Terry Gerton Brookings has just put out a new report quantifying the continued under-investment by federal government and philanthropy into Indian country. And one of the ways the report frames this is an obligation, that the nation has an obligation to support tribal communities, not just a bunch of programs. Talk to me about why that distinction is so important.

Rob Maxim Yeah, and we don’t use that word just arbitrarily. That’s a pretty recognized legal term. The idea of trust and treaty obligations by the United States to Indian country. And where that really comes from, so as I’m sure folks are aware from their elementary or high school history classes, the U.S. signed well over 300 treaties with Native American nations. And so if you look at the Constitution of the United states, treaties are treated as the supreme law of the land, and that’s inclusive of treaties signed with Native American tribes. And over the last, you know, 250 years of our nation’s history, these treaties have been affirmed and reaffirmed by courts as being the valid law of the land. And why this matters is tribes ceded what we now call the United States to the U.S. Federal government and to the states. And as long as the U.S. continues to exist on that land, those treaties are valid and they’re in force. And those treaties require the U.S. government to provide certain material benefits for tribes, tribal citizens, native people, and native communities in exchange for that land. And so what we’re talking about here isn’t funding based on race or DEI. It’s not funding based on need. It’s really a legal obligation that the US government itself made in exchange for the land, and as long as the U.S. continues to be here, those obligations are in force.

Terry Gerton And yet, despite the legal obligations, your report argues that federal investments in tribal communities still fall short, despite decades of studies and reports and recommendations. Why do we have so much trouble solving this problem?

Rob Maxim I think it’s largely a question of will. And so one of the reports that we quote in our work is by a group, the United South and Eastern Tribes. They’re an organization that represents about three dozen tribes in the south and eastern part of the United States. And they talk about the fact that the obligations that the U.S. has are debt-based. You know, they’re not based on need. So they must be paid in perpetuity, despite how well or how not well native people and native tribes are doing economically and socially. At the same time, though, we know that many native communities aren’t doing well. And the US government, as you’ve alluded to, has studied this over and over, and yet they continue to not take action. One of the most notable studies that we cite in the report was published in the 1970s by the U.S. American Indian Affairs Commission. And what they said is that as part of the trust obligation, the trust and treaty obligation that the U.S. has, it is incumbent on the United States to ensure that the standard of living for Native people meets that of the population of the U.S. as a whole. Well as a lot of our recent work at Brookings has shown, that’s definitely still not the case on many economic and social indicators. And so despite the fact that the U.S. Government has known and published about this problem for 50 years. The way that we continue to perpetuate our systems of federal government funding continually results in these shortfalls for tribal communities. And again, that’s a policy choice that we’re making.

Terry Gerton When people here are under investment, they probably think first off, maybe only of money. And yet your report makes the point that there are many other issues here. Data problems, grant barriers, funding structures. What did you find maybe as the biggest obstacle beyond will to actually meeting our obligations?

Rob Maxim The way that the federal government goes about its annual funding process, this discretionary funding process and a lot of your listeners, especially those that work in the federal government are probably familiar with it, right? Every year the president submits a budget and then recently Congress tends to ignore that budget and create their own and then they’ll pass some top line funding levels. And then if we’re lucky, they pass an appropriations bill on time and we don’t have a government shutdown. But that has not been the case in recent years, but if we’re lucky, that’s what happens. The challenge that comes from that for Indian country is in order to avoid those shutdowns, the federal government likes to just hold funding level steady each year and keep passing the same bill with either the same level of funding or some sort of de minimis increase. Well, for Indian country, that results in an effective funding cut because of inflation. It does for many communities, but for the tribal communities in particular, when we’re thinking about the obligations that the U.S. government has, if we’re just holding funding steady every year, that means two things. The first, it means real funding is decreasing as inflation happens. But also, if these programs run out of money, then Native people can’t access the programs and benefits that are designed for them to meet these obligations. And that’s a real concern and a real challenge that tribal communities have had to contend with.

Terry Gerton Rob Maxim is a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Rob, the funding issue is maybe the single most important one, but the paper also really calls out the issue with Native communities actually accessing that funding. What are the systems challenges there? What are process challenges? And how can we improve their ability to access funding when it is available?

