ADDRESSING TRIBAL EMPLOYMENT RESPONSIBILITIES UNDER WELFARE
REFORM: A NATIONAL FORUM
Sponsored by the National Congress of American Indians
Transcript Highlights
Sunday, June 14, 1998
GREAT LAKES COMPLEX
RADISSON INN, GREEN BAY, WISCONSON
Overview;
Norm DeWeaver, Tribal Employment Requirements and Responsibilities
under Welfare Reform
Panel 1- Employment Requirements and Responsibilities Under Welfare Reform
Panel 2- Job Creation, Economic Development and Infrastructure Needs
Panel 3- Adult and Vocational Education Needs
P R O CE E D I N G S
Overview:
MR. DEWEAVER: The issue is employment. If you look at what distinguishes the new welfare from the old welfare, in many states you see a lot of things in common. In terms of eligibility requirements, for instance, definitions of family, definitions of income levels, required to qualify for assistance, assets that a person might have and still be able to retain assistance. Some cases those have improved.
But the one thing that really makes a difference between the old system and the new system, is employment. We have in the new system a law which provides programs and a great many of the discussions of welfare reform have quite logically and appropriately been dominated by a discussion of the TANF program, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The Federal Law requires that all recipients engage in some type of work activity. There is a requirement that a recipient engage in work activity as soon as the person is ready to work, according to the state, or the tribe, whoever's running TANF, but not later than 24 months after the person receives assistance. So there is a work requirement that is in one sense or another applicable to all recipients of assistance.
Through the imposition of time limits, the requirement is that everybody be prepared to be able to sustain their families economically before they run out of time on assistance. Before they reach the end of their time limits.
And it's interesting that even in cases where a person might be exempt from time limits for one reason or another, including living in reservation areas with very high levels of joblessness, the work requirements continue to apply. It is the central element of welfare reform.
It's not simply a matter of requirements on individuals either, because there are requirements imposed on whoever is running the welfare system. Whether TANF is the responsibility of the state or the tribe, the requirements at that level as well. Because the state or the tribe, whoever is running TANF, must enforce the work requirements on recipients or be subject to a loss of grant funds.
The first question at the state level is, "Can we meet our work requirements? Can we impose and enforce these requirements on people receiving assistance?" So that work becomes a central feature of welfare reform at the individual recipient level and at the TANF agency level.
Tribes have more flexibility than states if they wish to run their own TANF programs. Because, and we will hear from several of the representatives from TANF tribes get to negotiate what those requirements are and how work is defined.
We now have Welfare to Work, and we'll have a presentation on that program specifically. It's interesting because that's a term that's used to define a very specific program with money behind it. It is also a term used, particularly by states, to define the general process of what welfare reform is all about, so that in talking about Welfare to Work we need to recognize the sense in which we use the term.
And the issue for day care is not simply how to provide quality day care for children. The issue is how to provide day care for children of parents who need to work. The issue effects lots of other programs that are not necessarily considered welfare programs at all.
Transportation is a very critical element, as all of you know, in terms of whether or not people can get to work. And therefore, the issue is what can transportation resources bring to the question of how to help welfare recipients and low income people in tribal areas be able to work.
What do you do in a community where there is no private sector? It's a question left unanswered by Congress. A direct challenge to tribes. Where do the jobs come from? And here we're talking not just about any jobs. We're talking about jobs for a very specific group of people that have very specific characteristics. We're talking about jobs for women with children.
So how do we create jobs for that specific population? Create long term jobs, which is the basic bottom line, and what's needed because of the limitations on assistance. And also, how do we create short term jobs that are needed for people who must work to receive benefits? Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you, Norm. At this time I'd like to
call upon the first panel.
Panel 1
BACK
TO CONTENTS
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: One of the main issues that we face is trying to find employment for the individuals that will be asked to participate in the TANF program.
MR. PETERSON: Like all TANF Tribes, all dozen of us, I think, the Siletz Tribe is in the middle of a brand new experience in terms of TANF. One of the first questions asked of myself and my program by our tribal council was, "What are other tribes doing?" And our response had to be, "They are watching us."
That's a scary thing sometimes. We don't have experience from the tribal side to look at. What we've opted to do is to include TANF as part of the tribes 477 program, which has combined the JTPA employment and training services with TANF and general assistance. And we've combined that into a single program. This approach works best for us because of the history of the Siletz Tribe.
The Siletz Tribe was terminated in the 1950s, restored in the late '70s. We do not have a reservation base population. Rather we have a service area that encompasses 11 counties. Roughly equivalent in size to the State of Indiana. We have a main office in Siletz and three area offices. So we have a different problem in terms of service delivery than some tribes.
We also have some advantages. Most tribes don't have employers like Intel or Nike on the reservation. That doesn't mean that we worked out deals with either of Intel or Nike, but we have them.
Our experience has shown us that we can't approach the problem of TANF, or general assistance, or employment piecemeal. It has to be an overall approach.
The whole thing of welfare reform that Norm pointed out, I consider the whole "Welfare to Work" buzz phrase to be about as applicable in Indian country as "Just say no" was to addressing the problem of substance abuse in our community. It simply is not a complete formula.
What our tribal council is interested in doing is creating people who are self-sufficient. So as a result, our program places a very heavy emphasis on educational development. The very first requirement for people is, if they do not have a high school diploma or GED, we require them to enroll in an education program. We work with them to develop education skills. And life skills. And we try and get them into a position where they're able to secure jobs that they would be able to support themselves.
MR.KEEBLE: Like Siletz, we're a 477 tribe. And we have opted to integrate TANF into our 477 program. And we basically use our 477 to provide all the supported services for TANF recipients. And the direct money that we get from HHS is used to pay for maintenance payments.
Now, I guess one of the biggest questions that our tribe is always asked and me personally is why did we get into it? Why did we choose to operate TANF? Because we don't get state match money.
Well, there's several reasons, I guess, that Tribal Council considered. One was a reduction in case load. In 1994 we had approximately 225 welfare recipients and when we began to implement our case load was 160. So we had quite a reduction in case load. And another thing that council considered was our welfare recipients, their characteristics, and compared it to what the state plan was going to do.
And like Siletz a lot of our clients lacked the basic education. And so we needed to address that up front. And by running our own TANF program we could do that and still meet the participation rates, which are quite lower than what the state has.
And I think one of the biggest things that they did and that staff did, was to develop a policies and procedures manual, which was approved and adopted by the council before we began implementation. And that has saved a lot of problems. Not only for councilmen, but for staff as well, because we do have a lot of clients that come in and try to beat the system, or abuse the system. And with an adopted policies and procedures manual that put that almost to a stop.
Another negative area has to do with child support and enforcement. We have problems with jurisdiction on our reservation with the state. And so we've recently assigned a work group to look at that. We've attended the national meetings on child support enforcement. And we'll be considering what can be done in that area.
And again, I want to commend our council because they made a commitment not only to financially support our endeavor into TANF but also made a strong commitment for economic development on the reservation. So they really want to create jobs. And they're going all out to find ways to do that, so that we can put these people to work and become self sufficient.
MS. FOWLER: I'm Adella Fowler (phonetic). I represent people disabilities. Native people with disabilities. I work at the Rural Institute, University of Montana.
And one of my questions has to do with how the needs of people disabilities are getting lost in this welfare reform. How are the tribes addressing that? When I know just putting people to work through these programs -- when a person does has a disability how are tribes -- that's the question. How are tribes addressing that when you have a disability? Or has anybody done anything?
MR. PETERSON: We in Siletz have not developed a specific program for people with disabilities. But we do have a number of clients that we work with. And I guess basically the approach that we've taken is that we try to be flexible enough to address any special needs of tribal members as they come up.
And one of the other things that we're looking at is trying to develop an additional component of our program that would work with department of vocation rehabilitation in the State of Oregon.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: We have another question.
MR. BIBB: Gary Bibb, tribal consultant. For Frank and Richard. Would you address the issue and what experience you've had once you've taken on the TANF program with -- have you had any experience with families moving back to your reservation to take advantage of the program that you weren't funded for. And/or have you had families that were not prior AFDC recipients who wouldn't go to the state now come to the tribe for assistance?
MR.KEEBLE: As far as families relocating back to the reservation. In the nine months that we've been operating the program, I can probably only think about a half a dozen that have come back. And not to take advantage of the program but for other reasons they moved back into the reservation. And what is the second part of your question?
No, we haven't really had any significant number of people who have come on to the program. Our case load did increase because the state called back all those that they had initially sanctioned. And it's caused an increase of a half a dozen in our case load when we started. But other than that we really haven't seen any significant numbers in those areas.
MR. PETERSON: The Siletz experience is real similar. We've not seen numbers of people move into the service area simply to take advantage of TANF. We know of less than five families who have opted for tribal services who would not have applied for state services. And we do have a number of people who were sanctioned by the state who have come and applied for tribal services.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: I'd like to at this time move on to the next panelist.
MR.CAGEY: It's important that your council really understand, or one of your councilmen really understand what's going on. And if that isn't happening then you will begin to see problems in the near future. Because my prediction is that the community is going to be at really a high stress level asking the administration, asking the council what they're going to do once their benefits run out.
As a non TANF tribe we began to look at what the state was up against in measuring what they had to do for performance. And in welfare reform is that the state is required or mandated to deliver performance. And if the tribe chose to go into TANF, which we didn't, the states are still required to do performance standards. And we recognize that, and either we had a choice to take the money and work with the state, or let the state take all the risk. And kind of do some of the things. But the only thing we could do is assist in that effort in getting performance levels up.
So we entered into a contract with the State of Washington for employment services. We have a contract, an intergovernmental agreement with the State of Washington for employment services, which includes four agencies with the State of Washington to administer and virtually all TANF employment and training services for the people.
So what we began to do was to consolidate our employment services to a one stop shopping for our people to begin to do that. And I think that's something that the tribe should look at when they begin to look at employment.
