NATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICAN INDIANS

55TH ANNUAL CONVENTION

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

OCTOBER 18, 1998

NCAI


Organizational Reports on Welfare Reform in Indian Country: A National Forum
Sunday, October 18, 1999 Myrtle Beach Convention Center Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

TAPE TRANSCRIPTION

P R O C E E D I N G S

THE CHAIRMAN: -- welcome you here today. Ron.

RON: Thank you, Eddie. I really do appreciate your willingness to chair this session and chair -- Bobby Whitefeather, you know, was chairing one of our other sessions that we've had. And it's really great to see tribal leaders come in here and help us orchestrate these workshops on welfare reform. You know we've been dealing with this issue for a couple of years now. And a lot has happened in the last couple of years as we figure out how we're going to deal with the welfare reform and its impacts on our tribes and communities.

It is my understanding we have somewhere in the range of 20 to 25 tribes or tribal organizations who actually are running TANF programs. And we're learning a lot from their experiences. I know that is a big issue for us. And the rest of us are managing to survive one way or another with the states and various programs with the states. So one of the things that we were trying to do, and I know Dr. Eddie Brown was also contributing a great deal to this effort in helping us understand what this impact is -- what this whole devolution is with our tribes and our tribal operations. And so we just need to make sure that we're prepared to make the argument and make the case with the kind of data and the kind of research that will help persuade the Congress to make some legislative adjustment to the Act that actually provides the kinds of authorities and resources that the tribes need.

There's been a number of studies that have been conducted by different individuals and organizations. I know Dr. Brown is one of them, but I know that these studies are issues and I'm assuming that we are going to be getting into the discussion of some of their observations and findings today just to get a better handle on how we're handling it. Even though we have, right now, a rather small group, I am very appreciative of you because you know in many of our circles, no matter what we're dealing with, whether it's the welfare reform issues, the gaming issues, tribal court and enforcement, et cetera, it's the way it seems like it always is. You have a small cadre of tribal leaders and staff people who lead the way and the rest of the Indian country benefit from all your hard work and your understanding of what the issues are. But Levens, who was here -- it has been very, very helpful for us at NCAI for us to help to take a lead role on the national scale so that we could figure out exactly what's going on and what are the variances in each of our tribal communities. Because whether it's Porch Creek or here at Catawba country or up in Alaska, I mean, we have different situations in every one of our communities and we need to know what are the circumstances that we need.

I think that our arguments about these issues and concerns that we have has been persuasive. And you probably aware, we were awarded a three-year grant from the Kellogg Foundation. And it's a $1 million grant, I don't remember the exact number, but it's close to $1 million and it's going to help us evaluate the devolution process and the impact of this Act onto our communities and to examine tribal options. Now all these things are going to help us shape out what our game plan is in terms of how to deal with the Hill. I know that they are going to be focusing in on five specific areas. There probably will be others, but these areas of job creation, worforce development issues and problems that we have, the tribal educational needs and the impacts and concerns that we have in that area with regard to the welfare programs or eligibility issues, child care and children services, transportation, housing and elder care. The impacts of the new change in conditions on Medicaid, Medicare and managed health care initiative will certainly affect us.

And last but not least, the tribal data collection and clearinghouse needs. But those are definitely areas that we have that we need to deal with. And I think that it is going to be very important for us to have our act together to deal with the Congress. You know we are just now still working with the Congress in helping it conclude its work from the 105th second session and tomorrow morning we will be right back on the phone with the last minute appropriation issues. And you're probably all aware that there's a whole lot of posturing going on. And the posturing between the Democrats and the Republicans and they're all posturing for the upcoming elections and who is going to put themselves in the better position in the next session.

So regardless of how we fare, in other words if the Democrats, you know, get a little more control or gain a few seats in the House going into the next session, that will probably help us. But we should expect and prepare for the worst. I mean if the Republicans get more control over the House and they get more headstrong about what they believe is in our best interests, then we're going to have to deal with that. And then that's why there are arguments or persuasion -- you know, the kinds of data that we can present and provide to the Congress to persuade these congressional leaders and administration that some changes are necessary to affect us and to help our situation. We are going to have to have a more compelling argument.

So regardless of how it turns out, we have a heck of a job in front of us and I know that you will be helping us shape out what that argument is, what our materials are we'll be using, what the data is that we are going to use to make our case so that we can put ourselves in a better position. You have a number of grantees who are here who are going to make some presentations and a number of tribal organizations who are going to share their experiences so we will gain from these experiences and from these observations and the recommendations that come out of this thing.

So NCAI is very delighted to be able to help out and to help facilitate this effort. We're looking for your leadership and your guidance on how we're going to handle it. And we're basically going to be doing it together. You see in our theme here for this convention, you know, it's many tribes, one family. And we've got to remember that. We are many tribes, but we are one family and we have to be on the same page. That's how we are going to win this particular battle in the war we're in. So I thank you. I know you'll have a good workshop. I've got to run off to another one right now on gaming issues, so thank you again, Eddie, for chairing and moderating this workshop, and God be with you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ron. The way we're going to do this this morning, they first told me they were going to have six chairs and I could get the whole panel up here, but they wound up with four. And what we're going to do is I have the first two presenters on the panel. As Randy and Virginia complete their presentation they will leave the stage and if you would I'd like for the next presenters, which is Ms. Sanchez will be for the Indian Manpower Consortium, would be next. So when they leave if you will come on up to the table while David is doing his. And if we go, we're going to go right by the printed agenda. I think we have one that has not arrived yet, but we'll stay as close as we can.

I'm not exactly sure how much time they've allocated them all. What was the last number you had? Twenty minutes? Okay, so we're -- and I'll try to keep close to the time. I'll try not to cut you off in the middle of a sentence but I will let you know that your 20 minutes has expired. But please, again, let's be sure that we all realize that we're here to gain information. There's a wealth of information among us if we just take advantage of that. So to start today off, I'm going to call on Mr. Randy Blue from the Catawba Nation to start with the report first. Randy?

MR. BLUE: First off I would like to welcome you all to the State of South Carolina and down to this beautiful city of Myrtle Beach. And welcome to our church services this morning. No, I'm sorry. But, generally where I would be at on Sunday morning would be at our church services.

But for my presentation this morning, basically the gist of it is how could they not know. In some of our findings in going out in area in Region 1 we learned quite a few things. One of the first things that we learned was who's to blame for letting the white man come ashore. One of our first visits was with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, Aquinnah. And we found out that they were the ones to blame for letting the white man come ashore and even helped them to survive. So we can kind of put that blame on them. I used to blame Christopher Columbus for my light skin color and my hair and also my receding hairline. But now I know who's truly to blame. So I kind of put that on them right now.

But also during the many visits that we had with the tribes, we learned that the state government's relationships with the tribal governments in Region 1 varied just as the training weather in the states varied. In the State of North Carolina, the tribal state relationship there is somewhat different from some of the others, especially out west. They know that the Cherokee tribe exists and deal with them to some degree. In Maine, the state relationship with the tribes there is non-existent in some issues and very relevant in others. In the state of Michigan, the state and tribal governments have somewhat equitable relationship with each other. And again, only on some specific issues. In the State of South Carolina, the tribal-state relationship is somewhat apologetic and unknowing. During the visit with the state of South Carolina people that work with TANF, at our tribal offices -- we call our tribal office Long House -- it was found that in the South Carolina's TANF plan is stated that there is no federally recognized Indian tribe in the State of South Carolina.

This was a big blow to us whenever we read this in the plan. Their plan was written in 1996, sorry. We were re-recognized in 1993. How could they not know that we existed?

These are only just a few examples of some of the relationships of tribes and states here in Region 1. And I am sure they are true to form throughout all of the Indian country.

During our on-site visits with different tribes and states, we found that we are not just educating the tribes but we are also educating the state employees working with TANF. Some of the comments that we have heard from them are, I had no idea. Or I had never heard that before. Again, how could they not know? The Indian population in area 1 is somewhat less than a tenth of a percent. But we can make a pretty big stink when we get all our stuff together. And it seems that that is what needs to happen in Region 1. With the tribe's population impact being very minimal and with its smallness in size, it leaves them to be vulnerable to the larger, more aggressive predators out on mother earth.

To overcome the smallness in size, there has to be a creative approach to our plan or a plan put into place. Just as small animals band together or rather, join to fight the more aggressive and larger predators, the tribes in the east region would come out the victors instead of the victims if united with one another. In the east, in order for us to become the victors rather than the victims, we need to become partners and band together instead of being competitors or enemies as it has been in some of our past histories. For this to happen, it seems like the key is to getting our strength in numbers. We need to combine our efforts into consortiums such as what the tribes in California have done. Not exactly like those in California because as we all know, each area and tribe has different and unique special needs. But something similar could be done if possible. If a consortium is not the answer for tribes, then other options need to be explored.

One of the other options that is available that the law allows is doing tribal-state agreements or government agreements. This is where a tribe can contract with the state to provide services with the programs that they already run to the TANF recipients. This TANF law has opened the door to different possibilities to us in Indian country. We need to take advantage of this opportunity that we have before us. Maybe not to run a TANF program, but to explore the different opportunities that this law affords us as federal tribes. For the longest time, and I know that we have all heard this before, that Indians in olden times said the word "how." We no longer say how, we say chance. And not the games of chance, either. We just want the chance to be able to help our people. Again I say, how could they not know what this welfare law can do to Indian country. Thank you for the opportunity I had to speak with you all. Oh, and by the way, it's not you all, it's not you guys, it's y'all. Just remember to say y'all a lot and no one will know that you're from out of town. Kind of drag out your speaking a little bit and they'll think you're from the South. But thanks for letting me give a report on this. Virginia Aymond is going to give some of the cons to TANF as far as she sees it for the people in the east.

MS. AYMOND: I'm not that good with microphones. I have some real problems -- can everybody hear me? Okay. I believe that TANF is part of a mainstream of Indian people. The last several years now, the way Congress has been going, everything that has been coming down is to mainstream each of us. Making us state Indians again. That's -- I see this as another major step that we will have to depend on states for the federal share. And we as tribes are responsible for the 25 percent or 30 percent, depending on what the state share is. There's several issues that affect us as Indian people.

Number one, they are characterizing us in a category and they are labeling us also. I knew that TANF was coming down several, several years because of the process that has started going through. We need to be unified and work together and not fall into the blanket effect. And what I mean by the blanket effect is they put a blanket on the floor and they throw the dollars and then we all go fight for our share. And part of this is going to be taking place. I know in the State of Maine, we have no agreement. They will not talk to us. We've tried to have several meetings on the part of Social Security Act, Title 4E, which is the Foster Care. They told us that they will give us 70 percent, which is the federal share for that part of it, but we will have to come up with the 25 percent. Now where are we going to get 25 percent. And then they brought the question up of the Indian Education and Self-Determination Act, so I just moved away from there.

I think that TANF will also create a lot of child welfare problems, a lot of domestic problems and other problems that are going to hurt our Indian people. I have a real deep concern with TANF. I have been involved form the beginning, and I read every bit of the Federal Register. The states get bonuses, the tribes don't. So we're not treated equally. So I don't believe that we have a government-to-government relationship concerning TANF. Because if we did, we would not have to go through the state. We should be dealing with the federal government. Because we are a sovereign people, we are a nation versus jumping through all the hoops and not having the funds to do it with. It's a very expensive program, especially for tribes that don't have funds or even for tribes that can supplement the state's amount.

So, for me, I see it as number one, some of our sovereign issues because we do have sovereignty. And number two, it sets us up to fail. So we have to be really innovative and do the best we can with what it has. And look at it real well. At one point in TANF we are penalized 15 or 20 percent, and then on top of that, we're penalized another 25 percent. So we are penalized twice. And I had asked John Bushman who makes that decision. He said we do. So with the way things have been going with the state, of course they're going to -- they may penalize us twice. So I have a real fear and a real concern. With Indian country, we see children as creations of the creator. We see women as being very, very sacred. And the state, therefore, is the way they are going to take some of that away. Because those bonuses for children that are born out of wedlock, the more they get off the system, the more some more money comes in for them.

So we're in a total different position because we are a people. Whether the lady is pregnant or not, that child is still a creation of our people. And it's going to affect us. Because we are going to start saying to the people that, don't have any more children. And eventually, down the road, in my eyes, I see that some genocide is going to take effect. So I'd like to thank you all for allowing me this opportunity to be here. I thank Mr. Tullis for being the moderator. And I thank Randy Blue from Catawba. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Virginia. Next on our list representing the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Mr. David Thunder Eagle. Let me ask before, David, excuse me. Has anyone got a question that you'd like for Randy or Virginia to clarify something or to do it? We have a question over here.

As Leland's going over for the question, just one note. I do not have a written report back at the table, but I will have that later. They do not have a copier set up, but it's completely different than the oral presentation. It tells you some of the things that we did do and are in the process of doing.

MS. BROWN: Shirley Brown, Sioux St. Marie Tribe with Chippewa Indians. I don't have a question, but I did want to make a comment about the foster care issue and how we ended up resolving that in our state, which is Michigan. And as Randy had commented, sometimes the state will work with us if -- they'll agree to things. And that's something we're working on in TANF and if they want to. So it's kind of been a back and forth and it has come a long way in the last year.

I'm not real familiar with the Title 4E Act but I was just asking Nancy about that because what our tribe did was pursue a licensed placement agency for children in foster care so that we have a purchase of services with the state. So what that means is we get administrative rate for every tribal child that goes into foster care and then also the money to pay the foster care rate so that we can hire our own caseworkers. And the purchase of service agreements says that if that child is identified as belonging to the Sioux tribe, they must automatically refer that to our own placement agency. So that -- and I guess that was a way that we found to work with the state even though we may not have wanted to, but we have total control over the children that go into foster care and our own workers. And then we work with the plan and the parents and provide the services. And so I think that's an option that maybe other tribes may want to look into because it's about one of the only other angles to get in there to have control over your children once they go into foster care. And it's worked for us.

A PARTICIPANT: How long have you been licensed?

MS. BROWN: Since December of 1985 we've had our own child placement agency. Thank you.

CHAIR: Any more questions or comments?

MR. CUMMINGS: Leo Cummings, Affiliated Tribes. Randy, maybe, has there been any tribes that you've worked with that had any dealings with the state or within their own programming that are unique that has helped their people with welfare reform?

MR. BLUE: As of right now, the one that comes to mind is the Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts -- I mean, not Massachusetts -- yeah, that's right, Massachusetts. And they are in the process of -- they are not going to be running their own TANF plan but they are going to be working out an agreement with the state. And the state has been working very well with them and they know that their needs of their people on the nation there. But as to the specifics, I am not sure legally.

MR. CUMMINGS: Yeah, I think that was one thing that would have been very interesting as we went along this morning is finding out something unique and innovative that has happened with tribes where they have met and faced welfare reform for their people through new ways, change.

MR. BLUE: Right. And what's going on right now is with most of the tribal governments, we are finding out that they are not really digging into TANF at all because of the negative aspects and the negative things that surround TANF. You know, as we all know from past, that welfare has a big negative to it. And the people are just not willing to get into.

MR. CUMMINGS: Yeah, I've seen that too, also, that really tribes have not taken on TANF because really there wasn't enough resources.

MR. BLUE: Right.

MR. CUMMINGS: But, working with a state-operated TANF, innovative ways, I think that's something we all need to learn and deal with.

MR. BLUE: Right. That's what we're seeing. That's the key so that we do not have to, as the saying goes, recreate the wheel. That's why we're saying that it looks like the key to this is probably tribal state agreements. And that seems like it's the way to go because of all the data collections that you have to have and the other things that you have to have in place. There's no sense in us having to recreate the things that the state already has had in place for many, many years.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, Randy and Virginia. We certainly thank you for your being here. Our time has expired on the first one, so I'm going to turn the mike over to David Thunder Eagle, who will report on behalf of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council.

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: Okay, batter up, Lorenda, you're on deck? Okay, good morning. Don't let Randy fool you. They speak a secret language down here. I was on a plane coming into Charleston last night and this guy started talking to me. I couldn't understand a word he said. Y'all, it's more than that. They have a secret language. And I said, well, I'm from Alaska. And then he started speaking English. This is a picture of Alaska. by the way. Oh, that's not good. It's plugged in. Okay, is this plugged in? That would be something, wouldn't it? I go through all this trouble and have this thing die on me.

Anyway, I flew from winter into summer. And that's a picture of the mountaintops over near Juneau that I saw as I was coming down here. And I called my wife last night and sure enough it snowed in Anchorage. Okay. Get started here in just a second.

My name is David Thunder Eagle. I am the Director of Planning and Education at Cook Inlet Tribal Council, which is located in Anchorage, Alaska. There is about 100,000 Alaskan natives and American Indians living up in Alaska and about 20,000 that live actually in Anchorage, where our tribal headquarters are at. I have two friends here with me today I'd like to introduce, Norm DeWeaver and Bonnie Eastburn. Norm came up to visit us a couple of years ago and I took him to lunch and gave him a free office and he stayed. So we've got Norm all to ourselves sometimes. And the reason I mention Norm, though, he's been instrumental in our project of developing and implementing welfare reform in Alaska. He's been one of our consultants, so he's working for us also, now. There's no free lunch.

And his friend, Bonnie Eastburn, is also one of our key consultants. She was our director of Public Law 102-477, coordinated that program for many years. And then she got consultant-itis and she's one of our consultants, too, but she's doing a real good job. Our third consultant, Dr. Edward Doe, was our main technician developing databases and reporting requirements and things of that nature and writing TANF plans and things of that nature. He wasn't able to make it today. But those are three key people that worked on this with us.

Okay, unlike the lower 48, where individual tribes can run TANF programs, in the law, the 226 tribes in Alaska were not named in the law to be able to run TANF programs, okay? In Alaska, there are 12 Alaskan Native Regional Corporations that were named as eligible entities, okay? And they, in turn, serve the 226 tribes. And it was just a matter of efficiency. Because to run 226 various different welfare reform programs would be very difficult to do. And so Congress decided to award the contracts only to the 12 Alaskan native regional corporations, which are all supported by the 226 tribes and there is one reservation-based tribe, the Metlakatla tribe, on that island. And that is the one single tribe that also, along with us, the 12 regional corporations, that can run TANF. And this is, of course, the law that enabled all this to happen.

The 12 regional corporations are the Alaska Pribilof Islands Association. Their headquarters are in Anchorage but the tribes are on a 1,500 mile arc that go out into the Pacific Ocean. And those tribes are very remote and scattered on islands that would stretch from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean if you overlaid it on the United States.

The Arctic Slope Native Association, that's in Barrow, Alaska, up in the north slope. The Association of the Village Council Presidents, which is in Bethel. And they serve 52 tribes and about 20,000 Alaskan natives who live in those villages. Bristol Bay Native Association in Dillingham, where all the salmon were supposed to come up this year, it didn't. They serve about 32 tribes. Central Council of Tlingit-Haida Indian Tribes, and that's about 22 tribes down in southeast Alaska, headquarters in Juneau. And Chugachmiut, which is the tribes around the Prince William Sound. Cook Inlet Tribal Council in Anchorage, Alaska. Copper River Native Association is in Glenallen. Kawerak that's up in Nome. Kodiak Area Native Association is the Island of Kodiak. The Maniilaq Association serves the tribes around Kotzebue. Metlakatla Indian Community, like I mentioned. The Tanana Chiefs Conference are the tribes of the interior, the Athabascan Indians and their headquarters is in Fairbanks.

There are huge variations from one part of Alaska to another concerning the needs of welfare applicants and recipients and resources available. In many villages unemployment exceeds 70 percent. There's a lack of employment opportunities. And there's a lot of rural to urban migration. The severity is so difficult in Alaska that it caused an amendment to the welfare reform law that allows any village tribe that has more than 50 percent unemployment to not have to meet those mandatory work requirements, okay. And so that makes it not so bad. But a lot of the villages that are just below that 50 percent and so they've got a tough time. Because there's a lot of places up there with no jobs. It's really difficult to get people transitioned from welfare to work activities.

Now, in Alaska the range that we have got going up there, everything from doing absolutely nothing, to doing state contracting, to doing full-blown TANF. We are doing a little bit of everything. Now Cook Inlet Tribal Council received the ANA Information Dissemination Project. And what I'm going to go through now and some of the problems we are still faced with.

Prior to TANF, a state-wide tribal organization was loosely formed. It's called the State-Wide Single Point of Contact, the SPOT. All 12 regional corporations has a single person that the state contacts in matters of welfare reform plus Metlakatla. And we've been meeting since 1996. Before TANF was a law, before Alaska implemented their welfare reform law. So we were really ahead of the game. And when we got ANA Information Dissemination Project, we had already been meeting for a year on how to implement welfare reform. Because the State of Alaska passed it even before the federal government did. So we were already ahead of the game. So we had a year-long planning prior to the TANF program. And so the ANA Project just continued the process.

We have an Alaskan native welfare reform website which I'd like you all to note, http://www.citci.com/welfare, don't forget the last "i" because if you don't do that, you won't get Alaska, you'll get somebody in California. Somebody took c-i-t-c, so there's another "i" there. Okay. And that is a web page that we developed with the welfare reform ANA Technical Assistance Project. And Norm DeWeaver maintains that for us. And if you want the most current federal regulations on TANF, they are posted on there. You can download them. If you want any kind of information about Public Law 102-477, anything to do with employment and training, anything to do with welfare reform and related programs, it's posted on this very user-friendly web page that Norm maintains for us. And I know that Leland McGee accesses it. Lorenda said last night that she uses it. There's a newsroom, you can even converse with one another. You can get technical assistance from it. I think you'll find it very valuable. And if you don't listen to anything else I say today, that's fine. Just go the web page and you'll get lots of useful day-to-day technical information that you will need if you're involved in running TANF or a state contract of services.

