SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.13.2024
Native Americans have been treated brutally by the American government which stole, occupied and waged a war of genocide as it plundered their land in the 18th and 19 centuries.
Justice and restitution has been slow in coming. The Native Americans will never be fully compensated for the horrors they underwent at the hands and guns of their oppressors.
A Decision on June 6th by the United States Supreme Court provides a small measure of justice and relief.
Excerpted from Reuters 6.7.2024
June 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday held that the federal government has been under-funding Native American tribes that administer their own healthcare programs for 30 years and must pay potentially hundreds of millions more going forward.
In its 5-4 ruling, the court found that federal law requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to pay the overhead costs that tribes incur when spending money from Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers. The ruling is a victory for the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona and the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming, which had each sued over the funding.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court’s three liberals and by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, a consistent supporter of Native American rights. The ruling affirmed decisions by the 9th and 10th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.
Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin, who represents the San Carlos Apache tribe, called the decision “a huge win for Indian country and for the quality of health care provided on Indian reservations.”
Adam Unikowsky of Jenner & Block, who argued for the Northern Arapaho Tribe, said it “will promote tribal sovereignty and provide resources for health care in under-served communities.”
The IHS provides health care services directly to about 2.8 million Native Americans. Thursday’s decision centers on the Indian Self-Determination Act (ISDA), a 1975 law that allows Native American tribes to take over administration of their own healthcare programs under contracts with IHS.
Those contracts require IHS to provide the same amount of funding it would provide if it were running the program directly, and to cover administrative expenses incurred by the tribe.
Construction at the site had been halted before after over 1,000 people, most Native American, gathered at two prayer camps along the Cannonball River near its confluence with the Missouri in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access pipeline. The pipeline is slated to extend from North Dakota to Illinois, carrying crude oil from the Bakken shale play. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe filed an injunction against the US Army Corps of Engineers in federal court in Washington DC, claiming that the Army Corps did not take tribal spiritual and heritage sites into consideration when it granted permits for the pipeline.
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