What we have of the TERO office is going to be included, the JTPA , the general assistance, the new jobs, the Welfare to Work, vocational rehabilitation, the dislocated worker program, and the Northwest (inaudible) College. And our personnel office are all going to be in one area.
The advantages, I guess of what we see in not going into a TANF was it buys us some time to look at letting the State of Washington make all the mistakes. So we let them go through the process of setting up their data base and their regulations and things that they need to do to get set up. Because the State of Washington is not set up to do welfare reform. And neither are we.
And the resources that we have are very limited and are really dedicated to a lot of different programs they are administering. So we chose not to enter into a TANF and we chose to let the state make all the mistakes fist off. The first year, two years, I think that's what we decided to do.
The disadvantage in not going TANF, I guess, is what's happening in the state in the regulations. What we're seeing right now is the regulations are being drafted with no consultation from the tribe. And that's something that we've been trying to keep on top of.
But we've got four agencies to work with. And each time that we're attempting to keep up with the regulations in the drafting, it gets pretty difficult for one or two people to track the development of regulations. And the state did commit to work with us on drafting the regulations for welfare. But the hard thing is just keeping up with the state in that area.
A little bit about the agreement that we entered into the State of Washington. We entered into the agreement in 1997. And it was finalized on March of 1998. And the agreement with the state is the state will pay all cash grants and support costs. So this allows us to begin the process to consolidate all of our employment services at their expense. So they have agreed to help the tribe begin to do the necessary things to consolidate all our services.
The grant is also based off of successful administration and performance based payments. So one of things that we agreed to do with the State of Washington to measure our was such as things like completing GED and high school diplomas. Community service and work experience assignments. Job search, job retention, and wage progression. And that's just kind of the overall performance based measures that we're using with the agreement that we're entered into. The present update where we're at is that we're over 50 clients now. We have 12 clients that have entered into jobs. Eight jobs are off reservation, four are on reservation. And there's a whole bunch of other points in here that I can't read. But I think one of the points that we're beginning to find out in working with our people is they're really hard core people. What do we do with the hard core people that we have to serve? And that's one of things that I don't know really how we're going to address the hard core people that just have never worked before.
I'll give you an example in 1991 when we opened out casino is that we had 12 people that never had social security cards. And there's people on the reservation that you don't know of or think of that have never worked before but are expected to go to work here in the next 60 months.
And the state, the government, and the tribes are really not thinking about the short term, I guess. Because 60 months is very short.
And what happens in 60 months when your families that can't work, what are we going to do? And that's really not being thought of on the 60 month plan of what happens to our hard core families that just they don't have cars, they don't have education, they've never worked a day in their life. What are we going to do?
And there's no focus on that end of it. And somehow that needs to be brought out by these types of forums or with the State of Washington to look at how do we serve the hard core individual?
I think that's it so far. But what we've seen with our tribe and with the other tribes is that we have 27 tribes in the State of Washington. And there is looking at the landscape in our state and in our region, there's maybe three or four tribes tracking this whole thing. And it gets pretty frustrating to go to some of these welfare meetings when there's no leadership involved.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER At this time I'd like to introduce our next panelist. Who's a JTPA NEW director from the Oglalas Sioux Nation, Ms. Angie Eagle Bull.
MS. EAGLE BULL: Good morning. I'm not only the program director for JTPA and NEW but also we received funding recently for Welfare to Work. Our tribe is discussing right now the options of 477. Our tribal council kind of split on it and it's campaign time. So it's kind of been put on the back burner for now.
Oglalas Sioux Tribe is in South Dakota and has a population of about 38,000 plus. That's according to some figures that were done two years ago. So I'm sure it's more than that now.
Our TANF case load on Pine Ridge Reservation is 955. I just received that information the other day. That's updated information. Two thousand and eighty eight children are served under those 955 cases.
South Dakota keeps bragging about 300 people have been taken off the welfare roles since welfare reform. It's not because of employment that they've got these -- since they were on welfare. A lot of these recipients have come to our office and told us that they simply don't want to deal with the paperwork. Or they don't want to participate in the work activities. So many of them have just chosen not to apply for TANF. So South Dakota is bragging about that reduction and it's not a positive thing. A lot of it is negative. And that's 300 from the Pine Ridge Reservation alone.
Our tribe has chosen at this time not to administer TANF. And the biggest reason is because of the matching funds. South Dakota is not working at all with any of the tribes that I know of in South Dakota to provide matching funds. And for our tribe that would mean One million dollars to run TANF. And we just simply don't have the resources to do that.
There are very few job opportunities on our reservation. We have a large reservation but very few employers. Indian health service, the school, and the tribe are our main employers. But then there again, it's who you know not what you know.
Child care and transportation are the biggest problems for our welfare recipients. South Dakota chose the 12 weeks instead of 12 months of age for the youngest child of a welfare recipient. So when they have a newborn, when that baby reaches 12 weeks, they have to participate in the community service program.
They have a big problem. There are just a lot of child care providers on the reservation that simply do not want to provide child care to a baby that young. They in turn don't want to participate. Want to stay home with their children. And many of those are on the verge of sanctioning right now.
South Dakota has a new sanction work penalty out. They're going to start it in July. And it's going to pertain to those participants who have to do the required number of work hours every month. For every hour of work that they do not complete without good cause, $5.15 per hour is going to be reduced from their welfare check.
We have quite a few that are participating with our program that are on the verge of that. When we told them about that 50 percent of them came back. Fifty percent of them came back and it wasn't because they wanted to, it was just to keep that check. To keep supporting those children. That's going to start in July.
Our tribe has the native employment works program and they have the Welfare to Work program. Each of those programs are funded at about $200,000 each. And this is simply not enough money to service all 955 welfare recipients. We currently have 150 enrolled in the NEW program. And with our Welfare to Work money we're only going to be able to service 20 to 25. We're just now beginning that program with it's services.
I'd say our working relationship with our state is back and forth. I mean, they don't include us on many of their discussion when they develop their new rules or their policies. But they're sure to be there to pat us on the back because we helped them meet their work participation rates this past year. And they're panicking now because they need to increase that by 100 more participants by next year.
We stressed to them that child care is a big problem on the reservation because of the age of the children that they want the mothers to start to participating. And I just got word, a couple weeks ago, from the State of South Dakota that they want to contract with the NEW program to offer some money to contract a person to do nothing but child care. Hoping that this will overcome the child care program and they'll get more people involved in the work activity that they have.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Our next panelist is Leo Cummings.
MR. CUMMINGS: Our department administers, like a couple of our panelists here, Public Law 102477. The demonstration. And integrates the following programs in our 477 efforts, Department of Labor JTPA program, summer youth program, and the new Welfare to Work program. Health and Human services, native employment works program, child care development fund program, and lastly the Bureau's adult vocational training and direct employment programming. And the TWEP program.
Full integration of these programs, these seven programs into a single program with one set of rules with one set of reporting has enabled us to put more emphasis on our tribal and our peoples needs. So through 477 as a vehicle of coordinating and collaborating existing tribal programs we have been able to provide services that can meet the welfare TANF recipient's needs.
Along with that our tribe has looked at their responsibility. Every tribe has a responsibility to look at the option under the law, TANF law, that says that tribes have the option to implement their own program. Tribe has looked at this. Three affiliated tribes has looked at this. And in essence went through a beginning planning stages.
But like most tribes in the Nation, there is not enough resources. That is the biggest problem. There's not adequate resources available through what's available with the federal TANF monies to run a program on an at home level that can provide for adequate subsistence for our people. Plus provide them with the transitional support they need to go from Welfare to Work.
Another thing the tribe has looked at long term. Tribe has made a determination, priority, that really education is the key to the long -- long rate in success for our welfare service population.
And therefore, educational services are prioritized under our 477 program. These in turn then are coordinated and collaborated with the state, county TANF program that gives the opportunity for employment education for our TANF clientele. Very, very important this MOU I'm talking about. I think all of you have got one right now.
What it provides for many things. It provides these in writing. It provides us a referral process from the state TANF operator to the tribal 477 program. Therefore providing us with clients. Very important.
Provides for child care assistance information between the state and tribe to avoid duplication of services. Recognizes the dual eligibility of tribal TANF clientele for state and tribal, both child care programming. We in turn provide the county and state with the TANF recipients enrollment and employment development planning. We provide them with that.
It puts in place quarterly meetings to review and discuss issues relating to welfare reform and if applicable make modifications to our understanding. And one of the biggest things it does right, and it's written right in that MOU there, it recognizes our tribal NEW 477 activities as meeting state approved work activities.
One thing tribes got to remember there's an option in the law. On the Balanced Budget Act of '97, it says that states have the option to exclude tribal NEW participants in their work participation formula. And if you understand that, what that means.
It means that if we have people participating in NEW activities, and at home our NEW activities provide for education beyond 12 months. That they do not then, if the state takes that option, have to meet the state work participation work hours of 20 hours. They can go to school full time. And be full time and be full time students. So this becomes very important.
In the back part of that, you have an addendum. And that addendum speaks to the tribes determined service area. And tribes determine service population. The tribes service area includes five North Dakota counties. reservation and non-reservation areas. Our tribe determined the service population and that is all tribal members. Our tribe as well as other tribes.
Our tribal service priorities. What I talked about that tribe made the priority for education. Therefore, our tribal priority for services, under 477, as those needing and wanting education. Including those that don't have GED, don't have high school and wanting to go into employment education.
I don't speak to vocational ed or higher ed, I'm talking employment education. It could be either or. We need to look at that. We need to broaden our scope on education. What education needs in the context of employment.
This MOU is very important to us. All of the tribes in North Dakota have one of these. Mostly it's a working document and continues with the Welfare to Work monies that came into picture with the Balance Budget Act of '97, welfare reform II. We see new monies came in. The tribes got these new monies and we're working with it.
But states also had access to formula monies. In the State of North Dakota that's $5 million. If you look at the native case load in the State of North Dakota, which is 53 percent. You can see the importance of $5 million new welfare money. Historically or with maintenance of effort over 50 percent of that should go for Indian services. So very important.