Okay, like I mentioned, we're doing lots of different things up in Alaska. The Tanana Chiefs Conference are the only ones so far that have submitted the first TANF plan in Alaska. And they will implement it January 1. Interestingly, it is only for tribal members of federally recognized tribes in the Doyone (phonetic) Region, as they call it around Fairbanks. If you are a member of a tribe from another area, the state has to serve you. That's the deal that they were able to make. It's a pilot project. And the reason they consider it a pilot project is because the stupid state legislature won't match the funds. We have a dollar-for-dollar match in Alaska, but the state legislature which is controlled by very conservative republicans which seems to be the trend throughout the nation right now, would not give us the match. And it has a lot to do with politics because we have the Indian country fight up there, subsistence fight is still going on. So the politics are really dicey and so they don't want to give natives anything if they can get away with it. But I think this coming year we will get the match. And the reason will become apparent here in a moment.

Other models that are still going on, the Copper River Native Association has written a plan. A plan that we helped write for them with our ANA Project. Tlingit-Haida Central Council is drafting one. The Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) in Bethel, Metlakatla, all of these tribes are probably going to a TANF situation within the next 12 months. One thing that is hindering this is that the Copper River Native Association, for example, only will get $9,000 in administrative dollars. So we are trying to work with them and say do you really want to run a welfare program if you only $9,000 to administer. Sure, you get the money for the public assistance checks, and sure you're going to have to determine eligibility and you're going to have to sanction and you're going to have to take checks away from them if they don't do work requirements. And you get $9,000 to do that. So that's one of the big challenges we have in Alaska. And part of it is because of the state match as well.

Now, at Cook Inlet Tribal Council, what we did back in '96, we started talking about the fact that TANF was coming. We decided we did not want to run a full-blown welfare reform program. We did not want to determine eligibility, we did not want to issue checks and we did not want to go to our tribal members and say you can't have public assistance anymore. But we are very, very good at training, we are very, very good at placing people in jobs. We average 1,500 job placements a year. And so we started negotiating with the state early on, with the Department of Public Assistance, to run a state grant program rather than a federal contract program. With the Alaska Temporary Assistance Program, which is the state version of TANF. We focused on the work first model, which is the model that Oregon started, I think, back in 1992. We sent staff down there to learn their system. We call it the Bridge to Success and we have an 80 percent success rate. And this came with a lot of work. When we first got this program we started it last year in July, it was like a train wreck the first couple of months. My God -- I mean, we didn't realize. We thought we knew what we were getting into. Even though we had been planning for an entire year. But we had to rearrange staff and hire new staff and massage the thing for two or three months until we got all of the kinks worked out. And if you want to talk to me about what that was like after the presentation, I can go into it in great detail. But right now, because of the way we are doing it, we have an 80 percent success rate on our Alaskan Natives and American Indian families involved in our welfare work program.

Our program was chosen as a model by the state for other tribes that wanted to do a participating project with the state for welfare reform rather than doing it with full-blown TANF. And so the very first year -- in fact, we submitted a grant for the proposal to them and it was no Request For Proposals (RFP). We submitted it to them in February and we said, here, write an RFP to match this. And they did. There were lots and lots of meetings and things, though, to pull that off. But that's what we did. We just submitted it, cold turkey. Bam! here it is. And three months later they wrote an RFP to match what we wrote and we were in business. And then they turned around and gave one to Bethel, which is AVCP, one to Fairbanks TCC and one to Tlingit-Haida. Now the reason they did that, it was really cool. They're sneaky. Remember, we're Anchorage, 20,000 Alaskan Natives, Fairbanks, urban, 5,000 Alaskan Natives, Juneau, about 8,000 Alaskan Natives there, I think. Okay. The only rural one was Bethel. The reason being there was 50 percent of the welfare reform public assistance recipients were two parent families.

When you saw those contracts being proposed at a meeting when I was in Juneau, I go, aha, they're cooking the books. It's a numbers game. They virtually ignored the entire rural part of the state. Ignored them. They didn't help anybody in the rural part of the state. The reason being is because if CITC, AVCPTCs all hit high numbers in the urban areas, they've met their goal with the federal government, you know. Because if you don't meet your goal you get sanctioned, okay? You're supposed to have a 40 percent rate in the first year of people in workforce activities, okay. When they contracted with us they said, we want 60 percent. And like I said, we got 80. So we were able to do the job for the state. We were able then, just be concentrating on Alaskan natives in these high-concentrated urban areas, allowed the state then to ignore all of the rural areas, the bush Alaska, it's called. Just ignore them, all the villages, because we were getting so many people to work in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau. And then the people in Bethel getting the two parent families. You know, cut them in half basically. Very sneaky. But we saved the state $25 million. And now they owe us. And so they're adding now these other tribal organizations this year. They are going to get their state grants because they now they know they need us.

Now, a lot of the other tribes are still waiting to see what they're going to do because of a lack of the state match. They don't want to go full-blown TANF except for TCC so far. Since there's a lot of large number of isolated villages and lack of resources in those villages, -

-- refuse to use any of our tribal money for child care. To talk about the child care thing, what we did here is refused to use any of our tribal money for child care. We used all of our child care funds that we received, about $1 million a year for the working poor. The people that are not on welfare, they're working poor. If it wasn't for child care, then they would be on welfare. We told the state you are not going to put us into a downward spiral here. So the state is responsible for all child care. And I suggest that if you work out an agreement with your state, you do the same.

Reductions in reporting requirements. Boy, they had a real sneaky thing on us this year. They used the WTW money, the state did. They got WTW money. They took that money and mixed it into the ATAF money. So now all of a sudden they got all of these extra reporting requirements. And if anybody run WTW programs, welfare to work, you know how difficult those things are. You mix them into 477 it's a little easier. You can mix and match. Well the state doesn't do that. And so all of the goofy reporting requirements on WTW, they try to impose on us. And we said no, thank you. And anyway, that's a long story, but we got to keep moving on. I've gone way over my 20 minutes. Like I said, we need to continue the ANA Information Dissemination Strategy Development Projects. We are going to continue our web site. We are going to keep giving Norm free office space. We're going to keep on keeping on with our TANF programs in Alaska.

We really enjoyed the fact that NCAI is taking a leadership role in bringing us all together on this and I appreciate your attention this morning. I'm sorry I went so long, but this is an important issue to us. And if in the future you want to learn any more, go to the website. Also on the back table is my report here in written form. It's five pages long. I brought 200 copies, please take them all. I don't want to take them back, they're very heavy. Thank you, Chairman.

MR. CUMMINGS: (Inaudible) tribe, just one question, David. The natives in Alaska. What is the percentage of that group in relation to the total states TANF caseload?

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: I dont know if I understood your question, Leo. The --

MR. CUMMINGS: The native -- the native TANF caseload.

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: Oh, how many in the state?

MR. CUMMINGS: Yeah.

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: Oh, boy. In Anchorage, we have 26 -- no, 2,000, and we have worked with 800 of those families and gotten 80 percent of those to work. Now youre asking me about the entire state?

MR. CUMMINGS: Yeah.

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: I used to know that. I think -- Norm, Barney, you guys can remember?

MR. DEWEAVER: I was trying to remember, David. I think it's in the vicinity of 35 to 40 percent of the total TANF caseloads in the state. Our Alaskan data, although interestingly enough, Leo, if you look at the two parent caseload, that is more than Alaskan native, a chance to do David's --

MR. CUMMINGS: That -- that makes a lot of difference as you look at the native population in regards to total state TANF caseload. In North Dakota were sitting at 53. In South Dakota I believe it's in the 60 percents right now.

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: Yeah, I remember the percentages, but I just dont know the numbers. And Norm is correct, it's about 40 percent state-wide. it's about 28 percent in Anchorage because we make p about 9 percent of the population. Any more questions?

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, David. You can tell he came well-prepared for his report. Okay, next were going to the California Manpower Consortium, Ms. Linda Sanchez. Good to see you

MS. SANCHEZ: Good morning, I would like to thank NCAI for hosting the forums over this past year. CIMC has been the ANA TANF Information Dissemination and Strategy Development Contractor for California, Arizona and Nevada. Altogether we have been working with about 161 tribes. At this point, we have one tribal consortium that will have inclusive about 12 tribes by the first of January. And several tribal groups in Arizona that are also involved in direct TANF operations.

As the other contractors, we have done a lot of work with information dissemination. At forums, we have held separate forums in each of the three states that we work with. One of the advantages that we had in California was working with the state under the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Programs as the consortium for 52 tribes under the former tribal jobs program. We began a dialogue with them well before the implementation of the welfare reform legislation. And we were able to include specific tribal language in the legislation that was passed by the state in regards to the states welfare reform program. The tribes in Arizona also are very -- have a history of working with the state. And their state relations are fairly strong. And that was advantageous to the tribes in welfare reform. In the state of Nevada, however, we began at the very beginning. What we call Welfare Reform 101. And we have made some progress in the state but there is much work that remains to be done on all three states.

Besides the forums that we held, we have also done a number of cluster sessions, grouping tribal interests and concerns that were presented to us as a result of the forum so that we could meet the specific needs of tribal areas or tribal groups in all three states. We have kept the state involved through all of our efforts in the implementation of this contract. At each of the forums that we sponsored, we not only had consultants and individuals that came in to share their knowledge with our states. We also invited all of the state representatives in California. We were very pleased that the Director of the Department of Social Services took time from her very busy schedule to be at our meeting as well as she mandated that every branch chief of the 11 division within the Department of Social Services in California were at the meeting. They were required to stay for one full day. And it helped the information. Questions were answered, but during that day they also had an opportunity to become familiar with some of our specific needs and it has made the approach by tribes in the State of California for TANF and for some of the state and county services much easier for us.

The State of Arizona and the State of Nevada, we also invited the state Department of Social Services staff and they were very good to work with. And I think it makes a difference in where each of the groups that weve been working with are today. The state of Nevada has hired a liaison. Shes native American and it's -- shes going to play a critical role in what happens in that particular state.

At this time, there is no tribe in Nevada that is actively pursuing TANF. One of the issues that were working on there is just coming to agreement with the state on the number of American Indians that were AFDC in 1994. The state has indicated that they had a total of 212 Indians in the entire State of Nevada. Thats urban and tribal. And so theres a big debate and challenge that we have because the tribes know that that is a significant undercount. But we are working with the state and looking at different approaches on how to bring that count to a more realistic figure. But in the meantime we are also looking some memorandums of agreement with the state, as well as we have a couple of tribes that want to look at their own tribal services plan and re-contracting it back to the state to run for them.

Arizona has progressed very well. They continue to look at TANF for direct funding or for contracting and re-contracting back to the state. And we have a few tribes that we will be working with during our extension of the A&E contract.

In the State of California we have about 42 tribes that are pending a decision on which way they would like to pursue. Whether it's becoming a part of the consortium that currently exists, forming another consortium or directly applying for a TANF grant. We have about 22 tribes that have made it very clear that they are going to not pursue TANF, but have asked that we work with them in their county to ensure that they are included in all the programs and that funds that are made available do flow to their tribal members. And we are in those dialogues at this time.

We did do a comprehensive survey of all of our tribes. And all but 11 of the 161 tribes actually responded and gave us some very good information about where they are, what technical assistance needs. Very specifically that they would like to be provided to them in making a TANF decision or in pursuing a TANF plan. With that information, CIMC did request a nine month extension, no- costs extension to ANA. It has been approved and we will continue to provide those services.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MS. SANCHEZ: They told me at the beginning that it would be a very slim chance, David. But we had every tribe that needed services actually give us the documentation. And I think there was quite a bit of need demonstrated. I do have a comment to add about ANA. And although were grateful that the funds were made available, it is my understanding that one of the reasons that the funds were not continued to the ANA contractors or for TANF was that ANA felt that we did not successfully meet the expectations because they hadnt seen a significant increase in the number of TANF contractors as a result of our year contracts. And at the closing of our application for the no-cost extension, we did make a statement that we took exception to their perspective in that the purpose of the ANA contracts was, in our opinion, to disseminate information and to develop strategies. It was not to increase the number of TANF contractors. And I felt that all of the contractors had provided the information dissemination and developed the strategies. And that I felt that it was very unfortunate that there were no funds to begin to further those strategies or provide for implementation of a years worth of work. That was very valuable to many communities. And I still believe that very strongly.

We do have a very important role with the states. And in the State of California we deal with 58 counties because we are a county-based/run welfare program. And it varies from state to state. And although a lot of tribal communities are experiencing a big challenge in working with their states in regards to the match and in regards to just coming to agreement on the number of recipients, I believe that we need to look at welfare reform and the opportunities that are included in that legislation for American Indians as an opportunity. An opportunity to change a system that for years has not worked. Not only in main line but in our own communities. And to use our own experience to design what we feel is best for the people that we are responsible for in our communities. And that is both in tribal communities and urban communities.

In working with the State of California, we do have state legislation that guarantees a match. A minimum of 50 percent. We have the tribes making the decision on the data collection and the data that is used by the county in determining their needs. There is a provision that requires the state to provide and make available funding for other programs to support welfare reform in this state. And its very important for us to make sure that even if we think there is no chance that the state is going to work with us, that we make that attempt to get some type of legislation and use other programs, Indian TANF programs, both on and off reservation areas that have been successful in partnerships with their states.

Most states are very concerned about their bonus money or being sanctioned. And we can use that to our advantage. We know our people best. We have a history of running our programs that provides an end result that is positive. And we can take the TANF challenge that we have and make it work for our community and make it work for the state. And I think we should utilize each other and our success stories to open the doors to the communities that, at this point, do not want to dialogue with our tribal groups.

In the next nine months, we have another series of forums that will be on-going. And about 30 tribes that will have a one-on-one with their tribal councils and general councils in regards to TANF. We will continue dialogue with the state in regards to some medical issues and some child care issues that remain unaddressed at this point to our satisfaction. And we will continue with information dissemination. And I would also like to let a number of the contractors here know and the tribes that are here know that CIMC is celebrating its 20^th year in 1998. And weve operated most of our -- I would say 95 percent of the programs that we operate have been through a consortium effort. And in a number of communities, that may be the only real chance that we have to administer the TANF program. And we will make ourselves available to those tribes and to those contractors in helping to design consortium efforts for TANF. We have nine months left in the contract and if we can help some uncompleted business in your areas, we would certainly want you to work with us.

The consortium in California, Southern California Tribal Chairmans Association, currently has nine tribes and will be adding, I believe, three tribes for a January 1 implementation. Having the state legislation in place, working with the county, the consortium there I believe is -- I call it the Cadillac version of TANF in Indian country. We were able to look at data, not only the 94 levels negotiated with the county. Because the county in California makes the decision on all of the welfare programs. We are able to look at historically what had happened in other communities. There were some communities that went into TANF, looking at their programs based on the 94 levels. But when they opened their doors, had more people that came through their doors. Why? Because they refused to go participate in the state program prior. They had no records and werent included in those counts. But they are people and they need to be served. So some of the numbers that were looked at in determining the funding for the grant were not only the 94 AFDC numbers, but also the people that were being served by the food commodities program. The number of American Indians that were receiving Indian health care services that were at poverty level. And then a tribe-by-tribe review of specific data that had been collected. And those numbers raised significantly the number of families that would be eligible from about 170 to close to 450 people -- 450 families. So it does make a difference. And when you have those types of opportunities, you can do much with your program. And it's not going to be something that will happen in all communities, but I think it sets a precedent that can be looked at. And others can utilize that information. We have several documents and manuals that have been produced under the contract. And those are also available. All the tribes in the three states have received them and some of the tribes, I know, have sent or produced manuals with their contracts. And if any of you are interested in any of those materials, our phone number and address is on the handout that is at the back of the room. Please contact us. We would be more than happy to share that information with you. We look forward to working with our tribes in the next year because we have a lot of uncompleted work that needs to be done. And I want to make a comment in closing that Congress this year also passed new legislation which will end the Jobs Training Partnership Act (JTPA). We now have the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). And the Native American Employment and Training Council is in the process of working on regulations for the implementation of the Workforce Investment Act in Indian country.

All of the Native American grantees will be receiving in the next week a paper that will share some background on WIA as well as food for thought in what those regulations should look like and how the Workforce Investment Act can be reshaped with innovative and creative options in regards to employment and training in their communities. We have another opportunity now. We have welfare reform that addresses a specific population in need. And now with the Workforce Investment Act, we can look at the employment and training side in our communities. And I hope that our communities will be stimulated to think about how the employment and training program can reshape the labor force in their communities. And this will probably be our one chance in the next 10 years to make a difference in employment and training. And I cant say enough good things about Public Law 102-477 tribes and what they have been able to do with consolidation and integration of programs.

And in looking at the Workforce Investment Act, we need to look at those challenges and those opportunities in the same fashion as those Public Law 102477 tribes looked at how to meet the employment training related services in their communities. So I hope you will take some time to visit the Workforce Investment Act also. Because we do have the employment and economic development side of welfare reform. If we are going to move people from welfare to work, there are other opportunities and other challenges that we have in our communities. So please take time to review the information thats shared with you and comment. And we look forward to your input.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any questions for Ms. Sanchez? I hear you have one of the largest programs around. Im sure it probably covers more areas than a lot of the state agencies that have a state-wide program. Any questions for Lorenda? Youve done a good job, nobody wants to know any more.

MS. SANCHEZ: Thanks.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Okay. Next we have a report from the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and Mr. Ed Fox and Ms. Karen McGowan. I dont know whos going to go first but -- Eds going to do it first. Ed's going to do it first.

MR. FOX: I guess I'll sit down and talk. I'm Ed Fox, the Policy Analyst for the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. And I'm here today with Karen McGowan, the director of our Northwest Tribal Welfare Information Project. I'm just going to say a few words. I did notice that we are running ahead of schedule so I look forward to questions and hopefully a time period where will talk a lot about what we want to do from here on out after we conclude. But we will stay a bit brief so we can possibly do that.

The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board is an organization made up of 40 of the 41 tribes in the northwest states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. We're a health care organization with a long history. We have 25 years of providing policy analysis, policy development really for national, state and tribal health issues. We're very good at what we do in health and we're somewhat leery of taking on the welfare project. We begged other people to take it on, but when it seemed clear that no one else was willing to or other people put in a positive slant and thought we could do a good job, we went ahead and applied for the ANA grant. I am a health care analyst and one year after starting this project, I'm still impressed by how difficult welfare reform is compared to the health care issues that I deal with. I think health, Indian health particularly, is very complex. The financing is complex, the delivery systems are complex. But believe me, and you know this, welfare is even more complex. The financing is unbelievably complex. The difference between the need and the resources is greater than it is for Indian health. And Indian health is only funded at 50 percent or 40 percent. So that really tells you how bad it is when we thing about providing the social services to the people in need.

You know, I'm humbled in a way about our ability to provide the tribes what they needed over this past year. We did it the way we do our health care. We facilitate meetings, we make presentations to our tribal organizations. We are blessed in the Northwest with a strong regional tribal organization, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. We made presentations to them. We have a history of having conferences so we had our first conference last December and Karen is going to share information about that. And our second conference this August is a wrap-up conference to our project. And that's just the way we do things. We're great -- we're going to meetings in the northwest.

The facilitation. All of the discussions on welfare reform went well. We also wanted to serve not only tribes that wanted to operate their own TANF plans, but we were told early on by our tribe that some of them didn't want to operate a TANF plan in the first year, certainly and may never want to operate a TANF plan. So I agree with Lorenda Sanchez -- I felt like I got her last name wrong -- we never looked at the ANA grant as something that would go out and sell TANF to the tribes. Talk about turning the sow's ear into a silk purse. This was -- you know, we've been even incredibly creative and innovative and northwest tribes are pretty good at that. I think we have five of 15 approved plans. But to think that we would be going out there talking tribes into offering their own TANFs is really an unrealistic expectation on the part of ANA.

But we did try to serve tribes that wanted to do their own TANF plans. And it turned out that that was more of an individual tribe working with the state than it was anything we did. So we take very little credit for those tribes that went out there and worked with states and developed their own plans. They did the work. Maybe we helped them. If we did, I'm glad that we could. But it was very much a single tribe working with a single state and state official to get those TANF plans up and running.

For the tribes that said they didn't want to do TANF plans, we also provided them information and worked with them as they worked with states. Their number of intergovernmental agreements. Washington state probably is the best example where tribes have some very good arrangements with states to make sure there is equitable access. And that is the buzz word from the law. Indian people deserve equitable access to state plans.

We also over the last year worked with other tribal organizations. I mentioned AT&I. The northwest is -- Portland is the headquarters of the National Indian Child Welfare Association. We are lucky that they're in our neighborhood so we have them at our conferences. We have already in existence, in two of our states, we already had regular meetings on social services. In Washington, it's the Indian Policy Advisory Committee. We just presented at their regular meeting. That's tribal folks who are there by resolution from their tribes so they are really good decision-makers. So we assisted them in their welfare meetings. We instituted social service meetings in the State of Oregon and those have gone well. And in Idaho, the tribes themselves work on the agendas for regular quarterly meetings that have been established since the passage of the Act. And we also appeared in both Idaho and Oregon to present information.

We provide tribes with all the information hopefully that they need to think about welfare reform. yes, we do use Norm and CITC's website and in a way, when you see someone else doing a job, you can kind of take it easy sometimes. We have a website, too, that you can take a look at. I do the legislation at our board and we are connecting our tribes to the Internet through a wide area network with a grant from the Commerce Department. We were disappointed that we couldn't get our tribal program people to come in for a training that we set up on the use of the Internet. I think that is going to be very valuable from here on out. And you probably agree, but you need to come to our training. We have a 16 station training center at the Board and we wanted to teach tribes on how to access information to the Internet.

Although it's somewhat discouraging, we always tell our tribal chairs, council people, when then come to a meeting that, no, we'll still get you the information. We don't expect you to dial up and get the information on the Internet. We're not like DHHS' Administration for Children and Families (ACF)which, by the way now tells you, we're not mailing to you, you just got to get it off the Internet. That's not acceptable. But we think it makes it easy and it's kind of a nice filing cabinet to have everything on the Internet. That's where my files are. I don't have to carry as many papers to meetings nowadays if I know I can get on the Internet and download it at Kinkos and print it out. So I think you will want to use the Internet more in the future and I hope Norm can keep that up. But you better train someone, Norm, it's too much work.

