The COVID stimulus bill that Biden and the Dems passed allocated $31 billion to serve the indigenous communities and includes $20 billion that goes directly to tribal governments, $6 billion to bolster health systems, and more than $1 billion for housing.
Nick Tilsen, the founder and CEO of NDN Collective and an activist for tribal rights over lands, appeared on PBS Newshour, and said:
This is a pretty monumentous step forward. You know, this is one of the biggest single investments that the federal government has ever made in history directly to indigenous people.
And so we're happy about the big investments going directly to tribes. We're happy about the investments to save the to save Native languages. We're happy about the $1 billion investment into broadband and into some of, really, not just Native communities, but some of the most underinvested communities in the whole country.
You take, like, this opportunity of $1 billion being invested into Navajo, but you also have 65,000 people at Navajo who don't have power.
That some indigenous communities have no running water or electricity
in one of the richest countries on the planet (not to mention some Appalachian communities), is just shameful. Proud that the Dems are addressing it.