Washington had a busy week. Then it handed Indian Country the weekend shift.
On Nov. 4, the Office of Management and Budget issued a letter announcing tribal consultations on proposed changes to federal grant rules. The sessions were scheduled for Nov. 9 and 10. Registration closed at 2 p.m. Friday.
The letter included no meeting times, street address or virtual access instructions. Tribal speakers would get three minutes each. Written comments would be accepted for five business days afterward.
Apparently, meaningful engagement now comes with a stopwatch.
When I spoke Friday with Meghan Bishop, policy director at the National Congress of American Indians, she described the scramble to help tribes respond to the proposal, which could affect funding throughout Indian Country.
OMB had acknowledged the need for consultation when it proposed the rule changes in May, she said. Native organizations had been waiting through summer and fall. Now, suddenly, everyone needed to clear their calendars.
“I’m using air quotes when I say consultation because this is not consultation,” Bishop said.
The stakes extend beyond scheduling etiquette. Tribal organizations warn the changes could make federal funding less reliable and more burdensome to manage.
Bishop said tribes needed to identify specific harms to their communities in their limited speaking time. Those comments could help build the record for a legal challenge if the rule moves forward.
The assignment: Explain what’s at stake for your entire tribal government. You have three minutes.
And as tribal leaders and policy staff scrambled to prepare for those consultations, Congress handed them another assignment for this weekend.
Senate negotiators introduced their bipartisan permitting bill — dubbed BAAJA — way back on Sept. 30. Wizipan Garriott, president of NDN Collective and a Rosebud Sioux Tribe citizen, told Tribal Business News it was developed without input from tribal leaders or tribal policy experts — “in secret, in the dark.”
Tribal leaders objected. On Saturday, Senate negotiators released a revised bill running 494 pages. A procedural vote was scheduled for Monday. Tribes had a weekend to figure out what had changed — and what hadn’t.
This appears to be Washington’s approach to making sausage: Leave tribes out of the kitchen, act surprised when they question the ingredients, then give them the weekend to pick out the bad parts. Service starts on Monday.
To be fair, the BAAJA amendment would remove a troubling federal takeover provision affecting tribal historic preservation programs. That matters. So does time to examine the rest.
By Sunday, 11 tribal organizations were asking Congress to hold the bill until the next Congress could meaningfully consult tribes — or, at minimum, remove the provisions that would weaken protections for sacred and historic places.
Whether the assignment is reviewing 494 pages of legislation over a weekend or preparing for a hastily announced OMB consultation, Washington is treating tribal governments as if they have unlimited staff and can drop everything on command.
OMB had months to consult tribes on its proposed grant rules. Senate negotiators could have involved more tribal leaders before introducing their permitting bill. Both had time to ask. Now tribes are scrambling to answer.