Job service North Dakota is now in the final submittal stages for the new Welfare to Work monies. And hopefully they'll get the money and get their plan approved shortly after July or August. But that is another player. That was another resource we can look at. And that is something for us.
And how we can tie all these resources together is very important. How we have flow patterns within our programming that can flow to the state. Or how state participants can flow to the tribal levels. And how we can get best performance, or meet the needs or our people that they can transition realistically from Welfare to Work. That's the big question for us at employment training level.
Big question on the other hand is where the jobs going to be. But at least if we provide education and skills for these people that sometimes have many barriers, at least we're giving them a chance to at least qualify. Qualify for jobs and complete for jobs on the reservation. Or off if they want to do that. So that's where we look at it at the tribal level. And our department being able and part of welfare reform at the tribal level working with the state.
We talk about state resources and tribal resources being important. And tribes themselves making determination on use of these resources. Very important that we don't have states, bureaus, agencies, dictating to the tribes. You can use this money only for this purpose. These are the only activities you can use. Tribe needs to make these determinations themselves. They are the governing bodies. Especially on our own resources.
This week they're having social service introduction. They're going to introduce those new social services. A draft of regulations. This involves two programs. TWEP, which is under our 477 program. And GA, that is with the tribe right now. But these two programs are very important. Very important how the tribe can make use of them in our local welfare reform efforts.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: I'd like to open up the floor for some questions for our second panel. And I have a question from a young lady back there.
A PARTICIPANT: I would like to address the issue of disability and how it relates. In the new census of data that came out and there was a recent RFP sent out to the research and training centers on employment for persons with disabilities.
The census status says that one in three Native Americans has a disability which limits their ability to perform life functions. And I'm wondering how you guys are going to deal with that because those guys get cut off too.
And also I wanted to make a comment that the gentleman, Henry, if a person doesn't have a social security card, that doesn't necessarily mean that they haven't worked. It simply means they have never been on welfare. Because to be on welfare you have to have a social security card.
MR.CAGEY: Well, I think we applied for a disability program actually as one of the counselors for the disability program, vocational re-hab counselor. And one thing I noticed in our state and in our tribe is that tribal governments really aren't set up to serve disabled people.
And I think it's going to be a long struggle to take a look at how tribes accept serving peoples with disabilities. And the policies aren't set up to serve people with disabilities and working with our people on disabilities is that probably one out of three have a hard time just filling out the application and reading.
So it's a long, frustrating problem that I think we're up against. And I don't think there's any easy answer.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you.
MS. HUSTIES: I'm Alvina Husties (phonetic) from the Umatilla Tribe in Oregon. And we're already dealing with sanctions for individuals that were with the state. And they're being sanctioned off because of a disability. But they're using other areas of the sanctioning to get them off the program.
We're starting to really deal with the hard core, third, fourth generation welfare. And we're finding we have a lot more alcohol affect families because they're not able to adjust to what's happening to them. So we have a lot of mental health issues that we're being forced to deal with that we've never had to deal with in the past.
And the state now is starting to recognize the mental health issues. They're not equipped to handle them. And the major mental health they're looking at is the alcohol and drug. They don't know how to deal with alcohol and drug participants. They're very hard core, unrealistic to see a real change in what's going to happen in their future.
So when we're looking at these regulations we have to really take into consideration the areas they didn't identify for us. That we really have to deal with and work with.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. Got one more question?
MS. ASGLITH: My name's Cheryl Asglith. And I'm the social worker with the grand tribes band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians outside of Traverse City, Michigan. And my question is currently we don't operate a TANF program. But our tribe issues a per capita payment annually to our tribal members. And it makes them ineligible for services on the state level clear across the board.
The way that the per cap contract is written is that the state divides whatever the payment is over 12 months. Thus giving, or at least on paper it looks like the membership has an income every month. And it makes them ineligible for any sort of funding, food stamps, Medicaid, anything. What would be the difference if we did operate a TANF program? Are there any provisions that would be able to help the tribal membership or not?
A PARTICIPANT: One of the things a tribe can do is to exclude up to a certain amount a lump sum payment. That is if the tribe's option on it that determines eligibility on for TANF.
MR. PETERSON: Yeah, that's a question that we've had to address. We don't have per capita distribution to the Siletz Tribe. But in developing our program we developed the eligibility requirements.
And we have included tribal distributions just incase some day we do have some sort of distribution program because we are a gaming tribe.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: And with that, I'd like to move on to the next panel.
MR. HENRY: The Welfare to Work program is a part of this big picture that everybody calls welfare reform. And we are getting ready to send out notification to all of the tribes within the next couple of months announcing the fiscal year 1999 program funds. So all of this information will be sent to all of the federally recognized tribes.
The Welfare to Work program is a program designed to supplement other employment and training programs that a tribe currently operates. Remember the big push with welfare reform is get a job. They're not interested in the type of job or if you're going to be able to support your family and your self. The key phrase is, get a job.
And what we've been seeing with the plans that were recently approved, and for your information at this point there are 78 plans that have been approved across the Country. And we still have seven plans that are pending approval. And you know, we always hear those hard to serve individuals, these must be the hard to serve tribes who have been saying give us this, give us this, you know?
But we're continuing to work with them to get their plans approved. One benefit about this program is that the tribe will have up to three years to spend their money once they receive their notification that they have received an award. Because we were getting calls from tribes saying, you know the fiscal year is ending, you know, how are we going to spend all this money? But that is one benefit there.
One thing with the Welfare to Work program, it does have some flexibility. There are work activities that you can select from and in the regulations there are no definitions for these particular activities. For example, you would have community service, work experience, on the job training.
And what we noticed initially with the plans was that if a tribe has operated a JTPA program, or a NEW program, and I guess this goes back to the old way of thinking is if something is working for us this way, why should we try and change it? But with the Welfare to Work program you do have that flexibility to expand on a certain type of work activity.
For example, if you have an OJT, which is on the job training, with the JTPA program you have a lot of limitations in the length of training, you know, things like that.
With this program what's going to work for that particular client? Again, we hear individuals have never worked for years and years, have been on public assistance for generations. What type of work activity is going to work for that individual so that they can meet their work requirements so that they won't be cut off of aid? Okay.
And be creative in identifying how you're going to do this. You know there are limitations that the schooling is not an option. But we all realize that in Indian country the importance of education. And sometimes the major step for individuals is obtaining basic education, GED.
How are you going to work with that so that you can have that individual obtain that training yet allow them to continue to receive their AFDC? Okay.
And since I've worked with the NEW program, the old jobs program before, it's a little easier, I guess, to understand how the NEW program and the Welfare to Work program can interrelate so that they can allow you to provide a better service to your client. Okay.
For example, if the individual needs their GED, their basics skills. You know that's an allowable activity under the NEW program where there are no limitations on 12 months or whatever. Okay. What you can do is you can concurrently enroll them in different programs, NEW, JTPA, Welfare to Work, while that individual is actually working.
And what a number of grantees have done was to develop a program where they're working part of the time. But also as a part of their work activities, they're in some type of basic skills program so that they can obtain their GED program.
Also within the Department of Labor they do administer within DINAP, which is a division of Indian and Native American programs, the JTPA program. And that's another resource. So those are the main two resources within labor.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Our next panelist is Janae Oliver.
MS. OLIVER: I just wanted to give you a little update on the child support enforcement programs.
They just completed having consultations with the tribes on their proposed, I guess, regulations. And they had consultation in Albuquerque, Portland, and Nashville, Tennessee. So they will be in the process of developing their regulations.
Like the TANF program the tribes will have the option to run their own child support enforcement programs. And the consultation was divided up into three tracks. One was for tribal leaders. The other was for those involved with the legal system. And the third track was for personnel or staff that are involved with persons that actually need to file for child support enforcement.
So far we have 13 tribes that have implemented TANF. We have 78 tribes that operate NEW. And the grantees are set by the law. We can get no new grantees per se. Also the funding level is also set by the law. That won't change.
I guess the interesting part about the native employment works program is it's a lot more flexible than the old tribal jobs program. So you might want to view it as your chameleon type program.
Whatever programs you operate NEW should be able to fit in. It can supplement your TANF program. It can supplement the services that you provide for your TANF recipients. Or it can serve GA recipients. The eligibility criteria is left up to the tribe to determine what that is. Or which target groups they're going to serve.
And the services and work activities are also left up to the tribes. So you can supplement, compliment, whatever your NEW program to the other programs that you operate that are related to employment and training.
Basically the NEW program is pretty cut and dry. Actually, we have our NPRM over at Office at Management and Budget. It's been there about 60 days, so we have 30 more days for them to provide comments to us.
In those proposed regs we have indicated that we'd allow some economic development and job creation under the NEW program. We don't know how that's going to sit with O&B. Whether they're going to approve it or make comments on it. But that's also something different from maybe the other employment and training programs that you operate.
Where you would be able to provide maybe small start up grants to clients to start their own businesses and that kind of thing. Or maybe some start money for a job creation effort.
Also in the plans that are coming in there's a lot of coordination with the Welfare to Work program as well as tribal JTPA. And there is still a lot of coordination with educational agencies, which state TANF programs may or may not count as work activities. So each tribe is having to work out with their state TANF programs what's allowable and what's not for participation rates.
So that's kind of the status of where we are with the NEW program.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Okay. At this time we've got a little bit of time here to open it up for general discussion and some questions to any one of the panelists. And I'd like to give the opportunity to anybody to ask a question, make a comment.
MS. LOWE: And one of the things that we've done in Minnesota, which Chairman Whitefeather's pointed out, I think we've got a pretty successful relationship with the State of Minnesota both with the Department of Human Services and Department of Economic Security, and with the state legislature.
One of the things that we initially did when we started planning all the welfare reform programs and things was that we instead of going individually to the State Department of Human Services, or individually to the counties, or individually to the legislatures. We got together with all of the tribes in Minnesota. Kind of decided amongst each other what it was that we wanted to get from the state. What we wanted to accomplish. And then we went as a group of 11 reservations.
