Tribes receive good news regarding federal COVID-19 funding

By Dean Rhodes

Smoke Signals editor

Native American Tribes nationwide received two good pieces of news in December and January regarding COVID-19 relief funding as the federal government transitioned to the new Biden administration.

Tribes received news on Dec. 12 that their deadline for spending Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funding approved in March 2020 has been extended by a year to Dec. 31, 2021, as part of the Consolidated Appropriations 2021 Act that was signed into law.

The Grand Ronde Tribe received a combined $44 million from the Treasury Department in three payments and $1.56 million from the Department of the Interior in CARES Act funding.

The Tribe used approximately 42 percent of that emergency funding -- $19.3 million – to fund a COVID-19 Relief Payment program that sent a total of $4,400 to each adult Tribal member in eight monthly payments from April through November.

The relief payments approved in March were designed to help Tribal members adversely affected by the nationwide economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the suspension of quarterly per capita payments in June and September after Spirit Mountain Casino closed for 74 days from mid-March through May 31.

Oregon’s nine federally recognized Tribes reaped about $200 million in direct payments from the departments of the Treasury and Interior in CARES Act funding.

The $2.2 trillion CARES Act was passed by Congress in March 2020 and Oregon Tribes initially received a combined $152.7 million in funding, according to a Harvard study that used Treasury’s publicly announced formula for determining payments to Tribes. The study estimated that the Grand Ronde Tribe initially received approximately $33 million in funding. The exact amount, according to a U.S. government website, was in the ballpark at $31.6 million.

After a hold on 40 percent of the $8 billion allocated for Tribes ended upon settlement of whether Alaska Native corporations were eligible to receive CARES Act funding, Treasury dispersed the balance to help Native American Tribes weather the COVID-19 storm.

The federal mandate is allowing the Grand Ronde Tribe to extend its deadline for Tribal students and Elders to apply for $500 technology grants with which to purchase a computer to access educational needs or keep in contact with the Tribal government. The new deadline is Dec. 31, 2021, as well.

It also is allowing the Grand Ronde Tribe to offer $200 grants to nonElder Tribal members and descendant children for the same purposes.

The grant applications can be accessed at https://www.grandronde.org/covid-19-information/.

The other piece of good news is that $20 billion in additional funding for Native American Tribes is included in President Biden’s proposed American Rescue Plan. The funding will help Tribal governments and communities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the new administration’s Build Back Better website, the two-step plan is intended to provide relief for Americans who have been most affected by the pandemic, both in terms of health and economic impact.

The American Rescue Plan still needs to be approved by the new Congress that took over in mid-January.