Funding Cut Threat: Impact on Cherokees and All Tribes

Congress is considering cutting funding from the Cherokee Nation because of a controversy over the citizenship status of non-Indian Freedmen descendants. Exactly whom will this legislation harm? The poorest, oldest and neediest Cherokees.

“There are nine of us living in a two-bedroom house. Our two year old son Mykel was born blind, so our new house will have special handicap features. When I think about not getting our house, it makes me angry. My kids need that house, especially Mykel. With nine of us, it’s so hard. I just want people to take a good look at our family and see what we would lose. We don’t have alternatives.”

—Erica Eagle, Cherokee citizen, mother of seven

The Eagles are participating in the Cherokee Nation’s self-help housing program and have helped multiple families build their own homes. If HR 2824 passes, the Eagle family may never see their own dreams of a home become a reality.

“If this clinic weren’t here I would be dead. They’ve gotten me through serious health problems, and now I have breast cancer. I never had a job that came with insurance, so there’s no other place I can go. My social security check is $580 a month, but my cancer drugs will cost $488 a month for the next five years. If not for the Cherokee Nation, I would have died already.”

—Betty Page, Cherokee citizen, breast cancer patient

Tens of thousands of patients rely on the Cherokee Nation as their only health care source. Passing bills like HR 2824 will create a health care crisis of vast proportions in northeast Oklahoma and hand down a virtual death sentence to thousands of patients just like Betty.

Facts 

  • With more than 280,000 citizens, the Cherokee Nation is one of the most inclusive Indian tribes in the United States.
  • It does not matter if you are Hispanic, African-American, Asian, or any other ethnicity, as long as you can prove ancestry to just one Indian on the Dawes Rolls, you are a Cherokee citizen.
  • The Cherokee Nation is still providing full services to non-Indian Freedmen descendants. Native Americans are the lowest income group per capita in the United States.
  • The Cherokee Nation served more than 318,000 Indians through its health care system in 2006.
  • For 44,000 of those Indians, Cherokee Nation clinics are their only source of health care.
  • Without federal funding rural hospitals and doctors will be faced with either absorbing patients with no guarantee of payment, or turn away the critically ill.
  • The Cherokee Nation helps nearly 8,000 families with housing assistance in rural areas where there is little housing.
  • Cutting federal funding the Cherokee Nation would mean nearly 1,000 three- and four-year olds will see their Head Start programs close.
  • The Cherokee Nation and its businesses employ more than 6,500 people, including more than 1,500 who aren’t Cherokee and pay those employees more than $184 million in salaries. Those salaries largely stay in rural Oklahoma communities.
  • The elimination of federal funds would leave those individuals without health insurance or the means to support their families.
  • HR 2824 and amendments to appropriations bills don’t solve a problem. They only hurt Oklahomans of all races by terminating life-saving services for the poorest of the poor, and eliminating 6,500 quality jobs.