We ended up getting funding last year for $150,000 to develop a welfare reform plan for the tribes in Minnesota. We worked on some legislation. Last year the legislation that we worked on included employment and training funding for the tribal NEW programs. Some other child care funding, and stuff like that.
I attribute our success primarily to two things. Being prepared, having worked out a plan prior to meeting with the state and coming together as a united group of tribes.
MS. FOWLER: One of the things that came, I think from the form in Portland, we had a rush of questions about what passed over a year and a half ago through the Social Security Administration was that alcohol and drug are no longer primary disabilities.
So people receiving Social Security were cut off of that funding. Also from the benefits of Medicaid. And that's had a real impact on a lot of programs including vocation and rehabilitation. And so I guess, we want to keep raising the issue that even if we do have Section 130, tribal voc/re-hab, or state, that some of you have referred back to, in helping people with disabilities. I don't think that's enough. What we've seen is at the state voc/re-hab programs do not adequately outreach to Native Americans. Thus that was why Section 130, tribal voc/re-hab programs were created. And with only 39 of those in the nation, with how many tribes are there? I think there needs to be you know, a bigger push or something.
I know that we've been trying to do that in trying to get RSA to look at creating well, more funding for one thing. But to create more programs that would actually help. And so again, I think we just raise this as an issue that within your programs that you can rely on these systems. But I think there should be built in that we address these issues. Thank you.
MR. BAYLESS: Randolph Bayless, vice chair, Hoopa (phonetic) band of Pomo Indians, Northern California.
Federal Section 130 that you were just mentioning. I believe once we really work that program and we actually work with the other state agencies, such as social services, and the Department of Vocational Re-hab, we're able to establish ourselves as a nonprofit agency. Where we can go ahead and start our own independent living center.
That's exactly what we need to do and that's what the money's for. It's not there just to assist us in employment and training so that we give jobs to those that are disabled. You know, we're looking at disability is something that we don't always see.
Some of us are temporarily disabled for reasons beyond our control, such as maybe an accident.
So we have to change our way of life and new careers. And that's what Section 130 is all about. You know, but we need to go further as tribes and develop our independent living centers. So that we can actually go beyond just training and service. And actually start creating jobs and helping to assist people in the new technologies. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Any one else on the panel would just offer a brief comment or suggestion.
MR. PETERSON: We are very fortunate in Oregon that we have a good working relationship with the state that did not require legislative action by the House or Senate. The decision was made at the administrative level to provide matching funds for the TANF program.
The State of Oregon is providing direct access to the state computer system. That they've in fact paid for the computer switching equipment, the training, and the computers that will provide us access to the AFS. Information, food stamp information, and child support enforcement. Screens, they were working. We just met on Thursday of this week to develop a little bit more on how and what kind of access our tribal staff will have to the state system. And we're really
MS. OLIVER: Mine is just more or less a reminder to the NEW grantees. If you have not obligated your 1997 funds, you have to do that by June 30. And if you have not submitted your plan for the 1998 through 2001 program, you need to do that, or should have done it June 1. So we're still accepting those plans. What may happen is you may not get your funding the first week in July. It'll just be you know, a little later than that after the plans been approved.
he other thing I'd just like to mention is that it's one thing for a staff person to take back your concerns to the office. But it usually has more impact maybe if you either write, or call in, or also talk to your Congress persons. But I think most of you know, our division director is John Bushman. And he would be the person in our shop, I guess, to talk to.
But I would think that a logical next step might be there have been some grants awarded for TANF education. Maybe the next step is grants for TANF technical assistance for the tribes that actually want to implement TANF.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. I'm going to allow myself a couple minutes just to summarize the discussion we've had.
But we talked about issues of employment, one stop shop, state relations, tribe/state relations. A lot of discussion about disabilities, which is an issue that perhaps hasn't received enough attention because we're always trying to address the immediate need that's out there.
I think one thing that hasn't been discussed but I'm sure will be some point, is the long term impact of welfare reform on other areas such as health care. And there will be some major changes coming about.
I think the alcohol issue is a real critical part of this thing. And we're finding that in our tribe. That the State of Minnesota has to be aware that we just don't bring in recipients and hope that they're going to adjust right away. There's some other underlying issues that we have to work with them on before we expect them to go to work.
There will be still requirements that they do assessment, job search, that kind of thing. But what's going to happen to us is that the more people that move home, we've already got a housing shortage. We've got other issues that we're trying to deal with. And even though it may be a mixed blessing, I think that there's an opportunity there to maybe work through that.
And the various situation with the states and the tribes have, I think it's worthwhile to ask questions and have some dialogue. Perhaps what may be needed is NCI should convene a national week long forum on welfare reform. Because this issue before we know it is going to be very critical.
Because back in 1994 or '96, it didn't appear that it was going to be upon us. But as has been described here, some of the states have already sanctioned Indian people. And a lot of times without due process.
There's got to be some way we can interact to help each other to fix
that. As well as going back to Congress. And to address some of the inequities and some of
the uniqueness that Indian tribes have with respect to this TANF.
Panel 2
BACK
TO CONTENTS
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: The first panelist this afternoon that we're going to be hearing from involves job creation, economic development, and infrastructure needs.
MS. SANCHEZ: The introduction of work force development legislation as well as welfare reform have brought about an increased awareness of the need to coordinate and improve employment, training, literacy, and vocational programs to better serve our diverse work force.
Those that have had the unique experience of working in Indian country can attest to the difficult and often improbable feat of creating employment opportunities in their communities and on the reservations.
Unemployment rates on our reservations remain very high. And opportunities for very few jobs are often very limited. The services that are provided by employment training programs means the success or failure to a client. Many times extra tools, clothing, car repairs, child care, housing, and general support can be a roadblock to the pursuit of the dreams of many of our clients.
Through innovation and creativity, we have an opportunity to provide new choices in our community. Those clients who are single parents, unemployed for long term, they're welfare recipients who are homeless, have been in physical abusive situations or lived with substance abuse problems have dreams. Our role and our responsibility is to help guide them to achieve personal and financial success.
In reviewing a number of the opportunities for the people that we work with in our program, we find it important to not only do an assessment of the individuals, but the communities where they live.
Many times we find that our individuals have to be provided assistance on how to manage conflict, anger, and emotions. And if we can meet the challenge of that battle, we can begin to look at innovative and creative approaches for their success.
In many of our communities the tribes are the main employers. It's important that we know the jobs that are available. The economic and tribal enterprise development so we can prepare people. Our own people for those jobs.
Native Americans for years have been artists and craftsmen. And have been very successful in that area. So they are business people. A number of our tribes have grown. Beyond gaming there are other enterprises that the tribes should take a look at.
Through the efforts of tribes and private partners our job training program has been instrumental in the development of a tele-work center. Utilizing technology, developing the human resources of our tribal communities, and providing a service to both private tribal and public agencies.
Our goal was to have 50 percent of the people that are trained and work at the tele-work center be AFDC recipients. And as we move towards this next year, we anticipate that 75 percent of the work force will be individuals that are coming off the TANF programs.
We've provided structured, entrepreneurial, and business development leadership sessions through a nine month program. Developing feasibility studies, business plans, financial packaging, and also addressing the administrative and financial requirements of running a business for selected tribes and individuals throughout the state.
In the past two years eight of the ten individuals that went through our business development and entrepreneurial leadership program today are successfully operating their own businesses. We have two that are general contractors. We have two that are running child care development centers.
We have one person that is currently working on developing or finalizing the transportation system for their reservation to the local community. For providing transportation for people not only to jobs but for other services in the community.
Micro enterprise and entrepreneur approaches for individuals are choices, new choices that we all can offer in our communities. We also work with current individuals who are native artists and crafts people to enhance their marketing and publicity techniques. So that they can improve and expand their businesses.
We are characterized by our diversity and our shared perspective of native values and belief systems as a driving force in the holistic nature of our communities. Our cultural views may be tribally diverse but our collective perspective as Indian people forms the foundation of how we view our communities as one family, one community.
Our understanding of community cohesion is rooted in the tradition passed on to us from the generations who came before. We honor our ancestors by looking to the past before looking to the future. We need to look at home. We need to look at our people. And move those people into the job opportunities in our communities. Thank you.
MR. LEWY: The Colville Confederated Tribes has been working very hard at job creation. We are currently under attack. We are a gaming tribe. We are currently under attack, and in fact, when I left Friday a civil suit was being filed against us for forfeiture in our gaming enterprises.
This has been very instrumental in our job creation. But along with gaming, we have moved on to other issues. The Colville Confederated Tribes has developed it's own apprenticeship program and had it federally recognized by the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training. So that we would be on equal grounds and playing grounds with the states.
We've developed our own entrepreneurship program. And mostly we have developed this in the young entrepreneur type of situation. We feel that we have the Bill Gates out there in Indian country. But we need to be able to learn that job creation does not only mean that you have to work for somebody else. That you can work for yourself.
We've developed in our Welfare to Work program a micro business and home based business. We've developed a resolution that we've sent to the state, and we've worked and negotiated the state in welfare reform that relocation is not an option for our tribe.
In our home based and micro businesses we are trying to develop right now access to internet capabilities. And utilizing these as supportive services so that our home base and micro businesses can access worldwide markets.
We can no longer just think of our own interstate commerce, or even international commerce. So we have to start being able to look at Indian tribes that the world economy is affecting us.
Our tribe right now is 80 percent dependent upon our timber industry. And we have been trying to move forward in some type of economic development to alleviate some of that dependency. With the trade agreements, the North American free trade agreements, and the Asian economy as it's happening right now has affected us greatly with the Colville Confederated Tribes.
The tribe has developed a training policy statement. As we look through our enterprises and throughout our tribal government we got to notice that all of the upper management and the people who was making the decisions was non-tribal members.