We work with the state and federal agencies. I think our project became very well known. Even though we're very critical of the consultation of ACF in developing the regulations, I think we still have a good relationship nationally and in our region. We work very well with the states, I think. Oregon and Washington -- Oregon for sure. Oregon's been great. Washington, big state. it's kind of like the federal government. It's so much, so complex, so bureaucratic that Washington is a difficult case. We have conservative republican legislatures in all three states. You probably think it's not true in Washington and Oregon, but it's true, very conservative legislatures. So we kind of bypass them. We have the democratic and somewhat liberal democrats in the governor's office and running the states. Executive agencies in Washington and Oregon and in both those two states they have documents, Executive Orders recognizing tribes as sovereign and have engaged in true government to government relations in those two states. That's very helpful.

Idaho, it's kind of a daily report and we have folks from Idaho here today that can tell me how we're doing today in Idaho. We've had some good relations and so I don't want to say anything negative. Hopefully we'll draw them into the conversation. At the end, Idaho's a case. And whenever it gets good, they change the people. It's like someone finds out someone is talking to the tribes and they get rid of them or something. And I don't know where we are today. The last meeting was -- no, the last meeting was when we found out they had changed someone, that's right. The 7th we had a quarterly meeting. So we provided information, the law, regulations. At our meetings we had a nice briefing book last December and we provided more information again this year.

We think we're pretty good at analysis. We took a shot at that, on welfare and realized we weren't that good. Or else it was more complex than we could handle, in a way. So I've kind of backed off myself thinking I know a lot about welfare, It's really -- I don't know. it's just too complex but I hope someone can. Dr. Brown, hopefully can produce some good analyses and we'll see what happens on that. But I think we were a little disappointed that we couldn't solve welfare reform. Besides it was more money. Even with more money it would still be terribly complex. So, we -- we -- we were a little disappointed there. I know personally I was disappointed I couldn't write some better analysis for our tribes.

And finally, and I'll stop now. I think we are prepare to plan for the future of welfare reform in Indian country. And we're ready to engage in that debate and I know we have time this morning. I hope you will throw out some ideas and we'll I'd like to say a few things if we still have time when Karen's done about what the role of northwest tribes will be. We're very anxious to learn about what does on in other parts of the country. And we are, as always willing to share any way we can on what northwest tribes are doing if that will benefit tribes in your part of the country. Thank you.

MS. McGOWAN: Good morning. When I got in here early this morning we didn't have as many numbers of folks that we have now. I'm really pleased to see all of you here on a Sunday morning to kind of listen to some of the findings that Indian organizations and tribal folks have been finding in regards to welfare reform. It is a great pleasure and honor for me to be here this morning to share the findings and the activities the northwest tribal welfare information project has found the past year. My name is Karen McGowan, and I am the project director.

I've had the unique opportunity to work with 40 tribes in the northwest, and like Ed said, the states of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. I have also had a unique opportunity to work with who I consider who I consider very knowledgeable individuals in regards to welfare reform such as Norm DeWeaver, Dr. Eddie Brown, and Leland McGee. We have been able to pull information that they have put together and distribute it to the tribes we serve to keep them informed and educated as to the moving events that go with welfare reform.

We have four tribes in the northwest administering their own tribal TANF programs. As we know, the Klamath tribes in Oregon were the first to operate a tribal TANF program back in July of '97. Also in the State of Oregon the Siletz tribe have been offering their TANF program for a little over a year. Then we have two tribes whose plans were recently approved by Health and Human Services and have opened their doors as of October 1 in the State of Washington, the Lower Elwa and the Port Gamble tribes.

All of the four tribes are receiving state matching funds and one of the proposals made by the Washington tribes is to add an incentive to that -- not an incentive but to add to that matching fund because of the likelihood of an increase of individuals seeking services from their tribal TANF programs. As we know, the Klamath tribe, once they opened their doors, they found an influx of Indian people seeking services from that tribal program. And we know that for a various reasons, Indian people did not participate in the AFDC programs so the 1994 data that is available are that dollars are based on isn't sufficient information for tribes to go by. So the State of Washington has allowed the Port Gamble and the Lower Elwa tribes additional matching funds for an increase in their tribal caseload numbers.

And then, also, the Nez Perce tribe, they submitted their plan and they're anticipating a start-up date of January 1. In addition to seeing the events and activities going on in Indian country as it relates to welfare reform, I also have looked at the so-called success this nation is claiming as far as reducing caseload numbers by over 40 percent in the country. And there are, I guess, opportunities as far as employment and getting families off of the welfare roles and into employment opportunities. But I think, too, there is a lot of negative impacts welfare reform has across this country. I was just in a meeting last week and I live in Portland, Oregon, the biggest city in Oregon and one of the organizations that have been following welfare reform recipients in the city of Portland, they have been conducting surveys. And one interesting that kind of validated some of the findings that we identified at our first conference was the hardship this new law was going to have on families and children and the potential loss of children because families or parents weren't able to provide for that child's basic needs. And one thing that I heard or an outcome from the survey that was --

-- effects this welfare reform is going to have out there in Indian country. We havent seen in the northwest a decline in the caseload numbers with the two tribes in Oregon that have been providing TANF services to their tribal population. And in fact we know that the Klamath tribe, once they opened their doors, they have seen a drastic increase in Indian people seeking services. And what they have had to do is reduce their service population to only serve tribal members in the county of Klamath.

We know in going out and sponsoring conferences and participating in meetings, we know and like Lorenda Sanchez had mentioned this morning, once the tribes build those TANF programs, the people will come. You know, theres that saying, once you build it they will come. We know that thats going to be the case. Also, this past year, Ive really drawn upon a lot of the experiences that TANF programs in Oregon and Washington and Idaho have identified. We know that there are many barriers, but the bottom line is we know that we will be able to offer culturally competent services to our tribal community members once we open those tribal TANF doors. We know that to be true.

On the back table is a packet that we brought with us here to Myrtle Beach and Im going to be pulling information from out of this packet, so if you want to follow with me, Ill be citing findings that we have found in the past 12 months. Our project sponsored two conferences. One back in December of 97 and it basically kicked off the project activities. At that conference, we drew over, I think, a hundred folks. A lot of people from tribal, federal and state programs staff attended the December conference which was held in Seattle, Washington. But on page 3 of the handout, the table, the top of the page, the table identifies some of the issues that were expressed by tribal caucuses at our conference. And its interesting to note that although this was a year ago, some of the same issues are still really relevant. If you go to the first table under the tribal implementation issues, we know that that 1994 data is not good. We know, like I had mentioned earlier, that what the state had as far as caseload numbers for 1994 is not what the tribes can expect as far as what their service population or what their client caseload is going to be.

Another issue is the lack of infrastructure. There arent any start-up dollars to go with tribes once they take on the TANF programs. And there isnt the automation system to assist in generating those checks and managing a caseload. We also know that if tribes choose not to provide TANF services, their tribal members, those tribal members who are willing to participate in the state services are still up against some critical barriers. And some of the things that were noted at our first conference is we need to train. Not only do we need to maintain a dialogue with our state TANF personnel, but we also need to train them on culturally appropriate or cultural competency training in how to work with Indian family. One of the things that was also recommended was the need to hire Indian caseworkers employed by the state programs to provide the case management for Indian people on the state welfare rolls.

Some of the employment barriers. We know in many Indian communities there are little or no jobs out there. And a big part of welfare reform is moving people off of welfare and into work. And when the jobs just arent available out in the Indian communities, that is a very big obstacle for tribes to overcome in how to create jobs and get people trained for jobs. So that was one of the employment barriers identified. We also know that transportation is a big issue out in Indian country. Also reliable transportation. How do you get these folks moving from job site to job site or doing job search or getting from the reservation to the nearest town where there are jobs when you dont have reliable transportation.

Another thing that was identified in the employment barriers was the alcohol and drug issues. We know in Indian country we have some of the highest rates of alcohol and drug abuse. And to be able to have the population that has to go out and look for work, secure work, that population will also need to address their alcohol and drug issues. We, at our August conference, we heard from the policy analyst from the State of Oregon. And the State of Oregon is a leader in moving people off of the welfare roles into work. They have seen most of their client -- their caseloads have dropped and their claim is most of their folks have now secured employment, but those that didnt rise to the top are still the ones on the TANF roles. And a lot of those are suffering some type of mental health or alcohol and drug problems. And that is going to be the most difficult case to work because you will have to address those underlying issues. And the State of Oregon has, through their alcohol and drug programs, increased resources to meet the need of those recipients.

And then, at the final column in the table were the potential social impacts, the forced relocation, the increase in domestic violence incidents, the child neglect due to the parents' inability to meet their childs basic needs. Homelessness where Indian families are going to have to be because they have been sanctioned off of TANF, are going to have to double-up or triple-up in one household. We also know that theres going to be some impacts in regards to child support enforcement. We know with the welfare law, there came the requirement for absent parents to become financially responsible for their children. And we know a lot of our Indian men at home because of lack of jobs or history of alcohol and drug abuse arent able to provide for their children. Or they might be providing for their children but not in a dollar monetary way. They go out and they hunt and they fish, they gather wood and they try to help meet some of those needs of their children. But yet those arent considered as far as the support enforcement regulations go. They look at providing monthly monetary support for that family.

We also believe that theres going to be an increase in teenage pregnancy and a return of many tribal members to the reservations once they become sanctioned off of the state programs. So those were some of our findings from the December conference. Our August conference, the activities begin on page 6, or the highlights are mentioned on page 6. Again, it was a conference that brought together state, federal, tribal people. The August conference, we set the agenda where the conference participants were actively involved in committee reports. What we know, in the past year, in providing TANF services, it isnt all about eligibility, meeting that eligibility requirement, determining if they are eligible or not for welfare. And we also know that all of the state programs have had to redesign how they provide services to their recipients. Caseload management is a lot more intense today than it was back prior to welfare reform. Caseworkers have got to be responsible in designing a program that best meets the need of that TANF participant. So it goes beyond is this family eligible or not. If the family is eligible and there are some barriers, then it is the caseworkers responsibility to refer that family to the appropriate programs to try to alleviate or diminish those barriers.

So we know that theres always been some themes that come again and again. And those themes have been childcare, child support enforcement, adult and vocational training, health care and Indian child welfare. We need in Indian country to not only have an office that is going to be providing TANF services, but to be able to have other tribal departments and resources to wrap around that tribal TANF project. And those were the five main areas in providing those wrap around services for the family.

We spent a lot of time in collecting the information and that information begins in the middle of the packet starting on page 1 to 5. And each report is done individually. Im getting some signs saying my time is up. I just want to mention real briefly that our project also received a 60-day no-cost extension where we received no additional funding from the administration for native Americans. We dont feel that our work has been complete. Theres a lot more work ahead of us and Im not sure where the tribal communities are going to able to get the kind of information that the ANA grants have been able to disseminate.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any questions for Karen and Ed? Im going to let them -- they seem to have such good information I let them run over a little while. We would love to have them respond to questions if anyone has one.

MR. FOX: While youre thinking of questions, could I give you a piece of information thats not trivia? At our first conference in December in 1997, we had tribal members attending fill out a form that documented how much it cost them to attend that meeting, not including their salaries. The cost of travel and hotel and per diem that was a federally approved rate came to over $40,000 for them to attend our meeting in December. So ANA shouldnt think that they are the only ones spending money on welfare reform. Tribes are spending a lot of money attending conferences, attending the state meetings, travel and time. That $44,000, though, was for 32 tribes. Probably about 80 tribal representatives to attend a 2-1/2 day conference. So theres quite an investment on our side in all this and I think that sometimes states and federal agencies think that theyre the only ones spending money. Guess what? Theres a lot more of us than there is of them at these meetings. And we are the ones that are really spending the money.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any questions? If not, we are going to take a 10 minute break. We will come back and well finish up with the reports from the contractors. Ten minutes now, please.

THE CHAIRMAN: It is certainly my pleasure to report -- I mean to introduce to you Dr. Eddie Brown.

DR. BROWN: Thank you. Let me say that I really enjoyed listening to some of the talks this morning and presentations because I think what were going to hear, particularly this afternoon as well, is a real trend on some very key points but very important points. So you are going to see a lot of reaffirmation from some of the study that I am going to talk about and then Im sure this afternoon you are going to hear some more of that because -- and I think thats good. Because not only do we want to say well we think this is going to happen, but we want to be able to say we know these things are happening in some areas. And here are some specific examples. So today I want to talk just briefly.

And before I get started, I always have to do the sales pitch. This is that I am from George Warren Browns School of Social Work in St. Louis, Missouri. When people hear Washington University, they say, oh, Ed, its good to have you in Washington, D.C. And I say, no, my university is not there. And then theyll say its good to have you in the state of Washington. I say, no, its not there. Were in St. Louis. And usually a glaze goes over their eyes in saying what in the world are you doing in St. Louis? And one of the reasons I am there is because of the special endowment. It is the only endowment that a graduate school of social work for a master's degree in social work and a doctorate has for the recruitment and scholarships for American Indians. I have put some of those outlines or information that was developed by students on the back table. And I would really encourage any of you know American Indian students who are wanting to go back and get a master's degree to join or at least call and get some information. We do offer, its a private university, we do offer full scholarships for that. We have a hundred year endowment for such a thing. Weve got, I believe, some outstanding courses now developed as well as a number of research projects ongoing.

Today Im going to talk about one and Im going to try to move as quickly as possible to make it as informative as possible. This is a project we have entitled Welfare to Work: Monitoring the Impact of Welfare Reform on American Indian Families and Children. Its a five year longitudinal study. Now many of you have already heard this morning that it's not just enough to begin to understand what the early impact is, but weve got to be able to track this some way. The idea that -- we know that as people and as the program goes into effect, there are going to be many different strategies used, not only by service providers, but by the families themselves in how they are going to survive. Whether they continue to move from welfare to work or whether they are sanctioned and fall off the roles, what kind of survival strategies are being used. This, because of the limited of dollars that we receive, it was a side of the study is American Indian Reservations in the State of Arizona. When we looked at where we could go that had the most reservation population, that was the state of Arizona with 21 different tribes. And then were saying we wanted to take a look at all of the 21 tribes, but then we wanted to focus in on principally three tribes.

One tribe that was close to an urban are, such as the Salt River Indian Community, one tribe thats kind of semi-rural such as the San Carlos Apache tribe, and then one tribe that represents a very much isolated tribe way out in the rural. And that, of course, is the Navajo nation.

So weve selected those and I will get into that a little bit. The principal investigators are myself and Dr. Shanta Pandey, both from representing the Buder Center for American Indian studies at George Warren Browns School of Social Work. With that, many times, Im going to take just a minute to just give you a little on the context that were working. I think whats important is the idea that we go in just understanding what were dealing with in welfare reform in the types of people that we are serving. And many of you are familiar with this data but I just wanted to mention it.

One is 27 percent of American Indian families, both on and off reservations are headed by female householders. This is one of the highest percentages in our nation. Fifty percent of American Indian families maintained by females with no husband present live in poverty. Forty-six percent of women living on reservations age 25 and over have less than a high school diploma. Fifty-five percent of children living on reservations live below the poverty level. The unemployment rate on reservations averages 26 percent, but if you look at the bureau's potential unemployment, it averages 35 percent. Twenty-three percent of the households on reservations receive some form of welfare assistance. In Arizona, it's even higher than that. Those that were on AFDC in 1996 represented about 25 percent of American Indian population residing on reservation in Arizona.

Now the purpose of our study was to do this. One, we wanted to document the characteristics of American Indian families receiving welfare. Just who are they? One of the things we know right off that over 90 percent of those families in Arizona are single parent mothers with children. So right off we know, and given the earlier figures, we kind of get an understanding right off the kind of situation that were facing on reservation with hard-to-place individuals and hard to move people from welfare to work. We wanted then to also identify community, family and individual level barriers to work in self-sufficiency. And youve heard some of those barriers talked about this morning. About as clients are trying to move from welfare to work, really what are the barrier and are these barriers overwhelming or is there something that can be done that will help an individual move over these barriers and find employment. Then we want to explore strategies used by parents to obtain self-sufficiency. We know that anybody on welfare on has to be creative. And we think that welfare reform is really going to tax the creativity of TANF recipients.

Second, to monitor the survival strategies used by families who are sanctioned or terminated. You hear so much about how welfare roles are drastically being cut within the different states. What you dont hear is whats happening to those people that are leaving the welfare roles. Are they finding jobs, are they maintaining themselves in jobs. But what is really happening and are they any better off than they were before. And then, we wanted to monitor the social and economic conditions on reservations as welfare reform progresses. The methodology which I think is important, and we really struggled with this given the amount of dollars that we had, really what could we do. Quickly we talked about an analysis. One of the things we wanted to do was to analyze the administrative data from Arizona Department of Economic Security which is the social service agency. We wanted to look at BIA statistics on GA, child abuse, the police reports, all of those kinds of things so that we have indications going in what the situation was. And then we wanted to take a look at any information and data that the tribe social services had.

Whats interesting on the first is were finding that state data has been the most difficult to collect. Even in Arizona where they supposedly had some of the best data collected, we find once we looked at that date, it is filled with errors. So its going to be very difficult as we go through. We are also working with the state on how to get better data, do away with those errors so that in the following years we have better information to work with. We have yet to get all of the errors out of Arizonas data and were working on our final report for our first year. What has delayed that, of course, has been the error ridden data from the state and the delay of trying to get those errors addressed so that we can have some more relevant data.

Secondly, we are going to do that through all five years. Also focus groups with current and former welfare recipients. You know, there is nothing that is brought home to me more important about welfare reform than the impact that its going to have on families. Until you have an opportunity to sit down with single parent mothers around the table and begin to talk about what are the stress, what are the challenges that youre facing under welfare reform. And Ill guarantee you, people, after youve done that for a few times, you really begin to get a deep understanding of the challenges faced by these single parent mothers, but also the impact that this is going to have on children. We know that for every adult thats on TANF, you have approximately three children. So it comes out to about one-third, two-thirds. So that as people are sanctioned, as things begin to become more difficult, we know that the pressure on children is going to be tremendous.

Secondly, focus groups with service providers on reservations. We found it was real important and what was talked about today and will be talked about this afternoon is the importance of coordination within the tribe as also with the state. And one of the things in talking with the providers, were interested to see whats happening, how they are coordinating with one another from the employment to the education and training, to job creation and to economic development. We are also going to interview the state department staff that are serving reservations. Like in Arizona we currently have just two tribes that are TANF tribes. And they are going to be working heavily with the state. And we have another tribe that has submitted a plan, Salt River Indian Community. But we know that the majority of tribes work with the state and they are going to be dependent upon the state. So the question -- it becomes very important to understand what are the issues that state staff have.

Were also then, in the last two years. And this is something that were just gearing up to do. Well be bringing interviewers in and begin the training -- to begin individual interviews with 400 women whose families receive TANF. So all of these interviewers will be reservation individuals who live in the community and who will be working and will be going through some extensive training on interviewing. We will be doing that for the next four years. We will also be interviewing with employers of TANF recipients who find work over the next four years as well.

Now, I want to get into the early findings and Im just going to hit, because of time, some very specific things. Some of the early findings, and again, because of the data, most of this early findings represent qualitative data through interviews with service providers on 15 of the 21 reservations in Arizona on which, also this information was substantiated by site visits to five reservations of which we conducted group interviews with state and tribal social service providers and on four reservations with focus groups with current former welfare recipients.

The first is the increased participation on the part of welfare recipients in work, training and educational programs. I think this is pretty much understood, but according to reports from residents as well as service providers, TANF recipients are anxiously looking to enroll in education and training programs. As a result, on all four reservations we visited, there were waiting lists of women wanting to get into GED programs and our JTPA training programs. One state JTPA coordinator said a lot of tribal members are going to work. They see that the federal government is serious about work. Most welfare recipients are complying and this is a positive impact. A local staff member, also a tribal member, commented that TANF is opening peoples eyes. It is going to change the way we think as Indian people. And another worker commented that welfare reform woke a lot of people up.

Going to the next finding, is the psychological impacts on welfare recipients in terms of both motivation for change and stress. I think it's very important that we understand that welfare reform has initially increased the stress levels of welfare recipients. As I told you about those welfare focus groups with recipients, it didnt take very long as we started our first group that immediately became very, very emotional. And when you begin to talk to the women concerning the -- not sure whether they are going to continue to get welfare, not sure what the new policy is going to do, not sure whos going to be serving them, whether it's going to be the tribe or the state, not sure what the time limits are going to be, not sure that if they can find work. Also being faced with very limited education. These meetings immediately became very emotional meetings. And I think at Navajo, they learn very quickly that we had to pass around tissues immediately just as you begin to hear the stories.

The director of social services of one tribe stated, welfare reform has made women scared that they would get cut off when they received the general letter from the state informing them of changes. It will require a different lifestyle for people who receive assistance. One JTPA director noted that while more TANF recipients were requesting services, they were still afraid of change. This anxiety about new TANF requirements also lead to other adverse effects. Another state worker noted that, quote, a lot of people get depressed. They want to drink if they lose their welfare or lose their job. One focus group participant expressed anxiety about TANF when she said, the money goes too fast. People dont live like we do, meaning in remote areas. They dont understand what Im going through. The worlds going to change. Soon there wont be any assistance.

Moving to the next is the 50 percent unemployment rule as well as Arizonas waiver of the 24 month time limit. Both acting in a way as to postpone many impacts in Arizona. Youre all aware of the 50 percent rule. In Arizona, the 50 percent rule impacted nine tribes which really represent about 87 percent of the total population. So about 85 percent or 87 percent of the total population are not going to be impacted by the five year time limit. What the State of Arizona also said, for these same reservations, because they dont have the kind of outreach thats necessary to put people to work, that they were still going to require people to search for work, but they were going to, at least momentarily or in the near future, they were going to waive the 24-month requirement. Now in talking to some people, they said, well, gee, when we heard about this a lot of people started coming in to the education programs, training programs, employment programs. But once the 50 percent rule hit and then the 24 month rule, one individual indicated it was like taking the gun away from our head. And that it cause it some kind of relaxation. And in a way it served as a blessing and a curse. Blessing in that it gave us more time and softened the impact of sanctions. But a curse in that it really took away the immediate need to do something. To really get tribes moving, get the state thinking, as well as getting recipients excited about, gee, we can go into training, we can get some education, theres going to be opportunities to go to work. These kind of things have continually happened in Indian country. And its one of the things thats my concern is that all the time that we pass rules and regulations, we always say, well its too difficult for reservations, we are going to do a waiver. And what that means is, many times, we are not going to face the situation or we are not going to address the situation. So one of the concerns is, that if were going to give waivers, then we need some kind of backup of what support were going to do to better the situation rather than to just leave it as it is.

