- Which California Native Americans Receive Casino Money
- Native American Casinos By State
- Native American Casinos Revenue
FRESNO, Calif. — The court rulings brought hope. Finally, California's Native American population — the nation's largest — would receive its rightful share of federal health care funding.
Triumphant, leaders in the California Native community journeyed to Washington to negotiate the process of opening the funding pipeline.
- — The court rulings brought hope. Finally, California's Native American population — the nation's largest — would receive its rightful share of federal health care funding.
- Harrah’s provides employment for approximately 1,800 individuals with the average salary being $37,000. Each of 12,500 enrolled tribal members, children and adults alike, receives biannual checks averaging $3,500 that are drawn from the 50 percent of casino revenue that is distributed to the Indians.
That was more than four decades ago.
Today, despite a 1979 federal court-ordered settlement that would have pumped millions of dollars into California for Native American health care, the state's share remains stunningly underfunded by the Indian Health Service, Native leaders say. Their claim has been corroborated by government records and, most recently, a 2019 letter to IHS co-signed by then-Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, urging the agency to repair 'this longstanding inequity.'
Native Americans have had the privilege of voting in national elections since 1924; however, until recently some states prohibited Native Americans from voting in local elections. New Mexico, for example, did not extend the vote to Native Americans until 1962. Most native people, of course, also are members of their respective sovereign tribes.
The consequences for the health of the state's largely poor and low-income Native population are incalculable.
The inequitable and chronically underfunded health care services in the Golden State have driven up morbidity and mortality rates, said Mark LeBeau, chief executive officer for the California Rural Indian Health Board (CRIHB). It has cost a significant number of lives, particularly among elders.
Without native elders, future generations might not have a culture and identity.
'They transfer their indigenous knowledge, such as language, culture, and traditions to younger generations in their communities and this assists these young people in knowing who they are, where they come from, and what their responsibilities are,' LeBeau said. 'It is critically important to provide adequate health care to these elders.'
But the consequences of underfunding have also been felt by those at the opposite end of life.
'A lack of funding to California Indian country has direct impacts on our youngest, our youth and upcoming generation,' Virginia Hedrick, executive director for the California Consortium for Urban Indian Health (CCUIH), said. 'We already are a community that's disproportionately impacted by poor maternal-child health outcomes.'
That impact is clear at the local level, with the Urban Indian Health Institute reporting that Native babies in Fresno County die at a rate that is more than three times that of white babies.
Anxious to fix this funding gap, the state's Native leaders say one option is to go back to court in an attempt to force the IHS to fulfill the terms of the 1979 order, which found there was 'no rational basis to justify' the government's 'long history of minimal funding' of health programs for Native Americans in the state.
Those leaders say they've tried almost everything. Over the decades California's Native leaders have testified before Congress multiple times, made pleas during numerous meetings with IHS officials, and have been involved in countless advocacy efforts. However, they say, their pleas throughout the years have been to no avail.
There are historical, economic and political reasons why California Natives have struggled to gain their fair share.
It all started when a group of California-based Native Americans filed a lawsuit in the late 1970s claiming that for years Native residents had not been allotted their proportional share of federal funding for health care. By 1980, two separate federal courts had ruled in their favor after finding that the government's own data clearly showed, in the court's words, a 'conspicuous pattern of disproportionate funding in California.'
The court found that in 1977, the IHS reported the country's Native American population served by the agency was 518,000, of which about 52,000, or 10%, resided in California. However, in the two decades leading up to 1977, data compiled by the agency showed that California had only been receiving an average of 1.18% of IHS distributions.
The court also reviewed agency documents showing that the IHS had 8,100 health care workers across the country at the time of the lawsuit, but only 45 of them were working in California. The federal agency, at the time, operated 51 hospitals, 99 health centers, and several hundred health stations nationwide. California was being served by a single hospital and two health centers. The hospital has since closed.
The court went on to find that the federal government had provided no argument to justify depriving the state's Native American residents of health care services comparable to those available to Native populations in other areas of the country.
'The burden of providing a rational basis for the disproportionate funding of health care programs for Indians in California has not been met,' the court concluded. '...defendants' past and present allocation system for the distribution of IHS funds violates the California Indians' right to equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.'
In 1980, the IHS appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which reaffirmed the lower court's decision, and put the agency on notice to allocate to California its fair share of funds.
'IHS was ordered to develop a reasonable, rational, distribution methodology, specific for American Indians and tribes in California, and has failed to do so,' said LeBeau, CRIHB's CEO.