Rob Maxim Yeah, so I don’t want to be too repetitive, but a lot of it does come back to this scarcity that’s created by discretionary funding. So when Congress only allocates a certain amount of money, it’s not enough for every tribal community to access their full needs. And so what that means is federal agencies, when they receive funding from Congress, take two steps to implement that. The first is they’ll often use competitive grants. So tribes will need to put forward applications for funding and not everyone will receive it. And so what that means is funding goes toward those tribes that are either the largest or they have the most well-developed grant or federal government application capacity, and it disadvantages many smaller and less-resourced tribes. So there’s an unequal distribution of funding. The other challenge comes from the federal government. And again, anyone that’s ever dealt as a contractor with the federal government is probably familiar with this. They use a reimbursement-based model. So you’re expected to go out and spend your money, and then you get reimbursed by the federal government. It’s called a drawdown. And so that can work fine for, for example, a large private sector company, like a defense contractor or some sort of construction contractor that has a lot of capital on hand. But for a tribe, it’s a small government, and it’s really trying to make ends meet. And as we’ve discussed, many of these are less resourced. They may not have the capital on hand to be able to put out an expenditure and then ask for reimbursement. So even if there wasn’t a funding, the way that these barriers go into place really prohibit tribes from accessing funding, even if it’s available.

Terry Gerton Separate then from the question of whether the United States is meeting its treaty obligations to tribes, the report also looks beyond Washington and finds that less than 1% of foundation and corporate philanthropy goes to native-serving causes. Why hasn’t philanthropy stepped into this gap more aggressively?

Rob Maxim Yeah, and the reason we talk about the philanthropy side of things is because not only has there been historic underinvestment in Indian country, but right now, under the Trump administration, we’re seeing some pretty intensive federal cuts. You know, our recent research, looking at the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, found that Indian country is likely to lose $1.5 billion from that bill being turned into law. So there’s a real impetus right now for non-federal sources, including philanthropy, to step up. What we find, though, is really a series of barriers that have prevented them from doing so. So one of the biggest is many philanthropic organizations, foundations, corporate giving, just don’t think about tribal communities. It’s not on their agenda, it’s not on their radar, and it’s part of their giving. And they may not regularly interact with many native folks or native communities. And so they’re not putting that as a priority when they think about who they want to invest in. We see a pretty small and narrow set of the same funders giving to Indian country every year, and there are efforts to expand that, but the bent’s slow going. Another challenge comes from just misunderstandings about Indian country. I think that on one hand, for example, giving to tribal communities has really been wrapped up in this anti-DEI backlash. And so native communities have really been negatively impacted by that. In other instances, and we saw this in existing research, there are philanthropic leaders that think that, oh, well, tribes already get a ton of federal funding, or they have a bunch of casino money, so they don’t need philanthropic funding. But the reality is those are based on misconceptions of Indian country and absolutely aren’t the default for most Native people in many places.

Terry Gerton So if policymakers took only one lesson from your report, what’s the change that would produce the biggest improvement in outcomes for tribal communities?

Rob Maxim I think in terms of the biggest outcome, it would be shifting more money to mandatory funding. And let me give you an example of what we mean by that. So if you qualify for Medicare, for example, once you qualify, your medical expenses are covered at a certain threshold, and there’s kind of no financial cap. If you have a major surgery, then that’s going to be covered just as much as if you only visit your doctor once or twice a year. That’s not the case, for example, with the Indian Health Service, which has granted a certain amount of funding. And when that funding runs out or runs low, the Indian health service needs to make the decision about what services it isn’t going to offer or what people it’s not going to be able to serve anymore. So there are many of these programs in Indian country that are set with a finite cap of funding, and if we change that to a more mandatory structure, akin to many the programs that Americans are familiar with, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, then it would do a lot to ensure that more funding is available for tribal communities.

Terry Gerton So Rob, as we wrap up here, you made the case for this funding at the beginning when we talked about treaty obligations and national history. Make the case, for national well-being, why should we be engaged with the tribal communities at the level that this paper suggests?

Rob Maxim Yeah, one of the things that our work and others have shown is that investment in tribal communities doesn’t just benefit Native people, right? I mean, Native reservations border many non-Native communities. They serve as economic anchors. If you think about things like tribal colleges, they educate not just Native students, but non-native students, tribal enterprises employ a significant number of non-Native people in the U.S. And especially in rural areas, you see tribal governments are often the primary facilitator of many pieces of core infrastructure, physical infrastructure like roads, but also provision of health care, right? Think about back during the pandemic when, in many instances, the only places in the U.S. that had vaccines available were tribal governments early on. So there’ all sorts of examples of when tribes are fully resourced and do well, there’s spillovers for non-Native communities as well. But when it cuts the other way and tribes are under-resourced, it inhibits economic growth in the surrounding communities as well. So beyond just the legal obligation, it’s a really good economic case to invest fully in tribal communities because there would absolutely be positive economic and social fill-overs for non-native people as well.