Moving to the next, the lack of economic development and employment opportunities, especially in rural isolated communities is a very serious problem. One of the greatest barriers faced by American Indian communities in implementing welfare to work is the shortage of employment opportunities on or near reservations. I dont think thats any kind of a new enlightenment. One service provider said, even if we trained everyone we wanted, we dont have enough jobs. Another service provider echoed this thought, the big concern is that we can train people until we turn blue, but if we dont have the jobs, where will we put those people once they are trained. It doesnt just take tribal government to create jobs, but it takes the state, local employers and all members of society. One of the impacts of welfare reform that service providers foresee is that it will, as one tribal planner stated, force the tribe to quit being lackadaisical about economic development. Another tribal planner stated, welfare reform will not work in rural areas without the economic development piece. However, we may be faced with taking capital from other tribal economic development efforts if we have to quote, make work for TANF recipients.

Going to the next, we have the lack of transportation and childcare, our other major obstacles. And again, youre hearing the same through what you heard this morning. Says the lack of support services regarding transportation and childcare are barriers to employment and training on reservations. Transportation was mentioned as one of the main barriers in putting TANF recipients to work on virtually every reservation where representative was interviewed. This is especially true for reservations in remote rural areas. As one state manager reported, the biggest problem is that people tend to live far out from the nearest town. There is no public transportation, their available transportation is not adequate for maintaining employment. A TANF recipient on another reservation stated, my truck is always broken down. The further I go with my education and training, the harder it is. Im not close enough to town and not close enough to stores. My aunt has to take me shopping. I have to go 30 miles for gas. A tribal social service provider close to an urban area stated, our transportation problems are shocking. Were close to the city, yet were still isolated. Its like theres a big wall around our community.

In regards to childcare, all but the smallest tribes had access to come form of childcare whether the state or the tribe provided services. Most communities reported increased demands for childcare in the last several years. In one community, the childcare director reported the demand had doubled in the last two years. Several tribes maintained long waiting lists for services. In one community, there were 60 children on the waiting list with only 80 total childcare slots in existence. The child services that were available were limited in a number of ways. For example, most providers provided only care for children from 7:00 a.m. till 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. weekdays only. While a few casinos provided childcare services to employees, even these services were only available during the daytime, although the casinos are open 24 hours. Some programs placed restrictions on the children they will care for. For example, one family didnt accept children under the age of 5. All the service providers who were asked, stated that childcare services were not adequate in meeting the needs of their communities. They attributed the shortage of services to the shortage of funding.

Going to the next. Individual barriers such as the lack of education, job experience and individual family problems are also evident. Just looking at low education. In one tribal program, 50 percent of the participants had an 8th grade education or less. Some only had a third grade education. Some JTPA programs required applicants to have GEDs before they could even participate in the program. Other JTPA programs offered GED classes, but service providers in several communities said that they did not have enough GED slots to meet the need. An employer training coordinator said that most TANF recipients who apply for his program need extensive assistance with reading, writing and basic math. The majority of service providers describe their available educational services as quote, inadequate. They said they were having a difficult time meeting the increased demands for services because quote a lot of the individuals referred to us are hard to serve. They need the most basic skills.

Regarding job experience. Many of the focus group members had never held paid positions outside of either job corp or some type of community service program. However, focus group members were aware of the importance of the experience or for experience. Let me quote, the employees I see each month, and that is to sign their work activity form, tell me the same thing. You need a GED and you need job experience. Although I have to apply for their jobs if there are openings, I know they wont pick me because I dont have experience. To address this lack of job experience and training, tribal new jobs as well as JTPA are being utilized. The problem is, not every tribe has a new job program or have a welfare to work funding and have to rely heavily on either the tribal JTPA or the state employment.

Looking at basic necessities. Another barrier to work faced by reservation residents is the lack of basic necessities such as telephones, food, fuel and clothing. Of all the focus group participants interviewed, only a few had telephones. Employers are reluctant to hire people who they cannot reach by phone. Most participants reported lacking basic household supplies at the end of each month. In some communities, residents still rely on wood fuel for heating their homes. One woman reported the money I get from welfare is not enough to cover rent and butane. My fuel runs out and we have to sit in the house with blankets over us. This lack of basics also makes it difficult for recipients to care for their families and effectively pursue employment at the same time.

Looking at individual and family problems. Focus group members reported having children with health or behavioral problems which made it difficult to work as well as to find specialized childcare. Some were grandmothers caring for grandchildren because the childrens mothers were not longer in the home. In addition, alcoholism was cited as a problem in many communities by both service providers and focus group participants. As one service provider said, alcohol abuse is a big problem. It impacts employment, parenting, violence, suicides, crimes and other things.

Looking at the next which is very interesting. Lets move that up just a little so you can see that. This was something that I hadnt really thought of but really jumped out heavily in our early interviews. And that is service providers and focus group participants were aware that TANF recipients were often discriminated against by employers due to their gender -- due to gender issues, ethnicity or personal family histories. Respondents perceived that this discrimination in both employers both on and off reservations. So they werent just saying that this kind of discrimination was off reservations, but they said that it was very heavy within the reservation as well. In towns and cities outside the reservations, service providers and focus group participants perceived that American Indians were stereotyped and discriminated against some employers.

One service provider said that in the nearest town, many fast food managers didnt want to hire American Indians. They think we dont know responsibility, commitment or the work ethic. They think we always have emergencies to take us away from work. Personal or family histories of alcoholism were also reported to be a barrier in employment. A social work director said, discrimination is a big problem here. Once youre labeled as an alcoholic, you have a stigma for life. People who know the background of individuals wont hire them. Thats the weakness of trying to work within the community. One woman stated, Ive been sober for three years but no one will hire me because I used to be an alcoholic. Im trying to get back with the rest of the world, but Ive been labeled as an alcoholic.

Moving to the next on increased communication, coordination and collaboration among tribal service providers. Now this is probably one of the most positive things that have happened. As we traveled and worked with tribes, one of the things weve seen more than ever before now is internal communication that has never happened. That is, many times the employment training people rarely talk with the social service people who rarely talk with tribal planners who rarely talk with any type of economic development and job creation or with the tribally controlled community colleges. One of the things were seeing happening is a strengthening communication. People coming more and more to the table across tribal programs beginning to examine how the can put together some type of comprehensive system that can serve clients. Also weve seen a tremendous increase in communication with the state and vice versa. There have been more meetings with states and tribes than there have been in the past and if nothing else, a better understanding of what isnt being done as well as what is being done to service American Indian recipients.

The next is increased opportunity for tribal sovereignty and culturally sensitive assistance programs. Never before, I believe, have tribal governments been positioned --

-- lot of little streams of funding with a lot of little individual programs. And what this allows is some real time for some critical thinking of how we can begin to combine these programs so that we can move people from welfare to work in a more creative way. I think tied to this and you will hear this legislation of Pub. L. 102-477 that allows for funding into a single block grant for training, education and social service programs. The new Pub. L. 93-638 regulations and amendments that make it much more flexible to use those dollars, and then as well as the 50 percent unemployment rule all kind of come together in a way that I think provides an interesting approach for tribes who want to step into this. Even given the lack of funding just through TANF. Particularly if we just see TANF alone and we just see the small amount of money thats there, it is a real challenge. But when we start thinking about TANF money thats available, the new jobs money, the welfare to work money, some of the GA money and adult education. When we start looking at it from that standpoint, then were seeing a much larger amount of dollars that can be used in much more creative ways rather than continuing the individual small programs on reservations.

Moving quickly here, conclusions. It is really too early to draw some major conclusions about survival strategies and tactics. Thats why its important to have a longitudinal approach. But some of the conclusions that we have reached is 1) the impacts of welfare reform are both positive and negative. Positive in motivating heads of households to seek education, training and work and in presenting opportunities for tribal social services. I think that is very, very positive. You know, so many times in the history, most of our reservations, the only opportunity that has been provided us is how do we increase social service programs. There has not been a real emphasis on work, economic development and job creation. Now that emphasis is there and I think we need to begin to ask ourselves then are the support services there to push that and to support that kind of effort.

Negative, especially for those tribes that are rural that have high unemployment, few jobs and few support services because this is going to be a challenge. And as tribal governments that has the responsibility to care for the well-being of their citizens, tribal governments need to begin to take a look at, okay, weve got these challenges, what are we going to need and what kind of restructuring are we going to need to more effectively provide if, in fact, high unemployment. How are we going to do job creation if in fact there are few jobs, how do we create jobs? Or how can we do community service jobs, how can we do subsidizing types of jobs, and how do we then begin in the long range to create long term employment? This becomes very critical in bringing the planning, the tribal planning office involved and your economic development office if you have one involved in welfare reform. Unless we know what the future is going to bring on job creation and the types of jobs that are going to be created and the type of training thats going to be needed, it's going to be difficult to do any type of long range training and planning.

Support services are inadequate and underfunded. In think we all know that. When we look at childcare we need more innovative ways. The gentleman from Alaska this morning talked about why are we using our childcare for TANF. Under the possibility that American Indians have a dual eligibility for childcare and that tribes need to say, well if we start using our childcare for TANF, then thats going to put some of these working poor out of childcare. So how can we make our childcare monies go further? And that is youve got to talk with the state. Theres an obligation and an agreement needs to be made with states on how youre going to meet the tremendous need for childcare.

Transportation is a tremendous problem on reservations that are rural, in rural settings. And you know, a number of different ideas through third party billing, setting up transportation systems on reservations is going to be critical. It makes no difference if you have a job if you cant get to the job. Here again, another thing is that when we look at the welfare recipient, these --

-- the question is tied to that also has been the idea that many of them will have a health or mental health problem. Even in the state of Oregon, they said right now after they cut all of the people, and this is not just Indian, this is a total state, after they cut everyone off, they think at this point theyre saying that I think its 75 percent of those people still on welfare suffer from some type of mental health issue or concern or problem that keeps them from going to work. Now if its that high there, think about how high potentially it could be on reservation. And then think about how we, not only going to create jobs and provide childcare and transportation, but if a person is not ready to go to work, is suffering from an alcohol and substance abuse or is suffering from domestic violence or is suffering from some type of other ailment that keeps them from work, unless we have those kind of support services, and this is where Indian health service and psychological services and some of these other support services have got to be tied in as well to working with the hard to place.

The future impact on Indian families will vary depending on the geographic location and regards to isolation of reservations. We know that, for instance, we work with Salt River Indian Community. Theyre right next to Scottsdale. Our focus groups with those individuals were much different than on the other reservations. Theyre very close to employment, they have a lot of industry going onto the reservation, et cetera.

So those kinds of needs and challenges are going to be different than someone thats in a more isolated area. Some of the early findings that are concerning us about people living in the rural areas are statements of one individual who is saying, gee, if Im going to go to work, Ive got to go to an urban area and I cant take my children with me so Ive left them with extended family on the reservation while I go search for work. Or another statement of an individual who said the pressure and stress was too much to try to work, to get training and so forth so I put my child in boarding school for the time being so that I can meet that need. Both contrary to the reason of why welfare reform was put into place and that is for the strengthening and support of families.

The tribal state coordination is critical in successfully transitioning individuals from welfare to work. One of the things, it doesnt matter whether the tribe is administering welfare reform or not, youve got to be talking with the state. And Ill give you several reasons why. One is the state is obligated and had to sign when they submitted their plan back to Washington, that they would provide equitable services to Indian communities. We will not know if those equitable services are being provided unless we, as tribal governments, sit down at the table with the state and say how are you providing equitable services to us. And one of the things you will find in probably many situations is that they are not. In the State of Arizona they are not and they have waived certain requirements because they cannot provide the type of employment services that are needed out there. So they waived it. When you are asking how many of our tribal members are on the TANF roles and then become really important are also asking your GA program how many of our people are on GA to begin to understand if theres a shift that occurs.

The other thing is to ask the state, what kind of data are you collecting on us as American Indians? At the end of these five or six years, what are you going to be able to tell us specifically about American Indian population? And Ill guarantee you the state will tell you probably they can predict whats happening in the urban areas. They can probably tell you whats happening with Hispanics, or Blacks or Asians, but Ill tell you, when you ask them whats happening with American Indians, very few of the states are really taking any kind of effort or time to take a look at American Indian populations. The tribal governments must demand or at least sit down and agree with the state on what kind of data is going to be collected for American Indians that you can use, not only in negotiating with the state but also begin to take a look in regards to the future impact.

Okay, lets go to -- is that, okay. One of the things again that its very important is the longitudinal kind of aspect. We have just started this. We need data to tell the story about whats happening to Indian families and children. This is one small grant in Arizona. It will not answer all the questions. We know that every state is different and every tribe is different. Right now we only have one grant that is provided out of Health and Human Services. And thats ours. And its a small tiny grant to look at one state and focus on three tribes. What we need, either tribes need to go to the state and say listen, youre getting all of these thousands of dollars to do impact studies of whats happening with welfare reform in your state, what are you doing and how can we work together to make sure that youre collecting reliable, sufficient data on American Indians. We also need to as HHS and the Administration on Native Americans. The Administration on Native Americans had that education and information grant. The question is, how are we going to have any kind of dollars to take a look at whats happening to your tribes and being able to collect that data. I will guarantee you that as we move through these next few years, Congress will be holding hearings in regards to welfare reform to determine how well it's working.

Now we can wait and go back and talk about how sensitive and how our heart feels about how people are suffering in Indian families or we can say weve got not only that, but weve got some clear data that show whats happening and show the need for either some type of administrative changes, additional support or whatever is going to be needed. And I guarantee you, unless we have that in hand given the kind of direction that Congress is going, we will not get additional funds, we will not be able to tell the story thats sufficient to convince people of the need that exists in Indian communities.

One of the things that Ive learned here if nothing else, is the opportunity of getting out and talking with welfare recipients and to really begin to feel the pain that single parent mothers face. And if theres one thing that has benefitted me of the importance of the study that we are doing and the importance of the story that we have to tell of whats happening. Now I dont know how many of you have been raised in single parent families. I dont know how many of you have been raised on welfare. But if you have, youll really get an understanding that of the myth and the stereotype that 1) women do not want to work, that women prefer to stay in welfare. That children somehow get through that they have enough, et cetera. Youll find that many of those are myths that have to be addressed and that they can only be addressed by effectively moving people from welfare to work.

Okay, any questions after that last presentation? Yes, sir. There is a microphone there for you. This is a gentleman I havent seen in so long I hardly recognize him, because his hair has turned so beautiful white.

QUESTION: Why isnt any of your research focused on the incomes of Indian families who have transitioned from welfare to work? Because it seems to me if you transition to work and youre at a lower income than when you were on welfare, not a lot of progress has been made in terms of actual family economics. It could make you in a worse situation than when you were on welfare. Because you couldnt pay for the services that you once got. So I was curious why that focus wasnt in your study.

DR. BROWN: No, and an excellent question. One of the things were finding is that people go off of welfare or they go to work, theyre still -- were not talking about rocket scientist jobs here, were talking about minimum wage jobs working in fast food industry, et cetera. which do not meet the -- does not give enough money for a person to get off food stamps, to be able to pay for childcare, et cetera. So in many instances you will find welfare people moving off of welfare into work, but still earning less money. And the question is incentive. And yes we are going to be looking at that. This next week and a half well have interviewers --

One of the things that we will be talking to them is the salary that they make and compare that as well as we will be talking to their employers in regards to their income as well. So we hope to look at that, were still making adjustments to our questionnaire to try to get as much data. Again, wed like to do a much thorough study and a much more in-depth approach but we think weve got that covered. But thats a good question and Ill make sure when we go back to take a look at that. Had a question in back.

MR. CAGEY: Yeah, Henry Cagey, Chairman of the Lummi Nation. I think, Dr. Brown, you mentioned data I guess and we just spent a lot of time on the Hill here these last couple of weeks on different issues from health care issues to self government issues. But I think where were really missing the boat with Congress and the people on the Hill is the data. And welfare reform is something that ties into everything that we do as tribes. But how do we begin to start moving towards data and developing a proper way to gather data for all the tribes that is consistent. We have IHS That has different data, we have BIA has different data, Department of Ag, Department of Health all has different ways to gather data. We have no way of gathering it unless you know the right people to talk to and the right agency to talk to or the right tribe to talk to. Is that were getting our butt kicked, I guess I should say, up on the Hill because we have no data to back up what were saying. And welfare reform is a good example where we need good data to defend some of the things that Congress is doing to us.

DR. BROWN: You know, one of the things is when this program first came out, we were either in Phoenix or Tucson at NCAI conference and we approached the Assistant Secretary saying well we know that annually $15 million is appropriated for evaluation of welfare reform. And then we said what is the Indians portion and how do we get that? And the response was, its all gone. it's already been all committed to the state. Theres no money left. And so that was a concern. And we then waited to see what was going to happen and then this bone was thrown out, which literally is what it is, to say well, well throw it out. With everybody competing against everybody else wasnt just for American Indian or whatever but just to do studies looking at different area. So we got that. We still dont have a national study.

I think out of the Kaiser Foundation came up with some dollars to do, and youll hear this afternoon, I think things that will continue to reinforce what we have been talking about today in regards to the need for some type of longitudinal study. I think one of the things of recommendation that ought to come out to NCAI is what is the effort. Recently the welfare to work money came out, that was placed out. There was an RFP put out for a major study on how welfare to work money was going to be utilized. They did an Option A attached to that saying, oh, by the way, if you have an interest, you can also write a grant to look at the Indian tribes. We got involved in that and we did submit a grant as an Option A with one of the large contractors. Our concern was why did we have to go with one of the large contractors. And lo and behold, the grant was submitted, we werent successful in getting it with that large contractor. Another large contractor got it.

But I think, you know, at least theres one other element out there. But the question is, what has been and what will be the involvement of tribal governments in ensuring the research thats being done in there and how can it be tied in.

The other is, you know, like you say, theres a great diversity. One of the things that we need to look at is each tribe needs to be working with their --

-- is collecting data. In some ways they have tied with some evaluation company thats doing an evaluation on the impact of welfare reform in their state. You need to be asking, particularly those of you that have large populations in those states about what the state is doing to collect data on American Indians and what theyre going to be able to tell you on that impact. I think it's going to be very, very important. The other is, we continually need the coordination.

MR. GOBIN: Hi, my name is Steve Gobin from the Tulalip tribes in Washington State. And I had a question on your focus groups. I didnt hear you say anything about child support enforcement and thats a big part of the federal TANF program. And also I wanted to make a brief statement on working with your state. The states are -- a lot of what the state in Washington is doing is geared not so much now towards getting people onto TANF, but on working on wage progression and getting people that are currently in jobs, that got their jobs under the TANF program back into some sort of training programs so that they can progress in their jobs and increase their wages to have a livable wage for their families. But support enforcement issue, I think, is important and I dont think it's been properly addressed by Indian country yet and were going to need to take a look at it.

DR. BROWN: I agree with you. Let me just tell you, right now there are two basic approaches in discussing work and moving people from welfare to work. And theyre kind of at two ends of the continuum. One is work first. The states that have taken this approach has said, it doesnt matter, lets just get people into jobs. Were not even going to look at the level of jobs, what the pay is, lets just put them to work. By putting them to work theyll get experience in working, et cetera. And then theyll be able to move up the ladder. The other end of the continuum is what you call a human -- a capital development approach that says, no, what were going to do is provide training and education first so that as people go into a job, they can make sure that theyre getting the best possible job that they can given the training and education. Its going to be interesting to see those tribes that take on TANF, how many of those use work first versus a human capital development approach. So far in the 12 that have taken over TANF, I have not seen the kind of creativity. Many of them have followed much very closely to what the state plan is.

Now with the new TANF proposed regulations out, I think, and talking about the tribes have great flexibility in defining what is work and building in education and training and so forth, I think it will be very interesting to see how tribal governments respond to that flexibility.

The other on child support enforcement, I agree with you. In the law it says that you can develop your own tribal child support enforcement or you can work out an agreement with the state because such a mechanism is very complicated. I think some tribes are ready to move. There are other tribes that have not looked at that and I agree with you that weve been somewhat slow in that regard and some of that has to do with jurisdictional problems. In the state of Arizona, not many tribes have moved to that with the exception of maybe Navajo tribe that are developing some child support enforcement. But clearly it's going to grow. The need for that and the understanding for it is going to grow. A number of years ago, just in the states, we were trying to work with county judges to do law enforcement. There was not an awareness or an interest to do that. I think we need to create that interest among tribes to realize the savings that could be made by having child support enforcement being collected. A lot of that, unless youre running your own TANF program and unless youre getting a hundred percent of that return, there is some question about some question about what the incentive is to the tribe to try to get into those kind of agreements.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, final question.

MR. THUNDER EAGLE: Last year when we were talking with the regional corporations about implementing TANF, I asked them all how are you going to do it? What are you going to do? They all joked and said, well, David, we are going to buy airline tickets and we are going to send everybody to Anchorage.

All joking aside, I was wondering. I think one of the data that I would hope that you, Dr. Brown, and others that were going to be doing as well is really track the migration patterns. This really could cause a big shift of rural people, isolated reservation people moving to the urban areas.

DR. BROWN: You know, as I indicated over the next four years we are going to be tracking 400 families -- a hundred from Salt River, 100 from San Carlos, and 200 from Navajo. We will track those wherever they go. And you know the difficulty, we may lose them, but we at least will know that they left the reservation or they went somewhere and if we can track them down we will do that. But I do agree with you. Not only that, but also to follow the GA, general assistance, to see if thats shrinking or if thats growing. To really understand our people coming, being sanctioned, coming back to the reservation and going on GA. Or are the tribes developing GA and putting that in as part of their welfare reform and so GA is taking on a whole new personality or a whole new thrust in that effort.

