, because we can't 
provide jobs. We can't provide income for our people. It is a 
hard thing to watch when you are a cop or when you are a tribal 
leader now, and you watch this.
    And we are--reservations across the country are still 
fighting for our water, and so is Fort Belknap. And water is 
another basic necessity that we need it in the country. And our 
prayer, sir, you know say you can't have the land without the 
water. Well, we need water, too, and we need the money to build 
the infrastructure to irrigate, to grow crops to feed our 
cattle, our horses, things like that. To grow our medicines.
    And I am a very strong believer in our culture. I am 
holding a piece of bark that I hold and I talk and I pray with. 
That is from our medicine lodge that I danced in. I asked my 
relatives that have gone before me to say the words that I am 
saying to you. And I speak from the heart to every one of you 
to understand that it is not me speaking, it is the people back 
home where I come from, that the basic needs that we need.
    And I have to reiterate the basic needs--public safety, 
health, housing, court systems, things like that--we really 
need you guys to really think about that and the money that you 
guys send to overseas of over $40 billion, and this is a couple 
years ago. It is probably a lot more now what you guys are 
sending over to foreign countries compared to what you are 
spending on the First People of this country.
    And I won't take any more of your time, but I want to thank 
you for your time, for listening, and I hope that you don't 
listen with your ears, but you listen with your heart to really 
understand what we are going through, the people.
    [Speaking Native language.]
    [The statement of Mr. Stiffarm follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you, Mr. President.
    And Council Member Lankford.
                              ----------                              --
------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

 TRIBAL COUNCIL OF THE CONFEDERATED SALISH AND KOOTENAI TRIBES OF THE 
                          FLATHEAD RESERVATION


                                WITNESS

CAROLE DEPOE LANKFORD, MEMBER, TRIBAL COUNCIL OF THE CONFEDERATED 
    SALISH AND KOOTENAI TRIBES OF THE FLATHEAD RESERVATION
    Ms. Lankford. Good morning. [Speaking Native language.]
    My name is Carole Lankford, and it is an honor to be in 
front of this committee today to be able to speak to you, but 
especially in front of you, Congressman Zinke, Chairman Zinke. 
It is a real honor, and I appreciate your service and honor you 
for that.
    Thank you very much.
    My name is Carole Lankford. I am a member of the 
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. 
The Flathead Reservation was reserved as our permanent homeland 
under the Hellgate Treaty of 1855 and encompasses over 1.2 
million acres in Western Montana, situated around the southern 
half of Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the 
Great Lakes.
    Our tribes are made up of approximately 8,000 enrolled 
members, with about 5,000 members living on the reservation. 
With a total reservation population of approximately 30,000 
people, we are the largest minority on our own reservation.
    The past 3 years have been challenging for us as Native 
peoples. The COVID pandemic claimed the lives of three to four 
times that of other populations in the State of Montana. This 
disease took from us elders, speakers of our language, and 
carriers of our beliefs. It swept through our communities 
despite our tribe's working tirelessly to keep our communities 
safe.
    But the pandemic taught us a valuable lesson. We learned 
that if we work together and effectively work toward solutions, 
we can overcome great challenges. We also learned how important 
it is for resources to be deployed where they are needed the 
most.
    Now we must take what we have learned and apply those 
lessons to the challenges ahead. We appreciate the opportunity 
to share our thoughts on addressing these challenges and the 
subcommittee's commitment to improve the lives of our shared 
constituents. We face an ever-growing epidemic of untreated 
mental illness and substance abuse. We also face threats to our 
homeland, water, forests, and animals from fire and other 
natural disasters, as well as from invasive species.
    Our tribal council has endeavored to tackle the challenges 
head on. Like the bison our people have been in a relationship 
for thousands of years, we must turn into the storm. To that 
end, our tribal council has resolved to eradicate homelessness, 
to address and treat mental illness and dependence on drugs and 
alcohol, to make our forests and fields resilient to fire and 
other natural disasters, and to prevent the introduction of 
invasive species that destroy our homeland, private property, 
and economies.
    We support full funding for the Indian Health Service. As a 
self-governance tribe, we have been carrying out all the 
functions of IHS on our reservation for decades. Local control 
and otherwise fiscal management have resulted in significant 
improvements in the delivery of healthcare services, but our 
efforts continue to be limited by funding shortfalls. If we 
have any hope to adequately address mental illness and 
addiction, we need the necessary resources to do so.
    We support additional funding for the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs. I am incredibly proud of the essential governmental 
services carried out by tribal staff under the self-governance 
compact with the BIA. Our law enforcement officers, wildland 
firefighters, and social services, for example, make sacrifices 
every day to protect our people and our homeland. In most 
cases, they do so for less pay and inadequate resources and 
with substandard infrastructure.
    Our reservation was ravaged by wildfire in 2021 by the 2021 
fire season. The CSKT Division of Fire, which engages in a full 
host of fire management activities, was stretched to the 
breaking point due in part to inadequate infrastructure to 
support an evolving fire landscape. Lack of available space and 
facilities to permanent and emergency personnel, the equipment 
is a problem, and it has exponentially over the past few years 
as we adapt to changing snowfall patterns and drought 
conditions.
    And one area of critical concern for us is that tribal and 
wildfire fighters providing fire suppression to our 638 
contract are not paid equitably in relation to other Federal 
firefighters. We need the tools to pay our firefighters the 
same as our Federal counterparts.
    Adequate funding for these essential activities is critical 
as we face the challenges ahead. We appreciate the 
subcommittee's commitment and partnership with us.
    On behalf of the Tribal Council of the Confederated Salish 
and Kootenai Tribes, I thank you for this opportunity.
    [The statement of Ms. Lankford follows:] 
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you.
    Ms. Ashleigh Weeks of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes.
                              ----------                              --
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

        ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX RURAL WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM (ASRWSS)


                                WITNESS

ASHLEIGH WEEKS, GENERAL MANAGER, ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX RURAL WATER 
    SUPPLY SYSTEM (ASRWSS)
    Ms. Weeks. Good morning, Chairman Zinke, Ranking Member 
Pingree, and members of the subcommittee, my name is Ashleigh 
Dupree-Weeks. I am the general manager of the Assiniboine and 
Sioux Rural Water Supply System in Northeastern Montana.
    There are 21 employees on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation 
that operates, maintains, and replaces this vital system that 
now serves a rural population of 18,000 persons and will serve 
32,000 when the design capacity is reached in several future 
decades.
    This drinking water system supplies safe, high-quality, and 
reliable drinking water from the Missouri River. A regional 
water treatment plant operated by my certified and highly 
capable staff delivers water through 3,200 miles of pipeline 
when completed, with multiple pumping stations and water 
storage tanks.
    The construction of the project is 95 percent complete 
within the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and 85 percent complete 
in the area that we serve off the reservation known as Dry 
Prairie, our non-Indian partners and a very successful part of 
our project. The United States will invest $375 million in 
construction to complete the project in Montana, and Dry 
Prairie will invest an additional non-Federal cost-share of $47 
million.
    I have the responsibility of operating, maintaining, and 
replacing the facilities on the reservation with a Federal 
construction value of $239 million. The request we make of the 
subcommittee for funding in fiscal year 2024 is $4.204 million, 
or 1.75 percent of the construction cost, a modest percentage. 
This is an increase over our fiscal year 2023 funds of 
$772,000.
    Our funding in fiscal year 2021 was $3.28 million. So our 
request this year is nearly 28 percent higher than 3 years ago. 
We only requested small increases in fiscal year 2022 and 
fiscal year 2023, but we now need a significant increase due to 
several factors I will outline for you.
    The first is inflation. Reclamation construction cost 
trends index for our type of construction rose from 505 to 654, 
or over 29 percent, over the last 3 fiscal years. This is 
reflective of the type of inflation for operation, maintenance, 
and replacement.
    The second, increasing water deliveries with service to 
more people. Our deliveries of water rose from 795 million 
gallons to 1.112 billion gallons over the last 3 years, an 
increase of 40 percent.
    Chemical costs at the water treatment plant increased from 
$407,000 to $607,000, an increase of 50 percent.
    Pumping costs increased from $266,000 to $378,000, an 
increase of 42 percent.
    We have also increased the staffing of highly qualified and 
certified operators for our system to its full potential. Our 
labor costs in fiscal year 2021 were around $1 million, and the 
projected cost in this next fiscal year 2024 for current staff 
is $1.5 million, an increase of 70 percent due to the increase 
of manpower, increasing our FTEs from 18 to 21, and an increase 
in average salaries.
    FTEs increased by 17 percent. Average salaries increased by 
21 percent, reflecting an increase in certification as well as 
inflation. Fuel and maintenance cost of vehicles has also 
increased over the last 3 years by about 16 percent.
    Mr. Chairman, factors I have outlined account for the 
increase in funding needed for fiscal year 2024. I thank the 
subcommittee for the continued support of OMR funding for 
ASRWSS, as authorized by Public Law 106-382.
    Thanks.
    [The statement of Ms. Weeks follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr  Zinke. Thank you.
    And my good friend, chairman of the great Assiniboine and 
Sioux Tribe. And Mr. Chairman.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                  ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX TRIBES OF THE
                         FORT PECK RESERVATION


                                WITNESS

FLOYD AZURE, CHAIRMAN, ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX TRIBES OF THE FORT PECK 
    RESERVATION
    Mr. Azure. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Zinke. We have 
had a great relationship for the past few years, and I even 
enjoyed it when you were at the BIA. That was a lot of fun.
    Mr. Zinke. I am glad you did.
    Mr. Azure. I would come to see you. I know what happened to 
you. I didn't agree with it, but some people just do things. 
And I went through the same thing, basically. So it is not 
good.
    And thank you, Ranking Member, and thank you, committee 
members. Thank you for allowing us to be here today, and I want 
to thank you for allowing my manager of our water treatment 
plant give her report, and she does a great job.
    Mr. Zinke. Mr. Chairman, you hire really good people.
    Mr. Azure. I am Floyd Azure and chairman of the Assiniboine 
and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation. Fort Peck 
Reservation is in northeast Montana, 40 miles west of the North 
Dakota border and 50 miles south of the Canadian border, with 
the Missouri River defining its southern border.
    The reservation encompasses over 2 million acres of land. 
We have approximately 12,000 enrolled tribal members, with 
approximately 7,000 tribal members living on our reservation. 
We have a total reservation population of about 11,000 people.
    We appreciate the subcommittee's continued commitment to 
addressing substance abuse and the consequential challenges 
that arise from this plague. When someone is suffering from 
addiction, it is not just the person who is impacted, it is the 
entire family. And for tribal communities, it is the entire 
tribe.
    The addictions our people are facing today, and 
particularly meth and heroin, are so much more destructive than 
alcohol. I am not sure we can survive another generation with 
our people locked in the grasp of addiction to these drugs.
    Thus, I would like to take the time today to talk about the 
importance of supporting Indian Health Service, and we need to 
support the Indian Health Service's capacity to collect from 
third-party payers like Medicaid, Medicare, and private 
insurance. From expanded Medicaid, Montana has allowed the 
Indian Health Service to actually provide healthcare rather 
than band-aids, which all too often were prescription 
painkillers.
    It is an old story across Indian Country that the biggest 
drug dealer on the reservation is the IHS clinic. This is 
because the IHS historically did not have the resources to 
treat serious conditions like torn ACLs, rotator cuff injuries, 
or even gallbladder disease because these conditions are not 
life or limb conditions and would not qualify for PRC contract 
care.
    Consequently, the providers, who were led to believe that 
painkillers would be a safe alternative to real care, 
prescribed painkillers. Thus, for a generation, we have had to 
deal with people who were given pills and became addicts, which 
led to the destruction of lives, families, and in the end, 
compromised the very foundation of our community and our 
future.
    However, since Medicaid expansion, the numbers tell us that 
people are getting real healthcare, and their quality of life 
is improving, which means the quality of life of our children 
is improving. No longer are our people being told that they are 
not sick enough to get quality healthcare and given a bottle of 
pills for the pain.
    Specifically, we have had scores of hip and knee 
replacements and other orthopedic surgeries and other 
preventive and screening healthcare, including substance abuse 
treatment. While there is no magic solution to combatting the 
many issues that are caused by drug and alcohol addiction, I am 
certain that ensuring people have access to quality healthcare 
is a big part of the solution.
    As our people heal, we must work to heal our families, and 
that is why I am here again asking for additional funding for 
our tribal social services program. Over 35 percent of our 
children are in foster care in Montana. They are Indian 
children. Indian people represent only 10 percent of the State 
population.
    Finally, a key factor in keeping families together and 
healthy is housing. Our reservation is in dire need of housing. 
It is masked by the fact that we have families living in 
overcrowded situations.
    Thus, when someone is asked do they have housing, they 
answer, ``Yes, I live with my grandmother.'' What they do not 
disclose is that sometimes four or five other families live in 
that house, and it is usually a two- or three-bedroom home.
    We need additional Housing Improvement Program funding to 
be able to meet the low-income housing needs for our members.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Azure follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    We talk a lot about treaty obligations, but there is also 
an obligation to border security. There is also an obligation 
to create the economic conditions where people can reach 
prosperity.
    So I recognize, fully recognize the obligations of treaties 
because sovereign nations, it is one nation having a treaty 
with another nation. So I understand that and respect that, but 
also the U.S. can do a lot better with our obligations on 
border and such.
    Ranking Member, would you like to ask a question?
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much.
    Thank you so much for your testimony. I thought that was a 
really good way of describing the issues when you don't have 
sufficient healthcare and the IHS being the biggest drug 
dealer. We understand the progression that has happened in so 
many places where people start with a painkiller.
    Did the tribes--or did your tribe receive any of the 
settlement funds with the drug companies? Were you involved in 
any of that litigation?
    Mr. Azure. No. No.
    Ms. Lankford. Yes.
    Ms. Pingree. No. Yes, you are? Yes, that is interesting. I 
think----
    Mr. Azure. The issue with us----
    Ms. Pingree. Go ahead.
    Mr. Azure. You know, the drug problem we have is great on 
our reservation, but the biggest issue I have to deal with is 
the children that are affected by it. My wife has been a 
schoolteacher for 33 years in kindergarten, and she deals with 
it. And the children that come in have increasingly came in 
with mental disabilities.
    And not only that, but this drug problem we have increases 
the burden on our healthcare and law enforcement and 
correctional, our social services. And that is why we have the 
majority of our children in social services. We got 97 of them 
in foster care on the reservation, and they are not on a 
reservation that is spread out through the State of Montana.
    Ms. Pingree. Right.
    Mr. Azure. But it all stems from the drug abuse that we 
have, and there--in Montana, there was a representative in 
Montana that was putting a bill forward to come to Congress and 
ask to do away with the reservations with the drug problem, but 
you have got to remember that our reservation is in the middle 
of Montana. So it is not coming from us. It is coming from the 
State of Montana.
    And we have to work with the State of Montana. We have been 
working with the State of Montana. We have a drug task force 
with the State of Montana, and it extends to the state of 
Minneapolis, and it extends to the State of Washington, our 
ties. And we have been catching people on Burlington Northern 
because they have no guidelines on Burlington Northern. Anybody 
can get on Burlington Northern.
    We caught one person that was coming from Washington--from 
Portland, Oregon, all the way across going to Minneapolis. And 
they stopped it, they have a stop in Williston, North Dakota. 
Well, the agents from Williston, North Dakota, came in, joined 
with our agents. We put them on the train in Wolf Point. They 
pinned the guys down, who they were and where they were at in 
the train, and they took them off the train in Williston, North 
Dakota.
    And my people, working with the State of Montana, we worked 
with the Highway Patrol. We worked with the County of 
Roosevelt. We worked with the County of--Valley County, the 
City of Wolf Point. We all have the same issue. We don't have 
enough officers.
    But we have been doing a great job. We have had a bust 
almost every week. The last bust we had was over 5 pounds of 
marijuana, over a kilo and a half of meth, and I don't know how 
many fentanyl pills in one bust. But that is what is destroying 
our reservation. And if the State of Montana can't stop them 
from coming into our State, how are we going to stop them from 
coming into our reservation?
    Ms. Pingree. Yes. No, and thank you for the good work that 
you are trying to do. And you are right. It is certainly not 
just specific to tribal reservations. It is a huge issue in all 
of our rural communities in a State like mine, too.
    So, but thank you all for your testimony. I really 
appreciate it.
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you.
    Mr. Ellzey, do you have any comments?
    Mr. Ellzey. [Indicating no.]
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you.
    One last, Mr. President, you had mentioned before that you 
have five officers because you had to reduce the number of 
officers simply to raise the pay. Because you get the same 
amount over time, and 10 years later, you have the same amount, 
obviously inflation, it is hard to recruit when they are so 
underpaid.
    But is that true? You had to reduce the number because the 
budget has been the same. You got to hire somebody, and you got 
to find someone to do the job.
    Mr. Stiffarm. Yes, exactly. We had to reduce the number of 
officers down to five to increase their wages, which their wage 
is still incompatible to surrounding areas, the county or 
Highway Patrol or anything like that. And we are not cross-
deputized. The only officers that serve our people back home is 
tribal officers, 638.
    And like I said, their starting wages in 1997 were $10 an 
hour. That is minimum wage to put your life on the line, and 
that is how when I started in law enforcement, I was at $9 an 
hour. And people, the surrounding areas, counties, they are 
offering $30, $40 an hour. And like I said, we are a training 
ground.
    The lack of funding throughout Indian Country also affects 
the BIA. In my years of being a council member, every time I 
came to D.C. I asked BIA for extra funding to increase our 
baseline for our officers' pay and then give us one-time 
funding, which was like around $100,000, and you couldn't use 
it towards wages. You have to use it for equipment or things 
like that. And I tell them it was a training ground for other 
agencies.
    And the BIA told us last year that they are going to 
increase the BIA police officers' wages because they are a 
training ground. And I told them, well, welcome to our world. 
We have been living that from day one. And here you guys are 
the people that distribute money down to the tribes that have 
638 contracts, and you guys got to remember us. You know, you 
give us pennies on the dollars you get.
    But then what the BIA and the Federal Government gives to 
BIA is pennies on the dollars to what they give foreign 
countries and other entities. Something to think about going 
forward is how much money you give other countries compared to 
what you give to the tribal nations of this country, our First 
People.
    But I want to thank you again for this opportunity to let 
us tell our story and the stories you are going to hear after 
us, and I appreciate every one of you.
    Mr. Zinke. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you all.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Zinke. Well, thank you. I am honored to be chairman of 
the next panel. So we will go right into it.
    Doctor, we are interested and waiting for your testimony.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                     UKPEAGVIK INUPIAT CORPORATION


