Meg Jones

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

GREEN BAY - The children had just awakened from a nap and were still rubbing sleep from their eyes when they pulled up tiny chairs at two small U-shaped tables.

Bowing their heads to say grace in their Oneida native language, the Head Start students were about to snack on Kiwi slices and rice cakes washed down with cups of water.

The Oneida Nation spends $233,000 annually on its Head Start program, which oversees 152 children at two locations on the reservation. Almost three-fourths of Head Start funding for the Green Bay-area tribe is paid through federal funds — roughly $172,000.

But all federal funds flowing to the Oneida and other Wisconsin tribes, as well as Indian tribes across the country, have dried up since the federal government shutdown.

Wisconsin tribes are using their own funds to continue to provide education, health, law enforcement, food pantries and other services, but if the shutdown lasts much longer — and there's no sign of the impasse ending any time soon — some services could be curtailed or cut, hiring might be frozen, workers could be laid off and other drastic measures taken.

"We're fortunate we have the infrastructure and manpower here. A lot of tribes don't have that," Oneida Vice Chairman Brandon Yellowbird Stevens said. "We can supplant the loss of funds with emergency contingency funding."

But the tribe's emergency funding is not limitless and it's designed for emergencies, and no one knows how long the federal shutdown, already the longest, will last.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has furloughed 2,295 of its 4,057 employees, the New York Times reported.

When Oneida self-government coordinator Candice Skenandore tries to contact someone at the bureau, which she does daily for her job, she gets automatic email replies that the person she's trying to reach is on furlough for an indefinite time. It's the same for voicemail.

Skenandore is in the middle of negotiations for a new funding agreement for the tribe's health services and she's waiting for grant approvals and funding OKs for several programs. But everything is on hold and Skenandore knows it will take several weeks, if not months, for federal employees to get up to speed once the shutdown ends.

Skenandore is supposed to attend a tribal self-governance advisory board meeting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, but she's not sure if the meeting will be held.

The shutdown "is stopping us from doing what we need to do to improve our health services," said Skenandore, whose position is federally funded. The tribe is paying her salary during the shutdown.

About 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives receive basic services from the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Some tribes, like the Oneida, administer services funded by BIA money, while other tribes have their programs run by federal workers, many of whom are tribal members.

Services tied to decades-old treaties

Because of treaties negotiated decades ago, the money funneled to tribes for health care, education, law enforcement and other services is in exchange for tribal nations giving up millions of acres of land in the 1800s. In effect, the tribes prepaid with land for funds now held up by the shutdown.

There's no guarantee tribes will ever see that money. Stevens said the Oneida tribe never got the money it was owed and was not paid during the government shutdown of 2013.

"We ceded millions of acres of land and, in return, the United States said they would pay for health and education," Stevens said.

The Oneida tribe was based in New York at the time and gave up 3 million acres. It later moved to Wisconsin.

Stevens points out that the Oneida were among America's first allies, fighting alongside American troops and helping feed George Washington's army when it was hunkered down at Valley Forge during the brutal winter of 1777. The tribe continues to receive a symbolic annuity payment of $1,800 each year from the Treasury Department as part of a treaty signed at the end of the Revolutionary War.

The tribe operates a 48-bed nursing home and a health center that handles 350,000 patient visits annually, offering family practice, internal medicine, behavioral health, dental, optical and public health services among other things. Its pharmacy dispenses between 1,000 and 1,200 prescriptions daily, said Debbie Danforth, comprehensive health director for operations.

Last week Danforth was on a conference call with other tribal health directors and learned that while some tribes are able to continue to provide services during the shutdown like the Oneida, some might have to close their clinics in a few weeks.

'It's truly scary'

"It's truly scary for some tribes," Danforth said.

Of the Oneida Nation's roughly $490 million 2019 fiscal year budget, about $50 million comes from federal grants and self-governance funds. There are 17,165 enrolled members in the Oneida tribe with more than 4,400 living on the reservation, including 1,000 who are 55 or older.

"Our message to Congress: these should not be discretionary, we shouldn't be the first to be cut," Stevens said.

Wisconsin's other tribes are facing the same difficulties as the Oneida.

The Stockbridge-Munsee tribe is the largest employer in Shawano County with about 900 employees. The tribe does not have its own school system but provides tutors and a public safety officer for school districts where tribal members attend, in Gresham and Bowler. It handles snowplowing and repairing roads for many smaller communities in Shawano County.

About 1,475 people are enrolled in the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe with 500 living on the reservation.

"But many of those are aging so their health care needs are great," Stockbridge-Munsee President Shannon Holsey said.

"A majority of our citizens are no longer in the workforce. They're living on fixed incomes and they look to the tribal nations for needs such as transportation to medical appointments and healthy food distribution through Meals on Wheels," Holsey said.

The biggest priority for the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe is its rural health clinic in Bowler, which offers general medicine, dental, behavioral health, chiropractic and community health services as well as a pharmacy. Since there are no buses or public transportation, the tribe shuttles members who cannot get to a doctor on their own and sends a registered nurse to help people who forget to take their medicine.

The tribe is paying for services normally provided by federal funds out of its reserves but Holsey said there's a limit to that, especially for a small tribe like the Stockbridge-Munsee.

Lac du Flambeau tightens spending

Two weeks into the shutdown, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa decided to freeze all capital expenditures until further notice and told employees to be frugal in spending. Not all federal grants have been affected by the shutdown but some have and tribal administrators are meeting regularly with the tribe's accounting staff.

"We want to avoid disruption in services wherever possible and we are working carefully to determine the impact to our general fund and to avoid layoffs," Lac du Flambeau President Joseph Wildcat Sr. said in a statement.

The Menominee Indian Tribe is also using reserve funds to keep essential programs open, Chairman Douglas Cox said.

Like all tribes, the Menominee use a mix of funding to pay for services ranging from a police force and tribal court system to a large health clinic and K-8 school. Menominee Indian High School is a state school district and is not affected by the shutdown.

There are 9,300 enrolled Menominee members with about 4,000 living on or near the reservation.

Cox estimates about 60 percent of the tribe's $19 million annual operating budget is funded through federal grants. Cox and other leaders are reviewing the tribe's finances daily during the shutdown to ensure services continue to be provided.

Cox is worried money due to the tribes from this federal government shutdown will never be paid because Congress would have to approve paying those funds separately, just like it is expected to do for federal workers who are not getting paychecks.

"We certainly hope this (shutdown) doesn't continue and they come to some resolution so they're no longer holding back our dollars for something so frivolous," Cox said in a phone interview.