THE CHAIRMAN: Okay, we certainly want to thank Dr. Brown for his presentation. I think its the beginning of something that we as Indian people will see quite often in the future. And we realize that we cannot do the planning if we dont have the statistics to do it.

I infringed on your lunch period just a little bit. I apologize for that, but Im going to compensate for that and ask you to come back at 1:15. Our other presenters are present, theyre ready to go on. Were going to start back up sharp at 1:15. I want to make one other statement before we leave is that it really does please me to see here today not only the technicians that are having the responsibility of implementing programs, but I see a lot of elected tribal officials here. I think one of the things that we realize is this is going to affect all of us. So I appreciate each of you being here, please be back at 1:15.

A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N

THE CHAIRMAN: Its Curtis Zunig (phonetic), right. I mess up every time I say it. I got a little bit of an accent, you know, and it comes into play on me. But we do appreciate you being with us, Curtis. And please, Ive been allocating 20 minutes to each presenter and you can use the table or you can use this one.

MR. ZUNIG: All right, here we go. Everybodys still at lunch. So this makes my presentation real easy. Thank you all very much, those of you that are here. I appreciate you coming and joining our afternoon session. My name is Curtis Zuniga; I am the chief of the Delaware tribe of Indians, Americas first federally recognized tribe. And I also serve in the additional capacity of being the chairman of the board for an organization called Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity. The organization has been around for some 32 years, headquartered in Norman, Oklahoma, right south of Oklahoma City. And the overall purpose of the organization really is to impove the cultural and economic opportunities and conditions for our Indian people. And we do that by coordinating and facilitating different resources, both at the state and national level and at the tribal levels. And of course the whole idea is to improve the state of our social and economic status and also to perpetuate the history and heritage of our individual tribes.

Now the early efforts of our organization, going back to the '60s, really, have grown into what we now know as self-determination, self-sufficiency. A lot of the federal Indian programs that have evolved now under this guise of self-governance, self-determinations. The building blocks to achieve that, what the organization began in the '60s to try to do.

Now as times have changed, the organization, of course, has been a long time grantee in many different areas. A grantee from the Administration for Native Americans, ANA. Probably most of you all at one time or another in your tribal history have received and operated an ANA grant. Our organization applied for and received two different grants through ANA to disseminate information to tribes about Public Law 104-93 which is the Personal Responsibility Act or the new Welfare Reform as we know it. Now the states that our two grants cover include 103 tribes. And the states are Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Yeah, a lot of traveling.

Now we have a number of consultants who travel throughout Indian country, throughout these areas and help disseminate information about welfare reform and how tribes are to look at bringing on welfare reform today. Now one of the first ways of doing this obviously was to -- Im giving you a report on what were doing with our ANA grants. So thats really what Im supposed to be doing here is just kind of telling you what were doing with our grant and how its affecting the Indian country. So I dont have all the answers about what are you supposed to do with your tribe, but I can help facilitate that information.

So, again, one of the first things we did then was to develop a resource manual and to -- we coordinated with a number of national consultants. And probably the top national consultant was our presenter here earlier this morning, Dr. Eddie Brown. And he worked with us in a very significant manner to help us develop this resource manual. So weve got one of those hard-back, three ring binders. it's about this thick, full of materials that are a part of the presentation materials that OIO does when we are bringing forward this information about TANF. In addition to developing the resource manual, we put on a number of state and regional workshops, inviting tribes, inviting the state in and then, of course, we do on-site visits for individual tribes.

Let me go into just, again, just a bit of information about the development of the resource manual. We spent the first three, a little over three months of our initial grant consulting with a number of experts across the country in putting together this resource manual that I am referring to. Welfare, employment, childcare and, again, people like Dr. Eddie Brown and others gave input. We had a number of sessions where we brought all the consultants in, looked at various drafts, tried to fine tune it. And what kind of information from a tribal perspective, from a state perspective, form a national perspective, what kind of information is needed in this resource manual. So we put the resource manual together. And again, the -- some of the materials were indeed a copy of the law itself, characteristics of tribal TANF plans, locations of tribal TANFs and a guide for tribal Temporary Assistance to Needy Family Programs. Those states that had provided a TANF plan, that is in there also. And also three tribal TANF plans are in this resource manual. So whenever we do the outreach to the tribes in the area, whether we put on a regional seminar or we do an on-site visit with the tribe, thats what we will be providing to you all.

So thats great. Now weve got a box full of manuals. What do we do with them. How do we get it out into the hands of the tribes? Obviously, as I said, what we do is first try to do a large outreach effort, state and regional workshops. Presentations were given under the premise that the tribes had little knowledge of the new welfare reform act and did not realize that as a tribe that they were able to do their own TANF services. Now although this was found to be incorrect we wanted to make the presentations meaningful. And we put on seminars like this, we hand out the manual, we bring in all kinds of high-powered speakers including Dr. Eddie Brown. But oftentimes, after gathering general information and trying to figure out what do we do with it, how do we apply it specifically to our tribe. Thats when the request for an on-site visit was made. And so that would be arranged. For instance the -- well, a number of tribes in this service area that I referred to have asked for on-site visits and we have done that in the last year.

Since the initial presentations were made, a lot of tribes are sitting here trying to figure out, do we go with the TANF program, do we not go with the TANF program. What are the pros, what are the cons? When we did this presentation, what we would do is we would have a list. Eight reasons why tribal governments might not want to administer a TANF program. But we also did an outline and went through in detail seven reasons why the tribal government might choose to administer a TANF program. Now the state and regional workshops provided an in-depth analysis of the Act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act. Background information was given on TANF contrasting it with the old programs, AFDC. And then, you know, again wed go over the pros and cons of developing a tribal TANF plan. We also covered how to implement a welfare program in your tribe. Options in regard to child support enforcement, childcare, employment, training and other kinds of family assistance.

Because the main -- you know, one thing, and Im a tribal leader. My tribe doesnt have a TANF program because were sitting here thinking, wow, it's this huge thing, the state is already doing it. But Im trying to get my tribe to also do the critical thinking in that if youre going to do a TANF, it should not simply be yet another program and you follow the program guidelines and you hire a program director and you sit there and, you know, you hand out some checks or you process some paperwork. Were talking if it's really, truly welfare reform, changing it, changing the whole face of it. Were talking about trying to coordinate a full system here.

As Dr. Brown said earlier, your average welfare recipient is going to be a single young mother with some kids, probably on the lower end of the soco-economic scale. it's one thing to say, all right, we have a TANF program, you are required to work and thats part of welfare reform, you are required to work. And youll get credit for working and youll get some welfare monies. You know, but that doesnt solve the problem. And besides, hows that young mother going to take care of her kids while shes working if shes required to work. And what jobs. Is she going to go work at McDonalds in town and leave the reservation or leave the rural community to go into town to work at McDonald's so she can get a little bit of a job because she doesnt have the training to get a better-paying job. A job thats really more career- oriented.

Those of you that work at McDonalds Im not insulting you but, you know, quite frankly it takes more than just a minimum wage job to survive. Well, wait a minute, I thought tribal governments have all this capacity for job training, transportation, childcare. So when were talking about changing welfare reform or changing welfare as we know it with the new reform programs, its the business of tribal government to develop a much larger umbrella. If you have a transportation program, figure out a way of getting your people to the job site. If you have economic development, create some jobs. Have your own people working for you. If you have a childcare program, give them credit to put their children in the tribal childcare program and watch their kids while theyre working. This is the critical thinking that we were finding out when we were conducting the state and regional workshops. This is the critical thinking necessary for the tribes.

Now, whenever we did these state and regional workshops we also had to bring in the state. Because the state most of the time is running the welfare programs. And if you dont have good working relations with your state, Department of Human Services, and in some cases, states actually do have a tribal TANF representative within their organization. In Oklahoma weve got a real good guy, but its --

(Interruption to tape.)

Its kind of like an additional duty to him. He told me, man, I could make a full time job -- because in Oklahoma we have 39 tribes headquartered in the State of Oklahoma. And our guy said, man, I could make a full time job just coordinating with all these tribes. But it's an additional duty to him, but thank God we do have somebody kind of assigned by the state to kind of work with the tribes and help them with their plan, whether they are going to transition into their own TANF program, or if they decide not to do it, how are they going to attend to the, quite frankly, special needs of our Indian people in the state.

So what we did was we worked on bringing in representatives from the state to participate in developing strategies for negotiating with state welfare, child support and employment agencies. Each of the state and regional presentations started with an emphasis on the need for the tribes to do critical thinking. Again, Im a tribal leader. I dont have a degree in -- Im not a social worker or anything like that. So when a lot of this stuff hits me it's like new material, you know. But everyone is saying well, council and chief, you guys got to set up the mechanism here. Were counting on you to do your work. And then quickly were having to get educated. And it's like big and overwhelming, you know.

But thats what these sessions are for. And thats what the on-site trainings are for. To help bring the tribal leadership up to a level where they understand what their charge is. And, again, to do that critical thinking. it's more than just contracting and taking on a program. it's thinking how can we take all of these other things that were doing and coordinating them to a full-service delivery system thats going to benefit our tribe, rather than just contracting for a simple program. Money comes in, money goes out, oops, contract is over. Lets hope we get funded again. The whole idea is, were going to transition these people out of welfare and into work. And if you want to keep your people on the reservation, if you want to keep your people close to the tribe, then youve got to provide those additional opportunities in employment and childcare, housing, transportation, and all of those things that tribal government can do. That is what I mean by critical thinking. And thats what we try to provoke. Thats what we try to inspire when we have these sessions. And to look at what other tribes are doing.

My friend, Mr. Lassley here from the Osage nation in Oklahoma. Theyre the only tribe right now in the state -- did the Pottawatomies get theirs? Okay, theyre the only tribe in the state right now that have their program going. And so in a lot of ways were looking at them as a model.

Now let me quickly go over because my times running out. Let me just say that OIO did put on state meetings in Montana with seven tribes, South Dakota with four tribes. And not just the tribes but we had other social service organizations, state representatives, sometimes a tribal consortium may exist when the tribe is too small. And theyll come together as a consortium. So they attended these TANF meetings. Albuquerque with eight Pueblos and three consortia. Nebraska and Iowa tribes, we met in Sioux City. Oklahoma, we had one in Norman, Oklahoma. We had 12 tribes there and one consortium. New Town, North Dakota, we had five tribes and two tribal community colleges. Utah we had one at Salt Lake City. Kansas, we had one in Lawrence, Kansas. The Southern Utes hosted one in Colorado. And in Louisiana, we had a meeting in Baton Rouge. So we did, over the last year, put on a number of state and/or regional conferences or meetings in order to bring tribes together and again go through this presentation process.

Now, out of that oftentimes we would get on-site requests. So, indeed, we would bring this material and go right to the tribes, sit down with them and look specifically at their tribal dynamic. And help them through that critical thinking process. But youve got to remember now. And this is, again, as a tribal leader. You can get educated all day long but the initiative has to come from the tribe itself. And if your social service people, if your program people are saying we need to do this, we can do this, then its the tribal government thats got to develop that mechanism so that you can take it away from the state. And theres an incredible dynamic there, too. Thats why relations with the state are important.

What Im trying to do is give you a brief overview of what weve been doing. Let me just also say that this full report and lots more details, theres a whole stack of them on that table directly back in the center of the room. So when this is over, please go ahead and pick that up and look over the details. So I wont get into the specifics of the site visit, but let me just say under state and tribal coordination, the Department of Human Services co-sponsored the event. Thats how we --

(Interruption to tape.)

If youre like us in Oklahoma, relations with the state arent always good. Especially when youre talking about the state legislature. And they view Indians oftentimes as the enemy. And how can you have good relations with the enemy. But quite frankly it's our people that are going to line up at the state DHS office for their welfare.

So in spite of the political problems that may exist between the state legislature and the governor of your state and your tribal leaders, we have to recognize that we have to work with these state agencies. And thats why, at least at the level of your program people, they should have at least good relations with the state Department of Human Services. And even if there is a TANF administered at the state level, again, its very important. Raymond and I -- with our guy in Oklahoma, would you acknowledge indeed that having a good relations with him and good information source has helped in your transition. Hes a good -- were really lucky to have somebody who is -- hes a non-Indian but hes very sensitive and hes taken time to become educated about the tribes. And the individual tribal dynamic. Because we know that Osages are completely different from the Commanches on the other side of the state. So he has to take that into account, too.

So, yes, very important to have state participation. Should a tribe decide to look more closely at doing their own tribal TANF, they would need to get information from the state on the number of people served in 1994. Because that 1994 base figure about how many people were being served is whats used to start developing a formula on the state match. If you decided to take on TANF yourself, the money that the state was getting to serve Indians, can you develop a relationship where theyll say well well just give you the match if you guys are going to handle it yourself. You cant just walk in there and demand it. Youre going to have to negotiate it and work it out and let those state guys know that were supposed to be getting his, but just because you say it doesnt mean they are going to give it to you.

(End side B, tape 2.)

So the state match, again, we do go into that in our -- both in our workshops and in our on-site visits. Questions and concerns for tribes not considering a TANF plan. Well, theres no regulations in many cases. A lot of unknowns. This has historically been the responsibility of the state. Tribes receive no start-up costs. And in most cases, tribes will need to redesign a large umbrella of programs. Thats rather a daunting task.

Questions and concerns for tribes who are considering a TANF plan. What is your service area? What do you do in developing the process of submitting a plan? Who are you going to serve? Is it just going to be tribal members, is it going to be all Indians in your service area? What will that service area be? You have got to take into account the time limits about how long people are going to be eligible for TANF. And youve got to also realize what if theyre living in another state or they move back. You are going to have to coordinate with these states. You coordinate electronically.

So theres this whole business of computers and software and everything. How youre going to link up with your state and possibly other states to track whos been receiving TANF and for how long. So, there is a lot of critical thinking that needs to be done. And in the areas where OIO, Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, has received funding to serve those tribes, thats what we are trying to do in our outreach effort.

In addition to that we have some information on CHIP, the new childrens health insurance program. So I hope that we're serving as a good model in our region for what should be going on nationally. We do attend a lot of NCAI briefing sessions on welfare reform. And, again, our handouts are back here on this table. Forgive me if Ive compromised by a couple of minutes on my time. And after this is over, if you see me at any time, Ill be glad to answer any questions. But contact us at OIO. I think our 800 number is somewhere back there and well be glad to visit with you some more. And I thank you for the time.

THE CHAIRMAN: Im going to give you an opportunity to answer questions. If somebody has a question, well give you an opportunity to answer a couple of questions.

MR. ZUNIGA: Certainly. Are there any questions? I know I kind of breezed through it real quick, but -- I just would ask you to take this -- and listen, they shipped a whole bunch of these posters, please take some with you so I dont have to ship them back. And the reports and everything. Please take some of this material with you and everything. Okay, if there arent any questions, thank you, again.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Okay, were going to now, I guess, officially enter into a different spectrum of our presentation today. This morning we were talking about the ANA contractors and all. And so -- but now were going -- and weve already had one presentation by Dr. Brown about the statistical impacts. And so this afternoon we will be hearing people that recognize the fact that we, as Indian people dont have the statistics we really need. I think theres a real effort going on now to make sure that we do try to get up to speed with this and also the first person that Im going to introduce this afternoon is her by the generosity of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Ms. Joanne Kaufman. Joanne, welcome.

MS. KAUFMAN: Thanks, Mom. Good afternoon. My name is Joanne Kaufmann and Im a member of the Nez Perce Tribe from Idaho. I just moved my family out of Washington, D.C. where I had a -- started a consulting and lobbying firm and did some work -- oh, can you hear me back there? Yeah, sort of. Anyway, we moved back to the Nez Perce Reservation in 1994, and so my family is living back there. And I was asked by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation about a year ago if I would do what was described as a brief analysis of the way tribes are administering TANF and the decisions that tribes or the planning and decision-making process that tribes go through in deciding to go with the TANF program or to not go with the TANF program.

That was about a year ago. It was a project that I worked with Michael Hughes from the Phoenix, Arizona area. We worked together on that. I think that in getting started, I guess, before I get into the things that I discovered, I just wanted to provide a little of my own background in context, I guess, in terms of looking at welfare reform and looking at how this federal legislation is affecting tribes.

One of the things I heard today was a question about whether tribes wanted to get into welfare or not, which kind of struck me as an odd question because welfare, the welfare of the tribal members, I think, is a fundamental. It is one of the most fundamental aspects of tribal sovereignty and the definition of tribes, of who we are going back to the original negotiations of treaties for many of the leaders that we revere in our history who made very difficult decisions about these negotiations. It all centered on the welfare of the tribe, what was in the best interest of the families of the children of the old people who couldnt take care of themselves. And in the discussion about whether or not administering your own TANF program or whether or not the state should administer it, it still does not relieve from our shoulders as staff for tribes or as tribal leaders, that inherent fundamental responsibility of protecting the welfare of our tribe and our tribal members.

I think in recognition of my good friend and former professor, Buffalo Head, I would like to quote from Felix Cohens Handbook of Federal Indian Law a very brief definition of tribal sovereignty. And it states that -- it is defined as those power which are lawfully vested in the Indian tribe and are not delegated powers expressed by acts of Congress, but rather these are inherent powers of sovereignty which have never been extinguished. I think welfare falls into that category. It doesnt really matter if we choose to administer TANF or if we continue that function with the state. Ultimately, the welfare of our tribal members falls back to the tribe.

The Kaiser Foundation asked that I visit three tribes in Oregon and three in Arizona and three in Wisconsin. And I did that with the exception of Arizona, we only were able to visit two tribes within the time period of our study. And the purpose was to really to take a snapshot of how those tribes were dealing with the TANF program.

The tribes that we visited in Oregon were the Klamath Tribe, the first tribe to open their doors to TANF clients and to begin providing those services to the tribe. We also visited with the Selets and also with the Warm Springs. In Oregon, what we found, and I guess -- the other person who worked on this with me is Connie Evans, who is a former nurse practitioner and researcher, also from the Nez Perce tribe. Im not sure if you can see that back there, but the other thing I wanted to mention is I xeroxed copies of our executive summary and the findings section that is available on that back table in the corner.

But in Oregon, I think we see -- we found a very typical model of those tribes that are administering TANF. They are administering a program that is operating parallel with the state system. That the tribe, the Klamath and Selets tribes have received their approved TANF plan, negotiated their allocation, the grant allocation through the 1994 AFDC and jobs data and then proceeded to develop a specific plan. And the plan includes what they describe as their work activities, their participation rates, how sanctions would be applied, and how time limits are administered. In the state of Oregon, Oregon has one of the most flexible definitions of time limits, I think, than anywhere. The state of Oregon, if I get the definition correct, is that the time limit for TANF benefits is 24 months, no more than 24 months within an 84 month consecutive period, but that the time limit, the clock never starts ticking until youre out of compliance with the TANF requirements. So if youre in compliance, then the clock is not ticking. That was -- we did not find anything as flexible as that in Arizona or Wisconsin. But the system is divided here between what the tribe provides and what is provided through the state so that the clients will receive their financial assistance through the TANF program, be provided a variety of support services and training opportunities. They would have to come to the state for medical assistance, for medicaid eligibility and for food stamps. So in that context, there is a disjointed part of the system that requires either clients to do from one system to another, or for some to be lost and not be able to access those medical benefits or food stamp benefits.

One of the things I did want to mention is with regard to the Selets Tribe, within their TANF plan, they have focussed their energies around training and education. Dr. Brown talked this morning about the spectrum of philosophy in regards to welfare reform from being, you know, mandatory work first versus development of human potential. And I think that the Selets Tribe has included within their definition of allowable work activities, higher education. So that in addition to the other work activities, higher education counts as a work activity.

What we found in Arizona was very interesting. We visited the White Mountain Apache and also the Pasquiocki (phonetic) further south near Tucson. For both these tribes, they were facing an impending doom as the clock was ticking in Arizona, Arizona had enacted a -- I think it's called the Empower Program that set up a 24-month time limit for cash assistance. And for many of their clients, for example, I think at Pasquiocki, 90 percent of their clients were approaching that 24-month period and were about to be sanctioned or disqualified. Dr. Brown mentioned earlier that there was a waiver that was provided ultimately, but in preparation for that, both tribes that we visited prepared their TANF plans, they extended the timeline to go beyond what the state was recommending, but still within what the federal requirements are of five years total eligibility. And changed -- expanded the definition of work activities. I think reduced required work participation rates.

And once the plans had been developed, in each case the tribe then negotiated with the state and gave the program back to the state to administer. So that the tribe was not administering the program. The tribe took the TANF plan, changed the rules and the definitions and the time periods. And then, once they got it crafted to a way that was acceptable to their tribal council and consistent with their philosophy, contracted that function of actually administering the program and handing out the checks back to the state.

So for clients -- the benefits of that for clients, from a clients perspective, I think, is that this system would allow for one-stop shopping. It would consolidate not only cash assistance, but also medical assistance and food stamps into one office. This was a very creative way of dealing with it. It might not work for every tribe, but for White Mountain Apache and for Pasquiocki, they were both fortunate to have a state office located on reservation or very near and employing tribal members.

I guess Im partial to circles. In Wisconsin, the -- the State of Wisconsin implemented their own welfare reform prior to the enactment of the federal welfare reform legislation. And actively began to initiate strategies to move people off welfare very early. Again, there was a model that was set up. It was called Wisconsin Works, also known as W2. The primary motive behind that project or that initiative in Wisconsin, again, is to move people off of welfare and into jobs in a fairly aggressive fashion. And its backed up with a state-wide, computerized job search support system. But one of the things that Wisconsin did is that they issued RFPs across the state to counties, to non-profits, and to tribes to submit a proposal, submit a bid if they wanted to take over the entire system and run it on behalf of the state. So the state was really getting out of the business of administering welfare services.