After World War II, according to a 1986 congressional review of IHS, the federal government ceased providing health services to California's Natives. It wasn't until 1970 that the state asked the federal government to resume those services. But by then, California was substantially behind other states in obtaining IHS funds. It has received lower funding ever since.
CRIHB was one of the organizations established by Native leaders in 1970 to bring back IHS services to California, according to the review.
Beverly Miller is director of the California Area IHS. When asked what IHS has done in the last 40 years to address the underfunding of health care programs for Native Americans in the state, she acknowledged 'there are some things that have not changed over the years.'
Among them, Miller said, is a 'shortage of human and financial resources and the challenges of providing care in the most remote corners of the country.'
While she said there are no IHS hospitals in California (the agency operates 24 in the other 11 areas, plus 51 health centers), she said Congress recently funded two youth regional treatment centers. One of them is in Hemet, and provides services to youth ages 12 to 17.
The other center is in Davis and is expected to open later this year, Miller said.
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Miller left little doubt that the agency is inadequately funded.
According to figures provided by Miller, in the year 2017, IHS spent $4,078 per capita, compared with a U.S. national health expenditure the same year of $9,726 per capita — more than twice as much. The agency's budget for fiscal year 2020 was $6.0 billion.
After the 1980 court ruling, leaders from California traveled to Washington, D.C., where they met with Congressional leaders and encouraged them to fairly allocate funding, LeBeau said. It is Congress that appropriates funding for the Indian Health Service, which then allocates the money to its 12 areas throughout the country. California is one of those areas.
Several organizations, such as the CRIHB, California Consortium for Urban Indian Health (CCUIH) and the National Indian Health Board 'have been fighting this fight for 30 years or more,' said CCUIH's Hedrick. 'We just need a government that is ready and willing to respond.'
But Native Americans in California continue to be deprived of services that other IHS areas across the country enjoy, leaders say.
'We are just essentially advocating to be underfunded at the same level as tribes in other IHS areas across the country,' LeBeau said. 'We're very financially poor in receiving IHS funding in California, and we just want to be brought up to being as poor as our colleagues in other IHS areas across the country.'
The agency currently only receives enough funding to cover 60% of the health care needs of Native Americans across the country, according to the agency's website.
'We're really handing out breadcrumbs,' Hedrick said.
The July 2019 letter sent to IHS by then Senators Harris and Feinstein says that over 39 years independent authorities have determined Native Americans in California receive a substantially smaller portion of IHS outlays than they deserve.
The court required the IHS 'to adopt a program for providing health services to Indians in California which is comparable to those offered (to) Indians elsewhere in the United States,' the letter points out. However, they say in the letter, a 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office found Indians in California were still not getting their fair share of federal funding, and there were no IHS hospitals in the state, despite California being home to more Native Americans than any other part of the country.
'We urge you to develop a plan to remedy this longstanding inequity,' Harris and Feinstein wrote.
Inquiries to Harris, who is now vice president in the Biden administration, went unanswered by her office. Adam Russell, a spokesperson for Feinstein, said the senator continues to work on the issue.
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Jessica Farb, director for the Health Care Team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said the 2012 GAO report reached the same conclusions that the senators did.
But while IHS implemented some of the GAO's recommendations, others were not adopted, Farb said.
Some of that failure, Farb pointed out, is due to internal politics among the tribes.
'IHS provided information to GAO that made it clear that IHS would not be able to make changes that reduced funds to any tribe,' Farb said. 'It is our understanding that this is a very sensitive issue with the tribes.'
According to a Congressional report from the '80s, even at that time, it wasn't 'surprising' that there was 'great reluctance' to redistribute base budgets among the various IHS areas across the country.
Inquiries on this matter to the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, whose agency oversees IHS, went unanswered.
Meanwhile, California has the largest Native American population in the nation, with around 720,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The state is home to about 100 reservations or rancherias. But, again, it has no IHS hospital.
Charles D. Fowler, chief executive officer at Central Valley Indian Health, Inc, said Native Americans in California are at a 'major disadvantage' compared with their counterparts in other states, given that lack.
'There's absolutely nothing on the horizon saying that there's going to be a hospital here in the state,' he said. 'It would certainly be a benefit to the Indian people in California.'
As a result, inpatient care is not available through the Indian Health Service in California. Patients who need to be admitted to a hospital, or need to see a specialist, have to be referred to providers in the community, Fowler said.
But the IHS budget for referred care in the state is 'grossly underfunded,' Hedrick said.
That shortage of funding forces Native American patients in California to seek care outside the IHS system and apply for health insurance through Medi-Cal, the state's insurance for poor and low-income residents, or through the Affordable Care Act.