                                WITNESS

DR. PEARL BROWER, PRESIDENT/CEO, UKPEAGVIK INUPIAT CORPORATION
    Dr. Brower. Thank you. Thank you.
    Uvlaalluataq. Good morning, Chairman Zinke, Ranking Member 
Pingree, and honorable members of the Subcommittee on Interior, 
Environment, and Related Agencies.
    Uvuna Nageak, Taniktunsiniga, Dr. Pearl Kiyawn Brower. 
Ukpiagvinmiuguru?a. Qaugliruna uvunga Ukpeagvik I?upiat 
Corporation, UIC. Quviasuktuna maaniitchumi(ng)agama uvlupak.
    So, good morning. My name is Dr. Pearl Brower, and I am 
from Utqiagvik, otherwise known as Barrow, on the edge of the 
Arctic Ocean in Alaska. I live, work, and have the 
responsibility of caring for our land, the land of the Inupiat, 
as the president of Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation.
    I am here to talk to you about the clean-up, or lack 
thereof, of the contaminated lands conveyed to Alaska Native 
communities as part of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement 
Act, ANCSA. Specifically, I am here to testify regarding the 
need for additional ANCSA contaminated land funding through the 
Environmental Protection Agency. Quyanaqpak. Thank you for 
allowing me the opportunity to provide our perspective on the 
impact of contamination in Alaska.
    UIC is an Alaska Native village corporation created under 
ANCSA, and UIC has worked to become self-sustaining and provide 
for the economic, social, and cultural prosperity of our 
shareholders. We celebrate our 50th anniversary this year and, 
as a company, are in the strongest position we have ever been 
in.
    As part of ANCSA, the Federal Government agreed to convey 
to 12 Alaska Native regional corporations and more than 200 
village corporations 44 million acres of land and $962.5 
million in settlement of aboriginal land claims of Alaska 
Native peoples. However, much of the land conveyed had serious 
issues with contamination, including PFAS, gasoline and oil 
spills, metallic debris, and other contaminants.
    In 1995, Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior to 
prepare a report on the extent of the contamination. The result 
was a report to Congress entitled ``Hazardous Substance 
Contamination of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Lands in 
Alaska.'' The report acknowledged conveying approximately 650 
contaminated sites to Alaska Native corporations with various 
types of hazardous waste and toxic materials, which pose 
significant health risks to humans, animals, and the 
environment, including arsenic, unexploded ordnances, PCBs, 
among others.
    Since 2016, there has been very little progress regarding 
remediation. There are 35 active contaminated sites in 
Ukpeagvik, and UIC itself owns 11 of those sites. Currently, 
the Navy, according to the Restoration Advisory Board meeting 
held in October of 2021, was on its third 5-year long-term 
monitoring review. Today, in 2023, we are in the 21st year of 
the long-term monitoring, and this year started the fourth 5-
year review.
    The results from the 5-year review show the absence of an 
established contaminant degradation rate, and the 2021 trend 
data make it unclear when this site will achieve clean-up 
levels via natural attenuation. It is recommended that the 
annual long-term monitoring program of active zone water 
continue until clean-up levels are achieved.
    So, basically, essentially, contaminants are not going away 
naturally. In July of 2017, the Navy conducted surface water 
sampling at Imikpuk Lake, found PFAS and PFOA was present above 
the EPA lifetime health advisory, showing that the contaminants 
are moving into previously clean areas. This lake, used by 
hunters and animals alike, was transferred to UIC from the 
military.
    We, as a people, are heavily dependent on subsistence 
resources consisting of migratory birds, caribou, fish, and 
marine mammals. Our connection to the land and sea, which 
surrounds us, is paramount. To sustain our culturally healthy 
way of life, we must have healthy lands, waters, and animals. 
It is our cultural belief that taking care of our environment 
will continue to sustain a healthy way of life, which is why 
the continued contamination of our land is so harmful.
    We hunt on land and in the sea because hunting feeds our 
children and ourselves. But we hunt on contaminated lands and 
waters. We hike inland on tundra, looking for eggs, gathering 
greens, but we encounter hundreds of barrels left by the 
Federal Government while researching Arctic activity decades 
ago.
    This contamination seeps into the water we drink and the 
land from which we feed ourselves and our families. The clean-
up is costly, but we cannot put a price on the health of our 
families.
    The fiscal year 2023 appropriation bill included $20 
million for the inventory, verification, assessment, and 
remediation of contaminated ANCSA sites. While this is a step 
in the right direction, $20 million will not cover the 
remediation of UIC lands, let alone all of the contaminated 
sites in Alaska.
    Therefore, I am asking the committee to include a larger 
set-aside for ANCSA contaminated lands in your fiscal year 2024 
appropriations bill to ensure the efforts to clean our lands 
can and will be addressed. By mitigating these issues now, we 
are preventing further problems in the future.
    I look forward to working with the committee to address the 
issues of land contamination in Alaska.
    Quyanaqpak. Thank you so much for your time and the 
consideration of your testimony, and come and visit us anytime.
    [The statement of Dr. Brower follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Zinke. The good thing is you are a long way away from 
it now.
    Dr. Brower. We certainly are. I was looking--I think I have 
traveled the farthest. Good to be here. Got in at 10:00 last 
night. [Laughter.]
    Mr. Simpson [presiding]. David.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                      METLAKATLA INDIAN COMMUNITY


                                WITNESS

DAVID BOXLEY, COUNCIL MEMBER, METLAKATLA INDIAN COMMUNITY
    Mr. Boxley. [Speaking Native language.]
    Good morning to you all, Representatives of the United 
States. Chairperson Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, and 
members of the subcommittee, it is my deep privilege to be here 
before you today, and I am profoundly honored to speak to you 
on behalf of my people, the Metlakatla Indian Community of the 
Annette Islands Reserve. Thank you for the opportunity to share 
our funding priorities for the 2024 Federal budget.
    In 1891, Congress set aside the Annette Islands to create a 
permanent home for the Tsimshian pioneers of Metlakatla in what 
was then the colonial territory of Alaska. In doing so, a new 
trust relationship was born between us.
    I have traveled a very long way--not quite as long as 
others, but a long way--to ask Congress to maintain this trust 
to keep faith with Metlakatla, to redouble its efforts in our 
shared commitment to face down every threat, to overcome every 
obstacle, and build a brighter tomorrow for the next 
generation.
    We strongly recommend a substantial increase in baseline 
funding to the BIA. Year after year, we have large funding 
shortfalls across all BIA-funded programs, causing services in 
our community to constantly depend on an inconsistent patchwork 
of Federal funding. We have been forced to choose between 
meeting water quality standards or providing scholarships to 
our students.
    It has sadly become the norm that we don't receive our full 
yearly appropriation until several months, sometimes longer, 
after the start of the fiscal year, making it nearly impossible 
for us to plan, grow, or achieve self-sufficiency. Full advance 
appropriations for the BIA would lead to better stability, 
reduce dependence on uncertain grant funding, and improve 
everything overall.
    For many years, tribes have requested that IHS be funded on 
advance appropriation cycle. Going forward, we urge the 
subcommittee to take the necessary steps to continue advance 
appropriations for the IHS for 2025 and beyond.
    Like many tribal communities, we continue to be impacted by 
the growing challenge of climate change. The Tongass National 
Forest, a temperate rainforest, now sees droughts that can last 
for years, bringing existential threats like water shortages 
and wildfires closer and closer to our shores. Erosion, 
landslides, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and changes in 
seasons all contribute to the serious challenges that my 
community currently faces.
    We are forced to reduce emissions to mitigate and adapt, 
but to be truly successful, we need additional support, 
Government funding at levels that are equal to the threat.
    On top of climate change, our shores have already been 
invaded by the European green crab, an invasive species that 
threatens to supplant native crabs, leaving desolation in their 
wake, most significantly the potential of destroying the salmon 
population, which we cannot allow to go unchallenged. Salmon 
are a keystone species and have shaped the lives of my people 
for millennia.
    We are asking the subcommittee to continue increased 
funding levels for fish hatcheries next year. Our own Tamgas 
Creek hatchery has greatly increased production in recent 
years, doing our part for the local economy as well as the 
salmon fishing industry as a whole in southeast Alaska.
    In addition to the critical funding needs I have mentioned, 
the Federal trust responsibility does not and should not 
require that we jump through hoops and compete against other 
tribes to see that trust services are provided to our people. 
We support moving away from competitive grants for Federal 
funding mechanisms. We must be granted the flexibility we need 
to respond to the specific needs of our own community, not 
those prescribed by Federal grants.
    There is also an invisible threat looming over my people. 
Our heritage language, Sm'algyax, is dying. The Tsimshian 
language is considered critically endangered. There are only a 
few dozen speakers remaining in the world. We must impart the 
grave seriousness of this to every member of this committee. 
With permanent recurring annual funding as part of our compact, 
we can, in partnership with Congress, help to save our 
language, which will ensure a positive identity and future for 
generations to come.
    The challenges facing my people are many, but the 
pioneering spirit of Metlakatla is as strong today as it was 
when my ancestors first raised the star-spangled banner on that 
sandy beach on Annette Island in August of 1887. The bravery 
and patriotism of the Metlakatla proudly shows in the faces and 
records of service of our veterans, as we have the most 
servicemembers per capita of any city, State, or tribe in 
America.
    Metlakatlans have the fortitude to withstand the challenges 
that face us if Congress will stand with us. We need funding 
increases not to become more dependent, but to become more 
independent. We want nothing more than to enjoy what many of 
our American Tsimshian warriors fought and died to protect, 
freedom. Freedom from poverty and freedom to determine for 
ourselves how our destiny will unfold.
    So when we recommend increases in baseline funding to IHS 
and the BIA, we are asking in the context of the trust 
relationship between Metlakatla and the United States that once 
again is built upon the premise of making the Annette Islands 
our permanent home.
    I come before this esteemed committee today not to beg for 
money, but to ask you to invest in Metlakatla's future, that 
our trust relationship can grow stronger, that together we can 
create opportunities that will bring prosperity to our whole 
region because what is good for Metlakatla is good for Alaska. 
What is good for Alaska is good for America.
    [Speaking Native language.] Your time and attention has 
been a blessing.
    [Speaking Native language.] Thank you for listening to me.
    [The statement of Mr. Boxley follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, David.
    Cecilia.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                OGLALA LAKOTA NATION EDUCATION COALITION


                                WITNESS

CECILIA FIRETHUNDER, PRESIDENT, OGLALA LAKOTA NATION EDUCATION 
    COALITION, BOARD OF TRUSTEES FOR OGLALA LAKOTA COLLEGE, AND LITTLE 
    WOUND SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER
    Ms. Firethunder. Good morning.
    Mr. Simpson. Good morning.
    Ms. Firethunder. Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree 
[speaking Native language]. I greet you with a warm handshake 
with good feelings from my heart.
    And I am one of those people who speaks two languages, 
Lakota and English. Lakota first and English second.
    So I would like to--Members of the House Subcommittee on 
the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, thank you for 
the opportunity to testify today regarding issues of importance 
to my tribe, Oglala Sioux.
    My name is Cecilia Firethunder, and I am the president of 
the Oglala Lakota Nation Education Coalition of six schools on 
the Pine Ridge, and we are pulling in additional schools to 
help us on this work that we need to do to increase our budget 
for our tribal schools. I am also on the Board of Trustees for 
Oglala Lakota College.
    Oglala Lakota Nation Education Coalition represents the 
Oglala Sioux Tribe's six tribally enrolled controlled schools--
tribally controlled grant schools. And so one of the things 
that we are so happy about is that back around 19--Senator 
Abourezk, as you know, recently left us. And it was because of 
Senator Abourezk's work, the Senate Committee was established 
many, many years ago.
    And one of the things that Senator Abourezk did was for 
Public Law 93-638 that allowed tribes to take ownership of 
programs in their community, and so we are part of that, 
tribally controlled schools. So we have our own school boards, 
and we administer and run our own schools. So, with that, I 
just wanted to put that out there. Okay? Thank you.
    One of the things--and I also want to be a good relative. 
Us Indian people, no matter what tribe we come from, look out 
for each other. So, today, I also want to acknowledge not only 
the Federal schools on the Pine Ridge, but the 183 schools 
across Indian Country that are under the BIE-administered 
education. So we have relatives all over that we need to also 
look out for.
    100-297 tribally controlled grant schools are the primary 
provider for education for on-reservation Indian students. Yet 
schools operating within the BIE system are woefully 
underfunded, outdated, and dangerous for students and staff. 
According to the Department of Education, in fiscal year 2023, 
the Federal Government funded Indian students at roughly half, 
$6,283, versus what the public schools were getting on my 
reservation, $12,500. That is like half. Half, okay?
    This also includes the 9.24 percent increase from the 
omnibus bill. I am also deaf. So you have to forgive me. 
Sometimes I can't pronounce words very well. Omnibus bill. Did 
I say it right?
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Ms. Firethunder. Thank you. [Laughter.]
    Anyway, so even with the increase, we are still 
underfunded. So what we wanted to do was to ask for your 
serious consideration to support our request for the Bureau of 
Indian Education to increase their budgets for our schools so 
we can provide even greater, better services.
    The ISEP, which is the Indian School Equalization Program, 
funding--so, all Indians schools are under ISEP. ISEP dollars 
are set aside to educate our children. Teachers' salaries, 
books, supplies. Unfortunately, Congressman, what is happening 
is that because of the underfunding of ISEP and all school 
operations, including everything else, we are using money out 
of the money set aside to educate our children to make up for 
shortfalls in operation and maintenance.
    Last year, my school, Little Wound School, we spent a 
little over $300,000 feeding our students. So the USDA, under 
CANS, is supposed to also help feed our children. 
Unfortunately, there is not enough money there. The CANS 
program only pays for one person in the kitchen, okay? And we 
have eight people. So seven of them we have to pay.
    So one of the things, and you will be hearing from us on 
this on a nutrition bill, a demonstration project that we want, 
too. So we want USDA to fund directly tribal schools. Right 
now, USDA funds the--gives the money to the State. The State 
puts regs on it, and they give it to us. And I am running out 
of time here. So I just want to--you have my written testimony.
    However, I also want to talk about our college. Our tribal 
colleges are like the diamonds on our reservation. The Oglala 
Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has done 
some fantastic work in terms of graduating. Our president of 
the college graduated from our college. He is a Ph.D.
    Our schools on Pine Ridge, my school especially, our 
principals graduated from our high school and went on to get 
higher education.
    So one of the things I want to ask you to do is to really 
give a serious consideration and as we ask for an increase in 
the ISEP funding and so our schools can provide better services 
and, most importantly, use the money for education and increase 
the line-items and all the other responsibilities the Bureau of 
Indian Affairs has.
    [Speaking Native language.] Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Firethunder follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate your 
testimony.
    And you mentioned that we spend about half of the money 
on--per student----
    Ms. Firethunder. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. On Indian education as we do 
other students.
    Ms. Firethunder. Public schools.
    Mr. Simpson. Public school students.
    Ms. Firethunder. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Simpson. Same is true with health services. If you look 
at the amount of money that is spent per individual on health 
services versus what is spent outside that, versus what is 
spent for veterans, it is about--it is about half of what we 
spend for patients outside Indian Services. And I mean, that is 
a dichotomy that we have got to address.
    Ms. Firethunder. Thank you.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes, it really is.
    You mentioned something else that I agree with, but if you 
would explain it, please. You said that treaty obligations--I 
will paraphrase--but treaty obligations shouldn't require 
tribes to compete against one another for grants and stuff.
    Explain to me where that comes from. What are the programs 
that you are competing with other tribes for, for money for? 
Because I agree with what you are saying.
    Mr. Boxley. Well, and specifically for funding that should 
be part of trust obligations anyway.
    Mr. Simpson. Right.
    Mr. Boxley. Grants, very often that they are competitive 
grants are for base services in our community.
    Mr. Simpson. So some tribes are going to get them, and 
other tribes are not going to get them?
    Mr. Boxley. Right. Or because of whether it is population 
or land based, other tribes are favored, ignoring the needs, 
the specific needs of the given communities that are up for 
those grants.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Mr. Boxley. And just there is not quite enough 
consideration there.
    Mr. Simpson. Especially if it is a trust responsibility.
    Mr. Boxley. Absolutely.
    Mr. Simpson. If it is a trust responsibility, it is the 
trust responsibility for all tribes.
    Mr. Boxley. Absolutely. Yes, it shouldn't be one or the 
other. It should be everybody.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes. I appreciate you bringing that up. That 
is important.
    Thank you all for being here.
    Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you. And I just want to emphasize that 
whole point about the per student expenditure. It is just hard 
to fathom like that you could ever do an adequate job with half 
of the average that we spend in other schools.
    And I wanted to just sympathize. I come from the coast of 
Maine, and green crab invasion has been a serious issue for us, 
too. So I guess they are hitting both coasts at the same time. 
I certainly know the importance of your fisheries to the tribe.
    Mr. Boxley. Absolutely. It is crucial to us. Our hatchery 
is doing fantastic, but we are the first community in Alaska to 
encounter green crab, and we are pushing the State also for 
funding and because it is just going to keep spreading. Our 
neighbors over in Canada, in Haida Gwaii, talked to their 
dismay about how out of control it is. And as I mentioned, 
salmon is a keystone species, and we have got to do everything 
we can to protect it. Not just for economic reasons, but the 
stability of our ecosystem.
    Ms. Pingree. Absolutely, yes. We had a--I think we had a 
contest in our State with chefs trying to develop recipes for 
green crabs, but we are not going to eat our way out of this 
problem. [Laughter.]
    It is devastating to our shellfish industry, our clams and 
other things.
    And the number of contaminated lands and the sites that you 
are dealing with is really staggering, and I am sorry that we 
have not met the obligation. And when Representative McCollum 
is back, we will remind her that the Navy has funds to do that 
kind of clean-up, and at the very least, we should be pushing 
and going after those places where we know the resources are 
there.
    I mean, all of this clean-up should be done. It is just 
unfathomable that we would say, here, look at all this great 
land we are giving you. Oh, by the way, we didn't clean it up 
before we turned it over. And then not to fund the clean-up. So 
I am supportive of helping you in any way we can.
    Thank you. Thank you for traveling the distance that you 
both did.
    Mr. Simpson. I have got to be real honest with you. I have 
never heard of green crabs.
    Mr. Boxley. European green crabs, there is--I have heard a 
couple of stories about their origin as to how they made it to 
the United States. It sounds like there is one strain of it on 
the coast that someone purposefully dumped off a boat at some 
point.
    They are--they are smaller than Dungeness. They breed 
rapidly. They destroy herring and salmon habitat. They eat 
through everything. It could be--it is to the--our knowledge so 
far is that there probably isn't a way to eradicate them. We 
have to learn how to maintain their population to prevent them 
from destroying natural wildlife and habitat.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes, I am very interested in salmon habitat. I 
have been working on an initiative to restore Idaho salmon runs 
that are--will be extinct if we don't do something about them. 
And it is amazing how hard it is to do.
    But the one thing I will tell people whenever they talk to 
us, I said, you know, every tribe in the Pacific Northwest, 
every tribe, when they sign treaties reserve their fishing 
rights. Those fishing rights, those reserved fishing rights 
don't mean anything if there is no fish. And especially if 
there is no fish because of what we have done to destroy those 
fish habitats.
    So we have got to restore those, but it is going to be--it 
is controversial. It is costly, but it has got to be done. Or 
one day you are going to wake up and your children will say, 
``What were you doing when the salmon went extinct in Idaho, 
and why do they call that the Salmon River? There is no salmon 
in it,'' you know?
    Mr. Boxley. Well, and I would just like to add that it is 
similar--actually, we could talk about funding for language 
revitalization. Doing something now before it is too late----
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Boxley [continuing]. Is going to be less expensive --
    Mr. Simpson. Exactly.
    Mr. Boxley [continuing]. In many ways than if we just take 
care of it now.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Boxley. As to whether that is salmon or our language, 
it is a cheaper investment now than later. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you all for 
being here today. We appreciate it.
    Abigail Echo-Hawk and Aurene Martin.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Good morning.
    Mr. Simpson. Good morning.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Simpson. I have got Abigail Echo-Hawk first on here. 
So, Urban Indian Health Institute.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                     URBAN INDIAN HEALTH INSTITUTE