Several of those tribes undertook that including the United Nation which operates a W2 program. For those programs that continue to administer those W2 programs, they are not only receiving the cash assistance support but also provided administrative matching funds from the state. As the section 412 in the Welfare Reform provided for tribes to come in, develop their own TANF program and administer those -- that cash assistance program through the tribal administration and under the tribal plan. Some of the tribes also decided to take that option. The state has withheld their matching funds for tribes who operate under their own TANF plan in Wisconsin.

There was a lot of discussion, I guess, in our interviews. We interviewed tribal leaders, TANF administrators, social service directors, childcare directors, jobs, whoever is in charge of the jobs programs for the reservation. One of the things that tribal leaders felt very strongly about was their responsibility to redesign and develop a program that was consistent with the beliefs of the tribe or the values of the tribe. Even if it meant they were sacrificing the contribution from the state of the matching dollars.

For the tribes that we visited, the Stockbridge Muncie tribe and the Forest County Pottawatomie tribe in Wisconsin, both tribes are providing significant dollars from tribal casino operations to subsidize the tribal TANF program.

Just in brief summary, I guess, some of the things we learned had to do with the importance, both from the few clients we talked to. We didnt get to talk to as many clients as we wished we could have but with both clients and line staff and with tribal leaders. The quote here was from one of the clients that we did get to interview and she said that the state was just pushing me through a program. Here they want to help. It was real important for tribal leaders for line staff to be able to intervene in what, I think, is viewed as an aggressive and potentially harsh social policy that is being implemented here. And to intervene on the behalf of the benefit of the families. Particularly in protection of the culture and values of the tribe, to be able to integrate that into the program and to develop appropriate work activities.

It will be especially important as we move in the next couple years from those easy to serve families. Easy to serve families that are just, you know, down for a few months and in transition and move them into the workforce to the hard to serve families. The families, I guess, Ive heard described multiple-barrier families. But basically the families with the variety of mental health or alcohol substance abuse types of problems. For tribal leadership this was important also to have a program that was consistent with tribal values.

The other thing we discovered and heard a lot was that caring was not enough. Theres a lot of outpouring, I guess, of concern about the welfare of tribal members. But the challenge of administering TANF, or connecting with a state-administered TANF system gets down to the nuts and bolts of planning and integrating resources, restructuring tribal programs, which means opening a can of worms in terms of political vested interest and program reporting requirements, funding allocations, jobs, offices. Creating new linkages with state officials. For many tribes and in many areas and with many states, that is a significant obstacle in light of some of the assaults against tribes that states have led.

And finally, the whole -- somebody said, you know, you bring a bunch of consultants in and by the time you get done paying them all the money and sitting through all the meetings, it always comes down to the same instruction that you have to do a paradigm shift. But in regards to TANF and welfare reform, the rules have been changed. And in light of the sanctions and the time limits that are at the base of this whole new welfare reform system, it is frightening to -- I think it should be frightening to tribal leaders and planners who are advising tribes to look into the not too distant future about what is going to happen to this population, the hard to serve population unless there is some shift and some risk taking in terms of redesigning tribal programs.

We heard a lot about that it's not about welfare, it's about work. And I guess after I looked at that and I was thinking this morning, I dont feel real comfortable with that statement anymore. Because it is about work, but it's not about work, it's about welfare. And it does go back and forth. Work participation is key but the tribes that we visited, I was kind of surprised that there was not more risk taking in terms of expanding the allowable work activities. A lot of the tribes that we visited are depending upon, in terms of really what jobs are available, were listed tribal programs, daycare, casino jobs. So in terms of -- you know, there were few exceptions, but those were the main jobs. If those are the main jobs where and when is that penetration into a larger economic opportunities and/or what is being done within the tribe to develop those work opportunities.

The other thing I just wanted to mention, too, in terms of it's not about welfare, it's about work. One of the things we did find which I was surprised about because theres been a lot of discussion about welfare reform and 102477, you can redo your whole tribal bureaucracy and restructure things. And you can, you know, you can make this paradigm shift and integrate it into your tribal organization. In fact, what we found is that the TANF services are being administered like a program. Primarily delegated to the -- or designated to the social services program. And the amount of restructuring that was predicted is not happening or is happening very slowly. And I think over time it may happen, but it wasnt happening to the extent that I thought it would be when we went out to visit.

Finally, in terms of the three different states that we looked at I hope one thing that came through is that there really is no one model. The Oregon experience I think is probably typical. The typical one that most tribes envision when thinking about TANF. I think that the creativity of the White Mountain Apache and Pasquiocki in terms of redesigning everything and then putting the administrative responsibility back to the state was interesting. And then with regard to what happened in Wisconsin, even thought the state officials said, we dont think its legal, but we did it anyway. They have given over even the medical assistance determination responsibility to the tribe and to the other contractors without the statutory authority to do that, but in that experiment have gone ahead to do that.

Finally, I guess, the thing that was important I think for us is that with all of the discussions about welfare reform there have been some things that have been left out. One of the things that we found was that medical assistance and medicaid is sort of an afterthought in terms of when people are developing their TANF program, when theyre linking with the state. Unfortunately, Medicaid is a very important resource for people without health care insurance. It doesnt matter if you are IHS eligible or not. You know what its like to be IHS-eligible and still be told you cannot have a surgery, you cannot have a certain procedure because there is no contract health service funds available. The Medicaid piece is going to have a detrimental impact on the budgets tribal programs, of IHS service units unless we can think of a way to better link Medicaid and TANF. For some tribes they have negotiated agreements with the state to bring their Medicaid workers into the clinic. Others, like Wisconsin, theyve taken over the whole function. But that is one area that I think has been overlooked.

The other, Dr. Brown touched on this morning is that across the board at every tribe we visited, the concern that is looming is the hard to serve multiple-barrier families. If you look at how youre going to serve these multiple-barrier families, everyone is relying upon -- make a referral to the Indian health service mental health or alcohol, substance abuse program, it sounds like an easy thing to do when in fact Indian Health Service has been suffering a hemorrhaging of its budget and purchasing power of the last several years and probably will continue until 2002. The money for the influx of new alcohol and substance abuse and mental health clients isnt there. And if theres something thats going to happen with regard to welfare reform, it is going to have to incorporate bringing that funding or resources up for the alcohol and substance abuse and mental health portion of the Indian Health Service.

There are a lot of other sections in there that I wanted to get to but the findings and the summaries are in the back. I am supposed to tell you that the Kaiser Foundation is going to publish the entire document and is trying to develop it as a manual that would be available for tribes and its supposed to be out soon and Im not sure when thats going to be. But in conclusion and closing, I just want to remind all of us that welfare is not a bad word. Welfare is a good word. And it's inherent, I think, and fundamental to who we are as tribal people and we have always looked for the welfare. And when our families are sanctioned or no longer eligible for national welfare reform, it's going to be the tribes who are going to be taking care of those families. So this is an issue that affects us whether we want it to or not.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

MS. KAUFMANN: Yes, it depends. In terms of high school and GED, yes. For the Selets they included higher education. And I think all of them had Voc Rehab and those kinds of activities. And I think there was another tribe that included higher education, I cant remember. I think it was one in Wisconsin. But Selets was really -- that was like the centerpiece of their welfare reform initiative was GED and higher education. And they were --

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

MS. KAUFMAN: Right, but one of the things that kind of surprised me was that when we went and looked at the TANF plans and read all the TANF plans, they tended to mirror what the state proposed. And so I think that tribes are being cautious and conservative in terms of expanding those definitions. In fact you could become much more creative and shift the priority of the work activities if you wanted to.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.) If you look at them, theres not a lot of creativity. Many of them merely mirror the state. And theres a reason for that in that the regulations were not out even in draft form when this was being done. They are out now. We know that theres some greater flexibility in what we can determine as work, but there is also what Flathead is experiencing is the lack of flexibility in regards to work timeframes. In the law, when you interpret the law, I think it's clear that there is some flexibility that given the tribes unique position that maybe 24 months and five years are not sufficient.

Now theres ways and Ive heard Mr. Norm Deweaver talk about ways of getting around that in some other ways and perhaps hell mention that this afternoon. But the very fact is that John Bushmans office, Tribal Services, drew a very hard line on that. And I think that needs to be challenged. I think the law really allows that and it needs to go forward.

Just quickly, two other comments. One is that when you talk about restructuring of tribal services, one of the things weve tried to do is not refer to TANF as a program. When we refer to TANF as a program it puts these blinders on that we see actually establishing a TANF program. We should in fact view it as a resource. As merely just another funding source that can be combined with other funding sources to create a tribal program that move people from welfare to work.

And then in regards to Medicaid and food stamps, I thought it was interesting most recently before the state legislature broke up in Arizona that they did pass legislation for the state to go and request a waiver very much like Wisconsin has that any tribe that wants to take off TANF can then subcontract from the state, Medicaid as well as food stamp eligibility and distribution, if they wish. So I think, you know, thats a ball thats beginning to roll. And I think in the future, eventually Medicaid which has been held sacred by the state as well as food stamps can begin to be turned over the tribe.

And the other one I just want to iterate again, I think we are missing some very important players here today, the welfare reform. Namely Administration on Native Americans, Tribal Services from HHS, and I understand we do have a BIA representative so weve got to applaud BIA for at least being at the table here. Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: One more.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Bonnie Lowe and Im the Employment and Training Director with Melax Expandable Gibway (phonetic). And I just wanted to share some information. Starting January 1, Melax will be operating their own tribal TANF program. And one of the things that we are doing and that any of the tribes in Minnesota can do due to some legislation that was passed, state legislation. January 1 we will be operating the tribal TANF that will be funded. Also in part with state funds we will be operating food stamps, medical assistance, emergency assistance, diversionary assistance. So it will be a complete one stop. The tribal members can come to our program. And the state basically is going to provide 100 percent of what would normally have been their state share. Even though they are not contributing to any of the administrative cost, they are going to provide, for any tribe that applies for TANF, all of the computer equipment thats necessary to hook up to their state database system. So we will be able to do all the electronic tracking from county-to-county, tribe-to-tribe, state-to-state, et cetera. And Im not sure if they applied for a waiver for food stamps, but I know that we are also going to be doing food stamp eligibility and determination there also.

THE CHAIRMAN: One more. Thank you, Joanne. As we move through this presentation or series of presentations, I think we have all come to realize that one of the things that we have to get up to speed with is finding out what were doing now for our people, finding out whats possible to do for our people. And one of the things thats become very obvious is that it's going to take an awful lot of statistical, acceptable statistical information in order to do the things and convince our adversaries that we can do the job and that we are doing the job competent.

The next individual that were going to listen to this afternoon is Mr. Rick Anderson who is with Tribal Data Resources. And were going to give Rick an opportunity to, I think, demonstrate a program that hes got that certainly enhances a tribes ability to have that kind of information readily available to you. So at this time Im going to turn it to Mr. Rick Anderson.

MR. ANDERSON: I dont know how long you all have been sitting but were going to keep this short. And I hope that what we have to demonstrate for you today is going to be interesting, it's going to be informative. What we have here is the result of over 10 years experience working inside your tribes. We have worked directly with over 110 tribes around the United States. And now Ive been to Alaska. Our program is not directly related to welfare reform. However, we are called on a regular basis to work with programs in anticipation of setting up TANF programs and any other programs that have to do with data collection.

This program was created out of frustration that you and I and anybody who works in Indian country and needs numbers has faced. We were frustrated with the fact that to get numbers we had to go to the U.S. Census or we had to go to the counties or we had to go to the states. Or even within our tribes we had to go to sources that were not updated regularly or uniformly.

And the reasons for that, of course, are that there is not one program that has a budget to collect all the information that your housing, or your Indian child welfare or your elder program all need at the same time. Therefore, it's done piecemeal. Am I preaching to the choir or is it just the tribes that Ive worked with. Okay. How many of you here represent tribes directly? Okay, so most of you. Anybody from Alaska here today? All right.

What we ended up putting together was a demographic data collection process that was global in its scope, comprehensive in its nature. We wanted to have enough housing questions that we could go in and do a preliminary assessment of folks that live in substandard homes. Those who neither own or rent and what their particular circumstances are. To be able to prioritize if were sitting with a group to prioritize the construction of new homes and some of the difficult things involved with housing. To help housing authorities prioritize assistance. And to work between housing authorities in the HIP programs.

When it comes to working with numbers we found that there were so many different numbers that were needed on a regular basis. Your labor force reporting. Anybody here familiar with the BIA labor force report? I always joke when I work with enrollment officers. Has anybody actually put together a labor force report? Youre laughing because you had to lie. And I had to lie. And we dont like that. Because when those numbers go out we have a knot in our stomach. It also makes us very vulnerable. For example, HUDs entire discretionary program is based on those numbers form the BIA Labor force Report. But theyve been the best game in town for us because we had some say in that. However, the way the questions were posed to us, there was just no way we could answer all the females 19 to 24 years old. Not only our tribal member females but the other native american females on or near a reservation, and if theyre not working, why arent they working. And it just gets worse as it goes through the genders and the age groups.

Bottom line is there needed to be a data collection process that was developed so that you could push a button. This is an automated age. Its also a very competitive age. We compete for every dollar that we get, not just amongst ourselves, but in addition for the dollars in Washington. We have to substantiate. And thats whats going on with welfare reform right now, too. Everywhere I go across the country -- youre not Rose are you? Oh, I didnt know you were here, hi. Okay, everywhere we go across the country, the tribes are faced with this welfare reform issue without the ammunition to really step up to the plate and deal with it effectively. And so we are all out there reinventing the wheel. Your tribes are working in one direction and your tribes are working in one direction because we have to.

So what Im going to demonstrate for you today is an answer that weve come up with thats being demonstrated or implemented all over the United States and now up into Alaska to bring statistics to your fingertips. To give you a much better starting point. To help you become much more professional and effective when it comes to sitting down demonstrating your statistics. When you want to bang heads with the U.S. Census and you want to go in and say thats not our unemployment statistics. Thats not our low income statistics. Or here are our TANF households. Heres what the mothers in these households have done for a living, heres what they desire to do, heres their job skills, heres their educations.

(End side A, tape 3.)

Whats included in it if it's case management or simply survey results and the ability to maintain case management information. But though weve asked for that we have not seen any information on it nor have we seen it demonstrated. But I would love to if anybody can get their hands on it. Ill give you my cards and we would love to see whats in that software.

If theres a representative of System Waupton (phonetic). You guys have this software? Okay. Ive not seen it or seen it demonstrated.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

MR. ANDERSON: Okay, Im hearing that it's not quite ready. Are you guys actually fully functional in that software? All right, I have no knowledge about that, but Im going to go ahead and show you what it is that weve been doing all over the country. Not specifically for welfare reform or for social services programs, but for general demographics tribe-wide.

All of this information comes from a tribe-wide census. You are going to fill out three pages of survey form and when youre finished, these are the abilities that youre going to have. These are the fields of information that we have. Handicap and disability, occupancy, owner, renter, homeless information, family composition. One of the things we take care to do is if I was married to one of the gals from your tribe and she had two children from your tribe and I have a Carew (phonetic) we pay special attention to get all of the immediate family members in here. So, for example, if you were going to report on your tribal members in poverty. Or your households and how many -- what are the numbers of folks in poverty. In your household, you are not just going to be reporting on my wife from your tribe and her two tribal member children, but also my daughter and I. So under family composition we include everybody in the immediate family.

Occupation. One of the things that we take care to do is we get occupation. What are they doing at the time of the survey. All too often because were in a hurry to get surveys done or theres limited human resources or limited dollars, we ask are they working. If theyre not working we just put them down as unemployed. But thats only part of the picture. If they are unemployed are they an unemployed steel worker. Are they working in gaming today but theyre a 30-year veteran carpenter by trade. So we have their occupation, their vocation, their desired occupation and other job skills. So, in just moments, we can bring everybody in your tribe by their occupation, vocation, even their desired occupation and what else they can do. We can also in the same query display their educational status. So you can see already, though this is not a welfare reform specific program, not a case management, this is a wonderful starting point for tribes. Tribes that have gone through this have a step up as far as assessing their needs. Okay, so occupation.

Another thing that we take the time to do is, remember if I was married to one of the gals from your tribe, it's not just your tribal members that youre concerned about if they are carpenters or administrators or secretaries, to give you and example. If your tribe needed a computer networking specialist and I fell in love with one o your gals and she hauled me off to your reservation and I had a good job in the city, and now I live on your reservation, theres no work for me. So Im dealing blackjack at the casino or Im working at the mill or Im out of work, okay? And Im a white guy, all right. So you send out a notice we are looking for a native computer specialist to do our networking. And you dont find them within your tribe. So you send information out to the other tribes around you and you don't find somebody there. Well, if you put me to work, you are also going to be feeding my tribal member wife and her two tribal member children. So we take care to provide head and spouse information. So you're going to have non-Indian spouses. You're going to have Indian spouses from other tribes and so forth.

Education, childcare information, occupancy information, property status. We've included the new NAHASDA fields for HUD, okay. That's what your records look like when you're finished. So you can see this touches on welfare reform questions at several different turns, but it goes beyond case management in many areas.

What we set out to do was to put a state of the art software in your hands but not require you to have a MIS director run it or a college graduate run it. We wanted to put quality professional reporting at your fingertips and get it to you very quickly, very simply. For example, if your council asked your planning department to put together a report on income, everybody in the tribe income, we want to see a breakdown of HUD above, moderate, low, very low. And then give a separate breakdown for Health and Human Services, poverty level. And in the same report and overview of housing, owner, renter, homeless and structural conditions. Those would be very difficult things for your tribe to put together. Lots of phone calls from department-to-department.

What this allows you to do is simply select the report and in less than 20 seconds you not only have that report but you have charts and graphs and calculations and percentages to hand your council. Seconds later you can give a comparable report for on-res or in your multi-county service area. Here's your report.

Like I said, you don't have to be a college graduate or computer scientist to be able to go in and do charts and graphs on occupancy, income, structural deficiencies and other information. Female head of household, overcrowding, overpayment and so forth.

Education. How would you like to be able to click button and be able to go in and display everybody over 18 years old by did the graduate from high school, did they go to the 11th grade, 10th grade, 9th grade? Did they get a GED? Break that down by male and female. Go back into the age category and look at your elders and break that group down compared to the younger children or younger adults. Here's your report. In about 15 seconds you can see how many of your members, 82 percent graduated high school from this tribe. Some of our tribes, on-res, have less than 30 percent high school graduates. And you are able to do these comparisons just that quickly. Or zip code by zip code. And why I'm telling you that is, when you want to bang head with the U.S. Census and you want to say, look, you didn't find us back in 1990. We're hoping you find us in 2000, but if you don't we've got our statistics here that we can compare side-by-side, zip code by zip code along with yours.

And we're finding everywhere that's challenged. All over the country, especially in California where we've done 70 tribes. We are winning at every turn. So it's putting some real teeth behind your arguments.

Now this is education. If I wanted to say employment, it brings us a little bit closer to the TANF issue. In seconds, we can go in and we can take a look at the tribe. In the state of Nevada, in the state of California, we challenged the states and we said, look, you tell us in some tribe cases we are only 8.3 percent unemployed when in fact we are 33 percent and we can prove it. Not only can we prove it, but we can produce reports like this. We can tell you that there's 46.3 percent tribe-wide employed. We have 9.7 part-time, 4 percent seasonally employed, self-employed 3.5, retired and 26.7 percent unemployed.

And the difference between these statistics and your statistics are the tribe and the U.S. government statistics are that I can name every one of these people. I can give you an economic and an education profile on every one of these people. And that's where we made our headway with the government that we're challenging the statistics with. In this case, two states. We said we can name these people, we know their names, their addresses, their economic profiles and educational histories. And, of course, the U.S. Census can't give you any names, address and U.S. tribes can't even prove that the census statistics are actually your tribal members.

My mom, for example, is of Minominy descent, but they never heard of me until a few years ago. But my economic and educational statistics weighs against theirs if I raise my hand and say Minominy. Unlike those census statistics, you know the people in yours and they're right from your tribal roles, okay. All right.

Because this is not a welfare specific software or welfare specific process, I am going to keep it very brief for you today and answer any questions that may have. I just wanted to show you how easy it is to be able to go in, for example, with employment. Because we work specifically with tribes and only with tribes and tribal service organizations, we found that there were some unique geographical delineations that were commonly used. For example, on reservation. Or within your tribal land base, if you don't have a reservation. Versus off the reservation but in Mr. Tellis' case, in a five-county service area that spans two states.

Well, we made it just this easy. For on-res or within your land base, this particular tribe has 770 households. In seconds, I can give you an employment report on those 770 households. Here it is. And you can compare side-by-side. If Mr. Tellis' council wanted their planning department or their economic development to come up with statistics like this for a council meeting, they can literally do comparisons by county, by groups of counties, by zip code, or on-res, off-res, just as fast.

Once you do a data collection process like this you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Only certain things change. it's a process to go out and contact every adult over 18 years old and ask them three pages of questions. But I am hoping that this demonstration shows you that it is worth it. Once you do this, you don't have to re-invent the wheel. Only certain things change, births, deaths, address changes, employment changes, occupancy changes, family composition. So you can sit somebody down in front of a computer, bring up their record, put a phone next to them, and they can update your whole tribe very easy without having to re-do your census.

All right, labor force reporting. We laughed about labor force earlier because any of us that have been involved in a labor force know it's just impossible to come up with good statistics for that. I wanted to demonstrate that with this process, when you ask the questions the right way, 15 seconds and you have your labor force report. And like the other reports that I've shown you, here's your labor force report. By the way, are there any BIA representatives here? They're not raising their hand. All right, I knew it, I knew they were here. Otherwise we were going to talk about them.

Okay, the only thing BIA didn't like about our report and asked us to remove was this. Yep, that's the only thing you didn't like. We kept it. Total males, total females, combined tribal member total of males and females. And then we added the other native American and the Alaskan native, males and females that are households, percentages. Because we now can tell the truth and stand on these numbers. We know who these people are. I can name all of these males and females. Even the native Americans that are not from my tribe but living in my household, I can name these.

So because we are able to truthfully and effectively display our numbers, we didn't want to be penalized if we couldn't find, in this case, 9 percent of our families. So we have an adjustment in here so that we can say we found 91 percent. We're adjusting 9 percent up to get the actual labor force statistics for our tribe, including this 9 percent adjustment.