The inadequate funding coming to California from IHS has forced tribes to borrow, seek donations and apply for grants in order to 'cobble together' enough dollars 'to fulfill the Indian Health Service's responsibility to provide care for tribes in California,' LeBeau said.
'When you think about that, IHS is obligated to provide health care to tribes in California,' he said. 'They haven't provided the clinics, they haven't built those facilities, to me that's a very important issue that needs to be addressed.'
Another IHS program has failed the state's natives. Under the 1991 Joint Venture Construction program, LeBeau said, if a tribe or a consortium of tribes can find money to build a clinic and it is approved by the agency, IHS will cover the cost to staff it for 20 years.
Tribes in California have submitted multiple applications over the years, LeBeau said, but only one has been approved. Since the program's inception, the agency has funded at least 35 projects, including five in 2020, according to the IHS.
LeBeau and others have testified before Congress on multiple occasions, most recently in 2018.
At this juncture, LeBeau said, he doesn't know what direction his organization will take.
'We are doing our due diligence to exhaust all avenues, and certainly the potential of having the court now do a review of the level at which IHS has complied with its order,' LeBeau said.
Dorothy Alther, an attorney and executive director for the California Indian Legal Service, which was involved in the original legal action, said the suit was before her time, but she is intimately familiar with the issue.
Alther has sued over the inadequacies of funding to tribal law enforcement, and she relied on Rincon, as the 1979 case is known, 'quite heavily.' What the courts have found, she said, is that if Congress appropriates money to a federal agency without guidance on how to spend the money, the court can't review how the agency chooses to allocate it.
'The law in this area is not good,' Alther said.
About the Native American Heritage Commission
History
In 1976, the California State Government passed AB 4239, establishing the Native American Heritage Commission (NAHC) as the primary government agency responsible for identifying and cataloging Native American cultural resources. Up until this point, there had been little government participation in the protection of California’s cultural resources. As such, one of the NAHC’s primary duties, as stated in AB 4239, was to prevent irreparable damage to designated sacred sites, as well as to prevent interference with the expression of Native American religion in California.
Furthermore, the bill authorized the Commission to act in order to prevent damage to and insure Native American access to sacred sites. Moreover, the Commission could request that the court issue an injunction for the site, unless it found evidence that public interest and necessity required otherwise.
In addition, the bill authorized the commission to prepare an inventory of Native American sacred sites located on public lands and required the commission to review current administrative and statutory protections accorded to such sites.
In 1982, legislation was passed authorizing the Commission to identify a Most Likely Descendant (MLD) when Native American human remains were discovered any place other than a dedicated cemetery. MLDs were granted the legal authority to make recommendations regarding the treatment and disposition of the discovered remains. These recommendations, although they cannot halt work on the project site, give MLDs a means by which to ensure that the Native American human remains are treated in the appropriate manner.
Today, the NAHC provides protection to Native American human burials and skeletal remains from vandalism and inadvertent destruction. It also provides a legal means by which Native American descendents can make known their concerns regarding the need for sensitive treatment and disposition of Native American burials, skeletal remains, and items associated with Native American burials.
Commissioners
Commissioner Laura Miranda, NAHC Chairperson
Tribal Affairs Consultant, Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians (Temecula)
Tribal Affiliation: Luiseño
Commissioner Miranda is a tribal attorney specializing in environmental and tribal advocacy focusing on tribal cultural resources protection. She is a member of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, has a B.A. in philosophy from UCLA and a J.D. from Cornell Law School. Ms. Miranda has served on the State of California Native American Heritage Commission (NAHC) since 2007 and is currently Chairperson of the NAHC.
Over the past 20 years of advocating for tribal governments, Ms. Miranda has held the positions of Directing Attorney with California Indian Legal Services, Deputy General Counsel with the Pechanga Tribal Government and Adjunct Faculty at UCLA Law School.
Ms. Miranda’s most notable accomplishment is the protection of her Tribe’s creation area, Pu’éska Mountain, through an extended arduous legal and political battle (2005-2010). This experience exposed deficiencies in sacred sites protection laws for tribes. This led Ms. Miranda and Pechanga to push for changes in the law and eventually the passage of AB 52 (2014), sponsored by Assemblymember Gatto, which added Native American Tribes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Ms. Miranda served as a main technical advisor to the Assembly member.