So we passed a training policy statement that would state that tribal members shall be trained into these positions. We're working on the procedures right now, and we offer management training, supervisory training on a weekly basis for all tribal members, and tribal employees to obtain some of these skills that are needed to move into management.
The other issue that the Colville Confederated Tribes has done, is the Colville Tribes is one of the largest employers in Eastern Washington State. Our tribal government itself employees over 950 employees and during seasonal work we'll sometimes go up to 1300. Our enterprises employ just about as many. What we've done now is we've adopted our tribal government to go under the TARO (phonetic) ordinance. So that our tribal members and Indian preference will take preference when it comes to these issues. What we found in the past by eliminating our tribe from TARO, it was not giving a due process and Indian preferences was not being adhered to.
So when we looked at Indian preferences now, there was always the argument do we want the most qualified person to work for our tribal government, or do we want our tribal person to become the most qualified person?
And that there is what TARO has been about now. Is that if our tribal people meet the minimum qualifications then they should receive the Indian preference and move into those positions. And we should be able to provide them the resources through our education, our employment and training programs to become the most qualified person that there is in Indian country.
So I'm just winging it in not having my five minute speech that I promised I would keep to. All right. Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: I'd like to introduce Chris Saunders, who is the administrative assistant for travel programs of the Mississippi band Choctaw Indians.
MR. SAUNDERS: Let me just give you a snapshot picture of the tribe. This is out on 25,000 acres scattered throughout East Central Mississippi. There are 8000 tribal members. Six thousand live on reservation, 2000 live off.
In 1997 demographic survey 73 percent were full bloods, 75 percent spoke Choctaw fluently. If you -- it will probably take a while to get the sheets. But let me just say right now we have 6000 jobs on the reservation. Probably a third of those are attributed to the casino, 25 percent to tribal government, and the balance to 9 different enterprises and retail outlets.
That being said, it took 28 years, or close to 30 years to get to this point. And I'd like to go back and just briefly sort of talk about how things were initiated back in 1970. At that time the economy in East Central Mississippi was almost nonexistent.
There was a little bit of timber, there's a Naval air base in Meridian, which is about 30, 40 miles away. There was a few plants in the town of Philadelphia. But aside from that, there was nothing. The tribes unemployment level was somewhere above 40 percent. The underemployment level was probably another 25 percent. How most tribal members made their living had been share cropping in the '50s and '60s that business was no longer viable because of the mechanization of agriculture.
So in 1970 the chief and the tribal council looked around and decided what they wanted to do. And what they said was their primary goal was to eliminate poverty through the creation of jobs.
In 1971 we got an EDA grant to establish a 30 acre industrial park. And then we sent out 500 letters. Chief and tribal council sent out 500 letters. A few people came down to look at the industrial park, but there were no takers. But still the tribal council and chief adhered to that philosophy.
In 1975 they redid the constitution and by laws to stabilize the structure of tribal government. In 1977 they got another EDA grant that expanded the industrial park to 80 acres provided for some road access. Some street lights and some parking. Finally, in 1978 Packard Electric, which was a dedicated wire harness supplier to Chrysler, agreed to enter into an arrangement with us.
So through an EDA grant and through a BI loan guarantee we built a plant which allowed us to hire 200 employees, 80 percent of which were Choctaw.
About a year later American Greetings, which had come down to visit the reservation in the late '60s and didn't like what it saw, checked us out with Chrysler and Ford and saw that our people could do the job effectively. And we entered into agreement with them. That agreement was a little bit different.
At that time we approached the City of Philadelphia to get the state industry revenue bonds. So we leased the land to Philadelphia, they re-leased it back to us and then we built that plant on to those state industrial bonds. Once again they employed about 200 or 225 individuals, 80 percent of whom were Choctaw.
So it took about from the initial drive, or goal to create jobs in reservation, it took eight years. And we've continued on to where we are today. I think there is some things that the tribal council did. Some decisions they made over the years, which allowed these things to take place and encouraged them to happen.
The salaries or the wages at the plants were low. Probably not much more than five or six dollars an hour. It became heated during some elections. There was criticism that we were training our people for dead end jobs. And that any kinds of profits should go back and should pay the employees.
What the council and chief continued doing was retiring the debt and expanding jobs. In '83, we still had 25 percent unemployment. Their thinking was we're not going to start doing that until we can get across the board on employment.
So the goal continued to be the creation of jobs and the elimination of poverty. Up
until 1994, the unemployment level had then sunk to 10 percent and the tribe was still
relatively cash poor because the resources were still being put back into expansion and
retirement of debt.
Between '95and '94 we were able to construct a casino. It's very interesting the way that turned out as far as the employment of tribal people.
Many of the people that worked at the plants formerly, that received low wages, moved over to the casino and at the similar time to the travel government. So before where they were making $5, $6, $7 an hour, they were now making $10, $12, $14 an hour.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: We'll move on to the next part of the agenda was economic development opportunities.
MR. HOMER: So every Indian that's maybe on a reservation and off a reservation and Indian tribes and Indian reservations, all of them qualify as HUB zones. HUB zone Small Business concerns a HUB zone business is owned and controlled by one or more persons each of whom is a United States citizen. The principal office of which is located in a HUB zone. And since you're in a HUB zone, on an Indian reservation, maybe the town that is next to the Indian reservation might be in a HUB zone most likely is in a HUB zone as well. So you can go on a reservation and probably near a reservation.
This one here is how they qualify these areas as HUB zones. And it's a qualified sense track. And this is for off reservations so it's really not of any consequence to us except for the off reservation businesses. And usually they're going to qualify for all of this anyway.
Income base criteria for qualified areas. Qualified non-metropolitan county is an area where the median household income is less than 80 percent of the non-metropolitan state median household income. Or has an unemployment rate not less than 140 percent of the statewide average unemployment rate for the state in which that county is located.
Qualified HUB zone small business concern is qualified if the small business concern has certified to the SBA administrator or the administrator otherwise determines based on information submitted. Or based on certification procedures, which shall be established by SBA. SBA has established that the Bureau of Indian affairs area office and office nearest that Indian reservation will certify you as a small business on a one page form.
Limitations of subcontracting, service contract, not less than 50 percent of the cost for personnel will be expended for it's employees or for employees of other HUB zone small business concerns. And supplies, other than regular dealer, not less than 50 percent of manufacturing cost, include material. Will be incurred by one or more HUB zone small business concerns.
This is going to be a situation where you have maybe a three page document. Not like the 8A documents like we used to go through with the 8A certifications.
The preference of this HUB zone is to set aside on the same level on the preference as the 8A company.
Ten percent price evaluation preference in full and open competition. Whenever there is an open competition, you get 10 percent price difference. If somebody bids $110,000 on a contract and you bid $102,000 on that contract, you win the contract if you're in that kind of a situation.
A sole source contract is up to 5 million in manufacturing and 3 million for all other contracts. We got by Indian preference and by Indian contracting, and BIA, and IHS.
We now have them in these ten agencies as far as I'm concerned. Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, and Department of Housing and Urban Development. Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics, Space Administration, General Services Administration, Department of Veteran's Affairs. I got a handout on all of this right here for you all.
These ten agencies will be putting up one percent of all the money that they contract in your one, which starts in January of 1999. One percent of all their money, these ten agencies is equivalent to $5 billion or so the first year. And then it goes up after that. It goes to two percent, and then it goes to three percent, and before it's over there's going to be a lot of contracts. There's going to be a lot of jobs created by this program.
So we need to keep track of it. Right now, NEBA is on top of this. The rules and regulations for this new program have just been developed. We made comments. We had 56 other Indian businesses and tribal enterprises that made comments to the rules and regulations.
Our biggest concern was the number of employees that they were recommending that would qualify you as a small business. And SBA wrote in 16 employees to be eligible. And we said, no. The intent of Congress was one. So we're back to that.
The small business committee on the Senate side and the House side both backed us on that with strong language to. So we're pretty sure that it's going to go back to one employee that will make you eligible to be involved in this program.
The other concern that we had was the principle business site. For off reservations, they didn't want to have a business sight in a HUB zone. If they had a business office, say, in Phoenix, Arizona, and it wasn't in a HUB zone, they felt that they could move an office to a HUB zone and be able to operate from that area. And we think we're going win that one as well.
So the program is a flexible program and a very simple program, and we think we're going to be able to work with this very well. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: I wanted to next call upon Lori Thompson, who is the director of the technical assistance and education of the First Nations and Development Institute. Lori, would you please make your presentation?
MS. THOMPSON: Thank you. For those of you who don't know, First Nations Development Institute is a national Native American economic development corporation. We provide grants, technical assistance, and we have a loan program for a reservation based and tribally run enterprises.
First Nations overriding philosophy is that tribes and native communities must take control of their assets in order to achieve sustainability. Taking control of assets whether those assets are natural resources, human resources, financial resources, infrastructure. Taking control of those assets means acquiring, maintaining, and leveraging them.
Communities in a position controlling assets actually puts tribes and native communities in a position to create viable, sustainable economies through jobs creation and income generation. This approach to assets based development, as opposed to a needs based approach, is just one way that can meet some of the challenges and opportunities that are set forth by welfare reform.
We have funded a lot of organizations and enterprises that are involved in the emerging field of social entrepreneurs, which essentially combines social services, and social service programs with income generating activities. Activities that not only employ people, and bring income to the organization or tribe, but also help to offset organizational operating costs.
We've funded a few programs that are doing food producing. We've funded quite a few revolving loan funds, which speaks to the whole issue of micro enterprise and home based businesses and providing training, technical assistance, as well as loan capital to them.
And we've also funded a few arts marketing programs that have allowed tribal members to stay at home and produce their products and then figure out ways to market them more nationally.
In addition First Nations is also looking into the practicality of establishing development accounts, or IDAs. IDAs are incentive savings programs or savings accounts for financially poor people. That are intended to build assets through savings accounts earmarked for home purchase, education and business start up.
