INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015 HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES KEN CALVERT, California, Chairman MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia TOM COLE, Oklahoma BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio JOSE´ E. SERRANO, New York DAVID G. VALADAO, California CHRIS STEWART, Utah NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. DAVID LESSTRANG, DARREN BENJAMIN, JASON GRAY, RACHELLE SCHROEDER, and COLIN VICKERY, Staff Assistants PART 8 Page Native American and Alaska Native Testimony, April 7, 2014 ......................................................................... 1 Native American and Alaska Native Testimony, April 8, 2014 ......................................................................... 291 Public Witnesses, April 10, 2014 ........................................... 539 Written Testimony From Individuals and Organizations on Behalf of Native Americans and Alaska Native ........................................................................ 895 Written Testimony From Individuals and Organizations ........................................................................ 999 Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 87–891 WASHINGTON : 2014 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia NITA M. LOWEY, New York JACK KINGSTON, Georgia MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana TOM LATHAM, Iowa JOSE´ E. SERRANO, New York ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut KAY GRANGER, Texas JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho ED PASTOR, Arizona JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California JOHN R. CARTER, Texas SAM FARR, California KEN CALVERT, California CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania TOM COLE, Oklahoma SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida BARBARA LEE, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ADAM B. SCHIFF, California TOM GRAVES, Georgia MICHAEL M. HONDA, California KEVIN YODER, Kansas BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas TIM RYAN, Ohio ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska HENRY CUELLAR, Texas THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio DAVID G. VALADAO, California ANDY HARRIS, Maryland MARTHA ROBY, Alabama MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada CHRIS STEWART, Utah WILLIAM E. SMITH, Clerk and Staff Director (II) DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRON- MENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPRO- PRIATIONS FOR 2015 TESTIMONY OF INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2014. PUBLIC WITNESSES—NATIVE AMERICANS AND ALASKA NATIVES OPENING REMARKS OF CHAIRMAN CALVERT Mr. CALVERT. Good morning, the hearing will come to order. Welcome to our first of four public witness hearings over the next two days, specifically for American Indian and Alaska Native Pro- grams under the jurisdiction of the Interior and Environment Ap- propriations Subcommittee. I especially want to welcome the distin- guished tribal elders and leaders testifying today in the audience. Despite a somewhat abbreviated hearing schedule this year, I am proud that this Subcommittee is able to hold hearings on these very important programs. They have been and will continue to be a bipartisan funding priority for this Subcommittee. The chair will call each panel of witnesses to the table, one panel at a time. Each witness will be provided with 5 minutes to present their testimony. We will be using the timer to track the progress of each witness. When the button turns yellow, the witness will have 1 minute remaining to conclude his or her remarks. Members will be provided an opportunity to ask questions of our witnesses, but in the interest of time, the chair requests that we keep things moving in order to stay on schedule. We have a large numbers of tribes that have come all over from the United States, and so we want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to be heard. The chair also wants to remind those in the hearing room that the Committee Rules prohibit the use of outside video cameras and audio equipment during these hearings. So Mr. Moran will be here shortly, but if Ms. McCollum, if you have any opening remarks, we would be happy to hear. Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I look forward to today’s hearing, and I want to thank all of the people testifying for their travel to Washington, D.C. Thank you, Mr. Chair. (1) 2 Mr. CALVERT. Thank you. Okay, first up is Mr. Vernon Miller, council member of the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska. Mr. Miller, you are recognized for 5 minutes. [Prayer.] Mr. Miller, you are recognized for 5 minutes. MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2014. OMAHA TRIBE OF NEBRASKA WITNESS VERNON MILLER Mr. MILLER. Well, good morning, esteemed members of the House that are able to be here today. My name is Vernon Miller, and I’m a member of the Tribal Council for the Omaha Tribe of Ne- braska. I was elected to this position in November, just a few months ago, so I am pretty green to this position. I am here on be- half of our chairman, Clifford Wolfe Jr. who couldn’t be here today. Prior to my election, I was the high school business teacher at Omaha Nation, which is a public school, for the past 8 years. And so, like I said, this is a new experience for me, and this is some- thing that I am acclimating to slowly but surely. So because of that and because I lived on the reservation, and my past experience on a tribal council, I have some knowledge of how the budgets of BIA and IHS impact our tribe and by also the utilization of those services that I do as well. We are a federally-recognized tribe living on the Omaha reserva- tion in northeast Nebraska and western Iowa. We have a popu- lation of 6,699 tribal members. Our land area is approximately a little over 307 square miles, and unfortunately we have an unem- ployment rate of 69 percent in our community. As a result of a lot of the treaties and things that have hap- pened, we have inadequate funding, high poverty rates, and the loss of much of our land due to the federal policy such as federal allotment. Because of our rural location combined with the fact that it was only about four decades ago that we were able to run our own governmental programs, it has made it very challenging for our tribe to develop viable economic ventures to fund critical government and social programs. Our tribal community more recently has been devastated through two natural disasters due to climate change. In, 2011, a manmade flood. We lost deer and buffalo, which are crucial because of the diseases, to our livelihood through the debris that came down through the Missouri River and that flood that happened in that area. And thus we watch our nutrients just float away down the river. And so then we have been praying for and struggling for our trib- al farm and our crops for this upcoming season. We can’t purchase nutrients that have been lost and need to be replaced. Even though we are in a natural agriculture or farm belt, we don’t have—we don’t receive agricultural dollars in our TPA funding. Although we sit on the banks of the Missouri River, we weren’t able to use this 3 natural resource, the water itself, for any purpose unless we find a way to circumvent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its use. We also just suffered a tornado that came through our commu- nity a few months ago, and that devastated our primary head- quarter area. And so that is another natural disaster we are over- coming as well. We don’t receive federal dollars to help pay for our water system, nor repair it. We have constant water breaks, we just had another one last week. We rely on what limited collections we do receive from the users of that water. But it is pretty hard with an unemployment rate as high as it is to receive any dollars from our users or tribal members. So you can kind of see the limi- tations that we have there. Our contract support dollars have been received at 100 percent this year finally, but with the decision that we take out of funds that we have already provided. Our tribe has faced challenge after challenge with a flood and a tornado. It has taken out 11 homes of people that live in those communities, and it hasn’t been re- placed. Slowly we are trying to replace them. Our people are faced with the same drug and alcohol abuse that you find in over- crowded, overpopulated cities of America, yet we do not have a youth detention facility. And I bring these challenges to you and pray that you hear the reality of the lives that the Omaha who live back in Nebraska are living with. We don’t receive HIP, Home Improvement Program- ming, to improve our homes. And so those vacant housings, some of our homes, are still vacant because they can’t—we can’t afford to, you know, revitalize those homes to make them livable. With regard to law enforcement for at least the last decade, we have lacked a dedicated criminal investigator through inadequate funding. And as a result, we lack the resources to investigate and ultimately prosecute in the areas such as white collar crime and so forth. Any resources we must have must be dedicated to the crimes of violence.