                                WITNESS

ABIGAIL ECHO-HAWK, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, SEATTLE INDIAN HEALTH 
    BOARD AND DIRECTOR OF THE URBAN INDIAN HEALTH INSTITUTE
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Good morning. Thank you so much for the 
opportunity to speak, Chairperson Simpson, Ranking Member 
Pingree, and members of the committee. I would also like to 
thank the staff, who did an incredible job of pulling us all 
here together. It is always an incredible feat to keep this all 
going.
    I am Abigail Echo-Hawk. I am enrolled citizen of the Pawnee 
Nation of Oklahoma and the director of the Urban Indian Health 
Institute, along with the executive vice president of the 
Seattle Indian Health Board, an Urban Indian Health program in 
Seattle, Washington.
    I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time working 
to end violence against indigenous women and all women across 
this country. Four years ago, I stood at the Capitol alongside 
Senator Lisa Murkowski, where we released the very first data 
report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that 
has ever happened in this country.
    In that data report, what we found is that there was a 
crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and 
people. However, what we knew is that there wasn't any data 
being collected, and our report 4 years ago pointed out this 
gap. As a direct result of our report, the advocacy of tribal 
leaders and grassroots advocates, there was legislation passed, 
Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act, along with, and I am 
very proud to say our report is cited in more than 40 pieces of 
legislation in States across the country.
    I self-funded that report with $20,000 I raised out of 
speaking fees because nobody would fund us to do it because 
nobody believed what was happening to our people. And then we 
proved it.
    But 4 years has gone by, and what has happened? 
Unfortunately, we have seen the dismal, nonexistent work that 
the Department of Justice was supposed to do under Savanna's 
Act and the Not Invisible Act. And I want to share with you 
what we have done instead.
    As a result of the Department of Justice not fulfilling 
their responsibilities under Savanna's Act and the Not 
Invisible Act, Indian Country had to act. My organization, the 
Urban Indian Health Institute, stepped up to do that because--
not because we wanted to, but because we had to because our 
people were suffering.
    We looked at and we found that under the--there was a 
Government Office of Accountability report that looked at the 
implementation of Savanna's Act and Not Invisible Act and found 
that Department of Justice was lacking. And in fact, it took 
them more than a year and a half to simply appoint people to a 
committee to look at this crisis.
    In the year and a half in which they did that, in a year 
and a half, I was able to reform an entire law enforcement data 
department for one of the largest counties in the country, King 
County, Washington, where we reformed their data, and I was 
able to train their law enforcement officers and fix the 
problems that they said couldn't be fixed.
    All of the things that my team and I are doing are actually 
in the work of Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act. We are 
doing this with a small amount of funding as a tribal 
epidemiology center. We are 1 of 12 tribal epidemiology centers 
in the country. However, we are drastically underfunded. Yet 
despite that drastic underfunding, we continue to do the work 
that nobody else is doing.
    I remember when we released that report. I was standing at 
the Capitol, and a woman from a tribe came up to me, and she 
said, ``Abigail, I buried every single one of my four sisters 
covered in bruises.'' She said, ``We can't keep doing this. We 
have to keep working.''
    And every time when I step into this work and I realize 
that despite everything that we do and despite all of the work 
that you have all done to ensure that this legislation passed, 
we are not seeing the fulfillment of it happening within the 
administration. They need to be held accountable, and those of 
us who are doing the work need to receive the funding that we 
desperately need to do so.
    I have done and volunteered more than 20--my team and I 
have done more than 2,000 hours of unpaid work in this 4 years, 
along with right now I am actually funding the State of Hawaii, 
who passed legislation to address missing and murdered 
indigenous women and girls into a data report, but they didn't 
give them any money. So I raised $100,000 and am currently 
funding the work in the State of Hawaii because our women 
matter that much.
    Mr. Simpson. Let me--let me interrupt you for just a 
second. I am sorry.
    Would that funding that you are requesting come out of the 
Department of Justice? Is that where it should be funded or 
whatever? Or out of this budget?
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. So we are asking for $474 million for a 
line-item for the tribal epidemiology centers, which is the 
work. The tribal epidemiology centers work across tribal 
nations. The 11 represent every tribal nation within the IHS 
regions, and the Urban Indian Health Institute works with the 
urban Indian population, which is more than 70 percent of our 
population. And so that line-item for $474 million would be 
under IHS.
    Mr. Simpson. Okay.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Am I willing to take DOJ money? Yes. 
[Laughter.]
    Well, I am tired of talking about what I can do with so 
little. What we are looking for is parity.
    And I will close with a story. I was working with a group 
of young women who had been kidnapped, incarcerated, 
trafficked. They were forcibly injected with heroin and other 
types of drugs.
    They had been recovered, and a tribal community was 
bringing them together. They were working to bring healing to 
them. They are using their traditional value system. Everything 
every tribal leader here has been talking about--connection to 
land, connection to culture, resources within the Indian Health 
Service, which is why we need mandatory advance appropriations.
    And I was sitting there with those young women, and I was 
sharing with them my own story. I am a survivor of sexual 
assault and of rape that was never prosecuted as a result of 
being an Indian person on Indian land. And I told them the 
story of the blueberry.
    And a blueberry in my tribal community in Alaska, where I 
was born and raised, it teaches us so many things. It teaches 
us how to survive in the greatest cold and the most heat. It 
has the most nutrients. It teaches us how to go out and gather. 
It tells us that we can survive despite all obstacles. I shared 
that with those young women.
    About a year later, I was at another conference. A young 
woman comes up, and she runs up to me, and she gives me the 
biggest hug. And she grabbed me and she said, ``Abigail, I want 
you to know that today I am a blueberry.'' She is like ``I can 
survive. I can make it. And I didn't think I could. But I am a 
blueberry because I am learning my language. I am connected to 
my land again. I am incorporated in my community. I am with my 
elders.'' She said, ``Abigail, I can be a blueberry, too.''
    And so, today, I challenge you to think about what it means 
for all of you to step into that same place, hold DOJ 
accountable, get the resources to Indian Country and law 
enforcement on tribal lands and urban Indian areas, to the 
tribal epidemiology centers into the Indian Health Service, 
appropriately in fulfilling treaty and trust responsibility. 
Because you are a part of our story, too.
    And when I go again and I see that young woman because now 
this young woman is about to graduate college. She is going to 
be stepping into these spaces and places and advocating for her 
people, and we are going to work to ensure. And that is the 
kind of healing we are bringing. When we bring our cultural 
value systems in, when we fight for our people, we will see the 
healing because opiates, substance misuse, health disparities 
are all grounded in trauma. And until we address the root cause 
of that, we are going to be sitting at these tables for 
decades.
    I don't want to sit at this table. I want to talk about 
healing, and I want to be a blueberry along with all of you.
    [The statement of Ms. Echo-Hawk follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Abigail. I let her go on because I 
interrupted her.
    Aurene.
    Ms. Martin. That is a tough act to follow. [Laughter.]
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

               NATIONAL INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ASSOCIATION


                                WITNESS

AURENE MARTIN, TREASURER, NATIONAL INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ASSOCIATION
    Ms. Martin. [Speaking Native language.] Good morning, 
Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, and Mr. Ellzey.
    My name is Aurene Martin, and I am a citizen of the Bad 
River Band of Ojibwe in Wisconsin, and I am also on the Board 
of Directors for the National Indian Child Welfare Association.
    NICWA is a national American Indian/Alaska Native 
organization with nearly 40 years of experience in policy 
development focused on Native children and families. Our 
mission is twofold.
    First, it is to address issues of child abuse and neglect 
through training, research, policy, and community development 
and, two, to support compliance with the Indian Child Welfare 
Act. And that is really my connection. I am an adoptive mom of 
two Native children, and I practiced Indian Child Welfare Act 
law when I was a practicing attorney.
    But today, I am here to talk about BIA programs serving 
Native children and families. And before I go into my comments, 
I do want to thank the committee. I want to thank you 
personally for what you have done in the last few years on 
child welfare programs. You have created some increases that 
have been extremely helpful, and we do appreciate that.
    But your support for these programs is extremely important 
because Native children are placed in foster care at a rate 
higher than that of the general population. In some States, it 
is 10 times higher than the general population.
    Yet tribal governments have some of the most limited access 
to Federal child welfare funding. In many cases, they don't 
have any direct access, and they have to access funding through 
States. We know and studies have shown that the surest way to 
reduce the flow of Native children into the child welfare 
system is to ensure that tribes have full capacity to protect 
their children and families, whether they are at home or in 
State care.
    Accordingly, we make the following recommendations. First, 
we recommend that Indian Child Protection and Family Violence 
Prevention Act grant programs--get that wrong every time--be 
fully funded at $90 million. These two grant programs remain 
our highest priority.
    The law creating these programs was enacted in 1990 to 
address the lack of reporting, investigation, treatment, and 
prevention of child abuse in Indian Country. The act was very 
successful in improving the reporting of abuse because it 
created mandatory reporting requirements for people that have 
regular contact with Native children. It also created the 
background check system for foster families.
    But the unique provisions of the act authorizing direct 
funding for child abuse prevention and treatment for Native 
families was only funded last year by this committee in an 
amount of $1 million. We request this program be funded fully 
every year, but we hope you consider any increase because we 
know that any access to this program will be groundbreaking.
    The other priority recommendation I would like to make with 
you is to increase funding for the ICWA on-reservation program 
and off-reservation program, changing on-reservation from $17.8 
million to $30 million and increasing the urban program from 
$1.5 million to $5 million. The BIA ICWA program provides 
dedicated funds for tribes to provide their own child welfare 
services, both to children living on and off the reservation.
    But even though tribal child welfare programs work with 
some of the most at-risk and needy families in America, they 
have access to fewer resources than their State counterparts. 
Although almost every tribe receives ICWA funding from BIA, 
almost two-thirds of tribes receive less than $30,000. This 
$30,000 is expected to support a wide array of essential child 
welfare services, including child protective services, family 
reunification and rehabilitation, case management, foster care, 
recruitment and retention, and adoption services. And that is 
not even enough to fund one full-time position.
    The same services are provided by ICWA off-reservation 
programs usually through urban programs, but the funding is 
even more scarce. We know that Native children living outside 
of their communities face bigger challenges because they have 
harder time connecting with their culture communities and 
kinship networks. These services are crucial, as the 2020 
Census indicated that nearly 87 percent of all individuals who 
identified as Native lived off-reservation, up from 67 percent 
in 2010.
    And 60 percent of individuals live in metropolitan areas, 
making urban programs vitally important to the tribal child 
welfare system. We are so grateful that you appropriated $1.5 
million last year, a $500,000 increase in this program, and we 
are hoping that you will consider bigger increases for this 
year.
    In conclusion, I would like to note that the statistics 
tell us that both the Native population and the number of 
Indian families involved in the child welfare system has been 
increasing for a number of years. We also know that prevention, 
early intervention, and treatment of childhood trauma saves 
lives, but it also saves money because children who experience 
violence are more likely to have problems and enter the system.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I am 
happy to answer any questions.
    [The statement of Ms. Martin follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Thank you both for testifying.
    You don't even want to get me started on this. This is a 
huge problem. The abuse of Native American women in this 
country is horrendous. They have just started making some TV 
movies about it. I think that has raised the public's attention 
to this.
    But I grew up, the southern border of my town was Fort Hall 
Indian Reservation. I went to school with a lot of kids. I saw 
the abuse that Indian children took and stuff. Not just on the 
reservation, but the abuse they took at school.
    This is, to me, almost the largest problem that has got to 
be addressed. I mean, there are other things. Yes, we need new 
buildings for schools. We need--we can go on and on. This can't 
happen in this country. We can't allow it to happen.
    So I appreciate everything that you all have done and are 
doing to try to address this problem.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Thank you so much.
    And I did a study that was released in 2018 that actually 
showed--it was a study in Seattle, Washington, where of the 
Native women we talked to, 94 percent of them had been raped or 
coerced into sex in their lifetime.
    In addition to that, one of the things we found is that 
they were more likely to have broken bones and large amounts of 
broken teeth, which is not actually the same when you look at 
other populations. And so my staff and I were thinking about 
that. It is like we could think about it as people beat us 
more, or we are fighting back harder.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. So we really want to see that strength. We 
have been working with--for us at the Seattle Indian Health 
Board, we have a full dental program, but we also--I have been 
working with American--the folks from the American Dental 
Association to think about what pro bono work looks like.
    And unfortunately, because of the underfunding of the 
Indian Health Service, because we need mandatory advance 
appropriations, our programs don't always have what we need to 
truly do some of the basic things. Cosmetic dentistry for 
somebody's teeth who were all broken out because they were 
beaten.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Those are the necessary things our people 
need, and we deserve that. That is a basic dignity, let alone 
now we need to have the mental health resources to address the 
problem at the root cause.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. And so, again, mandatory advance 
appropriations for the Indian Health Service is absolutely key.
    Mr. Simpson. Having been a dentist in the real world, I 
know exactly what you are talking about. And of course, you 
don't have the same challenge in the urban Indian Health 
Service. There are actually dentists within miles of where you 
are. But when you are out on a reservation, Pine Ridge or 
something, how do you get dentist to go out there? How do you 
get a dentist to live there or a physician or something else?
    And there are so many challenges, but I will tell you--and 
I mean this from the heart--we cannot in this country allow 
what is 94 percent----
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Yes. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. Of the women have been raped?
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. In the study that I did in Seattle, 
Washington, yes. And I do want to say for the urban Indian 
health programs, as funded through a contract through the 
Indian Health Service, we do receive less than 2 percent of the 
overall IHS budget. We do struggle with getting dentists within 
our program.
    And while there are dentists, for example, outside of our 
agencies, our folks, because of the socioeconomic deprivation 
that they experience, don't have the resources to access those 
services. So it is still an incredible gap and one that we are 
always addressing across the urban Indian health programs.
    Mr. Simpson. Well, I would be more than happy to work with 
you with the ADA because I have a close association with them.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Love that.
    Mr. Simpson. And see what we can do about pro bono. We can 
find dentists that do pro bono work that are willing to do 
that.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. I would really appreciate that, and so would 
our women.
    Mr. Simpson. You bet.
    Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you. And thank you so much, Mr. 
Chair. I really appreciate your strong commitment to dealing 
with this.
    And thank you so much for your commitment and the amazing 
work you have done. And really, your personal commitment of 
raising money. You should never have to be in that position, 
but then we shouldn't have so much neglect of this problem. And 
I would be fully committed to doing anything we can to make 
sure that the Justice Department--we are a small committee, and 
we should budget everything we possibly can to meet the 
requests that you have mentioned. But also we can make sure 
that the Justice Department in this administration is doing 
their job because it is a just staggering issue that we are 
still dealing with this.
    Mr. Simpson. I can see some joint letters coming up.
    Ms. Pingree. I can see so. Yes, yes.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. We would love to work with you on those.
    Ms. Pingree. Put down on that. So, yes, we would love to 
have your guidance on that. And really, thank you again for 
your work and your support, and I am just anxious to work with 
you in any way we can.
    And of course, you two are dealing with two really critical 
heart-breaking problems, the issues of women and the issues of 
children. And so many of these issues that you brought up are 
being under addressed.
    And I just can't even imagine when you said that almost 
two-thirds of the tribe received $30,000. And then the list 
that you made of all the things that have to be done with that 
money, that just doesn't even come close to being a drop in the 
bucket to what is needed. So I hope we can continue to do more.
    Thank you both, really, for the work you do.
    Ms. Martin. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Simpson. Mr. Ellzey.
    Mr. Ellzey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here today.
    This is my first hearing. I am new to this subcommittee, 
and I am grateful to be on it. I waited to listen until I heard 
all morning's testimony, and a lot of folks have gone, on the 
problem that faces our tribal nations.
    I am a husband, father, warrior, and protector, Navy 20 
years. I live in Texas. I don't have any tribal--tribes in my 
district, but what I have heard this morning is that we need to 
break the cycle of hopelessness and dependence that has existed 
for so long.
    And as we talk about kids, as a Naval aviator, there is not 
one thing that occurs to end up in a mishap. It is a chain of 
things. We call it the Swiss cheese model. And everything has 
to line up to have the end result being that mishap. And if you 
take one of the--if you block one of those holes in the Swiss 
cheese, you can effect mission success instead of mission 
failure.
    And so what I have heard this morning is we have a failure 
of education, employment, addiction, abuse of women, crime, 
housing, healthcare, and inflation. And we have to start with 
stopping one of those issues going forward. It seems like from 
where I sit, the easiest one--easiest. Nothing is easy. The 
most direct one is safe communities with adequate law 
enforcement based on full fricking treaty adherence to getting 
the law enforcement that you deserve.
    And as I have--it is very hard not to get emotional and, as 
I think you said, don't even get me started, as a warrior 
protector, and your staggering numbers. And of course, as you 
mentioned, it is in pop culture now. But now that I am a part 
of this committee, I would like to learn more. You have talked 
about the victims. Who are the serial perpetrators of these 
crimes over and over and over again?
    Can you answer that in 1 minute or less?
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Yes. So we actually find that a majority of 
the perpetrators are white men who have identified, 
particularly in reservation areas, the opportunity to exploit a 
maze of jurisdiction where they are not prosecuted.
    So the things that are happening under the Violence Against 
Women Act, the expansion of tribal authorities is absolutely 
essential and needs to continue to grow and have further 
funding associated with that. And we also need to be holding 
law enforcement accountable that is outside of the reservations 
in doing that.
    And again, and when we talk about it being hopelessness 
within our reservations, I would say this room here is full of 
hope. Because when we have the full fulfillment of our treaty 
and trust responsibility, we have the ability to stand up for 
our people, and our culture community and commitment to each 
other is what continues to give us hope, despite overwhelming 
obstacles.
    Mr. Ellzey. Thank you for that answer. It is staggering, 
and I look forward to supporting in any way I can to--and as 
you said, there is always hope. So I look forward to being a 
part of that solution on this subcommittee.
    Thank you for your testimony, everybody's testimony this 
morning. Thank you for your time.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes, one of the things that really is eye-
opening is to go visit our Indian brothers and sisters on their 
terms, on their land, and see what is actually going on on the 
ground and stuff. And we started that a few years ago. I think 
we were the first committee, when I was chairman, that took on, 
went out to Oklahoma and South Dakota and a few other place, 
and then other chairmen have followed up.
    We couldn't do it the last couple years because of COVID 
and all that kind of stuff, but we are going to continue that. 
And we certainly invite anyone that wants to go along, and we 
will decide which areas we are going to go this year. We want 
to go to some place we haven't been yet.
    Because I think it is important not only that you come and 
talk to us, as you are today, but we come and talk to you out 
on your reservations and your places of living and stuff about 
the challenges you are facing there.
    So I thank you for your testimony today very much.
    Ms. Echo-Hawk. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
    That concludes the morning session. We will begin again at 
                                      1:00 p.m.