We are currently funding several project to look a the feasibility of establishing IDA programs in their communities. We are also reviewing a few proposals from tribes ready to actually start IDA programs. While the success of IDAs in Indian company remains to be seen, we feel that they'll have a really strong impact in terms of playing a critical role for tribes and individuals facing the challenges forced upon them by welfare reform.
And I guess in closing, I just would like to mention that our approach to asset based development is based on the following, actually requires the following. The first one is leadership in capacity building. Building from within. Development from within. We look at programs that come to us to tell us what they want to do. We don't have any pre-scripted funding. We want to hear from tribes and native non-profits on what they'd like to do in their communities to create jobs and income.
We also look very strongly at building partnerships and self help networks. We can't do it alone. We need to look at diverse funding basis. And we're really working now with our grantees to look beyond federal and private grants, but also look at ways of working with banks and other conventional lending institutions to create capital, or acquire capital. So that you can work on developing enterprises and businesses in the communities.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Okay. Thank you. At this time we'd like to open it up to a couple of questions to Pete and Lori on the economic development opportunities they've shared with us this afternoon.
A PARTICIPANT: I wanted to ask Pete if he could comment on the enterprise empowerment zones. And how many tribes have applied and what does it mean to the tribes?
MR. HOMER: The status right now, is that the rules and regulations are just being put together. The comments have been taken. The far council will be looking at the regulations and the comments. They will put together the official rules and regulations. It will take them three months from maybe next week, or the following week. We're looking at October, November. And then when they come out they'll implement those rules and regulations and start the program January 1, 1999.
Between now and then we're encouraging tribal enterprises to diversify, and expand, and find out exactly what these ten giant agencies buy in your area, and try to diversify into businesses so as they can by your product.
We're getting new business people that want to take down these kind of contracts to do a business plan and start getting into business. And then find out that same information on exactly what they buy and what they're doing. And then all the 8A companies as well can take advantage of the program. Now they have two programs within SBA that they can receive sole source contracting.
Like I said, this is a new program. When you start a new program it takes that long to get the rules and regulations through the whole system. So that's where it's at right now.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: We'll move on to the final panelist for panel two.
MS. HADEN: And there's this whole idea that yes, you know, in the Indian community we think a lot of poor people and we think a lot of old people, but when it really gets down to putting them in a priority kind of thing. This is a very big problem. And I think there needs to be a processes for how we can look at very old problems in a very different way. We have to, and this is very concerning in terms of looking at jobs in a different way.
Yes, we can bring in economic development and do some of these kind of wonderful things that the Choctaws of Mississippi did. But there's many of the tribes that do not have those kind of facilities, or those kind of efforts. And so we have to begin to look at developing jobs in a very creative way. And I like some of the things that Ms. Thompson said, in terms of social entrepreneurship. Because that's kind of some of the ways that we have to look at things.
In addition to our philosophical shift, we're going to have to include things like integration of services. Now, someone brought this up when they talked about the one stop shop. And we talked about the one stop shop in terms of a computer sense, but I think that we need to realize that when you're going to do an integration of services at a tribal level, you're going to have a very interesting situation.
Because in many tribes, and again present group excluded, you're going to find that you have all of your little agencies within your tribe that are functioning on their own. And it's very possible that one of your programs could not even know what the other program is doing.
So in order to do an effective kind of integration of services, you're going to have to include the staff, some of the leadership and maybe even some your clients in designing this integration of services. And it's something that's not going to just take one month.
It's going to take some time. Because in order to properly integrate all the services that are going to help your TANF clients, we're going to have to have people that are willing to do that. And you have to assure that we're not going to be cutting out any jobs.
But that's one way that we can prevent duplication. We can make sure that we create a system that's going to be more responsive to out clients. And this will include the retraining of our staff into looking at job creation, and social service development in a really different and new way. And I think that many of us have a different idea about what social service and social workers are. And I think we're going to have to change that point of view. And social workers and social service people are going to have to do a lot in that area.
We're all are going to have to develop a system for coordinating with the states regardless of whether we're TANF or not TANF. Because if we TANF, it's going to be very important to be able to develop that relationship and continue that relationship. If we don't TANF, it's going to be very important that we continue to work with states so that our folks don't fall between the cracks.
And it's also going to be important that there's going to be a need to coordinate on various issues like Medicaid. And on CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program. And we're going to have to develop some kind of relationship on the whole child support issue and on food stamps, and other kind of issues like that.
I think that there's been some really historical kind of things happening with tribes and with states. And I think that -- you know, I come from Oklahoma. And the state isn't exactly in love with the Indian community. But it's not about jurisdiction. It's a matter of what can we do to best service the people who need our help the most. .
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Now at this time I'd like to open it up for a few questions for the entire panel.
A PARTICIPANT: I'm was just trying to figure out how to phrase it before I raised my hand. But this is for Lori Thompson from First Nations.
On the Nez Perce reservation the City of Lapwai is in a good position at this time because the City of Lapwai has a mayor that is also a Nez Perce tribal member. With two other council members that are also Nez Perce tribal members. And another Native American that's on the council. So the majority of our council is Native American in the City of Lapwai.
Working with TANF and with the city, is there possibly creating an
economic development plan utilizing the resources of First Nations?
MS. THOMPSON: Yes. There would be a potential for that. And I
know we've done some work with other tribes that have done collaborative partnerships with
not just other native organizations, but non-native as well. So let's talk about that
afterwards.Panel 3
BACK
TO CONTENTS
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: And the next panel that we have is going to address and talk a little bit about the adult and vocational education needs that are going to be a part of this process for moving people from Welfare to Work. And so at this time I'd like to ask Yvonne Novak, who is president of national Indian education association as well as director of Indian education in the State of Minnesota to make her presentation. Yvonne.
MS. NOVAK: Thank you, Chairman Whitefeather. Since 1996 NIEA has worked to include a set aside for Indian adult and vocational education programs. But based upon a survey done by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, that showed that a high percentage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives received services through state adult and voc educational programs.
They have not put money in Indian set aside money into adult and vocational education programs for the last few years. They used as an example in this survey, Alaska, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota. So they did not add, because of this they said, they're already being served by the state so there doesn't need to be an Indian set aside.
NIEA feels that this was an incomplete look at the situation. And as an example in Minnesota, the Indian education section manages an adult basic education program that services six sights through the Northeastern part of the state. We work in collaboration with tribal governments and public school districts to provide adult education programs.
But this is because Minnesota has a strong collaborative working agreement between the 11 tribal governments in Minnesota and the State of Minnesota. And they have a common goal of supporting Indian education. This isn't true across the country.
So NIEA is back to supporting and is continuing to support a need for a set aside for adult and vocational education in federal funding. This is not -- it's an uphill battle. It's one that doesn't look like it's going to go anywhere because of the survey done in '96 saying that states can better serve the students.
NIEA is working with Senator John McCain on again, amending the EFDA to include adult education. It's been unfunded for a number of years. And almost made it the last time, so this is NIEAs major push for serving the adult population.
To get Senator McCain the support and to really work the legislative end of it, NIEA will be working with tribes and we ask for your support for the funding again in OIE for adult education.
NIEA tries to work very closely to support adult basic ed. And as manager of Indian education for the State of Minnesota, one of our major concerns is what's going to happen with our training dollars, with our adult education program, and with the Minnesota Indian scholarship program? Because we have number of people who will be coming in who are going to need training and college degrees. And the money is going to be spread short.
So June 24th and 25th we're holding a statewide conference talking about this issue. How do we support adult education through the monies that we already have?
And so that's a very short presentation just NIEAs continued support of this. What we're doing in Minnesota. I'd rather take questions and answers when we get to that point.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: The next panelist Dr. David Gipp, who is the president of the United Tribes Technical College.
DR. GIPP: I guess what I would do is just summarize some of those things to say that the particular model I work with at United Tribes Technical College really works with the American Indian family on our small campus up in Bismarck, North Dakota.
And since 1969, I guess our view is that in order for our tribal societies to become more participatory, more successful, and more meaningful in this day and age we try to work with both the adults and children.
And that's why we emphasis in a residential setting things like child care, which we've always provided on our campus from ages 8 weeks on up. And a K through 8 elementary school setting. Well, those children of our adult students have that kind of activity going on and then you provide the technical or vocational types of training. As well as some of the rededication. And the other issues that affect both children and adults.
Every one of our people have to be functionally literate. Not functionally illiterate. And that's a major, major issue. I've talked about this in the past and some of you who have heard me, I know I sound like a broken record, so I won't get too much into that.
But it's very important that we emphasize the quality of training, the quality of education. Because if we're being asked to simply be a revolving door. Then I think we're going to be doing a disservice to those that are the first people in our communities. Whether we're an intertribal institution like ours, or whether you're running a program directly in your own home area. Then we're doing no one any great favors.
And in fact, all we're doing is responding to the typical carrot and stick approach that's been used and that's in some cases I think, even been implied with TANF and other failed policies. Whether we talked about relocation or, you know, back in the '50s, and those kinds of things.
Clearly the need of basic educational programs is tremendous. And it will increase as changes in the welfare laws are implemented.
We have already experienced the first wave of welfare recipients at many of our colleges or in our communities. And I can clearly state that a large percentage of these students do not have high school diplomas. And will require a basic literacy skills for college level work and for the work force.
How are these individuals, who are willing and attempting to learn going to become more prepared for unemployment in less than two years? Even with legislative changes, where will all the jobs come? We need to take a serious look at the long term impact of short term employment opportunities versus access to meaningful employment and lifelong skills development.
In the long run we may learn that two or three years of education and skill building rather than short term employment are the real keys to sustaining employment and economic development on our reservations and through out our various Indian communities.
Our schools and your efforts are going to have to share that responsibility for these conductive changes. And so we really need to address these concerns if we're going to be successful and if we're going to have programs and resources to really carry these things off. Thank you.
MR. BIBB: What I'd like to talk about is in the vocational education aspect. Because of this legislation we are now being required to move our people faster through the education process.
