While there is so much talk about a political stalemate in Washington, a different story is unfolding in Indian Country. The U.S. government is quietly dismantling its oldest legal commitments.
This isn’t about closed parks. It is about the systematic defunding of treaty and trust responsibilities through mass layoffs.
Kerry Bird of the National Indian Education Association saw it directly. Seven of nine staff at the Office of Indian Education were laid off.
"If these terminations are allowed to go into full effect, Indian education programs as we know them would be functionally eliminated,"
Grants for Native schools freeze. This isn't a bureaucratic delay. It is the functional termination of the treaty right to education.
Something Bird also told Congress really stuck me. The education guarantee is a debt owed, not a choice.
The crisis is widespread. In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski describes Alaska Native families choosing between food and fuel. Typhoon Halong destroyed winter food supplies. The federal safety net washed away to parts unknown.
When food benefits stall and health services are strained, it violates the legal promises of shelter and well-being made in exchange for millions of acres of land
Mohegan Vice Chairwoman Sarah Harris named the core problem in her testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
"The complete lack of transparency.”
Native governments are problem solvers, but they cannot plan in a vacuum.
Senator Brian Schatz stated the legal truth.
"Native programs are not charity. They are the law."
This shutdown reveals something simple, brutal. To the U.S. government, these sovereign-to-sovereign agreements appear to be optional. The empty desks in federal offices are not a symbol of a paused government.
They are a symbol of broken law.