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

   AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE PUBLIC WITNESS DAY 1--AFTERNOON 
                                SESSION

                                WITNESS

DONNA THOMPSON, VICE-CHAIRWOMAN, FORT HALL BUSINESS COUNCIL OF THE 
    SHOSHONE-BANNOCK TRIBES
    Mr. Simpson. The committee will come to order.
    We now have Donna Thompson, vice chairman of the Fort Hall 
Business Council of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Quincy 
Ellenwood, Treasurer, Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, and 
Keenan Groesbeck, councilman, Northern Arapaho Business 
Council. Donna, you are up.
    Ms. Thompson. Good afternoon. My name is Donna [Audio 
malfunction.] I want----
    Mr. Simpson. You want the mic.
    Ms. Thompson. I want to thank Chairman Simpson, who is our 
representative, for his continued efforts on behalf of the 
Shoshone-Bannock tribes, and for his efforts on salmon recovery 
for the Snake River. Thank you.
    My written testimony includes several issues of great 
importance to the tribe, including the need for more funding 
for the Johnson-O'Malley Program, BIA road maintenance, 
wildlife conservation, and wildland fire programs, as well as 
the need to maintain advanced appropriations for the Indian 
Health Service in the fiscal year 2024 appropriations. But 
today, I will focus on one: the Gay Mine Superfund Site, 
located on our reservation, BIE teacher salaries, and the need 
for a comprehensive approach to the opioid epidemic.
    The Gay Mine was an open pit phosphate mine that operated 
between 1946 and 1993. Ultimately, the mine would cover 7,000 
acres of reservation land with 158 pits, each ranging in size 
from 15 to 20 acres, many with high walls of 50 feet or more, 
and many with contaminated pit lakes. There are also 57 mill 
shell piles with over 30 million tons of overburden. The 
original lease in 1946 stated that Simplot would return the 
land in ``as good condition as received.'' This did not happen 
when the mine closed in 1993, and 30 years later, this has 
still not happened.
    Over the past 30 years, minimal reclamation work to make 
the land usable, again, has occurred, and only recently has 
environmental remediation work started to address the 
contamination caused by the mine. While the EPA remediation 
process is underway, the tribe would like to lead a strategic 
study to plan the reclamation of the site in order to utilize 
the area for future development of the tribe. When Gay Mine was 
leased in 1940, the tribes never thought that when the mine 
closed, we would never be able to use the land again. We, 
again, ask for your help in reclaiming our reservation land by 
directing the BLM and BIA to work with the tribe to undertake a 
strategic reclamation study of Gay Mine.
    Turning to the need for more funding for the BIE teacher 
salaries, the current funding levels prevent providing 
competitive salaries for qualified teachers at the Shoshone-
Bannock Junior/Senior High School, which is a tribally-
controlled BIE School on the reservation. Right now, the only 
way our school can compete on teacher salaries with local 
schools in Idaho is to use carryover funding, over $146,000 
this school year. Over the last 2 weeks, the school has been 
closed for 4 days due to a lack of certified teachers. This is 
not sustainable for the school. While the BIE has informed the 
school that additional funding was provided and the school 
should be following the BIE teacher salary schedule, the school 
is simply not receiving enough funding to meet the BIE teacher 
schedule. As a result, the school is having great difficulty in 
recruiting and retaining high-qualified certified teachers as 
well as having funding to provide a guidance counselor and a 
school resource officer. We urge the subcommittee to hold an 
oversight hearing on the BIE and to increase funding for 
teacher salaries.
    Finally, I want to make an urgent plea to the subcommittee 
to help us address the opioid epidemic that our community is 
facing. In the past 2 weeks alone, we have lost four tribal 
members to overdose. There is simply not enough funding for 
prevention and treatment. The tribes lack any suitable detox 
center or treatment facility on the reservation, limiting the 
ability of those in need to get treatment. Further, the lack of 
enforcement and prosecution of non-Indians on the reservation 
by the Federal Government is making the reservation a haven for 
drug dealers. We need immediate assistance to combat this 
issue.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
    [The statement of Ms. Thompson follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Donna. Keenan.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yes, sir.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                   NORTHERN ARAPAHO BUSINESS COUNCIL


                                WITNESS

KEENAN GROESBECK, COUNCILMAN, NORTHERN ARAPAHO BUSINESS COUNCIL
    Mr. Groesbeck. Good afternoon, Chairman Simpson, Ranking 
Member Pingree, and the members of the subcommittee. My name is 
Keenan Groesbeck, and I am a member of the Northern Arapaho 
Tribe, and I am business councilman from Wyoming. And I come 
here to speak on behalf of the Native American Church and 
peyote habitat that is being lost, you know. And I come before 
you guys today, and I want to thank you for your time, you 
know, to hear us out, you know.
    And we are here as a representative for the Native American 
Church, you know. I participate and run ceremonies as a tribal 
leader for the Northern Arapaho Tribe, you know. And the issue 
that we have now is the decline of habitat for the peyote 
cacti, and it is a holy sacrament through our Native American 
Church. And I come before the subcommittee here to ask for some 
funding, you know, to help the decline of the habitat. And 
through the efforts by us, sustaining the purity habitat is 
going to sustain a way of life, you know, that we have as 
Native-American peoples throughout Indian Country, you know.
    And the Northern Arapaho Tribe are 1 of 5 tribes that 
practice the Native American Church way of life, you know, and 
it is going to be detrimental to our people and other people 
for the loss of the habitat for the peyote cactus, you know? 
And we are here to ask the subcommittee here for allocations of 
funds, you know, to pay the private landowners in Southwest 
Texas, Laredo area, for the habitat, for the peyote that grows 
there. And through development of energy, and the roads, and 
construction, and everything, you know, the habitat is being 
lost at an alarming rate, you know. And we are here to put the 
markers up, and I will have you guys look into that, you know, 
see more Federal oversight on the issue of the peyote habitat 
loss, you know? And for myself, you know, it is a pretty scary 
time for our Indian people, you know, because we depend on this 
way of life, you know? It is the way we worship, you know? It 
is to the core over people, you know, how we get along with one 
another and how we support one another, and it would really 
hurt our tribe enormously, you know, if we was to not have the 
peyote to use as a holy sacrament in our Native American 
Church, you know.
    So on that, we are just asking for some stability into the 
habitat so we don't lose it, and that is what I have to say 
today. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Groesbeck follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yep.
    Mr. Simpson. Appreciate it.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Simpson. And then next, we have Quincy.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                  NEZ PERCE TRIBAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE


                                WITNESS

QUINTIN ``QUINCY'' ELLENWOOD, TREASURER, NEZ PERCE TRIBAL EXECUTIVE 
    COMMITTEE
    Mr. Ellenwood. [Speaking native language], Quincy, 
Illinois. I am known to my people [Speaking native language], 
the Nez Perce people, as [Speaking native language] after the 
late John Miller of Clear Creek, Idaho. And I am currently 
serving or the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee as the 
treasurer, and I am also the Natural Resource chairman. I also 
sit on Human Resources, Law and Order, and Land Commission. I 
want to tell you all thank you very much for your time today, 
and it is an honor to be here to testify on behalf of my Nez 
Perce people. Although I want to only summarize a few of the 
recommendations contained, you know, in this written testimony, 
I hope that you will fully respect the request of the 
subcommittee and the recommendations made by the Nez Perce 
Nation, and also those from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal 
Fish Commission during their deliberations for fiscal year 
2024.
    I want to also give a big testimony towards our Indian 
Health Services for the fiscal year 2024 and increased 
appropriations on a bipartisan basis to the multitude of 
programs under your jurisdiction, which tribal nations 
administer and benefit from, funding increases to tribal 
programs, including the fiscal year 2023 build on increases 
secured to Indian Country in fiscal year 2022. We want to say 
thank you.
    The Nez Perce tribe does a tremendous amount of work 
administering programs with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 
Indian Health Services, and Environmental Protection Agency 
under 638 programs and direct services. The Federal funding for 
this work benefits tribal and non-tribal citizens within the 
exterior boundaries of the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. It is 
very important to protecting the treaty-reserved resources to 
the Nez Perce Tribe, and the tribe urges you to continue the 
funding of these programs to the fullest extent.
    The Nez Perce Tribe, we have our own law enforcement and 
social services are two of the larger departments that the 
tribe administers. Currently, the tribe, we have to subsidize 
our law enforcement program to ensure services are provided 
throughout the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. In addition, we 
have constructed our own jail facility and finance all this for 
the Nez Perce Tribe because of the lack of cooperation with 
some of the local jail facilities in the five counties that we 
have on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation. So we would greatly 
appreciate advocacy for work for more funding through the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs.
    The Bureau of Indian Affairs, Natural Resource Tribal 
Priority Allocations, and Endangered Species Program funding. 
This funding is key for our work related to salmon, [Speaking 
native language] in our language, and the steelhead. And also 
the Bureau of Indian Affairs Rights Protection Implementation 
Account has also been critical in supporting our exercise of 
treaty-reserved rights on and off the reservation, and 
particularly, hunting and fishing and monitoring our fish 
harvest. In addition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the tribe 
operates a healthcare facility, which provides services to over 
4,000 Nez Perce and non-Nez Perce. This computes to over 40,000 
medical provider visits, and we have the main healthcare 
facilities in Lapwai, Idaho, with a satellite facility in 
Kamiah, to my people [Speaking native language] first, and then 
Kamiah second.
    The tribe's funding through the Environmental Protection 
Agency comes from a variety of programs: the Clean Water Act, 
Indian General Assistance Program, the Clean Water Act, just to 
name a few. And remember, these programs have been funded at 
the same levels for several years, and the tribe would 
recommend and increase in fiscal year 2024. The Nimiipuu River, 
salmon people, and we also travel to buffalo country. Since 
time immemorial, we have fished in the Columbia, and the 
Snakes, and the Clear Water Rivers. The tribe requests that 
this subcommittee continue the EPA's Columbia River Basin 
Restoration Program. We recommend that no less than $3 million 
provided for fiscal year 2023 be appropriated for 2024.
    We also work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 
operation of the Kooskia National Fish Hatchery, which is 
neighboring to where I grew up on the CERCLA area, which is a 
tributary to Clearwater River. The tribe manages the hatchery 
and the Snake River Rights Act of 2004. The hatchery is in dire 
need of new water supply. An extraordinary amount of sediment, 
it accumulates in the current water that is feeding Kooskia 
National Fish Hatchery. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that 
service should be allocated adequate funding with operations 
and importance in the O&M of this hatchery facility. Also, the 
State and Tribal Wildlife Grant Program has enabled the tribe 
to monitor gray wolves, conduct research on bighorn and 
California condor habitat, and conserve rare plants. The tribe 
does a tremendous amount of work with the Forest Service, and 
we just recently signed a GNA, Good Neighbor Authority, and we 
work with 12 different national forests that we deal with in 
fishing, hunting, eating, and exercising our way of life, which 
is now considered the treaty.
    In closing, thank you all for your time. It is an honor to 
be in your presence and also your attention to missing, 
murdered indigenous women. It needs more and more advocacy, and 
I stand with it, and I will do the best I can to always protect 
the givers and takers of life: our women folks. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Ellenwood follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. You say it is an honor to be here. 
You know, what an honor it is to have you, truthfully, so thank 
you all for being here.
    I have really enjoyed working with the Nez Perce Tribe on 
trying to save the salmon in the Snake River. We are going to 
get it done. It is going to take some time, something you have 
been working on for years. I am a latecomer to it, but we have 
been working very hard with your tribe, and with the Shoshone-
Bannock Tribe, and the tribes along the Snake River in Colombia 
to try to restore these salmon. And it is hard to do. It is 
controversial. It is going to take some changes to the way we 
are doing things right now, but I appreciate working with you 
on that and the other things that you have done on the Nez 
Perce Reservation, the tribes have done. So great work.
    Donna, have any of those high walls come down yet?
    Ms. Thompson. No.
    Mr. Simpson. None? Zero? I told them, give me some 
dynamite, you know? [Laughter.]
    Ms. Thompson [continuing]. Come back again.
    Mr. Simpson. I enjoyed our tour up there, and it is such 
beautiful country----
    Ms. Thompson. Right.
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. That it does need to get restored 
to its original state, and we have got to make that happen.
    Ms. Thompson. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson. And as I said at the time, I don't know what 
it is going to take, but it is going to take the cooperation of 
all sides. And I was hoping that the company, Simplot, and the 
tribes could get together and come to some resolution to start 
working on this because it has got to get done, and it is just 
getting more expensive as we wait. So I look forward to working 
with you on that.
    You know, I didn't know that we were having trouble keeping 
teachers because of low pay on the reservation versus higher 
pay in Blackfoot and Pocatello, I suspect. I knew that that was 
a problem that I brought up earlier, in fact, in another panel 
with police officers and firemen. I didn't know that that was 
the case with teachers also. I don't have the answer to that, 
but it is something we got to work on. It is an issue that not 
just affects tribes, but I noticed when I was a city councilman 
in Blackfoot, we would train all the police officers and 
firemen for Pocatello and Idaho Falls, bigger cities, you know? 
And as soon as they got trained, they would go there where they 
get paid more. Well, tribes, it is the same problem with 
tribes. They are the training grounds for the police and 
firemen in the larger cities that really are on the borders of 
the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, but I find that that is true 
across the country.
    I don't have the answer to that, but I brought it up with 
several individuals, and it is something that I think we need 
to work on very seriously. So I look forward to working with 
you on that and trying to address that problem. But as you 
know, I have always been thrilled to work with the Sho-Bans on 
issues that they have out there. I sat one day in a classroom 
where they were teaching Bannock language to bunch of 
youngsters, you know, and just listened to them. You know, we 
can't lose our languages of our Native-American tribes in this 
country. We have to find a way to maintain those languages and 
stuff. We have to find a way to maintain those cultures.
    I got an award from American Rivers the other night, and I 
said, you know, I have been working with the tribes on saving 
salmon, and I told them, this was at the reception, I said, you 
know what? I said, there is a wisdom there that we don't take 
advantage of with our Native-American tribes. Sometimes we take 
it too lightly, something we need to listen to and learn from. 
So I appreciate all of you being here today. Where are you 
located?
    Mr. Groesbeck. Central----
    Mr. Simpson. Central. That is right. Okay. Yeah. Ms. 
Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much 
for your thoughts are, and also your commitment to restoring 
Salmon Rivers, also a main issue. And as you said, it is not 
easy. It is often controversial, and it takes a lot of 
dedication and a lot of time, but it is particularly important, 
I think. Where our tribal communities have the salmon rights, 
it is really extremely important, so thank you for that. And we 
have learned a little bit about the disappearance of native 
peyote today, and so I am interested to keep learning more 
about that and seeing what we need to do to help preserve those 
areas where it is growing.
    And, Leslie, just tell me a little bit more, and I don't 
have to take up too much time about this, but so, how has it 
taken so long? If that was 1993 and there is still a company 
actively involved--you said, Simplot and FMC--and it is a 
potential or is a Superfund site, what is the barrier here? 
Like, how did they walk away in 1993 and not do any of the 
cleanup? And then I am pretty sure my calculations, it is 30 
years now, right?
    Mr. Ellenwood. Well, we could have a long discussion----
    [Laughter.]
    Ms. Pingree. All right. I may have to just buy the chair a 
drink sometime and hear the whole story, but it just seems like 
we need to do more. And you are not the only cleanup site or 
Superfund site we have heard about from tribes today, just----
    Ms. Thompson. We have two on our reservation, and, you 
know, that is----
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Ms. Thompson. It is horrible because we cannot use the land 
because, you know, just like I said, they were going to restore 
it to its, you know, natural state, but that has not happened. 
I would love if any of you could come out and see what we have. 
I think you would be probably surprised. Unless you can see it, 
I don't know if we can explain it.
    Ms. Pingree. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
    Ms. Thompson. But thank you. Anything that can happen to 
help us, that would be very well received.
    Ms. Pingree. All right. I will try to learn more about it. 
Thank you so much.
    Mr. Simpson. Ms. McCollum.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Ms. Thompson, is 
there a school shortage of teachers in Idaho that you are aware 
of, I mean, because I think there is a national problem with 
people not going into teaching.
    Ms. Thompson. Yes, there is, but, however, because our pay 
scale is lower than the State----
    Ms. McCollum. Yeah.
    Ms. Thompson [continuing]. School, and we have a hard 
time----
    Ms. McCollum. And then you have issues with housing and 
where people live.
    Ms. Thompson. Right.
    Ms. McCollum. And if you are married and you have a spouse 
that works, and that, but I think as we hear about this--I am a 
former teacher--there is going to be a real crunch----
    Ms. Thompson. Mm-hmm.
    Ms. McCollum [continuing]. For teachers in general. And if 
we don't get this fixed, you are always going to be behind, 
yeah.
    Ms. Thompson. Absolutely.
    Ms. McCollum. Councilmember Groesbeck, so I want to 
understand your journey. So you are in Wyoming now.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yeah.
    Ms. McCollum. The peyote is in Texas.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yeah.
    Ms. McCollum. So tell me your journey.
    Mr. Groesbeck. We have the tribe, you could call it. You 
could call it enough to pick it, to gather it, you know? And 
what is going on now is the private landowners, you know, their 
land is being developed, so it is being lost. We go down there 
with the medicine, and when we bring it home, we use the 
sacrament.
    Ms. McCollum. So were there also tribes that also went 
there? I mean, in Minnesota, we have Pipestone.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yeah.
    Ms. McCollum. So tribes travel for Pipestone, so this is 
just not an issue for your tribe.
    Mr. Groesbeck. It is an issue for all tribes in Indian 
Country, yeah, so that would be, like, a bona fide tragedy. It 
would be, like, the Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, you know, and 
the Cheyenne-Arapahos in Oklahoma, and there are more other 
tribes that use it.
    Ms. McCollum. Are there any, and I can find out more about 
this later, but are there any tribes where that was ancestral 
homeland where maybe the Federal Government and tribes together 
could work to, you know, purchase back some of the land or 
something like that?
    Mr. Groesbeck. I think there are some other tribes that 
have done it. It can be, like, Comanche and Apache, you know--
--
    Ms. McCollum. Okay.
    Mr. Groesbeck [continuing]. Yeah, route through there. That 
is what we are asking is for dollars from habitat conservation 
demonstration project for fiscal year----
    Ms. McCollum. Okay. So there would be many who would 
benefit from something like that.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yeah.
    Ms. McCollum. And, Treasurer Ellenwood, I really 
appreciated the way that you talked about the whole of 
government, not just in the Interior bill. So, you know, when 
Forest Service isn't plussed up and Fish and Wildlife isn't 
plussed up on the right lines, and you aren't plussed up. It is 
a multiplying effect of almost like a death by a thousand 
little cuts. You are not able to move forward. There are the 
lines that go directly to your tribe, but then there are all 
the other lines that go to other things that Mr. Simpson and 
Ms. Pingree will be funding that that your tribe draws from. 
Could you just expand on that a little more?
    Mr. Ellenwood. So yeah, we do a lot of work through the 
Forest Service, you know, through the culverts replacement, 
salmon habitat, and particularly, it would be really beneficial 
hugely to everybody be on the same page to protect each other's 
work. You know, for instance, water quality, you know, we have 
water quality issues in the South Fork area, South Fork of the 
salmon, and so, you know, there is a huge site to be proposed 
there, to protect each other's work that ultimately come 
through the tribe, and to have the advocacy that we have. You 
know, above all, you know, it takes a team. Teamwork makes the 
dream work, and ultimately, we have a right to live our lives 
as God has created us, and as you said, Mr. Chairman, you know, 
there is a lot.
    I urge you all to come out and visit Indian Country, Nez 
Perce country, any other tribe that is out there, because you 
said, Mr. Chairman, there is some huge wisdom that is there. We 
have a right to live our lives as the way God created us, and 
when we have pandemics like this, when people pass, sometimes 
that history is gone. So I urge you as the way it is taught to 
myself to teach it, to learn it, to observe it, to feel it, I 
urge you to come out and do the same along with us. It is a 
beautiful way of life, very, very beautiful way of life.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair [Audio malfunction.].
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah, and we are going to do a little more 
traveling up around there, and I would like to get out of the 
Pacific Northwest, and, I think, down to the southern part of 
this country where we haven't really spent any time down in 
Mississippi, and Alabama, and those places. So we are going to 
be looking at some of these places that we can visit because I 
think, as I said earlier today, that it is important that we 
actually get out and see where you live and the challenges that 
you face and stuff.
    So I thank all of you for being here today. Let me ask you 
one question, Keenan.
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Simpson. Is South Texas the only place that peyote 
grows?
    Mr. Groesbeck. No, it grows across the border.
    Mr. Simpson. Well, I am not sure I want to do that, but----
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah, but its habitat is very small, huh?
    Mr. Groesbeck. Right, so.
    Mr. Simpson. So you couldn't take it up and say I am going 
to grow it in Wyoming or----
    Mr. Groesbeck. I don't know. [Laughter.]
    Mr. Simpson. Pretty rough, huh?
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yeah.
    Mr. Simpson. That would be like Maine trying to grow 
potatoes, huh?
    Mr. Groesbeck. Yeah, that is right? [Laughter.]
    Mr. Simpson. I just get a shot in every time----
    Ms. Pingree. You got my material----
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah, that is right. Yeah. [Laughter.]
    Thank you all for being here today, and thank you for your 
testimony. I appreciate it.
    Okay. Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian 
Community; Tehassi Hill, chairman of the Oneida Nation, and 
John Johnson, president of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake 
Superior Chippewa Indians.
     Voice. They just called votes. Do you want to try to do 
one person?
    Mr. Simpson. They just called votes.
     Voice. Yeah.
    Mr. Simpson. Let's at least listen to one person before we 
go.
     Voice. Okay. Perfect. We will keep an eye on the time.
    Mr. Simpson. We are going to be interrupted in the middle 
of this. We will hear the first testimony from Stephen Roe 
Lewis, and then we have got to go vote real quick. I think it 
is two votes.
     Voice. Two votes, yeah.
    Mr. Simpson. We have two votes, and then we will be back 
and continue, okay?
    So, Stephen, you are up.
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--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                          GILA RIVER COMMUNITY


                                WITNESS

STEPHEN ROE LEWIS, GOVERNOR, GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY
    Mr. Lewis. Thank you. [Speaking native language.] I am 
Governor Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community. 
Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pingree, Congresswoman 
McCollum, and the committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
provide testimony today, and also Congressman Elizey as well. 
Thank you for allowing me to provide testimony on behalf of the 
Gila River Indian Community.
    Now, today I have two requests: first, funding to implement 
the surveying of Federal rights-of-way on our community's 
reservation, Chairman, which is required under legislation 
unique to the community; second, funding for the Indian Self-
Determination Act Section 105 (l) Program, which will benefit 
Indian Country as a whole. And I want to thank the 
Congresswoman McCollum for being such a champion from the 
beginning on the 105(l).
    In 2018, Congress approved the Gila River Indian 
Communities Federal Rights of Way Easement and Boundary 
Clarification Act. This act was necessary to enable the 
community to obtain the full benefits of the settlement that 
the community reached with the United States to resolve 
litigation that was filed in 2006. The act requires that all 
Federal rights-of-way on the community's reservation be 
surveyed within 6 years of enactment of the law, subject to 
appropriations. So at the time the act was passed, the 
estimated funding needed to complete these surveys was 
approximately $15.5 million. Since the Act became law, the 
community has requested $3 million annually to ensure the 
completion of this work within the 6-year time frame. Now, we 
are in the 5th year since enactment, and only $1 million has 
been appropriated to date, and if annual appropriations 
continue in the $1-million range, it will take another 14 
years, Chairman, to fully implement a settlement that began 
with litigation in 2006.
    Now, the community entered into this settlement in good 
faith with the United States, and Congress passed this act in 
good faith as well, but unless appropriations are consistently 
awarded in the amounts needed to complete implementation of the 
act, that good faith will be breached to all of the committee 
members and Chairman, leaving the community with an unresolved 
portion of its settlement. So today, I am asking this committee 
to allocate a minimum of $3 million to implement this 
legislation so the community can begin the good work in earnest 
as intended when the act was passed in 2018.
    Now, my second request addresses mandatory funding for 
sovereign tribal nation obligations under Section 105 (l) of 
the Indian Self-Determination Act. Today and tomorrow, you will 
hear from my fellow tribal leaders across Indian Country. You 
will hear a consistent theme: the need for improved or newly-
constructed facilities for schools, law enforcement, 
healthcare, natural resources, and administrative functions. 
Now, Congress has already developed a solution to those 
infrastructure needs for a majority of Indian Country. In 2018, 
I sat in this chair before this committee and proposed a pilot 
construction program, a program that would allow the community 
to design and construct a new school, and then lease that 
school facility back to the Department of the Interior under 
Section 105 (l) authority. You took a chance on that program 
then, and we were able to construct that school less 
expensively and in half the time that it would have taken the 
Federal Government.
    Now, since that time, the community has successfully 
utilized, moved this program forward to construct a second 
school, and last fall, we broke ground on a new police 
department. We have hosted tribes across Indian Country to 
learn about this program to show them that this program works. 
And with the support of this committee and the past two 
administrations, the program has indeed grown. The funding for 
the program has also grown an acknowledgement of this 
innovative approach to meet the needs of Indian Country. The 
funding has been elevated from pilot funding, to line item 
funding, to indefinite funding. Now, the next critical step to 
ensure that the program can be implemented to its full capacity 
and in compliance with the statutory mandates under the Indian 
Self-Determination Act and subsequent court cases is for the 
funding to become mandatory.
    Now, I want to note that this mandatory funding will not 
necessarily help my community. Our construction program is well 
under way, and we have entered into leases on our eligible 
existing facilities, but with help with any rehabilitation and 
repair needed on those buildings, that will help definitely. 
But this funding will help Indian Country by allowing the 
program to reach the potential anticipated by this committee. 
Now, mandatory funding will provide the mechanism needed to 
encourage the public/private partnership, that component of 
this program, by providing the capital needed for tribes to 
construct facilities, which is required before leases can be 
negotiated with the administration.
    Now, this program that I am describing is the embodiment, I 
believe, of the intent of the Indian Self-Determination Act to 
empower tribes to make decisions regarding the scope and type 
of facilities needed to carry out our governmental 
responsibilities to our members. I ask you to finish the job 
and to make this funding mandatory in line with the sovereign 
tribal obligations under this act. And also, in addition, I 
echo my fellow tribal leaders on the need to provide resources 
to tribal nations to address the MMIP issue, the terrible 
scourge of fentanyl that is sweeping across not only this 
Nation, but Indian Country as well, and also the necessary 
behavioral health services that are needed throughout Indian 
Country as well.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Thank you, Members of the 
Committee.
    [The statement of Mr. Lewis follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Stephen. We are going to have to 
recess the committee to go vote, a couple of votes, and then we 
will be right back. So have a Coke and a Snickers, but I will 
tell you, Stephen, you mentioned in there that there was an 
agreement you signed with The Federal Government that was 
subject to appropriations. You always want to be really careful 
signing an agreement with the Federal Government that says, 
``subject to appropriations'', because sometimes it doesn't 
come through. [Laughter.]
    I appreciate it, but we will be back in just a few minutes.
    The committee is in recess.
    [Recess.]
    Mr. Simpson. Tehassi, you are up.
                              ----------                              --
--------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                             ONEIDA NATION


                                WITNESS

TEHASSI HILL, CHAIRMAN, ONEIDA NATION
    Mr. Hill. [Speaking native language.] Greetings, everyone. 
I am Tehassi Hill, chairman for Oneida Nation. It is the people 
that I come from. So [Speaking native language]. Thank you, 
Chairman Simpson, and Ranking Member Pingree, and members of 
the committee. On behalf of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, I 
submit the following testimony for the Subcommittee on 
Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies hearing on fiscal 
year 2024 annual appropriations bill. The agencies and programs 
involved in the Nation's request are Indian Health Service, 
Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Environmental Protection 
Agency.
    Indian Health Service funding. I would like to begin my 
formal remarks by offering the subcommittee and those who serve 
on the full committee my gratitude from the Oneida Nation of 
Wisconsin for your efforts to provide advanced appropriations 
to cover Indian Health Services for fiscal year 2024. As you 
know, providing health security to our members has been a 
priority for our nation and all Indian Country for many years. 
Your efforts will likely save lives and bring calm to the many 
who depend on IHS for their services. This was a great step in 
ensuring the Federal Government meets its trust and treaty 
obligations.
    The next step is full and mandatory funding for IHS. Access 
to healthcare is a core element of the Federal treaty and trust 
responsibility. Moving IHS funding from discretionary to 
mandatory will ensure that the health of our people will no 
longer be impacted by government shutdowns or delays in the 
appropriation process. Long-term care. Groundbreaking language 
giving IHS specific authorities for provisions of long-term 
care was authorized in Affordable Care Act. These authorities 
represented a major step forward for our communities. 
Unfortunately, while authorized, these services have not been 
funded. We request Congress fund long-term care in the fiscal 
year 2024 appropriations. The nation has operated a long-term 
care facility since 1978 and currently operates a 48-bed 
multipurpose building they include skilled nursing, congregate 
elder meal site, and physical therapy services. Currently we do 
not receive IHS funding to provide our long-term care services.
    Next item is BIA law enforcement. Our nation's law 
enforcement program is severely underfunded, even by Indian 
Country standards. We only receive about 4 percent of our 
operating budget for criminal investigations. That doesn't even 
cover payroll for 1 of our 22 officers. Our funding allocation 
for public safety is so low because the BIA has chosen not to 
fund police for tribes, and Public Law 280 States. The Bureau 
tells us that in Public Law 280 States, like Wisconsin, that 
the State, not our tribal government, has primary criminal 
jurisdiction, so we don't need the money, they say. That is 
wrong. If we don't provide emergency services for the 27,000 
people living across our 102 square mile reservation, no one 
will. In 2021, our officers made a hundred 173 arrests, of 
which 133 were drug related. We cannot ignore these crimes and 
just say someone else will handle it. To that end, I ask that 
you set a minimum allocation of $500,000 for each tribe within 
the BIA public safety line item.
    Another item for BIA is the realty service funding. The 
nation asks appropriators to increase funding for equipment to 
assist and expedite our processes to acquire lands. The BIA's 
Division of Land Title and Records is to maintain timely, 
certified Federal land title ownership records. However, many 
of these details associated with the work of this office are 
carried out by tribes on their respective reservations. While 
the BIA employees are provided with new equipment on a regular 
basis, tribes, who are being asked to help carry out these 
programs, are failing to receive similar upgrades, or, in some 
instances, even enough computer hardware to carry out their 
responsibilities.
    Beyond the lack of support for technology, BIA has an 
abysmal track record of completing realty transactions in a 
timely manner. FETA Trust applications for even clear-cut 
examples can take between 5 and 10 years to complete. Realty 
transactions on tribal, residential, agriculture, and 
commercially-leased properties can take 6 months to a year, if 
not longer. Individual trust probates can take at least 5 
years, if not longer. It is clear that BIA's trust and realty 
offices are under resource and understaffed, and the nation 
asks Congress to provide funding to rectify these chronic 
issues.
    The next section is the EPA funding. We would like the 
committee to know that Oneida Nation takes the protection of 
our lands and waterways seriously. To that end, we have 
partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency for many 
years. However, our resources are stressed, particularly since 
funding has not increased in 24 years. We also take advantage 
of Section 319 of the Clean Water Act, which partially funds 
our Non-Point Source Program. This program did recently see an 
increase after many years from $30,000 to $36,000 annually, so 
thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Hill follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. I appreciate it. John.
                              ----------                              --
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

