Rancheria enhances autonomy

Smith River enters new agreement Jan. 1

Federal funding to Smith River Rancheria will soon take a more direct course.

On Jan. 1 the tribe will enter into a self-governance agreement with the Department of the Interior, which reduces regional oversight and allows the tribal goverment to run programs, services, functions and activities previously overseen through a compact with the department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“We take out a layer there. That’s important because it means there’s more money for the community,” said Smith River Tribal Chairwoman Kara Brundin-Miller.

Administrative costs can take a bite out of funds that must cycle through BIA offices from Washington, D.C., to Redding before making it to the reservation, she explained.

“As a tribe they’ve pulled together to take this official action, so they get to work with us directly,” said Department of the Interior spokeswoman Nedra Darling. “They will manage their own tribe. That’s pretty empowering for tribal governments to do that.”

After a three-years-long application process, in 2012 the rancheria will reprogram annual funds for administration, business and economic development, natural resources and social and human services, said tribal administrator Russ Crabtree.

“It allows the Tribal Council to allocate resources and how they will be spent,” he said.

While the tribe will have greater autonomy, reduced reporting requirements and the freedom to retool services from within, “the BIA trust responsibility is always there,” Crabtree said.

As is the red tape. The funding negotiations will shift from the BIA to the Department of the Interior’s Office of Self-Governance, which operates under the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. The BIA will still require annual reports and audits.

In 2011 the department allocated $496,500 in the Indian Affairs budget to aid Smith River’s tribal government, road maintenance, social services and education, to be meted out through the BIA. This figure doesn’t include competitive grants and other sources of funding.

Department of the Interior support represents about 16 percent of the total government-wide funding for Native American programs, according to the department’s 2012 proposed budget for Indian Affairs.

Over the past few years the tribe has cultivated more connections to non-BIA government agencies. The rancheria is now recognized through the Federal Highway Administration, making it one of only 10 tribes in the nation to bypass the Indian Reservation Road Program and appeal directly for infrastructure improvements, said Crabtree.

This contact was important in securing a recent $3.1 million grant from the Department of Transportation to boost pedestrian safety along Highway 101. The stretch of road has been the site of 10 fatal crashes since 2005.

“We are strong enough as a government agency to talk about it,” Brundin-Miller said. “There’s finally somebody able to fix it.”

Self-governance compacts were made possible by 1994 amendments to the 1975 Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act. About 60 percent of the 567 federally recognized tribes are self-governance today, while the number of BIA employees has shrunk by 35 percent since the early ’90s, according to the Tribal Self Governance Annual Report to Congress in 2009.

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