Ms. Miranda’s additional accomplishments include legislative work on a number of cultural resources protection laws, including AB 2641 (2006) sponsored by Assemblymember Coto which focused on Native American human remains and multiple human remains, both bills sponsored by Senator Burton to protect sacred sites – SB 1828 (2002) and SB 18 (2003), and AB 978 (2001) California Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Cal-NAGPRA) sponsored by Assemblyman Steinberg. Ms. Miranda is also a member of the UCLA Repatriation Committee.
Ms. Miranda believes in creative problem solving, the opportunities conflicts can present, and active-listening conflict resolution. With this as her road map she has been successful in negotiating numerous agreements and settlements on behalf of tribes with land developers and other government agencies.
Ms. Miranda presently resides in Los Angeles where she enjoys dancing, yoga and meditation. Ms. Miranda is also involved with issues concerning cultural trauma and has been actively engaged over the last 10 years with her personal healing.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Commissioner Miranda to the Native American Heritage Commission on November 14, 2007.
Commissioner Reginald Pagaling, NAHC Vice Chairperson
Tribal Elder, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians
Tribal Affiliation: Chumash
Commissioner Pagaling is an enrolled member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians and a tribal elder. He has devoted his time to re-establishing the traditional maritime culture of the Tribe since 1996, and has also served as chairman of the Indian Gaming Local Community Benefit Committee of Santa Barbara County since 2010. Pagaling was tribal education program coordinator for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians from 1993 to 1996. He was public relations manager for the Chumash Casino Resort from 1991 to 1993 and was cultural resources coordinator and Native American monitor at the Tribal Elders Council of Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians from 1988 to 1990. Pagaling built the Tomol “Muptami of Kalawashaq,” a traditional Chumash plank canoe, and co-organizes the annual Tomol crossing from Channel Islands Harbor to Santa Cruz Island. Pagaling is a member of the Chumash Maritime Association.
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed Commissioner Pagaling to the Native American Heritage Commission on March 28, 2013.
Commissioner Merri Lopez-Keifer, NAHC Secretary
Tribal Member, San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians
Tribal Affiliation: Luiseno
Commissioner Merri Lopez-Keifer is a member of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians. Commissioner Lopez-Keifer graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Art’s degree in Law and Society, with special emphasis in Criminal Justice. She earned her Juris Doctor degree from Boston College Law School and became a member of the California State Bar Association in 1998. Commissioner Lopez-Keifer began her legal career first as an attorney with Karshmer & Associates in Berkeley, CA, a law firm committed to Native American tribal government self-determination and providing Native American tribes and tribal organizations with the highest quality of legal services. Later, when an opportunity to become an Assistant District Attorney with the City and County of San Francisco’s District Attorney’s Office was presented, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer seized the opportunity and was a dedicated trial litigator for the District Attorney’s Office for six years. As an Assistant District Attorney, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer was passionate, fair-minded and effective prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence prosecutions. From 1998-2020, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer also served the Chief Legal Counsel for the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians. Commissioner Lopez-Keifer focused her legal skills ardently and efficaciously advocating for the protection and preservation of her tribe’s Native American tribal cultural resources, sacred places and burial grounds. Commissioner Lopez-Keifer was also instrumental in building and maintaining meaningful relationships with local, state, and federal government agencies within her tribe’s traditionally and culturally affiliated territory on behalf of her tribe. In her former role as San Luis Rey’s Chief Legal Counsel, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer successfully conducted hundreds of government-to-government consultations with CEQA lead agencies, local governments, state government agencies, and federal government agencies.
Commissioner Lopez-Keifer has been a keen educator and contributing panelist for many trainings and seminars on how to effectively and respectfully consult with California Native American tribes for organizations including the California State Bar Association- Environmental Law Section, the American Planning Association of California, the California Historic Society, the California Preservation Foundation, CLE International, the Bar Association of San Francisco- Environmental Law Section of, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, CalTrans, the Society for California Archaeology, the California Indian Lawyers Association, and the Association of Environmental Professionals. Commissioner Lopez-Keifer was also given the esteemed honor of presenting the keynote address for the 31st Annual California Indian Conference held at San Diego State University in 2016.
In 2017, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer served as an Advisory Committee Member for the development of the National Indian Justice Center’s Tribal Consultation Toolkit, an educational tool for tribes that consists of a sample consultation protocol template, a sample consultation flow chart, and a list of best practices for consultation.
In 2019, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer began serving as the Vice-Chairperson to the University of California, Office of the President’s inaugural Native American Advisory Council in her capacity as a member of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians. In addition, Commissioner Lopez-Keifer was appointed as a member of the California Indian Legal Services Board of Trustees and served as a member of the Advisory Board for the University of California Critical Mission Studies Project- Rewriting the History of California’s Missions.
