PROGRAM: DATE: SEPTEMBER 24, 1998
MORNING EDITION

 STATION OR NETWORK: TIME: 9:40
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

WELFARE & THE NAVAJO, PART FOUR

BOB EDWARDS, Anchor: When Congress and the President redesigned the Nation's welfare system two years ago, they made special provisions for Indians. Tribes may receive federal funds to run their own programs separate from state government. Of more than 500 tribes in the lower 48 states, just 15 are running their own programs. The Navajo are making plans to take over welfare and they've tied the issue to their pursuit of sovereignty over ancestral lands. In the last part of his series, William Drummond reports.
 

WILLIAM DRUMMOND, Reporter: Off the reservation, a gap in class, education, and status separates the welfare workers and clients. But not here on the Navajo reservation. Elsie Begai Eyoke(sp?) is a supervisor with the Arizona State Welfare Program. Like many other Indian welfare officials, Eyoke grew up not in a house but in a traditional hogan, an eight sided Navajo dwelling. Eyoke says her knowledge of public assistance began long before she went to work for the state.
 

ELSIE BEGAI EYOKE, Arizona State Welfare Program: My mom was on general assistance for a long time and it was hard. And they kind of like...We didn't have anything. We had a dirt floor and then we lived in, you know, a hogan. And I don't want to ever go back to that. What scares me is that poverty. And it's like right here, anyway. Like I'm probably about one check away from it, but I just have to keep striving.
 

DRUMMOND: Eyoke has worked for the State of Arizona for more than seventeen years, but she may stop reporting to the state and start reporting to the Navajo Nation. Under a provision in federal law, the tribe has the right to take control of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANAF program, which has been run by the state until now.
 

(UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN): ...Do you want to comment on the Congressional hearing that we just had?
 

: Yeah. This morning, since...
 

DRUMMOND: In a conference room at the Game & Fish Department in Flagstaff, officials of the State of Arizona and the Navajo Nation are carrying out negotiations. The goal of the meetings is nothing short of paving the way for the Navajo Nation to take control of TANAF. The Navajo Nation wants to set up its own bureaucracy and issue welfare checks affecting more than 21,000 adults and children. Not only Arizona is involved. Because the reservation includes parts of Utah and New Mexico, negotiations have to take place with those states as well. Tribal officials have provided few specifics about how they would do a better job running the program, or what the tribe hopes to get out of assuming control of welfare. Alex Yaza, Junior is the point man for the tribe on TANAF. He says the tribe is now working on a computer automation system to link benefits in the three states. Yaza says the takeover of welfare is a necessity for the tribe to gain its political identity.
 

ALEX YAZA, Tribal TANAF Representative: To us, we feel that the federal government owes us that much.
 

DRUMMOND: Why would anybody want to take on this headache? The state has been running the program, continues to run it. It could continue to run it.
 

YAZA: Sovereignty comes to mind. Navajo are saying that we have the talent, we have the resources, ability, to conduct its own affairs. And that's where I think, in essence, we've been pushing this.
 

DRUMMOND: Some important legal barriers like in the way. So far, Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health & Human Services, has rejected the Navajo Nation's claim that it should get special federal money to cover the startup costs of taking over TANAF. Quite likely, the federal courts will have the final say. But Elsie Begai Eyoke does not go along with the idea that Navajo tribal control of welfare would automatically make it better.
 

EYOKE: The state has taught me that, you know. How to help my own people. And I don't know what it would be like to work for the tribe because I've been meeting with the Navajo Nation for years now and when the TANAF people got together - you know, the taskforce - we wanted certain key people to be there. Like from the jobs program, from childcare. And it was like pulling them. They just don't seem to want to really work together and that's what scares me.
 

DRUMMOND: Eyoke says that welfare clients, too, are suspicious. In recent years, three tribal chairmen were forced to resign amid charges of improprieties. Eyoke says news like this did not inspire confidence when clients were being told tribal government would handle their welfare checks.
 

EYOKE: At the time we were doing all these hearings, the Navajo Nation was in the way where like, they were in a turmoil, I guess. And one of their clients got up and said, "What are you doing with all this money that's supposed to be our's, you know? When you get the cash assistance money, are you going to just go behind Window Rock and then distribute the money among yourselves, and then we'll have more money?" Somebody just needs to make them comfortable.
 

DRUMMOND: On this summer day in the reservation town of Payente in Northern Arizona, TANAF clients have come to meet their caseworkers and learn what's expected of them under the modified federal law. One of the clients is a woman named Bessie, mother of six children, who has been on assistance for ten years. I asked her if she's worried about the new rules.
 

BESSIE, TANAF Client: Yeah. Because it's hard for me to look for a job and go through the agitation...
 

DRUMMOND: So are you going to be better off or worse off because of that?
 

BESSIE: I don't know. I'm not sure.
 

DRUMMOND: With one out of two adults unemployed, nobody knows how to get welfare people into jobs. Under welfare reform, families face a five year limit to receiving TANAF benefits, but because jobs are so hard to find, the government gave tribes an exemption to the five year rule when the reservation unemployment rate goes above 50%. Even with this leeway, the future looks bleak to many. Richard Mike, who runs a Burger King franchise in Payenta, says the impact of welfare reform may be to drive talented young people off the reservation in search of employment. In fact, Mike says, the trend was underway before welfare reform, but the new pressure to get a job has sped up the process.
 

RICHARD MIKE, Franchise Owner: Basically what we're stuck with here...I don't want to say "the dregs of society", but basically I guess that's the shortest way of saying it. And so, how do you develop a new culture with people that are hanging on?
 

DRUMMOND: If the tribe takes control of TANAF, it may have no more success than the federal government in bringing up the standard of living on the reservation. But Dr. Eddie Brown, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs during parts of the Bush and Clinton Administrations, is not ready to dismiss tribal governments' efforts as hopeless. Brown says the Navajo can rise to the occasion and adapt to a new environment.
 

EDDIE BROWN, Fmr. Asst. Secretary for Indian Affairs: Clearly, things are changing. Tribes are understanding and realizing that they need economic development on reservation and that there is a certain tradeoff. Like any culture, no culture is stagnant. Certainly, when you look at Navajos, and you look at the sheep, and you look at the jewelry, and you look at the dress, that is all identified as traditional. We know that that was strongly influenced by the Spaniards. Pickup trucks. Pickup trucks have now become an Indian animal or an Indian machine that works in for Indian people. I think this will continue to happen and as Navajos have to decide, do we want coal or strip mining on our reservation, or do we not want jobs? And, you know, there are tradeoffs that are continually going to have to be made that are very tough. But that I think the Navajos have showed a great deal of courage and a great deal of foresight in saying we want to take on the responsibility of caring for our Navajo citizens.
 

DRUMMOND: By taking over control of welfare programs on the reservation, the Navajo Nation hopes to take the biggest step so far in asserting its sovereignty. But many of the thousands of aid recipients are more concerned with reliably receiving their benefits, than with the political symbolism of Indian self-government. Reporting for NPR News, I'm William Drummond.
 
 

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