As we look around on the reservations we have a lot of remote areas. We have those issues of transportation, child care. So what do we have to do? We have to find a way that we can reach those neediest people out there in those remote areas. If we can't bring them to our tribal colleges and to our community programs, we need to be able to go out to them.
One of things that we've talked a lot about today in this TANF program is technology. And technology is moving rapidly as we well know. And there is a lot of issues around that. I know within my own tribe and coming to the people up here in the North, some of our old prophecies even talk about technology. And it becomes an issue among us. Among many of the people into how much do we embrace this technology? How much do we depend on it?
And it's a tool. That's all it is. And we have to remember that sometimes you know, we have people. We put a hammer in their hand and hand them a nail, and they just bend it. But you know, we put it in someone else hand and they build a home. And so these tools that we have, we have to look at them and we have to use them in a good way.
We have to look at those things. We have to begin to use the vocational education process to support economic development of our reservations. Work together. We have that opportunity with the Welfare to Work money.
We have to be creative and innovative in our vocational educational programs. More so than we've ever been. We have to break down those territorial imparities between programs, between things that we do. And we have to begin to integrate.
We talk about government integrating between HHS, DOL. We have to do those same things within out tribe. I've heard a lot of that today. And many people are beginning to see that. With Public Law 102477 process provides an opportunity. If Navajo wins this 638, it's going to provide more opportunities.
So we have a lot of things. Vocational education, a lot of our people are not going to go on to higher education. And we have as much need on our reservations within our communities to have people who are quality oriented and that which they do.
Whether it be build a house, if they're sewing shirts, if they're doing bead work, if they're making baskets, they should be able to be as proud as they can be of that which they have. And through cottage industries, through mentoring groups, entrepreneurial training, we have opportunities and we have to make these things happen. We can't wait for them to happen. And we can use this technology.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: I'd like to open up the forum to questions for either of the panelist at this time? Does anybody have any questions, comments?
MS. NOVAK: The first to talk about vocational training, one of the things that we're looking at in vocational training, if it's a nine week program, is it a good program? We've had a number of students who have gone through vocational educational program. They're back into going to community colleges. And they've used up all their scholarship eligibility. And they still don't have something.
So one of the things we're working with, stressing with the tribal education directors, and with other people is that when we work with students that we talk about, what Bonnie talks about is setting goals and having them understand that funding is only so long. And that if you don't make progress, it's not going to be there to help you.
But on the other hand, we have people who really need some training. And the Minnesota Indian scholarship program, we have $1.8 million that we support students with each year. About 800 students we fund in Minnesota. And we're looking at how are we going to help work with tribes to help educate people and support them when they're going back to school.
And a lot of the times the problem is the first training they need, it takes almost a year to get them ready for college. It takes them almost a year to really get ready for vocational training so they can really benefit from the vocational training. And if they do this, where does the money come from and does it use up their eligibility?
So one of the questions we're asking ourselves in Minnesota is, do we set aside part of this $1.8 million we have to do the study skills program and not count it toward eligibility? Is that a way for us to work with tribes in helping train people? And to get those training.
On the GED, our GED program is, as I said, we have an Indian education GED program. And Vern Zacker (phonetic) is our staff person for that. And Vern is working with all the sites, setting tighter goals on people working through. Trying to get people to look at the fact that they need to go at a faster pace. And trying to work at it, not just alone. But work at it as sort of one stop shopping. So if we're working with a person on a GED, we're also making sure we touch base with the other agencies that they use.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you, Yvonne.
DR. GIPP: Yes, I was just going to point out, I think that all of us who work in training or some aspect of education are confronted with this whole issue of the culture of poverty. I mean, I think you're all familiar with that term.
That has nothing to do with our tribes, our own tribal cultures. And we have a lot of our own Indian people who over this generational issue of poverty that we've all had to live through in prior generations, are convinced that some of the things that they do, are somehow the behavior of Indian people. Or somehow that's part of our own culture.
And you and I know that's not true. Those issues of putting off things and not taking serious issues of training or those kinds of things. Some of the examples that you gave earlier to me are good examples of that issue of generational poverty of that culture of poverty.
And I think we've got a very strong responsibility as trainers, educators, administrators, leadership, whatever it may be, of letting people, our own people know that is not a part of our life. And that we do have things that we have to do that they have to do. And responsibilities that they have to carry out if they're going to be successful whether it's a small thing or a big thing.
And so I think -- and the other part is the collaboration among our selves and with our respective programs. Whether we use Public Law 477 as a means to pull sources together that are meager in the first place. The other part is issues of technology. I think that Gary has mentioned. We really are on the verge, I think, in Indian country of becoming a part of that.
And we need to work very hard whether that's done through legislation or other resources. To assure that every American Indian in community and preferably home, has access to the internet. And that means utilization of technology and learning how to use it. And apply it in the learning and training situations.
I do agree with Yvonne. Preparation is important. I know we see students that come on our campus from 40 different tribes annually.
And one of the number one issues are preparation, whether we're talking about reading or math skills, or other -- if you're going to be a carpenter, you still have to have fundamental math skills. Or if it's going to be more of the technological programs in computers and so forth. They need that background.
And Yvonne's point is that adult education and for that matter vocational education in other areas. Higher education have really declined, except for this past year in higher ed for FY '98.
You look at the amount of money that was available in 1969 under the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I'm talking about the Bureau of Indian Affairs now. The appropriation that was available in 1969 for BIA employment assistance was $75 million. Today it's less than $15 million in the BIA budget. And I'm not really discounting heavily the amount of funds that don't show up in that budget anymore that have been assumed by the tribes.
What I'm saying is that the federal government, I mean we can pick names and this (inaudible), over that period of time. 1969 to 30 years later. Has de-emphasized training with respect to the Department of Interior. We take a look at Department of Labor and you've all got the statistics in the reduction of dollars that we've actually taken. In DINAP dollars. Actual training.
And then we are expected that the welfare reform laws are going to work automatically. We take a look at the realities and you see what's being done to our young people and young adults who need training. We really need to work very, very aggressively to restore those dollars.
I mean, I talked about this issue of the Marshall plan. We really need to have an investment back in Indian country. And part of that is training of human resources.
You can have one of the most wonderful business plans, by the way, and you can even have the capitalization there, available. But if our people don't have the adequate training, whether it's management or first line training, who's going to run those enterprises? We're going to be back to dependency on non-Indians again.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. You got a question or a comment?
MS. HUSTIES: Alvina Husties from the Umatilla reservation. We're at that point now. We have Wild Horse casino. We started out social services did an evaluation that they would do very good in the beginning. High employment. And then it would drop. Because they weren't equipped. Staff in management was not equipped to deal with Native American people in the higher management positions.
Tribal members and Indian members that they placed in supervisor positions were not equipped. They were not trained properly. So they're having problems in dealing with their front line employees. And that's where we're at right now.
We started out with a 95 percent tribal enrolled members at our casino. We're back down to less than 23 percent. So something is wrong somewhere. And I have a feeling some of it is training, lack of experience, and knowledge in being a supervisor. And lack of cultural sensitive as part of the people that came with the programs. In not respecting who we were. And what our beliefs are. And trying to fit with us.
Instead we have to fit with them. And another large part was alcohol and drug. Barriers they have to deal with. The system was not set up to help individuals in this area. Their personnel does not have a social worker on call to help someone that's getting close to going back to drinking or drugs. Prevention program is not in place.
So mental health and education need to really work together and get involved in training our people if we have good economic development to keep our people employed, we have to really evaluate, self-evaluate, what we're doing.
And we weren't listened to. When we brought this up in the early stages and the talking stages of the program. And now here we are we're right in the middle of it and now they want to ask us why aren't these people working? Why are they back on the GA program?
So our GA is starting to climb back up. So that's one area I think, we need to really look at. Is keeping our people employed. What kind of training can we give to our personnel?
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you, that's I think within the -- a lot of tribes, especially, had gone into the gaming business, you'll find that you have to recycle your tribal members in a sense, two maybe three times before they're able to handle the job.
And in our tribe we look at it as an investment. It is a cost. But in the long term it's an investment. And we've got the same situation where one of our casinos, we started off with 80 percent tribal members and five years later it's totally opposite. It's 20 percent and 80 percent non-Indian. So I can identify with your comments.
Does anyone want to address the --
A PARTICIPANT: I think, if I can say one more thing, you know, we're talking about adult ed and higher ed and vocational training, and the people who work with that, they need to form coalitions. You all need to go out and form coalitions with the schools. With your education departments. Because you have to start at kindergarten.
And our education systems on the reservation, both public and tribal, they need to have high standards. And we need to work collaboratively. And we need not to have the walls between program and those things. Because if we don't start getting our children to succeed, we're always going to have this problem.
So we really need to really work collaboratively with education division on reservations and with your public schools. And start the training there. Getting people ready to go either vocational or higher ed.
DR. GIPP: Just one quick comment. I'm familiar with the scenario that both of you have pointed out and I think it's generally true a lot of times you will find that there's a high turnover rate for Native American people, Indian people with respect to service types of industries and those kinds of issues.
Manufacturing for example, I know, Spirit Lake Dakota Nation had this same kind of issue up there in North Dakota. And part of what they did was what you pointed out and that is that they didn't give up on their own members. There is a high attrition, or turn over rate. And it's kind of like getting them back into system and re-entering it.
I think your point about having adequate support services is very important. The real problem though, is that private industry is only willing to devote, and can only devote a certain amount of their dollar for that kind of investment. So it depends on, I think, the philosophy of the enterprise and who controls and runs it. And if it's your enterprise, or somebody else. You still have to look at what you can afford to do.
But the reality is that we have a number of agencies and organizations within the tribal community, many of whom you represent can be a part of that integral part in terms of trying to increase employability. And reduce attrition and those kinds of things. If you can build those into your programs. I think that's very important.
You mentioned the issue of a social worker or other kinds of people that can be helpful to helping them re-enter. Because again, we're talking about generational poverty. And also lifestyles and those kinds of things. And other social issues that you mentioned.