Which California Native Americans Receive Casino Money
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed Commissioner Lopez-Keifer to the Native American Heritage Commission on June 1 , 2015.
Commissioner Russell Attebery, NAHC Parliamentian
Chairman, Karuk Tribe
Tribal Affiliation: Karuk
Commissioner Attebery has been council chairman of the Karuk Tribe of California since 2012. He was a teacher and athletic director at Happy Camp High School from 2009 to 2012, substitute teacher for Shasta County Schools from 2003 to 2008 and quality control supervisor and sawyer at Sierra Pacific Industries from 1982 to 2003. Attebery is a member of the American Professional Baseball Association.
Commissioner Attebery received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Sacramento State University in 1974 and his Lifetime Clear Teaching Credential from Humboldt State University in 1981 through the Indian Teacher Education Program (ITEP).
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed Commissioner Attebery to the Native American Heritage Commission on May 29, 2014.
Commissioner William (Bill) Mungary, NAHC Commissioner
Director of Kern County Community Development Program, retired (Bakersfield)
Tribal Affiliation: Paiute/White Mountain Apache
Commissioner Mungary retired as the Director of the Community Development Program, Resource Management Agency of Kern County, a position he held for over 30 years. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations Curriculum and Masters in Business Administration in General Management from the University of California at Los Angeles. He served in the US Air Force and achieved the rank of Captain.
Mr. Mungary is on the Board of Directors of the National Association for County Community and Economic Development and founding member of the American Indian Council of Central California, Inc., California Association for Local Economic Development, and the Native American Heritage Preservation Council of Kern County, where he served on the Board of Directors from 1991-1995. He was a member of the Cultural Resources and Economic Development Committees of the Federal Advisory Council of California Indian Policy and the Committee on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Implementation for the California Department of Parks and Recreation. In March of 1995, Governor Wilson appointed Mr. Mungary to serve as a member of the California Rural Development Council.
Governor George Deukmejian appointed Commissioner William (Bill) Mungary of Bakersfield to the Native American Heritage Commission on December 17, 1987. Mr. Mungary served as the NAHC Chairperson from 1990-2008.
Commissioner Julie Tumamait-Stenslie, NAHC Commissioner
Chairperson, Barbareno/Ventureno Band of Mission Indians (Ojai)
Tribal Affiliation: Chumash
Commissioner Tumamait-Stenslie has traced her family lineage from her father Vincent Tumamait to at least 11 known Chumash villages and as far back as the mid-18th Century. She is currently the Tribal Chair of the Barbareño/Ventureño Band of Mission Indians (Chumash) and a member of the Board of Trustees for the Ojai Valley Historical Society, the Board of Trustees and California Indian Advisory Committee for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Committee on the “repatriation” of Native American ceremonial artifacts.
Ms. Tumamait-Stenslie has worked as a cultural resources consultant from Malibu to Santa Barbara to the Channel Islands, providing guidance for private groups and state, county and city regulatory agencies, including the Ventura and Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s offices. She is well known throughout Ventura County and beyond for her Chumash cultural education programs and also performs ceremonies according to her native ways, such as weddings, burials, naming ceremonies and blessings. She continues to act as the Spiritual Advisor for the California State University at Channel Islands where she was asked to present the benediction for the first graduation commencement in 2004.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Commissioner Tumamait-Stenslie to the Native American Heritage Commission on November 14, 2007.
Commissioner – Vacant
Commissioner – Vacant
Commissioner – Vacant
Nine Commissioners make a full quorum.
Christina Snider, Executive Secretary
Native American Heritage Commission AND
Governor’s Tribal Advisor, Office of the Governor
Tribal Affiliation: Pomo
Native American Casinos By State
Christina Snider serves as Tribal Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom and Executive Secretary of the Native American Heritage Commission. Christina’s work focuses primarily on tribal law and policy, with experience in tribal tax, economic development, gaming, child welfare, juvenile justice, cultural resource protection, voting rights and government relations at the state and federal levels. She is an enrolled member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians.
Christina received her law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013, and is licensed to practice law in California and the District of Columbia. She has served as a law clerk at the Office of Tribal Justice at the United States Department of Justice and the Hualapai Court of Appeals, and worked with the Wishtoyo Foundation/Ventura Coastkeeper as a legal fellow, the National Congress of American Indians as a staff attorney, Ceiba Legal, LLP as of counsel and the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians as an ICWA representative. Christina received her Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Native American Casinos Revenue
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