         LAC DU FLAMBEAU BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA INDIANS


                                WITNESS

JOHN JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, LAC DU FLAMBEAU BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA 
    INDIANS
    Mr. Johnson. [Speaking native language.] Thank you, 
Chairman Simpson, Ranking member Pingree, subcommittee members, 
and staff. I am John Johnson, Senior, president-elect of Lac du 
Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. I am a second 
term right now as president and have served the tribal 
government for about a decade. I am also the current chairman 
of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, GLIFWC. 
I strongly commend to you the work of GLIFWC to protect the 
treaty rights on behalf of the 11 Ojibwe tribes residing in 
Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Thank you for your 
invitation to testify regarding the fiscal year 2024 budget. I 
will focus primarily on BIA and IHS.
    Our small reservation is located North Central Wisconsin 
with lands in Southwestern Vilas and Iron Counties. Half of our 
reservation is lakes. The preservation and protection of our 
water, land, and air are critical to the health and well-being 
of all of our reservation residents. We have an enrollment of 
4,141 tribal citizens. Roughly one-half of our members live on 
the reservation along with over 1,615 non-residents. Our tribe 
faces many challenges as a rural remote community that must be 
most governmental services ourselves. Drug misuse is high. We 
are fighting to maintain professional staff and provide them 
with affordable housing, which we lack on our reservation. That 
is why Federal appropriations to the tribe for the programs we 
carry out on behalf of the Federal Government are so important 
to us.
    Despite the modest tribal casino, according to the latest 
data from HUD, we have nearly 700 Native American households 
that fall well below median family income in Vilas County, with 
a population of 25,000 residents'. Median household income was 
$57,000 in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Our 
median is $17,100 for a family of 4. Seventeen thousand one 
hundred dollars is not a living income.
    Many tribal leaders have come before you for decades to 
repeat a simple truth. In most instances, Federal 
appropriations for Indian tribes spell the difference between 
the success and failure of Federal programs enacted for the 
benefit of Indian tribes. If our tribal programs succeed, 
tribal members lives improve. Funds for scholarships, the 
Johnson-O'Malley Program, and social services, road 
maintenance, law enforcement healthcare help tribes provide a 
healthy and safe environment for our citizens. Since 1975, 
under the Indian Self-Determination And Education Assistance 
Act, Indian tribes have contracted BIE-funded and IHS-funded 
programs and receive funds and the authority to administer 
these programs.
    First, we urge the subcommittee to direct the BIA and IHS 
to reexamine outdated funding formulas and direct these 
agencies to develop and implement more transparent formulas in 
consultation with tribes that consider the geographical 
challenges that each tribe faces. Second, please decrease 
Agency preference for competitive grants and annual 
appropriations. Instead, increase their recurring funding for 
tribal programs that we contract from BIA and IHS under the 
Indian Self-Determination Act. Third, please increase the 
funding line items for the BIA accounts, including BIA, Fish 
and Wildlife, and parks, public safety, and justice, and road 
maintenance as I highlight in my written testimony.
    For example, our fish hatchery operation has a total budget 
of $1.2 million annually. That supports 260 lakes with stock, 
including over 14 million fish, 212,000 fingerlings, including 
walleye, musky brown trout, and perch. The Federal funds we 
receive in our contract with BIA total $503,000. This amount 
represents 46 percent of the total needs. Please increase the 
modest BIA fish, wildlife, and TMDP programs within the BIA 
budgets. Excuse me.
    Our tribe alone requires an additional $432,000 this year 
to address our current full-time employees for our law 
enforcement program staffing needs to hire and recruit two 
additional officers, one detective, one evidence technician, 
and two additional surveillance operators. That figure 
represents 95 percent of all BIA law enforcement funds, 
$455,000 we receive annually. The BIA funding accounts for 17 
percent of our $2.7 million annual law enforcement budget. 
Narcotics and drug crimes are the most significant crimes and 
public safety problems we face. Meth, heroin, and fentanyl 
arrests have exploded in our community, along with drug-related 
overdose calls our officers are called upon to respond. We 
typically lose our officers when 3 years of employment due to 
an existing retirement plan, which cannot compete with outside 
jurisdictions. We need help.
    Finally, please increase the BIA Road Maintenance Program 
to allow us to purchase and replace outdated heavy maintenance 
equipment and provide routine and emergency road maintenance 
services, like snow removal, sanding, and salting. It has been 
over 30 years, in 1990, since Congress included a significant 
one-time appropriation increase to the BIA Roads Maintenance 
Program Account to prevent BIA and contracting 638 tribes to 
upgrade outdated equipment.
    Thank you again for affording me the time and my tribe for 
the testimony here today.
    [The statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you all for being here today. I 
appreciate your testimony. And, you know, it seems like there 
is a common theme running through all the testimony that we are 
hearing from the various tribes about the need to increase law 
enforcement funding, and road maintenance, and other types of 
things. So I appreciate what you have to say, and we will 
certainly work with you as we try to put together a 2024 budget 
that isn't ridiculous. That might be hard to do, but we are 
going to try. Anyway, Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. I am going to quote you on that, the not 
ridiculous part. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Governor. 
I really appreciate your description of the 105(l). I have 
heard you talk about it before, and you are a great, real 
proponent and a good example to other tribes of how that can 
work, so we will try to continue to increase that funding. I 
thought that was very helpful to hear about the Public Law 280 
States where you don't get a minimum for law enforcement. That 
sounds ridiculous really. Obviously, they are not going to come 
in and do the law enforcement if they don't have to, and 
hearing the representation of the family income of $17,000 for 
4, we all know that is not doable. So my maiden name is 
Johnson, so I am on your team.
    Mr. Johnson. I just wanted to tell you, you know, a lot of 
things that are going on up on our neck of the woods also comes 
up with this heroin, and fentanyl, and stuff like that. There 
are a lot of grandparents raising their grandkids now, and you 
think about the money that they are getting. It was, like, 
$3,200 a month, $3,600 a month. It costs $17,000 a year to 
raise a child, and I just wanted to bring that up. So thank you 
for letting me speak then.
    Mr. Simpson. Ms. Pingree brings up a really interesting 
idea. Your idea about schools and an alternative way on how to 
build them and stuff. That is fascinating because I am all into 
looking at other ways that might be better to accomplish the 
same goal, so I appreciate your testimony. I am going to take a 
look at that. Ms. McCollum.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you. I think we started working on that 
when you became chair of Energy and Water.
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah. Yeah.
    Ms. McCollum. And it is a great solution for some tribes, 
but we also need to fund other lines for our other tribes. So 
thank you very much for your testimony, Governor. I still 
haven't gotten out to see the schools because of COVID, so you 
are on my bucket list to see the school, but the other thing 
that this committee helped do is the Bug School, which we are 
all very familiar with what we were able to do with looking at 
alternative ways to build, to build faster, to build cheaper. 
And I want to get back to the Bug School, you know, like about 
6 years later and kind of see how it is all holding up. But if 
that works and a combination of that, I think we are well on 
our way to be creative for ways to get schools done faster.
    Mr. Simpson. Really?
    Ms. McCollum. So, you know, because even if you get the 
money, you can't let it sit there for year after year after 
year and just be on a list to keep getting knocked down. That 
was interesting with what you told me about the title records 
because I know we were working with the Bureau of Land 
Management with some of the tribes with some of the expertise 
that was available to them for, whether it was oil, or coal, or 
natural resource development, but just the whole issue of not 
even having the right equipment. I hope you are not using DOS 
computers like the Indian Health Service told us one time. So I 
am going to look a little more into that.
    And then, Mr. Johnson, GLIFWC, is near and dear to my 
heart, and we need to make sure that that we fund that because 
we are the flyaway for so much. I know you are feeling it in 
Maine and Idaho has well. We are all Northern tier States. 
People look at us and think climate resilience is not a big 
deal for our lumber, for our fish, for our land, for our water. 
It is. Our Lakes are suffering now because we don't get the 
same kind of freeze-thaw. You know, the ice flow effects so 
much to do with the fish and the walleye. And, you know, you 
have your salmon, we have our walleye, and perch is good 
eating, too, but thank you for all the work that you do with 
GLIFWC.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Mr. Kilmer.
    Mr. Kilmer. I am happy to yield so we can get back on 
schedule.
    Mr. Simpson. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for being here 
today, and I don't know what you do with a walleye. I know what 
you do with a salmon. Is a walleye a fish? [Laughter.]
    So now I can tease Betty about walleyes and Chellie about 
potatoes, so we will sit down and have a walleye and potato 
dinner one day.
    Ms. Pingree. I don't know that you want to bring up walleye 
before the next three tribal----
    [Laughter.]
    Ms. McCollum. Yeah.
    Mr. Simpson. I heard the moan out there.
    Ms. McCollum. Not only that, Mr. Chair, I know who actually 
ate the buffalo tongue when we were on a reservation.
    Mr. Simpson. Yes, she did. I didn't, but you did. Okay. 
Thank you all for being here today. We appreciate it very much. 
Kevin DuPuis, Michael Fairbanks, Darrell Seki?
    Mr. Seki. Seki.
    Mr. Simpson. It looks like ``seek,'' Senior. Kevin, you are 
up first.
                              ----------                              --
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

               FOND DU LAC BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA


                                WITNESS

KEVIN DUPUIS, CHAIRMAN, FOND DU LAC BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR CHIPPEWA
    Mr. DuPuis. [Speaking native language.] Good afternoon. My 
name is Chairman Kevin DuPuis from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake 
Superior Chippewa. I just want to say Meegwetch to Chair 
Simpson and the board for having the opportunity to come and 
testify on appropriations. You have the paperwork that we sent 
to you. I am not going to read from the paper. I am going to 
speak the way I was taught to speak and what my uncles told me 
always: talk from the heart the best that you possibly can.
    With all the distinguished tribal leaders that came 
forward, there is a commonality between everybody that is here, 
and it is the lack of funding. I think with Fond du Lac and the 
other tribes, I think the biggest thing we need to look at is 
that direct funding that comes to the tribes. Direct funding 
allows us to take care of the people the way that we are taught 
and know how to take care of the people. When we take a look at 
funding itself in general, it was talked about the police 
departments, police staff. We talked about opiates. We talked 
about COVID. On Fond du Lac, in 2020 when COVID hit, we had 102 
people pass away. We have 4,200 Band members and approximately 
1,200 people that live within the confines of our reservation. 
This death rate that happened in Fond du Lac wasn't just COVID. 
It wasn't about the virus. It was the effects of the virus that 
hit, the acts of violence, the drugs, the alcohol, depression, 
the rates of suicide, mental health. These are the effects of 
COVID, and it is affecting any Indian Country in a manner that 
is running wild.
    In the state of Minnesota, there is approximately 5.7 
million people. We make up 1.1 percent of the population. Every 
formula that is put into place under the State level and in on 
the Federal level does not include the tribes. I know some are 
going to say that is crazy, but when you think about it 
mathematically, we are not part of the formula. We can't be 
part of the formula if we only make up 1.1 percent of the 
population in the State.
    Our disparities are higher than any ethnic group in the 
United States--any ethnic group. Our people are dying, and they 
are dying at rates that we can't control. We have a job as 
tribal leaders. We are obligated to the ones who came before us 
to pick up for the fight that they left off, to do what we can 
do today for one simple purpose, and that is to ensure that we 
have a future of our unborn. And to have a future of our unborn 
means that we have to maintain our way of life and our belief 
systems, and to do that we have to be able to do that in a 
manner that carries it forward, and a lot of things that have 
been talked here today as simple as appropriation is meaning 
that to receive the revenue.
    Tehassi Hill is a brother from Oneida talked about IHS. 
Region 5 is the least funded region in the country, and it is 
still the least-funded region. Even if we got full funding, 
which we hope, it is about addressing the need so we can 
eventually address the unmet need. The funding principles do 
not address the simple need, and the simple need allows us to 
look into the future to ensure that we have a future for our 
unborn, and that is to meet the unmet need. We do not know what 
the unmet need is yet because we haven't even addressed the 
need, and it is important that we do these things. It is 
important that we take a look at it. It is important that the 
United States, the States, see a people whose lands they sit on 
are dying at a rate that nobody else is dying in a State in the 
United States.
    We are the first, and we should be the last. Our rates of 
passing away, our rates of dying, our rates of violence, our 
rates are suicide, our rates of homelessness, every disparity 
that you can think in your country, we are higher than 
everybody else in the country. COVID came. The first call with 
tribal leaders was to say we want to address the at-risk 
communities. It was never done, but the tribes pulled together 
in the State of Minnesota. We got together. We talked to each 
other at 10:00 in the morning every day to see what one Band or 
what tribe was you doing so we could work together so we could 
ensure that we had a safety net for our people, but we always 
have to do it.
    If anybody knows how to stretch the dollar, it is the 
tribes, and by giving us direct funding, it allows us to take 
care of what we need to take care of so we can possibly address 
the need to find out what the unmet need is. And, again, I 
appreciate the time. I am here representing people. I am here 
representing our past so we have a future for our people. 
Meegwetch.
    [The statement of Mr. DuPuis follows:]
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                           WHITE EARTH NATION


                                WITNESS

MICHAEL FAIRBANKS, CHAIRMAN, WHITE EARTH NATION
    Mr. Fairbanks. [Speaking native language.] Meegwetch. Thank 
you, Chairman Simpson and the rest of the committee. You know, 
I know listening to our leadership today, and, you know, the 
panel before us, and I think all of us are on the same kind of 
tome that funding, and allocations, and, you know, the 
hardships that we have endured through the years of being 
underfunded. You know, I think this is a good day today that we 
testified with your group of representatives, that we come here 
with an open heart and trying to find common ground on how we 
can solve these issues.
    You know, I know one thing that when I get back home 
tomorrow, that I will be going directly to my nephew's funeral 
who passed away from an overdose, so I know that these things 
hit hard, you know. Back home, it is like, you know, we are the 
biggest reservation in Minnesota, and I have a lot of members 
that I have to talk to and communicate back to, too, like every 
one of us in this room here that we have to address, and we 
have to give our condolences and ask them why, and ask them, 
you know, why aren't we helping as a nation to address these 
drug issues. And I think that is one thing that I didn't really 
put on my thing, but I think following this and listening to 
everyone's heavy heart that we talk about this opioid epidemic 
is something I really wanted to say today, too, that White 
Earth Nation is making a hard stance against this, and we all 
are, you know, declaring these emergencies for our people. So 
but I guess I will get back on track now, and thank you for 
that.
    And, you know, the first thing I wanted to mention was our 
roads department. You know, back in 2003, I know White Earth 
Nation received over $5 million for our 150 miles of roads, but 
since then, you know, I know the various acts that came along 
that they cut us by 70 percent. We receive $1.4 million for our 
roads, and I think that is not enough. I mean, right now, we 
are struggling to tar our roads, to maintenance our dirt roads, 
you know. I think this is one issue I think that you heard 
today, too, is like, that is a huge part of why I am out here, 
too, is our roads department.
    And the next issue I have is on our health, and I talked 
about the epidemic with the drugs, but I know the other one is 
the IHS funding. Like we talked earlier, 37 percent of funding 
that comes through our Midwest region is the lowest funding 
amount that we have here in the Midwest. And, you know, I think 
that is important that we are trying to pick it up, you know. 
You know, for ourselves here at White Earth, you know, we have 
clinics and we have suboxone clinics, and we are doing what we 
can to help our people. The money that we do generate through 
our billing, you know, does supplement and does help, and we 
can offer services to ones that are sick out there. So I know 
that is a huge part of this is to keep that funding mandatory, 
that we get that money, and include the contract support cost 
with that, too.
    The next issue I have is, of course, what I think a lot of 
us in this room, we had a meeting today with all the tribal 
leaders across Minnesota, is the Four Walls, and I did talk to 
her some of our representatives from Minnesota about this. You 
know, after May 11th, we have 9 months to figure it out, so I 
think that is one thing that I think all the leadership from 
Minnesota here is. We were on the call today with that, with 
our health directors on how we are going to address this Four 
Walls issue, too, so I think that is something that I think 
that we are going to have to revisit and come back, and 
hopefully, you know, that Congress has a plan for us. And, you 
know, we are working with our State. Our State is really 
beneficial to us. They are helping us, you know, but, I mean, 
this is something I think that could be an easy, easy fix at 
the national level, too. So I am really, really addressing this 
to this committee that you take a look at Four Walls, too.
    And I guess the last thing I want to talk about is one of 
the things that, you know, we brought up here not too long ago 
was getting back some of our Tamarac National Refuge back home. 
You know, there is a lot of history with Tamarac, and, you 
know, when we talk about the horrible acts that came through 
back in the 30s--the Nelson Act, these acts--that were behind 
it that we were stealing our land from us, and Tamarac kind of 
falls into that where there are our lands that were kind of 
desecrated and that also that were taken from us. And I know 
that as a nation, we are reaching out to Fish and Wildlife and 
Department of Interior to work with us.
    You know, maybe it could be a fix at the Interior, but, I 
mean, we look at this, and, you know, if we look at history, 
and I gave you the handout on that, that is just a history of 
it. It is kind of like each President with the U.S. Forest 
Service when they are giving back 13.6 thousand acres. So it is 
something, hopefully, that you can look at, and we initiated 
those talks with the National Fish and Wildlife, with the local 
agency yesterday, so we are sharing those talks with them. And 
I know that one thing that when we get these parks back, I 
believe that us as stewards of the land, we know how to take 
care of our land because we do have Wild Rice Lake in that 
refuge that we take to heart, that we know how to take care of 
our water.
    You know, I appreciate it, and I really appreciate the 
members of this committee for listening to me, and I appreciate 
that you can work with us. So Meegwetch.
    [The statement of Mr. Fairbanks follows:]
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    Mr. Simpson. Darrell.
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                   RED LAKE BAND OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS


                                WITNESS

DARRELL SEKI, SR., CHAIRMAN, RED LAKE BAND OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS
    Mr. Seki. [Speaking native language.] Now, I will speak in 
my second language. Good afternoon, Chair Simpson, and the rest 
of the staff, and our friend, Betty McCollum. Meegwetch for 
being here and listening to us, and it is an honor for me to be 
here to present our testimony. I am Darrell Seki, Senior, 
chairman of the Red Lake Nation. Meegwetch for this opportunity 
to testify today. This is my third term as chairman. I am proud 
to say this subcommittee has always worked in a bipartisan 
manner to do the best they can for the Indian Country, and I 
believe all of you to continue this tradition. Today, I want to 
talk about four appropriations requests. These funding requests 
would help improve the lives of Red Lakes' 16,650 members.
    First, we request additional $49 million for tribal law 
enforcement operations, $22 million for detention operations, 
and $4 million specifically for Red Lake law enforcement. Red 
Lake is in the midst of an opiate crisis, spurred by non-drug 
dealers. Red Lake law enforcement is doing their best, but they 
are hamstrung by two things. One, our BIA funding is way too 
low. Our BIA public safety expenditures were $5 million more 
than BIA provided. Two, we have been hamstrung by the Supreme 
Court decision that tribal police cannot arrest and detain non-
Indians. The drug dealers notice, and they keep coming back to 
this reservation. Congress needs to authorize tribal police to 
arrest and detain non-members, drug dealers because over 130 
members of ours died from these fentanyl drugs that are brought 
by non-members. Something needs to be done. I keep saying that 
every time I talk to the feds or the State. We are not a 280 
tribe, but yet we need help to get that fixed so we can 
prosecute these non-members that come to our reservations and 
do what you guys are supposed to be doing: saving lives of our 
people.
    Second, we request that you fully fund, make permanent, and 
expand BIA's Tiwahe recidivism reduction initiatives. Tiwahe 
addresses many vital needs in our community. It helps 
strengthen youth suicide prevention efforts, made it possible 
for our children's healing center to implement a 24/7 youth 
residential treatment program for rehabilitative mental health, 
substance abuse services, and combat tribal member unemployment 
rates by providing classes, training, and workforce development 
programs. We ask that you provide that additional Tiwahe 
funding in fiscal year 2024, including $8 million for healing 
and wellness courts. Third, we request that you direct BIA to 
ensure that self-governance tribes, including Red Lake, that 
operates natural resources tribal management development 
programs, known as TNDP, are included in any increases. In 
fiscal year 2023, you provided a $3 million increase to TMDP, 
but BIA left Red Lake out of this funding.
    Fourth, you must direct the IHS to meet immediately include 
both depreciation principal and interest payments for eligible 
facilities, just as BIE does. The BIA correctly reached the 
Section 105(l) statute, which requires the payment of debt 
service obligation, both principal and interest, as well as 
depreciation. In 2021, the IHS would only allow depreciation, 
not principal and interest. Then in 2022, IHS reversed course 
and allowed principal and interest payments, but not 
depreciation. You need to help us hold IHS accountable to the 
law.
    In my hand, I have the Red Lake Nation treaties and 
agreements outlining the Federal trust responsibility to the 
tribes. You must continue to enforce these agreements. And the 
United States Constitution in my hand states in Article VI the 
treaties were adopted under United States Constitution. The 
Federal Government and the States have trust responsibility to 
the tribes for the welfare, the safety, and health for the 
people of all tribes, not just Red Lake, but everyone. And I 
want to say [Speaking native language] for allowing me to speak 
for all the things I presented, but 5 minutes is not enough. We 
need more time to address this subcommittee, and I am glad that 
I was allowed to speak. Again, I didn't have enough time. I had 
to cut mine because the red light came on, but anyway, I am 
going to [Speaking native language], and thank you. [Speaking 
native language.] [Laughter.]
    By the way, Chair Simpson, walleye is the best fish to eat, 
and we have the best walleye in the whole world.
    [The statement of Mr. Seki follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
     Voice. How big is the walleye?
    Mr. Seki. They get big.
     Voice. Twenty-some pounds.
    Mr. Seki. But we have the biggest. You want to buy some?
    Mr. Simpson. I got a 31-pound chinook on my wall in my 
office. Anyway, thank you all for your testimony. We appreciate 
it. You know, Kevin, you said you have an obligation to carry 
out the wishes of your forefathers, something along those 
lines----
    Mr. DuPuis. Yes, we do.
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. Abide by the wishes of your 
forefathers, the obligations of your forefathers. We have that 
same obligation, and that is called meeting the treaty 
obligations that we have made in this country over the years 
that we haven't done.
    Mr. DuPuis. So are you guys going to start doing it 
tomorrow?
    Mr. Simpson. Well, we have been working on it for a number 
of years, and it is moving toward meeting those obligations 
that we are interested in. So, you know, we wish we could do it 
tomorrow, as long as we are moving in the right direction. 
Somebody once told me it doesn't matter where you stand. What 
matters is what direction you are headed.
    Mr. DuPuis. Meegwetch for that, Chairman, but can I make a 
comment to that? And we do understand that, and we do know 
that.
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah, I know.
    Mr. DuPuis. But 530 years is a long time, and we don't want 
it to have 530 years to reverse that.
    Mr. Simpson. I agree fully.
    Mr. DuPuis. Meegwetch. Thank you.
    Mr. Simpson. Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your 
testimony, and I appreciate all of the comments that you made. 
I mentioned this earlier. Betty is the true Minnesotan, and we 
are so glad to have on the committee, but I was also born in 
Minnesota, spent a lot of my childhood growing up on a lake 
cabin around Brainerd. So very familiar with where all of you 
come from. And my family sends me a big bag of tribal wild rice 
every year, and I depend on that. So I am very interested in 
all the concerns that you brought up today, and hopefully 
sometime when I am home visiting my family, I will get to 
visit.
    Mr. Seki. Meegwetch.
    Mr. Simpson. Now I know the challenge. We have got two 
Minnesotans here. [Laughter.]
    Ms. McCollum.
    Ms. McCollum. And the bright wild rice from every tribe in 
Minnesota tastes really good. I have never done a blind tasting 
test, but I love it all. So I don't have favorites when it 
comes to wild rice, but I do when it comes to fish walleye. To 
the chairman of Fond du Lac, one of the things that really has 
stayed with me the entire time last time I was at the 
reservation is when I was looking at the water bottle facility 
that is right outside of your tribal chambers, and so treaties 
matter. Get things right matter. So when you are in Fond du 
Lac's tribal facility, you walk right outside, and I won't 
mention the company because I am not going to give them any 
advertising, there is a company that that bottles water, and 
they are denied access to a lake, a beautiful Lake, right by 
them. It is all privately held, and it goes back to the Nelson 
Act and some of the other things that that happened where 
lumber barons here came in and got Congress to allow 
subdivision of property. And Red Lake was the one tribal nation 
that didn't do that. I want you to know that that is a powerful 
memory with me, and thank you for sharing from the heart.
    I would like you to, Chairman Fairbanks, to explain to the 
committee why it is important for wild rice beds in the Tamarac 
region, and how you have to get in a lottery basically to 
harvest wild rice that is in Minnesota's checkerboard in this. 
I was just shocked that Fish and Wildlife make you go in a 
lottery, and I hope Fish and Wildlife is listening.
    Mr. Fairbanks. Yeah, I mean, I know that is one part of the 
lottery system is, I know that when we talked to him yesterday, 
that we talked about the maintenance, just the levels of the 
lakes themselves that we have to have a certain level. 
Otherwise, if we get too much water, it gets uprooted, and then 
don't have a crop. And I know all the leaders from Minnesota 
understand what I am talking about, but the lottery system 
itself, the racers themselves have to sign up to get into this 
lottery to be one of the few that get to race on the lakes in 
the refuge, so that is one thing, so.
    Ms. Pingree. Can non-tribal members sign up? Can they get 
into the levee?
    Mr. Fairbanks. I don't believe, not so. No, I don't think 
so.
    Ms. Pingree. No, no, you have to be a tribal member.
    Mr. Fairbanks. Yeah.
    Ms. Pingree. Okay.
    Ms. McCollum. But it is still a lottery system, nail-
biting----
    Mr. Fairbanks. Yeah.
    Ms. McCollum [continuing]. And everything else.
    Mr. Fairbanks.
    Ms. McCollum. Chairman, see, I always learn from you, and 
so now I have learned about depreciation, interest, all that 
other kind of stuff, so I am going to go to school on that. You 
always teach me something new, and I am so glad that you do 
every time I meet you. So thank you.
    Mr. Seki. Mm-hmm. Meegwetch.
    Ms. McCollum. And I just want to put in a plug for the 
State of Minnesota. We are not perfect as a State, but the 
State has taken great strides--great strides--over several 
different governors. But right now, our lieutenant governor is 
a tribally-enrolled member, and we have tribally-enrolled 
members serving in our State legislature, and it has made a 
difference. It made a difference in how COVID was administered. 
I was on the phone calls with the State of Minnesota and the 
tribes. We still had work to do, still wasn't perfect, but we 
are learning from that. The State of Minnesota is discussing 
how to support schools right now because we know of the 
shortage, and we know that they are our future.
    And I was just with the humanities folks from Minnesota, 
and they have a brochure called Why Treaties Matter, which you 
are part of. As a social studies teacher, it is going teach why 
treaties matter, and it is going to teach dignity and respect, 
and the wrong that was done to the tribes there. So as things 
are different in different States, I am glad Minnesota is 
stepping forward, but I am here to say we need to do our tribal 
responsibility. Meegwetch.
    Mr. Simpson. Mr. Kilmer.
    Mr. Kilmer. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I will just say I 
appreciate your statement in terms of having the Federal 
Government step up and meet its treaty obligations. The U.S. 
Commission on Civil Rights did an update to its Quiet Crisis 
report called the Broken Promises report, and laid out stuff 
that Congress ought to do. We turned that into a bill called 
the Honoring Our Promises to Native Nations Act to step up with 
funding, and I would just commend it to you, and I commend it 
to my colleagues. With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Simpson. You yield back? I called on you because you 
are a salmon person----
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. And we got a little debate going 
here about salmon and walleye, and I wanted some support. 
[Laughter.]
    Mr. Kilmer [continuing]. Last panel.
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah. Thank you all for being here. I 
appreciate it very much.
    Okay. Edward Johnstone, Ron Suppah, Ann McCammon Soltis, 
and Ron Allen.
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                 NORTHWEST INDIAN FISHERIES COMMISSION


                                WITNESS

EDWARD JOHNSTONE, CHAIRMAN, NORTHWEST INDIAN FISHERIES COMMISSION 
    (NWIFC)
    Mr. Johnstone. Thank you, Chairman Simpson and members of 
the committee. My name is Ed Johnstone. I am a Quinault tribal 
member, and I am the chair of the Northwest Indian Fish 
Commission. The Northwest Indian Fish Commission was formed 
shortly after the United States v. Washington court, commonly 
known, the Bolt decision. Our tribal leaders knew that in that 
court case, which affirmed our off-reservation fishing rights, 
was important, and we looked at the court case, and so we 
created the Northwest Indian Fish Commission in 1974. That 
decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1979.
    I am honored to be here and represent the Northwest Indian 
Fish Commission. The people that have done this work around 
this table before me are instrumental in working with Congress 
and working with you folks to tell our story about the Indian 
people of the Pacific Northwest who signed those treaties in 
1854 and 1855, the Stevens treaties, and what it means to us, a 
salmon people, to our culture and way of life, that we view 
things in a different manner. We are holistic, that everything 
is connected.
    And to listen to the tribal leaders before me, that is 
telling the story of us as Indian people as Billy Frank, 
Junior, would say. And we experience all of that when I hear 
the health and so forth, and what it is to COVID when I worked 
with a young man for 32 years, two doors down from me, that I 
walked in one night late, and he said, hey, boss, and scared 
me. I was after paperwork. So was he. Within a week, he had 
died. He had visited his mother on the Muckle Shoot 
Reservation, caught COVID over Thanksgiving. She died a week 
before him. These are the stories of us Indian people and the 
needs that we have. We have that great need here in Indian 
Country in the Northwest and our salmon and our salmon story.
    It is in our testimony, in our background, and a lot of 
what you are hearing here is cultural identity. Our salmon 
people, our young people are losing that cultural identity and 
the connection to who we are through our fishing rights, 
hunting and gathering, all those things that you see in the 
testimony. And the different areas talk about, you know, Fish 
and Wildlife, the parks, the Forest Service, national parks, 
anywhere that we are connected, and the story of our funding 
are important because that talks about our access and our 
availability.
    And, you know, when a young lady that sits on Council for 
the Stillaguamish Tribe. For over 30 years, Stillaguamish have 
not finished. She fights every day for that right that she has 
never been able to do it herself, nor are those waiting, and 
the young ones don't really know or understand because they 
don't have the access. And so we are talking about Puget Sound, 
and listed stocks, and recovery, things like the Pacific salmon 
funds either through the PST, Pacific Salmon Treaty, and PSC, 
Puget Sound through the Puget Sound funding. All of these 
different funding sources that you see in our funding requests 
are key to us tribes and those rebuilding process to do the 
work. We know how to do that work. We put the data together. We 
own the Bible, and in the recovery plans on every watershed of 
the 20-member tribes, we have that. That is what everybody goes 
to. It describes how to rebuild those stocks or protect them, 
so it is all threaded in the information.
    So I am here to bring that message, as short as it might 
be, to answer questions, but we are very appreciative of this 
committee. We have come a long ways in understanding. Some of 
you have been around this table for a long time, and that is my 
congressman from the 6th on the end, who I always appreciated 
working with and listening to who we are as Indian people. But 
we are losing our identity, and then you get the rest of what 
happens when that happens. I work often with the Alaskan 
natives, and that is very much evident up in Alaska. So with 
that, I will close and just wait for remarks.
    [The statement of Mr. Johnstone follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
    
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Ed. Ron, you are next.
    Mr. Suppah. Good afternoon. Long time since when we were 
wandering around in the backyard, and we ran into each other.
    Mr. Simpson. A real long time ago, yeah.
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                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

               COLUMBIA RIVER INTERTRIBAL FISH COMMISSION


                                WITNESS

RON SUPPAH, CHAIR, COLUMBIA RIVER INTERTRIBAL FISH COMMISSION
    Mr. Suppah. First of all, I would like to thank you guys 
for allowing us to be here to testify today, and I appreciate 
my staff because they did an excellent job with preparing the 
written testimony that you guys each have, and they also did a 
good job with my oral testimony.
    Good afternoon, Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree, 
and members of the subcommittee. My name is Ron Suppah, and I 
have the honor of serving as chair of the Columbia River Inter-
Tribal Fish Commission, or CRITFC. I am a member of the 
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon. CRITFC was founded 
in 1977 by the four Columbia River treaty tribes, Confederated 
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes 
of Warm Springs Reservation, Confederated Tribes and Bands of 
the Yakama, and the Nez Perce Tribe. CRITFC provides 
coordination and technical assistance to these tribes. Our 
regional, national, and international efforts protect and 
restore our shared salmon steelhead, Pacific lamprey, and white 
sturgeon and resources, and the habitat upon which these 
species depend. CRITFC's work is critically important. That is 
why I appreciate the opportunity to share our funding 
priorities with you today. Collectively, the priorities ensure 
that we are able to continue exercising our treaty-reserved 
right to harvest fish on the Columbia River.
    First, CRITFC requests $5 million to fund implementation of 
the Columbia River In-Lieu and Treaty Fishing Access Site 
Improvement Act. This 2019 act recognized the failing 
conditions of fishing access sites, which Congress authorized 
$11 million to refurbish the site so meet human health and 
safety standards. The assessment of the sites was completed in 
2022. The additional funds will ensure architect design 
designed and initial construction continues to successfully 
implement the act. Second, CRITFC urges the subcommittee to 
provide funding for Columbia River fishing access site 
operation and maintenance. BIA contracts with CRITFC to provide 
these services beginning in fiscal year 2022. Congress provide 
$1.7 million for this program. We ask that the subcommittee 
continue to fund these costs for tribal member health and 
safety.
    Third, CRITFC asks the subcommittee to increase funding for 
law enforcement at Columbia River In-Lieu sites. CRITFC 
appreciates the additional appropriations that were provided 
previously to enhance public safety and law enforcement 
services. CRITFC conservation and criminal enforcement officers 
patrol 150 miles of the Columbia River in Oregon and 
Washington, providing policing services at 31 fishing access 
sites. Continued annual increases are important for retention 
and long-term stability of public safety. Fourth, CRITFC 
requests the subcommittee provide $624,000 in additional 
funding for Columbia River fisheries management. Funding 
shortfalls prohibit the achievement of tribal self-
determination goals for fishing management, ESA, recovery 
efforts, protecting non-listed species, conservation 
enforcement, harvest monitoring, and increased funding will 
allow CRITFC to make core fishery efforts and maximize habitat 
management in the Columbia Basin.
    Next, CRITFC urges the subcommittee to provide funding for 
youth program initiatives. CRITFC strives to build a tribal 
workforce of skilled Native-American scientists, policy 
analysis, technician managers who will serve tribes, fisheries, 
and natural resources management's needs. Without an increase, 
CRITFC and the member tribes may have to reduce youth 
programming that enhances career readiness and workforce 
development. Next, CRITFC encourages the subcommittee to 
increase funding for Columbia River treaty modernization. 
Rights protection implementation supports CRITFC participation 
in the negotiation to modernize the Columbia River Treaty. 
CRITFC urges ecosystem function as a third primary purpose of 
that treaty.
    In closing, I would like to thank you for listening today, 
and we appreciate the opportunity to be able to participate in 
this forum. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Suppah follows:]
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    Mr. Simpson. Thanks, Ron. I appreciate it.
                              ----------                              --
------

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

            GREAT LAKES INDIAN FISH AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION


                                WITNESS

ANN MCCAMMON SOLTIS, DIRECTOR, INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, GREAT LAKES 
    INDIAN FISH AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION
    Ms. Soltis. [Speaking native language.] I am Ann McCammon 
Soltis. I am the director of intergovernmental affairs with the 
Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, or GLIFWC as 
we call ourselves. The chair of our board, Jim Williams, who 
also is the chair of the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Chippewa, 
regrets that he could not be here today to speak to you, but I 
appreciate the opportunity to testify. So my testimony is going 
to focus on rights protection implementation within the BIA's 
budget and the Great Lakes restoration initiative within the 
EPA's budget, two very important line items to us.
    As you might recall from our testimony in previous years, 
we are an inter-tribal natural resource agency of 11 tribes 
that have reservations in what is now Michigan, Minnesota, and 
Wisconsin. These tribes sold or ceded tens of millions of acres 
of land in those States through treaties with the Federal 
Government in the mid-1800s. In exchange, they reserved their 
right to continue to live their life way on those lands by 
hunting, fishing, and gathering within the ceded territory. 
Court cases in the late 20th century reaffirmed the right of 
our member tribes to govern their members in the exercise of 
their rights by passing their own laws and enforcing those laws 
against tribal members into tribal courts. Because the rights 
are shared by multiple tribes, they created GLIFWC in 1984 to 
help ensure that Federal court orders were being properly 
implemented through intertribal coordination, cooperation, and 
management. Our full-time staff numbers around 75, doubling 
with part-time help during the spring fishing season when they 
take all those very tasty walleye. [Laughter.]
    Ms. Soltis. We have conservation officers that patrol the 
ceded territory and cite tribal members into tribal courts for 
violations of tribal law. We employ biologists, public 
information staff, and experts in language and traditional 
knowledge, and this traditional knowledge really embraces a 
world view in which all beings, humans and non-human, are 
interdependent, related, and deserving of our respect, and I 
think you have heard that from many of the panelists who have 
spoken today. GLIFWC appreciates the bipartisan support that 
our programs have received from this subcommittee over the past 
30 years. We believe that our programs are a good use of 
taxpayer dollars, one that is efficient, effective, and takes 
place at the most local unit of government that is appropriate, 
which is the inter-tribal level.
    We greatly appreciate the increase in RPI funding that we 
received in 2023, and as we committed to do in our testimony 
last year, we have used the increase to bring our pay scale up 
from the 2018 GS level to the 2023 GS level, which is 
wonderful. Unfortunately, we still can't afford to pay our 
employees at salaries commensurate with their State and Federal 
counterparts, and unfortunately, this led to us being able to 
not fill three conservation officer positions, which is 17 
percent of our conservation officer workforce. We did not 
receive any qualified candidates, which was unfortunate, and we 
really attribute that to the fact that we just can't match the 
salaries that they can get at the DNR or at the Fish and 
Wildlife Service, but any increase that Congress might choose 
to provide for us would go toward remedying that situation. And 
I would just note we do not get any separate law enforcement 
funding. It all comes through our rights protection 
implementation budget, so that is really the only source that 
we have for law enforcement.
    I worked with Federal agencies for, well, as you can see by 
the color of my hair, 30 years now, and, really, I think it is 
kind of an unprecedented time right now in many Federal 
agencies' commitment to listen to tribes, and to talk with 
tribes, and to consult with tribes, and to take things like 
traditional knowledge seriously. I think there are tremendous 
opportunities right now to advance tribal interests and really 
engage the Federal Government, but I keep saying to people it 
is a little bit like trying to drink from the proverbial fire 
hose. There are a lot of Federal agencies that have a lot of 
people working for them, and we have got 75.
    We are very thankful that our RPI base budget has allowed 
us to embrace those opportunities as much as we can--we are 
doing our best--and expand on them by educating agencies about 
tribal culture, world view, and knowledge. And, you know, those 
perspectives benefit everybody, not just tribal members. The 
benefits of our programs go beyond just tribal membership in 
other ways. Our conservation enforcement staff are often called 
on as members of our local and very rural enforcement community 
to rescue stranded ice fisherman, and to search for missing 
people, and to do all those things that, you know, all law 
enforcement agencies are called upon to do when you don't have 
a lot of them, and they are spread pretty thin.
    The other program I would like to briefly address, though, 
is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which it would be 
hard to overstate the importance of that program to our member 
tribes that have treaty rights in the Great Lakes. This 
committee has been very supportive of, and we have worked with 
EPA staff to develop and implement a distinct tribal program, 
the DTP, as we call it, that directs funding to EPA for further 
distribution to the tribes through Self-Determination Act 
contracting mechanisms, which has been really huge. This 
increased the flexibility that our member tribes have and 
provided certainty. We would just like to ensure that as the 
GLRI receives increases, so does the DTP. EPA has been a very 
committed and willing partner that has provided those 
increases, and we just want to ensure that they are codified so 
that they are not at the whim of one particular person.
    I see that my time has run out, so I will just say 
Meegwetch. Thank you for listening to me, and I appreciate the 
opportunity.
    [The statement of Ms. Soltis follows:]
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    Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Ann.
                              ----------                              

                                          Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

                       JAMESTOWN S'KLALLAM TRIBE


                                WITNESS

W. RON ALLEN, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, JAMESTOWN S'KLALLAM TRIBE
    Mr. Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members, and 
thank you for the opportunity. So I am Ron Allen. I am the 
chair for the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, located about 60 miles 
west of Seattle. I come here carrying a couple of different 
hats that are critically important to us.
    Mr. Simpson. One of those hats better be that salmon are 
great. [Laughter.]
    Mr. Allen. I am a commissioner representing the 25 tribes 
that are part of the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon. Our charge is 
to manage the harvest management from Alaska through British 
Columbia, trying to get by a few dams up the Snake River. You 
might have heard about them.
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah.
    Mr. Allen. So it is a very challenging job for our tribes 
to engage with our State counterparts, our Federal 
counterparts, and, of course, our Canadian counterparts. It is 
a very complicated world for us in the models that we have to 
model, the way we have to analyze the status of the stocks, et 
cetera, to come up with who gets to catch what and how much, 
all up and down the coast. And so what we are asking for in 
that venue is that in the rights protection, there are about 
$7.1 million for the 25 tribes to do our job with regard to 
that international forum. And so we are urging that that get 
bumped up to $8 million to help us deal with the complicated 
issues, including, really, in the very near future, we will be 
re-negotiating these annexes in the chapters that oversee all 
the species, from chinook, coho chum, sockeye, et cetera. So 
that is a very challenging job for us.
    I do want to say as the chairman, we fully support the 
National Congress of American Indians and National Indian 
Health Board, Affiliated Tribes. They all made strong 
recommendations to you categorically across the Indian programs 
for Interior and over in IHS. So we deeply appreciate their 
recommendations. I also am the chair of the BIA Interior TBIC 
Tribal Advisory Committee, so all these conversations that you 
heard from your previous panels, whether it is road 
maintenance, public safety issues, natural resource management, 
all the issues that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has to manage 
helping tribes elevate their sovereignty and their self-
governing authority. So they are very important agendas for us.
    One of them is an initiative that has been active now for 
30 years. It is called the Self-Governance Movement, and self-
government is about the tribes negotiating their fair share of 
Federal systems and taking over those Federal functions and 
moving out into our backyard so that we can manage those 
limited dollars that tribes receive from the Federal 
Government, from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or Indian Health 
Service, and make them more successful. The monies that go into 
the program that manages that program is called the Self-
Governance Office. It is inside the executive section of the 
budget. And so we would like to get a special line item for it 
because it covers a lot of responsibilities to administer the 
388 tribes that are actually currently participating and 
growing every year. So that is a huge issue for us, and we urge 
you to seriously consider that.
    We fight for those monies, you know, in terms of 
administering it. We are in the middle of negotiating the 
negotiated rulemaking for PROGRESS Act, which extends the Title 
IV to be consistent with Title V. Title V is IHS, and, 
unfortunately, when that was passed, COVID happened and we end 
up with this problem in terms of that the authorization in that 
act to negotiate rulemaking, and we are hopeful that you might 
be able to help us solve that problem. All we are looking for 
is an extension. It is very complicated, every one of those 
sections of the regulation, so that would be very helpful for 
us as we move that agenda forward. We are making decent 
progress, but April 21 is when the authorization of the 
administration ceases, and we need to fix that and move that 
agenda forward. But the self-governance line item is a critical 
issue for us as well.
    The last thing I want to emphasize is Fish and Wildlife, 
and, you know, I listen to the Great Lakes tribes talking 
about, you know, the Fish and Wildlife and the challenges. My 
tribe happens to be currently negotiating a refuge from Fish 
and Wildlife, and it is becoming very successful. So it is 
actually in our backyard, right in front of our village, and we 
want to take it over because we feel that we are as good as a 
steward as anybody out there, including Fish and Wildlife. And 
so there are lots of examples of that. There is an example in 
Minnesota. There is an example in Kawerak up in Alaska, and my 
tribe is joining that effort, the Bison Range over in Montana 
with the Salish and Kootenai. And so that line item that 
administers those programs, the refugee, et cetera, we really 
do need some help so that we can, as we negotiate it, we also 
negotiate the share of administering and managing those 
refuges, and so it is a critical issue for us.
    The administration currently is advancing this co-
management, co-stewardship, which is consistent with our 
culture about, you know, we are as good as steward with the 
guards of nature and natural resources as anybody out there. 
You know, we feel that we understood conservation way before 
the word emerged in the Federal system, so it is a big deal to 
us. So looking for ways to get additional resources into that 
line item for that would be very helpful for us.
    Outside of that, there is a long list, and you have been 
listening to it, you know, all day today and tomorrow. I always 
want to say thank you for continuing to have these hearings. We 
don't get these same opportunities over on the Senate side, so 
at least somebody is listening to us. I go back to the Sadie 
Yates days. I have been coming here for a lot of years, and so 
I just appreciate these opportunities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    [The statement of Mr. Allen follows:]
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    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. I appreciate all your testimony. 
Ms. Pingree.
    Ms. Pingree. Thank you. I am sorry. I apologize for having 
to leave a little bit during your testimony but just want to 
reinforce that anything that has to do with salmon is important 
to us on the East Coast as well, and we understand really the 
cultural importance and economic importance of that to the 
tribe, and just want to say that you are extremely well 
represented by Mr. Kilmer, who keeps all of you in our minds as 
often as he possibly can.
    Mr. Simpson. Mr. Kilmer.
    Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Chairman. I just wanted to give an 
opportunity to Chairman Johnstone, or Chairman Allen, or both 
to speak a bit about two programs that get funded through this 
subcommittee that really matter, one the BIA Rights Protection 
Implementation, and two, the Puget Sound Geographic Program. I 
think it would just be helpful to share with the subcommittee 
how tribes use those dollars, why they are important, the 
impact that they have.
    Mr. Johnstone. Thank you, Congressman. I would definitely 
yield to Chairman Allen----
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Johnstone [continuing]. That is I work for, that is who 
we represent----
    Mr. Kilmer. Me, too, by the way. Me, too. [Laughter.]
    Mr. Johnstone. I will be happy, you know, to help, you 
know, that conversation, but it is hugely important. Number one 
is the salmon. We are salmon people, and I listened to the 
Great Lakes folks talk about walleye, how important walleye is 
to them. That is who they are, right? That is the fish that 
sustained them along with the other things that they always 
have had access to and lived off from. That was their 
subsistence as salmon is to us. That is who we are from the 
salmon in Puget Sound, out the Straits and the Pacific Coast, 
as well as what other resources they provide to us and for us.
    So, you know, rights protection, Western Washington, Boldt 
fundamentally is the base that Congress came up with after the 
Boldt decision and the legislation that put us in the base. 
That is where we started. And back then, that was reflective of 
what we knew at that time in those court cases, which was U.S. 
v. Washington. So we built the structure around that to comply 
with what the judge ruled, and the conservation, and how to 
manage. And for years and years and years, until this committee 
took it up with 2010, that base had never been adjusted. We 
went for years and years, and for us on the Pacific Coast and 
Northwest, then you came along the Hoh v. Baldridge. Hoh v. 
Baldridge talked about river by river, run by run, and 
sustainability, but no funding.
    And then you get the Pacific Salmon Treaty that is that 
recognition between Canada and the United States to bring our 
fish back to those rivers, run by run, accountability to catch 
all the methodologies as we have gone forward. What the Coded 
Wire Tagging Program means to us, all of that data collection 
identified where our fish are caught, by whom, and when, as Ron 
talks about. And then you come to Rafidi in 1992, another case 
for our shellfish but does not come with implementation 
dollars. In 2010, this committee upped it by--I can't 
remember--$10 million? Ten million dollars. And then that goes 
to all the treaty areas and how that is applied, and we did 
what we did internally at Fish Commission with the member 
tribes to help step that up.
    And you saw these duties and responsibilities in these 
graphs, and then you saw the inflationary dollars, you know, 
going this way, and so those lines went up. Well, they were 
going down, and so increases are over the long term. I heard 
what we are talking about. We can't just do this overnight, but 
with your help, we have been able to make some steady gains, so 
critically important, same way as in Puget Sound with the 
multiple amounts of funding that we connect to recovery of 
salmon in Puget Sound, the Geographic Program, and then through 
Puget Sound Partnership, all of these different cells that we 
work together with, moving towards recovery of salmon, recovery 
of the watersheds to support the recovery of the salmon.
    You know, we are heavily embedded in climate scientists. We 
recognized that as an organization over a decade ago, hired a 
climate scientist. Then working through Congress and through, 
you know, even State legislative process to put together 
climate adaptation plans, and they thread all the way into this 
management. They thread all the way into the recovery plans. I 
mean, they are very vital and very important. And as we go more 
in that direction of trying to figure out the work that we were 
doing under the old before climate really became apparent and 
really is pressing on us now to do more to react, and so much 
is required in data. I mean, it is all embedded in our written 
testimony. Most all of them intersect. I mean, harmful algae 
bloom in the oceans. Ocean is too warm, can't harvest. You 
know, you have to test all the time. They all are threaded 
together.
    Mr. Kilmer. Thank you. Thanks.
    Mr. Simpson. Thank you. I didn't ask any questions because 
I didn't want to get off on salmon. [Laughter.]
    That is something I have been obviously interested in the 
last several years, and those of you from the Pacific Northwest 
know that we put out, oh, about 3 years ago, a Columbia Basin 
Initiative to try to restore salmon runs. Idaho salmon runs 
particularly interest me because I am from Idaho obviously, but 
they are going to go extinct if we don't do something. And we 
started off by saying, you know, there has got to be a way to 
save these dams on the Columbia River and are on the Lower 
Snake River and still say the salmon. We couldn't find one. We 
couldn't find anything that we had not tried, you know? We have 
tried everything in the world to try to save these dams and 
still save these salmon runs, and they continue to decline. And 
we came to conclusion the only way, as many fish biologists, as 
all the tribes have, as have many other people, that the only 
way you are going to save these salmons is to remove these 
dams. That gets a little controversial.
    And we took a political risk and put out our plan, and 
said, you know, let people look at it, and it started a 
conversation, and it has got to continue, in the Pacific 
Northwest about how we are going to save them, because some of 
the tribes are looking at it as, well, you are talking only 
about the Idaho salmon runs. Well, we expanded it that we have 
got to improve salmon runs throughout the Pacific Northwest. We 
had money in there and programs in there for Puget Sound. We 
had, you know, for different river basins, whether they were 
the John Day or the Yakima, and that kind of stuff. We got to 
improve them always, but everybody says to me, well, we got to 
improve the habitat. We are not only taking on dams. We just 
got to improve the habitat.
    Idaho has some of the best pure habitat for salmon in the 
world, in the lower 48 for sure. It is high elevation, cool 
waters, and all that kind of stuff. Could we improve the 
habitat at some point? Probably. That is not what we need 
because you can have the best habitat in the world. If the fish 
can't get there, it doesn't matter. I actually had a guy say to 
me, this guy worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, say to me 
that, well, do you know it is the dams that are causing these 
salmon to go extinct. I said because if you look at the 
recovery rates of the John Day or the Yakima, the fish that go 
to Idaho then have to go over four more dams. The only 
difference is they go over four more dams, and their SARS rate 
drops to squat, to extinction levels. And he says, well, maybe 
it is not the dams. I said what else is it? He said, it could 
be the distance they have to swim, and I said to him, so what 
you are telling me is, like, in 1940 or 1950 when they had 
hundreds of thousands of fish coming back, somehow those fish 
knew a secret path that they had to swim less distance than 
these do now. Well, maybe that wasn't smart. [Laughter.]
    Everybody is looking for an excuse, but some time we are 
going to have to face it, and if nothing else, we started a 
discussion in Pacific Northwest about what are we going to do 
about this. So I appreciate all of your work on it. To me, it 
is the most important issue that I have been working on in 
Congress in the 24 years I have been here, so I look forward to 
working with you.
    Mr. Allen. If I might, Mr. Chairman, yes, we agree with 
you. It is the four H's.
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah.
    Mr. Allen. It is the hydro. It is the habitat.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Allen. It is the harvest management. It is the 
hatcheries.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Allen. They have to be advanced in balance----
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Allen [continuing]. In order to save this particular 
set of species for the Northwest, from Idaho, all the way north 
to Alaska.
    Mr. Simpson. Yep.
    Mr. Allen. And we agree with you.
    Mr. Simpson. But if you look at Puget Sound, it is not dams 
that are challenged for salmon in the Puget Sound.
    Mr. Kilmer. Habitat.
    Mr. Simpson. It is other things. It is habitat and stuff. 
So, you know, you are right. It is all of them----
    Mr. Allen. Yes.
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. That we got to address.
    Mr. Allen. Imbalance, and your initiative is a very 
aggressive one, but it can be done.
    Mr. Simpson. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you all for being 
here today. I look forward to working with you on walleye and 
salmon. [Laughter.]
    That concludes our testimony for today, so we will restart 
tomorrow morning at----
     Voice. Nine a.m.
    Mr. Simpson [continuing]. 9:00 a.m. with the second day. So 
thank you all for being here.
    The committee is adjourned.
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