All right. The last thing I'd like to show you today, and by the way, when you have these kind of statistics, whether it be a federal program or a program that a private company like ours creates, the question always comes up, who has control of this kind of data. We have a high security system, field-by-field, function-by-function level security. So you can choose who in your tribe. Ten people can have this with 1 different security levels. So you can only have the get to what you want them to get to.

Archiving. Unlike pogroms in the past, we let you archive your database with the push of a button. In less than 10 seconds I can take this entire tribe's database and I can archive it to a directory here. Five years from now I can go back and revisit. I can look at the TANF households back in 1998. I can look at poverty or elders back in 1998 and see how many elders we have today or how many children by blood quantum and so forth.

The last thing that I want to show you is the most important and powerful tool within the system. When you collect this kind of data, comprehensive meaningful data that you can use in a lot of different ways, whether it be for the TANF program, in preparation for the TANF program, banging heads with Census statistics over food stamp issues or whatever the case may be. HUD's new housing program. This tool will handle that for you. We created a library. If you have 15 different people in your tribe using this program, you can have 15 different libraries. We all look at it differently. Housing is going to look at housing issues, social service programs are going to look at elder and children and income issues. So I created, while I was sitting back waiting to come up, a few queries. Any query that you create once, you never have to think up again. All of these features are in this program because we've worked with tribes now going on our 11th year. And we found that I didn't want to do any more work than I have to. And once I think something up, I don't want to think I up again.

So we've made even this aspect, historically the most difficult access -- the most difficult aspect of data access and management, we made it very simple. We've taken out all the computer talk. No ifs, ands, ors, greater thans, equal to's, that's all gone. When you want something like income, you simply go pick income and say HHS poverty. I'll demonstrate.

I took, and since this is a TANF meeting, a welfare-bases session, I said okay, I want to see all of the native Americans in our households from this demonstration tribe, it's an actual tribe in California. I want to see those that are welfare, TANF, general assistance. If I wanted I could say just within our inclusive service area or within a particular zip code or in Denver, Colorado if I wanted. By the way, every city is here. I simply pick the city. These are all the cities that I have members in, these are all the counties or zip codes. I picked my inclusive service area. This would be, in Eddie's case, a five-county service area in two states. But we've made that very simple.

Output, you simply display what you want to see. In this case I wanted to see their names, their genders, their relationship in the household. In other words if I'm living with one of your gals, you're going to see me here, you're going to see my daughter here. And we simply insert this. And in this case I said show me everybody by income, above, moderate, low, very low, HHS. And give me a sub-sort of welfare categories. And in seconds you are going to see every member of this tribe that's on welfare by the various categories. Here it is. I can hand it to the council tonight. I can go in and do a comparison by age group. How many of our children versus other native American children on the system within our tribe. So though this is not a case management system specifically for welfare for TANF, I'm hoping that you're able to see that it touches many areas that will affect and benefit your programs. Okay.

I won't take the time to go into any more depth with this, but if I want to bring up everybody by occupation, all the carpenters, all the roofers, you can do all of those type of things, too. So it touches on a lot of employment issues. Are there any questions? Yeah.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone) -- that would be TANF-specific. And I think it's important because what we're seeing at least is that the application is a little different than what the states have developed. And to specifically address the tribe census and the population. And I haven't seen yet a software that's been developed for that. Although there are a number of attempts now. And how can this be applied at this point for those tribes that do have a tribal TANF program at this point. How could you apply this at this point?

MR. ANDERSON: It would be, at this point, you're seeing 10 years of work, really, to put this together. At this point we can create a module specific to case management. However, this is already being done. I know of at least three good attempts that are being done. One in Alaska, one in Canada and one in Oklahoma that's being piloted in a couple of different locations. And I can give you addresses and names to contact of those companies so you can see how close they are, which ones actually have it in the field being tested, what the costs are. I know a couple of them are quite costly. I know of a very inexpensive one that Selets is piloting right now, the Selets Tribe. And from what I'm hearing, it's good. It's an Access based system. There are also at least two Paradox based systems that are out there. So I can help you in that area and point you to what's being done.

A PARTICIPANT: Yeah, I was just going to mention, what Rick was saying is that if you want a specific software, Selets tribe has developed it. In fact we brought them up to Alaska to share it with the tribes of Alaska. They're going full-blown TANF. Now if you've just got to do work search kinds of things and case management only and not do the whole TANF program and just do the case management and work search, Cook Inlet Tribal Council has developed a software specific to that.

But this is much bigger. We're working with Rick to do the census for our entire service area as well. And it just much, much bigger and much more data intensive. Whereas the question you're asking for is more reporting kinds of data, just for TANF. And those really do have to be developed separately.

MR. UPWATOCKA: Ray Upwatocka (phonetic) for the Division of Tribal Services of HHS. We have a Windows-based reporting system for TANF tribes that was developed within HHS and we do provide to the TANF tribes directly, we can provide the disk, you know the floppies or you can download it directly through the Internet. But it's not, because it is on the Internet and you can in fact download it, anybody can have access to it. And it is a public access system. But it is basically a TANF reporting system and it can be used three ways.

One is as a data collection system. We also have a couple of the TANF tribes who are using it as their case files rather than maintaining paper files, they are maintaining the files using the system. And then we're also, the way the system is set up, the tribes can use it to submit their required quarterly and annual reports to us using that system where they don't have to submit any paperwork, they can do it directly through this. Either through Internet or direct access to the National Institute of Health main computer bank which houses all the TANF data for the entire nation.

There is also a system in -- for those of you who are interested, I can get your names and then I can send you the information on how you can get it or we can even just send you the system.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

MR. UPWATOCKA: Division of Tribal Services.

HIRSCH: My name is Rod Hirsch, I represent the U.S. Department of Commerce, and I find this fascinating. I'm based in Los Angeles, California, by the way. Of particular interest to me is information on native American-owned businesses. It's very difficult to find out information on native American owned businesses and for us to get an idea of what's out there. And I'm just curious to know if your program addresses that.

MR. ANDERSON: This is just like heaven for me. Okay. I don't have any time to do this but I am going to make it really quick. Two separate things. What I've been showing you is demographics, people data, okay. My company if you tour down the middle, has another division called the Contemporary Native America Series. You're going to see us on display out there so I won't take any time right now. But the software you see here, we have all of the tribes in the country, profiles on those tribes that you can print out so that if you want to know the tribes in Oklahoma, you can print all those tribes out. If you want to know where the Sioux tribes are, the federally recognized Sioux tribes you can get at information like that. So it's highly educational and beneficial that way.

But also we have all of the Canadian tribes in here. And this is our business version and it's only being demonstrated for the first time this week. So to answer your question, when you click on agencies, we've taken every database in the country that we know of for tribes. We have streamlined it down to 13,000 native-owned business or native-oriented businesses. And you can go in here by category and say gaming related, engineering, architecture, architecture in the State of Minneapolis. And if you guys come by the booth, we'll take as much time as you want to demonstrate that software.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Rick. As we get ready to move to another segment of the program, I'm sure that all of us, not only as the people that are operating the program but those of you that are traveling officials realize that the long term effect of what we do in relation to this program is certainly going to have an impact upon our kids. And we all are fortunate we've got people out there who are the people that concentrate an awful lot of effort to tell us about the conditions of our kids now and particularly about what the future for our children are.

So one of the parts of this program, we wanted to talk a little bit about what the effect of this will be on the children. And here today representing the National Indian Child Welfare Association is Mr. David Simmons. David.

MR. SIMMONS: As you heard, my name is David Simmons. And I am a policy specialist with the National Indian Child Welfare Association in Portland, Oregon. And our focus on welfare reform has really been -- it started with kind of following the legislative processes. The Congress and the administration began to get interested in welfare reform and there were some bills that kind of got floated out there.

We were looking at it from the perspective of how is this going to impact specifically Indian children. And, of course, children aren't separated from families, so we also looked at the impacts on family. But we initially began because we were interested in some of the earlier bills that looked at doing some child welfare reform. Some of the earlier bills in the House, for instance, were going to block grants. Some of the larger federal child welfare programs and they were going to take almost 23 child welfare programs, combine them into a large block grant and then that was going to be available presumably to tribes, but at least the way it was written only the states.

So we began working on following the legislation and then, of course, we got more involved with what was going on with the current AFDC program and how it was impacting Indian children and families and then how TANF might. And we kind of moved in as TANF became law into looking at some of the -- some without any funding I might add -- but looking at some of the impacts that it would have on the family units. Children and families from a child welfare perspective.

And I have, at the back table there, there is a handout that lists some of those impacts. it's just two pages, it's very brief. I didn't go into a lot of detail but I can certainly talk more about it and I'll do a little bit of that today.

We also got interested, and so did the Congress, in looking at child welfare reform as a whole. And the Congress, even though they didn't, in their welfare reform law didn't pass any kind of sweeping child welfare reform, they did follow up in the next couple of years and pass some new laws. One of the most significant is the adoption of the Safe Families Act which passed in 1997, right at the end of the year. And maybe some of you are familiar with it. It is a law that basically came as a result of the perception in Congress and in other places that there were children that were languishing in foster care and what is supposed to be a temporary placement, who weren't finding any permanent homes. And they were sitting there for sometimes as long as three, four, five, six years. And some of these children had actually been through several foster homes. I mean there were instances where they had talked about multiple home even within one year for a child.

And so the Congress went back and created new policy on how they were going to speed up the process of having children find permanency, as they call in the child welfare reform circles, find a permanent and secure home within a shorter timeframe. And that has an impact also on welfare reform. It has an impact on Indian children more specifically.

Some of the first things that we looked at where we though that with the passage of welfare reform, what kinds of trends or what kinds of phenomena might we see. One of the first things is that you might think, well, if people are getting access to resources is there going to be an increase? Are we going to have status quo in terms of the incidents of reports of abuse or neglect? Or actually are we going to see a decrease? And even though we are in good economic times, so to speak, at least within the general population. You know that in Indian country things still haven't changed all that much. And so what we see is, and we've seen in a couple of places, even in states where they have had economic upturns, we see an increase in the incidents of child abuse and neglect.

Now some of that may be due to better reporting, but I can tell you that I think that some of it is also probably due to the fact that as we transition off of the entitlement programs and families are trying to adapt to the new requirements of TANF and food stamps, Medicaid and things like that, there is additional stressers there. And there are families that are falling through the cracks to some extent. And I think some of these additional stressers create higher risk situations for abuse and neglect in different homes.

And so I think that's one of the things that we're trying to look at. I mean we haven't got any research data to back up some of our kind of our speculation, some of our thoughts on this. But I think it's an issue worth looking at. Because if you are going to be involved with welfare reform, of course those children are the most vulnerable of the population that you have to work with. They are not always going to be able to speak up and let you know when they are feeling uncomfortable or unsafe in the home.

Secondly, one of the other things we saw is that in terms of the families your're dealing with in welfare reform, those are some of the same kinds of families that you see in the child welfare population. You are going to see families that sometimes have only -- their single parent families. You are going to see families that also have poverty, are unemployed oftentimes. And these are often factors that when they are present in home situations, they increase the risk for child abuse and neglect. They don't necessarily determine that abuse or neglect is going to happen, but they have been shown statistically to increase risk.

Some of the other issues we looked at were kind of the need for resources and programming for child welfare to respond to reports of abuse and neglect. And already we know that many of the programs that are dealing with welfare issues, and that population are overwhelmed. And we also see that with child welfare. As the Adoption and Safe Families Act did, it's put more pressure on states to move the process along. And that means that they are going to be calling on more resources. And then, just like with welfare reform, they are going to be looking not to just their resources, they are going to be making referrals to tribal programs to also help with Indian children that might be under their custody. So there's going to be additional request and desire to bring resources to bear with these families who have these difficulties.

One of the other things that we thought about was the potential for increased removals of children based on court determinations that there was abandonment, dependency hearings. There could be -- we could see more situations where families get in trouble, where children are sometimes left with relatives and things like that. And while that may be -- seem okay within certain communities, some of the workers who are working with these families may not understand these things, especially non-Indian workers. And then we could see more petitions filed, I think, in court and state courts saying that there is abandonment issues here and that the child maybe needs to be removed from the home.

Also families that abuse or neglect find it usually difficult, more difficult to hold jobs. This is kind of true in general of social services that a lot of the families that you see don't come to you with just one issue. They don't just have issues with I don't have a job or I have a situation that I feel my children are at risk for abuse or neglect. They have multiple kinds of issues. And those are the kind of families that are most difficult to find jobs for too. There's a lot weighing on their minds. And the hardship exemptions under the welfare reform law are going to help with some of those families assuming that states and tribes are able to use those. But, unfortunately, there's going to be a lot more families probably than there are hardship exemptions available. So we are going to have to think very clearly about how we are going to deal with some of those issues.

Another issue that's really come to the forefront is kinship care, relative care. And of course in Indian country that's a very commonly used way to help children who can't live at the home for certain amounts of time. Now the federal government, through the Adoption Safe Families Act was required to do a study and actually report out back to the Congress on how they thought the impact of kinship care was on the child welfare population and what are the benefits and disadvantages of kind of continuing that use of it and maybe even institutionalizing it to some degree.

Now while it's not a new concept in Indian country, within other localities, it's just starting to catch fire a little bit and become more attractive. However, there are situations, if you look at the way welfare reform requirements work with the families, where if you have older relative care providers, maybe grandparents, for instance. What's going to happen is if that child is removed from the parents house, is then placed with grandma for instance, grandma has already been on assistance and she's maybe using up some of her benefits. How is that situation going to be resolved?

And I've already heard a couple of reports, too, about in a couple of places. One is in California where a determination about the placement of a child was made in regards to a relative care provider. They looked at the relative care provider and they said well look, you're on, you're taking TANF dollars or whatever California calls it. And we are a little bit afraid that you don't have the resources to take care of this child even though that was clearly the best placement for that child at that time. So will running out of benefits or using up your eligibility under TANF be used as a reason by courts not to place children with their relatives. That's another question that we have.

Case management. Of course that's been talked about a lot already. But it's certainly a very important function. With the transition to the new welfare reform laws, we have states with -- although we have one welfare reform law, we have several different interpretations of it in every state and even some variations in different counties. So one of the things we have to think about as case managers are people in your tribes who are looking at trying to follow child welfare cases is that you have to be very careful that the children, their eligibility for benefits aren't lost in doing that case management. So the system is going to be a little more difficult to circumvent. There aren't the guarantees for service that there were there before.

Teen parents who are victims of sexual abuse are required to live at home or in an adult supervised home in order to receive benefits. This could provide problems in some cases when the home is not an appropriate placement for that child. Possibly it could lead to the teen parents being ordered into foster care themselves. Again increasing dependency hearings, increasing removals of children.

SSI eligibility restrictions for children are also going to have an impact. And those are the restrictions that relate to emotional and behavioral problems. We are going to see children losing benefits. I think during the first year, even though they're trying to make some corrections, I think there were over 100,000 children, I'm not sure how many of those were Indian children, that lost their benefits through SSI. And that's a very important resource to a lot of those children.

We also have -- there's going to be increased involvement with child support enforcement. Parents are going to be asked, increasingly. More pressure is going to be put on them to identify who the absent parent may be. Who the biological parent is of that child. In those situations, contact with that absent parent could be a good thing or possibly it may not be such a good thing. And so we're going to have, as case managers and social service supervisors, are going to have to be paying very close attention to that.

We're also wondering about kind of a basic requirement about work. We talked about work and how important that is under the new welfare reform law. What about when that conflicts with the desire and also the need for a parent to take care of their children. There's going to be pressure to get out there and work. When we talk about childcare, more childcare being available. But, it's not always going to be appropriate for children to go into childcare right away, right immediately. And there's going to be stressers there as well on parents and also case managers. And they have to make decisions about work requirements.

I want to say a little bit about the Adoption Safe Families Act in general. And that is that it's a law that we have to be really -- we have to pay close attention to. It was passed about a year ago, November 13th. And it's really getting its implementation is really just getting underway. Many of the states have been required to adopt their own kind of interpretations of the minimum federal standards that have been passed. But as I said earlier, it is going to speed up the process of when a child is removed, how fast does that child go into a permanent placement.

In this language, as reflected in the title, permanency, the preferred or the obvious preferred permanency placement, at least according to Congress is an adoptive home. And that usually means that after the child has been moved into a foster care home and there is a determination that the child can't be reunified with the family, that in order to move a child into an adoptive home, the legal rights of that child, of that parent to that child have to be terminated. That's a concept that is not widely accepted in Indian country I know. And we want to make sure that we watch very closely and are engaged with our state governments to made sure that the rules and regulations that they pass, the strategies, the practice and the policies that they use in trying to determine what is an appropriate permanent placement for Indian children reflect those values that are both in the tribe, in their code and also in the Indian Child Welfare Act, that Indian children should be placed with Indian families first and relatives. Because, again, the debate about kinship care is still going on. There hasn't been any conclusion made but there are certainly people out there who when they hear the word kinship care and these people have strong voices in Congress, are not very supportive of. They hear things like race matching and they don't support that. So they would like to see kinship care become kind of a sub-category of permanent placement. So that's another fight that's going to have to take place too. We're working on that. Right now our organization is putting together a full analysis of the Adoption Safe Families Act. We have a draft, it's going to the Children's Bureau for review and then we're going to have that published and we'll have that out to all the tribes so you can review it and hopefully help be informed about how this law impacts your children and families.

I don't have any more comments, but we have a web site. It's just www.nicwa.org. And we have public policy updates on there as well as a lot of good practice information about what we're doing and what's going on in Indian child welfare. And you can reach me through there or at an e-mail address as well. And my e-mail address is desimmons, s-i-m-m-o-n-s, at nicwa, that's n-i-c-w-a dot o-r-g. And I'd be glad to talk with you more about these issues and some of what we're doing. Thanks.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any questions for David?

MS. GREEN: I'm Karma Green, with the Nez Perce tribe. In looking at our proposal, we submitted our proposal to ACF but we've kind of been looking at it from time to time after attending meetings here and there on what changes we could make to the plan already.

One of the problems we are having is how do you get families who don't want to do -- they choose not to do the work activities and then end up giving up their kids so that they can get on GA. How does ICWA plan to work with tribes to try to solve this problem. One, we don't want the children to go without. That's adamant with all tribes, I'm sure. But, under the law, it's a work incentive law. They want people to go to work and they're allowing some kind of money for tribes to do that under TANF. But we're still having that problem and what is ICWA going to try to do to work with tribes on solving that problem.

MR. SIMMONS: Are you talking about families where the parents feel pressured to give up their children in order to get benefits?

MS GREEN: No, they're just giving them up because then they can get on GA because it's for single people with no children. If they have children, under the GA regs they have to. They have to go to their TANF programs in their state. So families are giving up their children who then go on cash assistance to get the child only benefit and then the parents are going to GA as a single person.

MR. SIMMONS: Well, thanks for that easy question. I love the real easy ones. I like to start out that way. I appreciate your question, really. You know, actually our board is meeting here today and we were talking a little bit about welfare reform and some of these issues. And not specifically the issue brought up but something related. And I think what we need to do is we need to go out there and we need to look for additional capacity ourselves to be able to address these issues. What we've done about a month ago is we brought about 45 consultants from across -- Indian consultants from across the United States, and we formed a faculty, essentially of people who have anywhere from 0 to 30, 40 years of working in Indian country, that kind of experience. And we're trying to improve our own technical assistance process so that we can, if you make a request like this, that we can respond to it and we can actually do something meaningful for you.

But right now, I don't now if I can actually tell you what we could do. I think it's something I can take back to our board and to the other people on our staff and talk about with them about how we can respond to that.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

MR. SIMMONS: I have a working paper and I'll send somebody over there.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Brown has one.

MR. BROWN: (Away from microphone.)

(End side B, tape 3.)

MR. SIMMONS: -- workers, agencies, contractors, am I correct? Is that right? One of the things in terms of the -- in terms of foster care and child welfare, for a while there I think our agency had kind of -- and we still do to some extent, had a view that, you know, whatever kind of system you develop, whether it's all your services are tribally run or partly tribally or partly contracting with state, you know, that's fine. What we're seeing is that the pendulum is swung and that services that states and counties are offering are probably going to be less and less responsible receptive in many ways than they have been in the past to the needs of Indian people. I mean, just the polices that shape these services, these programs, are becoming more restrictive. I mean we can seek that clearly with welfare reform, we're seeing it with child welfare as well. And I think the problem is there needs to be some more thinking about how to, you know, empower the tribal community to do their own programs because really I don't think you're going to see -- states are only going to go so far, that's my opinion, in trying to serve the best needs of Indian children in the families.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, David. Okay, we want to move into the next phase of today's presentation. As I'm sure all of us realize, this guy had a perfect lead-in here. We all heard the reaction when we heard the labor force reports and all. We also realize here that, again, one of the things that the tribe's have got to be up to speed on is there is a program here that's going to have to be coordinated with a lot of other activities that go on in the tribal operation if you choose to do it. Our final presenter this afternoon and after his presentation, we'll stay here as long as people want to have constructive discussion about it but our last presenter this afternoon is a guy that I'm sure everybody in this room knows has spent an awful lot of time looking at the employment and training part of this. He represents the Employment and Training Coalition, Mr. Norm DeWeaver. Norm.

MR. DEWEAVER: Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm Norm Deweaver and have had the privilege of working with tribes and also off- reservation Indian organizations for a number of years to the Indian and Native American Employment and Training Coalition, which is really an informal information network among tribes and organizations that provide employment and training services to native people throughout the United States.

Thanks to a number of people who are in this room, the Coalition became active in welfare reform really 10 years ago with the passage of the last welfare reform legislation, the Family Support Act of 1988, which created the tribal jobs program. And a number of you in this room really implemented tribal jobs programs before even your states had begun to do so. So the involvment of tribes on the employment side in working with welfare recipients really dates back some years. Long before the current legislation.