So I really think that is a large part of some of our agencies that deal with employment or that sort of thing. That can be a very supportive anchor for getting longer term employment for many of our people.
So I would say, don't give up on it. But you really need to re-devise that whole strategy.
MR. BIBB: I think, and of course, a lot of you have heard me speak about a lot of these issues in the past talking about TANF. And not just in terms of education. But you bring it right back to exactly what I said a lot of times about.
Even if we have the economic development. And we have the jobs available. And we provide the jobs. It doesn't mean that they're going to keep the jobs.
And this goes back to again, a basic life skills education. I don't like the term self-esteem. I use self respect. I think that we have to continue to build that. I know as I visited some of the schools where we've had some of the suicides and the problems over the last six months. We find that a lot of our people don't know that it's okay to still be Indian.
That they're in questioning are we going to have to leave where 15 generations of our families are buried in order to make a living? We have to build that. It's our responsibility as this group in here and the other people who work in the programs to begin to build that confidence back.
And it comes down to the issue of self-respect and providing that support. Again, what you said about responsibility is very important. And I tell everybody all the time, if you expect nothing, that's exactly what you'll get. We do have to expect something of our people. We do have to set goals. They want those. But we have to provide the tools by which those things are going to be obtained.
And it's a problem. It's not localized. It's something -- we have issues like this all over Indian country that we have to deal with. But I'm going to tell you right now, and I'm going to be the first one to encourage every person in here. We can do it. And we will do it.
And what she said earlier about working together in coalitions and sharing, and the things that I've seen here today in terms of sharing the success in the business industries, in training, in education, is what it's going to take. Brainstorming. Working together. Not working separate.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. Anyone else have any comments or questions?
A PARTICIPANT: When NCAI first started holding these meeting on welfare reform, I was very happy that they had started to do that. Because I felt there was a real need for tribes to look at welfare reform on the national level.
And I think the welfare reform sessions have been going very well. And at each one that I have gone to, I've learned a lot. And I've tried to make use of all the information that I've learned. But unfortunately I think NCI needs to go a little bit further. And I have discussed this with Leland by e-mail. And because luckily our tribe has that capability.
What my main concern is that we need to start looking at what are the legislative issues that are going to be coming up? That are going to be revolved around welfare reform.
They keep talking about some technical amendments that will be coming down the line. And each time I've talked to the federal agency that I work with and with our A&A grantee in Portland. And with Leland, or with NCI, I keep asking, well where are these amendments and when are they going to come down to the tribe? So that the tribes can start taking a look at them.
Or why aren't they consulting with us now? If they're going to start developing technical amendments, why aren't they talking to us? And asking us what we think? And what we feels need to go into those amendments.
So that's where I see NCAI is we need to start now looking at what are some of the policy changes that we would like to see? Let's not wait until the last minute. Until they've already drafted up the amendments and then come to us and say we want a one time consultation. Just like the BIA is doing to us this week.
I think it's time we start looking ahead and being more aggressive as tribes. And saying this is what we would like to see, because I know, I'm sure within the year when the Nez Perce Tribe implement's their TANF
I'm going to start looking at some of the policy changes when our plan is implemented in jotting down, keeping a folder just on stuff that I think where polices can be changed to create a better program for our tribe.
And I'm hoping that some of the other tribes will do the same. Thank you.
MS. HUSTIES: This is Alvina Husties again, I'd like to also add that a lot of times we look at all the negatives our children are doing. And we don't really look at the kids that are doing super for us. And I think if we talk to those kids that are doing so well, and their families, maybe they can help us turn the rest of the families around?
Looking at ourselves more positively and not all of our negativeness but feed off of the positive. The good things that we're doing. What did we do right with these children? And what is the problem with the children that don't want to participate or can't participate?
And I believe in the training programs for summer employment. I think that's a good idea. But I think we really have to go back to basics and lets kids be kids. Do things that they like to do. Let them have fun.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. Do we have any other comments?
Ms. MORRISON: Helen Morrison. I'm from the Umatilla reservation Pendleton, Oregon. I think one program we forgot to include in integrating with these other programs is the housing. We've got to asking our housing authority or housing commissioners how they're going to work with the TANF program? What's going to happen to the clients when TANF is implemented? What's going to happen to their rent? What's going to happen to the families who don't complete the TANF program? I think we need to ask them with HUD, which has now become NAHAZDA (phonetic). Does NAHAZDA have funding to assist the TANF program and training programs? Thank you.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. Does anybody have a response to this question from the lady?
MR. PETERSON: Frank Peterson from Siletz tribe again. I'd like to address the question about housing authorities. One of the requirements when tribes designated their tribal housing entity, was that under NAHAZDA was that the housing authority was required to address the problem of TANF families and TANF participants in their one year and their five year plans.
And so if your housing authority didn't do that, I would severely question them. Because it is a required element. There is a section within both the one year and the five year plan that asks specifically how are you going to address the needs of these people. And how is the housing authority going to work with the tribal social service program responsible for TANF? Whether that's tribal or state.
CHAIRMAN WHITEFEATHER: Thank you. Any other questions? Any comments? Being that there aren't any other and I'm not getting paid by the hour or anything. In fact, I'm not getting paid at all. I'll be brief in my closing remarks.
Congress and the President enacted this act to end welfare as we know it. Welfare as was know that was brought to us at a time when we were probably self sufficient. And I think this process has set us back greatly.
Without opportunity, without job creation, there are some people that are going to be in pain. Those are those little ones. There have been some discussion yes, about this education. Some discussion about social adjustments.
But I think most importantly for everyone to remember in your hearts, is the young ones that are going to be hurt by this. Because it's very evident that we are going through a change collectively, in Indian country as this lady described.
We talk about the good times that the United States is having. Record -- the deficit of the United States government is going to be turned around. Record number of jobs being created. In our own State of Minnesota I believe we're about 2.2 percent unemployment?
But within my reservation we have over 50 percent. So there's something wrong here. And I'm sure those of you in other reservation experience the same thing. And it would seem to me practical for the benefit of everybody that states work with tribes a little more closely.
And I think, like I said, State of Minnesota has been working with us very well. They've sent two people here and I understand there's a representative here from one of the counties in our state here too. To listen to what's being presented.
And I realize that looking at this welfare reform and talking about job creation and having our members, or the people that we work with, make sure that they know how to work. And that's one of the more difficult tasks that we face. And that's on my own personal observation.
Because how are you going to tell someone that you have to learn how to work? That's a bit difficult for me. But I see that as one of the barriers. We talk about barriers. One of the buzz words back in the early days of JTPA was barriers. Those barriers are still there for a lot of us in Indian country. And so when you talk about life skills that is very important.
I think this is an evolutionary process that we're going to have to try and be patient with. I know that time limit is always out there. And there's always a sense of urgency.
For some states I can't offer a solution as to where you're going to get some type of relief from the imminent time of when you have to be off the program.
Again, what we did in Minnesota was we got active politically. We unified. We all 11 tribes went to the legislature and said that we need time. Sure there will be time when we'll be willing to take over the program. But we tell them we can't take a program over that's under-funded because you're setting yourself up for failure.
Particularly those that don't have their own financial resources. There are some that may be capable of doing that. With the housing issue, the NAHAZDA, I was fortunate to be serving on a negotiated rule making committee. And there were some provisions in the federal law that the TANF issue was a part of that.
But the good thing about NAHAZDA is there's a tremendous amount of flexibility. A tremendous amount of ability to leverage other resources so people can get into home ownership. For the longest time it has been the philosophy of HUD through the public housing part of HUD that rentals were kind of the cure all.
But for Indian country that wasn't. We didn't fit in there. And we finally got it separated and established our own tribal designated housing entities. And I think that along with a lot of these initiatives we're talking about. Getting our members and tribal employees and those that we serve to get educated to make sure they're responsible to each other.
And also to make sure that this is not a punitive thing that we're doing. I think that has to be understood that this is not punitive. It's something that we've got to be positive about to let the membership know. For you to have a comfortable life style, this is what is expected of you. Rather than they coming to you and say what can you do for me?
I know it's very tough as a tribal official. I'm always asked about what are you going to do for me.
I do what I can to help the individual by offering some of my own way of counseling as a traditional person. And explaining to them some of the values of our way of life is that some of us have lost. And I think there's a degree of acceptance that maybe there's some validity to this. Where we used to be self sustaining. And there's been a moral realization, I hope any way that the individuals that were serving are going to be accountable. And they're going to be responsible for not only themselves but those little kids.
There are a lot of things that are interconnected with this act. Education, and we've got deal with that. And so there are many facets to this welfare reform that's going to affect us for a long time to come.
I really have a deep feeling of I guess I want to reach out my hand to those tribes that are dealing with the states now where the time limit is maybe has gone by or it's going to be expiring soon.
I have the luxury of, at least where we bought some time with the State of Minnesota. Then we got a an exemption on the time limit. Those tribes that don't have that luxury, I don't know what to say to you. I don't know what to offer.
But I guess some of the main issues that we talked about is sharing information, having a united front on this, perhaps maybe getting a more frequent assembly with NCAI that we talk about our progress. Maybe some setbacks that have happened since the last time we met.
This Act was enacted it will be two years ago. And this is only our third forum. I think we've got to get more active too. I know everybody else is very busy about their own particular programs.
But I believe that this here today demonstrates that you have that commitment because it's on a Sunday and you could be in the casino. But you choose to be here. So I commend you for that. And I guess I could be out golfing too. But the way I golf it's better I stay here.
So I want to thank the panel for this part of the presentation and those panelists that were before you because we talked about different resources that are there. Different opportunities. And I think we ought to look at this as an opportunity too and realizing there are expensive barriers but I think in the long run you know, we're survivors. And we'll find a way. And if you asked what we call Amonidu (phonetic), creator.
So I want to thank you all for being here. And please have a good conference for the
rest of the week.