Fronteras

Federal lawmakers appear to be close to a budget agreement, which would end the now 16-day government shutdown.

Meanwhile there’s been widespread impact on Indian Country that will take weeks, if not longer, to recover from.

Impact aid to schools has been delayed. Federal impact aid supplements school budgets on or near the reservation much like property taxes do for schools outside of Indian Country. Many school officials depend on those payments.

The sequester deeply affected tribal programs, like impact aid, in the spring. Adding the shutdown on top of it is making matters worse.

The USDA’s Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, which provides food for low-income families, was able to get the food out before they had to lock their doors Oct. 1. But there’s no one to distribute the food, according to Janie Simms Hipp, director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, University of Arkansas School of Law. They’ve all been furloughed.

The Yurok Tribe in northern California is working with 20 percent of its tribal workforce on furlough. Tribal officials say the food there has gone bad.

The South Dakota tribes digging out from this month’s blizzard need heat assistance.

On the Pine Ridge Reservation, its Commodity Supplemental Food Program has gone bust. This program provides food for families who don’t qualify for food stamps.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota are worried about its agriculture leases, which generate a big percentage of tribal income and jobs. They have been held up by the shutdown, according to Cheyenne River Sioux Vice Chairman Wayne Ducheneaux.

There’s also been impacts on tribal oil and gas producers getting permits to drill in North Dakota, according to National Congress of American Indians’ Amber Ebarb.

The Navajo Nation president is worried about meeting deadlines to move forward on purchasing a coal mine. Erny Zah, spokesman for President Ben Shelly, says the project would provide many jobs for the tribe.

A few tribes in northern Arizona are experiencing an unexpected windfall. Tourists some traveling thousands of miles on trips of a lifetime have been turned away at the gate of the Grand Canyon. They’re finding there are other ways to see the canyon from tribal land.

In Alaska, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, a tribal nonprofit that provides many social services for Alaska Natives, said the BIA’s general assistance payments for needy individuals are being affected, which already runs out in the middle of the fiscal year for its service area.

The National Congress of American Indians recalled how the 1995-96 shutdown affected tribes: All 13,500 Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) employees were furloughed; general assistance payments for basic needs to 53,000 BIA benefit recipients were delayed; and an estimated 25,000 American Indians did not receive timely payment of oil and gas royalties.