What I'd like to do for the next just couple of minutes, really, and I hope this leads in, Mr. Chairman, to the discussion after I stop talking is to focus on recommendation. We did a report, I think there's still copies on the back table, on some of the things the Coalition has been doing under welfare reform. But what I tried to do there was suggest to NCAI and to tribal leaders some recommendations that they might consider adopting and pressing looking specifically at the employment aspects of welfare reform. That report itself did not go into any specific detail. I'd like to fill in a couple of the blanks right now. In terms of the recommendations, there are five of them altogether. They do not cover the whole area. They look specifically just at the employment dimensions of welfare reform.

The first three are legislative, the last two are administrative. The last three are fairly nuts and bolts things, they go into some of the fine print of welfare reform legislation. The first two are quite a bit broader. The first recommendation which we would suggest the tribal leaders and NCAI might want to look at in terms of resolutions at this convention and in action taken by individual counsel is that there needs to be a demand from Indian country to solve this problem of job creation for welfare recipients.

Everyone who has talked today has talked about the need for jobs. The training, education, social services, other programs are fine, but ultimately if the idea of welfare is to put people to work, there's got to be some work to put them to. In looking at this, it occurred to me that this kind of a recommendation gets a lot more attention if you can begin to quantify. We have also talked a lot today about he need for data.

I went to what, to my knowledge, is the only source of data on the number of adult Indian welfare recipients, AFDC or TANF welfare recipients in the United States. That tabulation which comes from data originally used to allocate tribal jobs money for fiscal year 1996 and supplemented by data from the TANF tribes happens to add up to 40,000 adult recipients in Indian country. The numbers are incomplete. They do not represent some of the smaller tribes that are not covered by that particular data series which is used now to allocate tribal welfare to work money. But is shows that at a minimum, we need 40,000 new jobs in reservation areas and Alaska in order to be able to actually provide employment for native TANF recipients. Again, everybody talks about this, we've got to get tribes to make a concerted effort to get the attention of the Congress. This includes the Indian committee in both Senate and House. It also includes the tax-writing committees that control welfare reform and say that there has got to be resources put in place to make those jobs happen and to make them happen in ways that are specifically beneficial to welfare recipients. Which, as a number of speakers have pointed out, are overwhelmingly single women. That, I think, needs to be put front and center in any series of recommendations adopted in terms of the impact of welfare reform on Indian country.

The second recommendation which is also very important, I think, has to do with the tribal component of the welfare to work program. Or to use the jargon of the Labor Department, the INA W2W Program. That program was authorized as part of the balanced budget act of '97. Tribes get 1 percent of $3 billion. They get $30 million, $15 million of which have already been allocated for fiscal year 1998. An additional $15 million will be allocated by the Labor Department and released some time, if I remember correctly, around the first of January 1999. That is all that exists under current law. That program has a two year authorization only. Tribes will have some additional years to spend that money, but there is no new money beginning in fiscal year 2000.

It is extremely important that the new Congress authorize at least money for tribes to help prepare welfare recipients for employment. Despite the fact that welfare reform said that welfare recipients have got to go to work, the only new resources for employment and training associated specifically with welfare reform, new resources are what came out of welfare to work. It is extremely important the program be reauthorized and that a number of the restrictions on the current money be removed. Restrictions really tie the hands of tribes in terms of who you can help and create an enormous paperwork hassle. 477 tribes can at least partially avoid, but an enormous paperwork hassle. There needs to be a general purpose resource specifically for providing employment and training services for welfare recipients. We need to do in a sense what we did on the jobs program. The whole program died with welfare reform for the states. We did hang on to that very small piece of money that went to tribes, $7.6 million which is now the new native employment works, the new jobs program. We need to make sure that similar types of things happen if welfare to work does.

The next two suggested recommendations offered to NCAI tribal leaders for their consideration deals specifically with the anti-education, anti-training aspects of welfare reform. Welfare reform is based on very much a work first philosophy where you put people into a job, any job and that regarded as a success. Well, certainly the lesson of Indian employment and training programs is you need to help people get jobs but you need to help people get jobs that can sustain their families. And where they have some upward mobility. And that requires education and training. We have one specific aspect of the federal welfare reform legislation which is particularly anti-education. This is the aspect that says that vocation education counts as a TANF work activity for a maximum of 12 months. I think it is entirely feasible if there is enough of an outcry to have that amended to make vocational education count for 24 months, twice the current limit.

It's very important, particularly since in most reservations the TANF services are provided by the state or controlled by these restrictions. Tribes have not been -- Selets, another of other tribes have used their ability to negotiate the definition of work under TANF and the work participation rates in ways that support education, don't deny it.

A proposal to increase the amount of time a vocational education counts as a work activity from 12 to 24 months has twice passed the United State Senate. Most recently as part of the Higher Education Act Amendment. Something which Karen Funk who is in the room has done a great deal of work on this, pointed out to me when that was moving through the Congress. The House has not acted on it and took it out of the conference on the Higher Education Act.

There is a good deal of support for that in the education community among tribal colleges as well as other institutions of higher education. So that, again, is something which I think would help, particularly in Indian country in terms of helping to prepare people for a decent job.

The fourth recommendation gets into the really fine print of the technical amendments actually to welfare reform which enable states, at their option, to count as a TANF work activity, participation in tribal new jobs program. This again opens up opportunity for tribal members and those tribes that have new jobs program to be able to get involved in education and training activity in ways which would not otherwise be permitted. There's been very little attention given to this. A couple of states have implemented this. I believe North Dakota has thanks to the effort of the North Dakota tribes through affiliated Spirit Lake and the others. We finally persuaded the State of Alaska to do this although they mumbled and grumbled that this would provide an option that was only available to the native people, and how could they give something to native people that they couldn't give to non-natives. They have agreed to it but buried in such fine print I'm not sure anybody knows it's there. But, again, that's a way of helping to re-enforce the education and training possibilities in welfare reform.

And finally, referring to something which Dr. Brown talked about earlier and that has to do with the exemption from time limits for people in reservation areas with jobless, not unemployment, but jobless rates of 50 percent or higher. That is required, actually, of both state and tribal TANF programs. in talking to a number of new jobs directors recently, it's seemed quite apparent that a number of states weren't paying much attention to it, have chosen to ignore the whole thing, unlike what has happened in Arizona and a couple of other states.

But that is also important if we want to look at welfare reform from a humane standpoint. I very much agree with what Dr. Brown said that this is a two-edged sword. If it means that nothing is done to promote self-sufficiency in reservation areas, that's a rather bad outcome. On the other hand, to force people to not have benefits, to drop them from benefits, who have played by the rules, who are willing to go to work, but for whom no jobs are available is also inhumane. So we need to ensure that HHS enforces this requirement. What they've done to do so so far I don't know. I'm not aware of anything that's been done to tell states this is a statutory responsibility. We need to look at making sure that that happens in all states, not just the states that have been particularly sensitive to the needs in reservation areas.

These five recommendations are a starter list. A couple of the ones I mentioned, the top two at least 40,000 jobs for welfare recipients in Indian countries, resources to create those jobs and an extension at least for tribes of the funding that's now available for welfare to work are particularly important that people speak loudly to the Congress and there are many other recommendations including recommendation which go to TANF that I am not as qualified to speak to as many people in the room are, but we need to come out of this forum, come out of the NCAI convention with a number of very specific recommendations to be able to take to the Administration and the next Congress and HHS and the other agencies that have a responsibility for this including HUD, Transportation, Labor, Commerce among them, along with Interior. To be able to move things forward and make this an experience which is an opportunity and not a dead end for Indian families.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Deweaver. He will be happy to respond to any questions anyone might have.

MR. DEWEAVER: Dr. Brown.

DR. BROWN: (Away from microphone.)

MR. DEWEAVER: On the 40,000 jobs, it's interesting because I kind of made up a number and then I said, well, gee, that's not quite right. You should have some back-up for this. So I went back and looked at the allocation figures for the tribal welfare to work program. These are based on adult Indian welfare counts, either AFDC or TANF counts. Or tribes that qualify for the tribal welfare to work program. Which includes basically at this point, all of the larger tribes, most of the medium-sized tribes, probably not a number of the smaller tribes.

And the Labor Department tally fortunately has a nice total at the end of that and it's slightly over 40,000. That's were the 40,000 number came from. It does not include some tribes, therefore it's low. On the other hand, some of these numbers go back to fiscal year '95 and welfare roles have been shrinking somewhat since so that to that extent, it's perhaps a slightly high number. But I was quite surprised myself. That is not a small number. That is not a small number and we are talking about new jobs, not existing jobs. And jobs that are targeted specifically for tribal welfare recipients. Whereas he previous conversation that we had about people that have been sanctioned and forced out of the system. You know, they begin no to show up in those counts. So that I think 40,000 is a very defensible number, one might well argue should be 50. But there is actually documentation in terms of where that number comes from tribe-by-tribe.

QUESTION: On your third recommendation, when you talk about moving it up from 1 months to 24 months. Now you've got to remember too, there's a percentage of the caseload that can take on vocational ed. Was that talked about. That was like in the last W-2, they moved that from 25 to 30 percent but is there any change in that?

MR. DEWEAVER: I haven't really thought that one through, Leo. That's an excellent point. The number was increased actually in two ways by dropping the teen parents out of the base and then just increasing the percentage. I think that also is a sign that Congress might be more willing to give on that particular issue than on some other issues that it considers even more central to welfare reform. But your point is well taken. The percentage is an important part of that equation as well as the number of months. I concentrated just on the number of months.

MS. DAVIS: My name is Julia Davis, I'm with the Nez Perce tribe. My concern is on the welfare to work proposals that tribes have not applied for. It is my understanding that if you don't apply for these funds and I know there's cycles on those, but what happens to that money for the tribes that don't apply. Where does that money go?

MR. DEWEAVER: In terms of the fiscal '98 money, that was reallocated to the tribes that did apply and qualify for the program. So that was not lost to tribes. It was simply used for tribes that did qualify. Any money that was initially reserved for tribes that for one reason another did not apply. In '99 I would also assume that there would be, if necessary -- it's less likely to be necessary in '99 a reallocation. The Labor Department has been very firm that all the $15 million should be provided to tribes. In looking at an extension of the program and this goes to another dimension to your question. In looking at the extension of the program, we also need to look at getting language which reduces or removes many of the restrictions in the current program. I mean some tribes didn't apply because they looked at all they had to do and the thing is a nightmare. I mean it's not employment for welfare recipients, it's employment for auditors. That's what it is. Because it says you've got to track every single dollar you spend in terms of who the recipient is that benefits from that dollar. So that we need to do what in fact was done, I'm not sure just what miracle produced it, in terms of the continuation of the tribal jobs money where there were some restrictions in that which got wiped out when that was reauthorized as part of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. But at the moment, in terms of money that is not being used by tribes, it does go to other tribes.

There is also an idea which has been floating around the Labor Department although I wouldn't hold my breath on it which says that in states that don't apply for the money, that a portion -- and I believe that Idaho, matter of fact, is one of those states, right? I know South Dakota is. In states that don't apply for their formula grants, tribes should have access to at least a proportional share of that state money which represents the proportion which tribal welfare recipients represented. There are a number of people in the Labor Department that have been supportive of a technical amendment to the law that would allow that money to go to tribes, which would benefit tribes in Idaho, South Dakota, several other states, would not do the states any harm and in fact I'm told that even South Dakota would probably support that kind of an amendment.

Again, because it's only a two year authorization, the program may die before we can get that one through. But that is an important resource and we need to make sure we hang on to it at least for tribes. I think there will be less interest on the part of states. Some states didn't apply for their state formula share of welfare to work money in the first place on the grounds that they had thrown so many people off the welfare roles, they had plenty of TANF dollars. So I don't expect a big outcry from states if the programs disappears. The trick is to save the money for tribes at least. Tribes can use the money.

QUESTION: (Away from microphone.)

MR. DEWEAVER: I used to work for the Department of Commerce myself. Specifically the Economic Development Administration. I've got a couple of recommendations, yeah. The first recommendation, and this is a recommendation not simply to the feds, this applies to tribes as well. That we have got to get the economic development people on both the federal side and the tribal side and the state side, for that matter and the people that deal with welfare recipients to sit down in the same room and have a conversation. I have been told by my good friends in federal HHS, once upon a time, not the Division of Tribal Services, Ray. This was before the Division of Tribal Services existed. That the administration for children of families in HHS is a welfare agency, it is not an economic development agency.

I well recall a person who I consider to be a friend, I am very familiar with the native situation in Alaska, he is the number two person in the Alaska Department that runs the welfare system saying again, we're not the economic development agency. The economic development agencies are sitting over in another corner saying they are not the welfare agency. Something's got to give. And people have got to start talking together.

Secondly, we need to look at a range of economic development opportunity. I mean I am very impressed by what a number of people have done in terms of micro-enterprise and entrepreneurial creation. Give a lot of credit to First Nation's financial project for making that real in Indian country in the days when everybody was talking about big project, tribal enterprise things.

And there's got to be a way of helping to support that and helping to bring the economic development people, the training people and the social services people together over a real program which looks at that specific population. So that if we at least start talking about it and also start communicating with both the -- I am tempted to call them Public Works, although I don't think -- yeah, I think in the House the committee still has that in its name, -- as well as the tax writing committees as well as the Indian committees. The Senate Committee on Indian affairs I think should hold hearings on this issue. I know that Chairman Campbell is extremely interested in economic development but nobody has packaged this in a way that really looks at the welfare aspect of this thing. We've got to translate talk on this issue into action, having people talk to each other, having resources to be able to have approaches that actually work put out there. You know, whether it's micro enterprise, whether it's larger projects or what have you. It's like they'll pick on transportation too. It's not a matter of laying asphalt, it's a matter of getting individual people to a place of employment and a place where they can have decent childcare for their kids. But all of that has got to involve some cross discussions with the various entities that are involved above the federal and tribal level.

MR. McGEE: Norm, along those lines I just want to add something for everybody's information. NCAI has been promised by a few federal agencies now just in the last few weeks that they are very interested in putting together what would be a federal agency roundtable where we do get, Norm, as you say, all of the key players from the federal agencies that have been assigned as the tribal liaisons or as the tribal division folks to sit together in that room and to hear from tribal leadership just as to what the myriad of issues are that we need to be covering and what we feel their responsibilities are in addressing those issues. And so we hope to work on that as soon as we get back to Washington. And may be able to report something positive on our preliminary efforts in securing such a roundtable here in the next 60 to 90 days.

MR. DEWEAVER: Leland, I would support that fully. I would also encourage NCAI to make sure you have the Leo Cummings and Karma Greens and other folk in the room that can speak to where tribal people are in welfare to make those kinds of discussions real. I shudder every time I hear about feds getting into the room and talking with each other. No offense to my friends on the federal side.

MR. YAZA: Norm, I'd like to add a comment to what you -- what you have presented here. My name is Alex Yaza, I'm with the Navajo nation. I think it is important to hinge on what Norm just presented because as tribes I can recall going back as far as Seattle, that is a comment that we had made before with folks in attendance like Mr. Bushman and a few others. The point is that bringing these federal agencies together is very important because the feds are forcing us a tribes to work on a coordinated effort within the nations and we've been doing that and we've been struggling with that. But the problem that we keep falling into is that these barriers and these barriers are the public laws that we have to work with.

And we haven't heard that yet from Washington, as to the DHHS, DOI, DOL or whomever sitting down at one table and providing tribes with that type of guidance and also some leeway in regards to developing these programs. And it's very easy to say that we ought to be able to do that. And I'm hoping that NCAI in this medium here that we are able to address it. I'm glad that Norm brought that issue up.

In regards to the job creation, the gentleman here from the Commerce Department, I had proposed a question to him earlier is that if tribes are -- not all tribes are equal of course and Navajo is not a gaming tribe so I know there is some resources that we have to rely on. And that is where the government would have to create some incentives, if necessary to create some economic development and small business development and et cetera. And that's something that we're listening for as well in regards to the federal agencies giving tribes some incentives to develop these kinds of economic opportunities for our people. Because that's something that we're also listening out for as well. So I support what Mr. Deweaver is presented her this afternoon and I think it's got to start and we've been waiting for it since Seattle and nothing has happened yet.

A PARTICIPANT: Since Eddie exposed me and told everybody I was here I guess I get to make some comment. I fully agree with Norm. The one thing that you have to look at. Whether you're doing TANF or thinking about doing TANF or not thinking about or deciding you don't want to do it at all and are content to live with your state TANF program, you have to look at the whole picture.

And TANF is not the picture. TANF is one piece of a large puzzle. And you're going to have to look at the whole gamut of things. TANF, by itself, is not going to do anything, without job development, without economic development, without child support enforcement, without childcare, without IHS, without education programs, without all the other social services, Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP program and all these other things.

The one thing that I almost fell out of my chair when he said that the feds ought to get together, I was about to die and then he went on to say with the tribe leaders and I'm glad he said that because to me, that's the key. As a former tribal leader I can tell you, nothing scares me more than a bunch of feds -- and I'm not a fed yet -- I haven't totally converted yet. But nothing scares me more than a bunch of feds getting together to talk about the tribe's needs.

It's got to be the federal program people -- and that's the other thing. you don't want to talk to the Secretaries and the Assistant Secretaries and all this other good garbage up here. You want to talk to the program people, the ones who actually do the work and who make the difference and who implement the policies and who interpret the policies and who do the real work on these things. Those are the people you need to have at the table and you need to demand to have all the programs at the table. All the players at the table along with the tribal leaders and the tribal program. Because on the tribal side the tribal leaders are not the ones who do the daily work either. So if you are going to have a meaningful dialogue, a meaningful examination of the whole welfare to work, the whole TANF, the whole ball of wax that we're going through right now in terms of where our people are being moved. And I say being moved because in many cases it's like a tide moving us along. You have to get a full picture, first of all.

Look at all of the things that contribute to the welfare of your people, number one. Number two you have to get all the players at the table from both sides. Get the Assistant Secretaries and the Secretaries, but also get the program people there who actually do the work. And on the tribal side get the tribe leaders that's fine. With all due respect to tribal leaders, they should be there. But the program people need to be there too. We often get lost in where we're going because we try to deal with everything at the top and forget about where it's actually implemented. But I fully agree with you. Until we start looking at the whole picture. At the complete picture of the welfare and what affects the welfare of our people, we can reform TANF, we can reform new, we can reform everything in the world and it's not going to work. As long as they're not brought together, it'll never happen.

MS. SORREL: I am not quite sure if my question is appropriate. My name is Ana Sorrel, I work for the Confederate Chekutney tribes (phonetic) and have spent most of the day waiting for an opportunity to hear when someone is going to talk about the federal tribal coordination. And how is the federal government going to be required to sit down and talk with tribal leaders in a true consultation, in a true government to government nature. We heard a whole lot today about the problems that we have with the states in trying to get the states to work with the tribes. Well in our particular TANF negotiations, the most difficult negotiations have truly been with the federal government. And I didn't hear any of that today and since you are really the only person who somewhat represents a fed here or at least someone from Washington, DC, I really think we need to address that. I don't know if Leland is going to do something at the end that adds to your recommendation, but I certainly do have some recommendations that I think need to be brought forward from this forum to the larger issue.

When Mr. Alpadocka (phonetic) said he is really concerned about a group of feds getting together and talking, I can't support that more. And if you look at the proposed rules that are being proposed to implement the federal TANF law, the tribal TANF law, that's what happened. A group of federal people got together and wrote these rules. They could be devastating. If these rules go in the way they are currently proposed, tribal TANF is going to be extremely difficult to implement.

For example, I don't know how many of you have really taken time to read these proposed rules, but they have inserted an administrative cap. The rule doesn't -- the law does not require an administrative cap. There is an administrative cap in here. They have also chosen -- they talk about being able to negotiate time limits. You can't negotiate time limits. You can negotiate lower than 60 months, but you cannot negotiate beyond 60 months. And if you're being told different, we have personal experience that says that that is almost impossible to do. So that's another one. There is also a clause in there that says if you have a carryover amount and the states have this rainy day account that says if you're in an economic upturn like we are right now and they have over five years where they can create a rainy day fund in case we go into a recession. Tribes aren't being given that same opporunity. Our money will go back to the general fund. There's no incentive to run a good program and to try to save for that rainy day. That's a major flaw within these regulations.

And it goes on and on and on. I know that -- and I was reading in what I believe Leland put together, to date the consultation with tribes on these federal regs and it is appalling what they are calling tribal consultation.

The filling out of a questionnaire does not constitute consultation and I think it's really up to this group to be very clear that we have not been consulted with and that the federal regulation, the statute requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services consult in a meaningful way. Either based on President Clinton's most recent executive order or his executive order of 1994 or that the law itself says that they will consult with tribes and that we figure out what that means. And that message goes forward from this body, from NCAI, to say that we will not accept what has gone on in terms of welfare reform in the federal government to date.

A PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much. Let me make a small footnote to support your recommendation. And that is that one way of doing this. And I am using as an exmple what the 477 tribes did when that started. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, bless them, sat on their hands and wouldn't do anything. What the tribes who were interested did, said we'll convene the meeting. We'll convene the meeting and tell the feds they better be there. That way you get a little bit more honesty in the process.

What we currently have in the Labor Department which is the one exercise of this type I am most familiar with, has done a good job I think in trying to involve tribes in some ways in the development of their procedures, but it all winds up being a matter of is the federal agency going to pay travel to go to the meeting. So that determines how many people can go, who goes, a variety of other things. The way to get around that is to take quite seriously the tribal government to government relationship and have a number of tribes that take leading roles in this, Confederate Chekutney is one, Navajo is another, Wapiti, we could go on and on -- a number of tribes that have taken leading roles in this and through some communication between the tribal chairs, simply set up a forum for a meeting and tell the relevant feds to be there. So it's not agency by agency or program by program.

To be able to look at this in a more holistic way is very suggestive. But I think that's one way of getting at it. Instead of waiting for the feds to consult, the tribes get together and say we're going to talk to you, you better show up.

As I said, we did that in the 477 case relatively successfully, but maybe that's one way to help make some of that happen because it bloody well needs to happen. You're absolutely right.

THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions?

(End side A, tape 4.)

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