Infrastructure for Indian Country is overdue

This week, Congress and the White House are putting the final touches on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that includes billions of dollars for much-needed projects in Indian Country. Tribal leaders are urging lawmakers to set aside all distractions and give final passage to the bill.

We have never before seen such a big response to the backlog of unmet need in tribal communities. The bill will send $3.5 billion over the next five years to tribes to construct new tribal water and sewer projects. At the Mille Lacs Band, this could help us extend municipal water and sewer systems to tribal communities on our reservation, systems that towns have declined to build.

The $3.5 billion will also bring cleaner, deeper well water and updated septic systems to individual tribal member homes in rural areas of our reservation.

Additionally, the bill authorizes $3 billion in the next half decade for diverse transportation projects throughout Indian Country and an additional $270 million for road maintenance. As a result, isolated tribal communities from rural Minnesota to villages in Alaska will have a better chance of connecting to the health, educational, employment and market resources enjoyed by the rest of America.

The bill also will send nearly half a billion dollars over the next five years to tribal communities for climate resilience and adaptation and relocation projects as well as the construction and maintenance of irrigation, power, safety of dams, sanitation, and other facilities. No part of Indian Country is immune from the adverse effects of the coming climate change.

The Mille Lacs Band is committed to making sure our fish and wild rice — and other cherished resources at the heart of our cultural and subsistence way of life — survive these challenges. This money will begin to help with the epochal changes we face.

Our tribe, like many others, will insist that the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Transportation transfer every Indian Country dime in this bill to us through self-governance and self-determination agreements so that tribes can control these projects ourselves.

We tribal leaders know best how to administer these billions of dollars most efficiently and usefully for our people. President Joe Biden should ensure that none of these billions of dollars will be used to re-create an empire of federal bureaucracies.

The infrastructure bill also provides $65 billion to help expand broadband internet into rural areas to better facilitate work, education, health care and social connections. Much of Indian Country lies in the expansion areas. Like other tribes, the Mille Lacs Band will insist that tribes own and control the development process so that it can begin quickly in tribal communities and capture substantially all of the short and long-term benefits in tribal economies.

Finally, Congress and the White House should be commended for funding in this bill a $2.5 billion "Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund" to pay for congressionally approved Indian water settlements. The episodic timing and huge size of a few tribal water settlements has long undermined the capacity of Congress to provide predictable, stable base budget funding for all tribal programs. This special set-aside will help Congress better support the growing need for tribal services in the future.

I suspect that most tribal leaders are overwhelmed in these pandemic times, trying to secure available resources and meet immediate and long-term needs that have gone unaddressed. In the midst of all this, I think we should take a moment to say Miigwech! — thank you — to the bipartisan group of senators and to President Biden for bringing together this infrastructure bill.

They are beginning to heed our calls for assistance that will help tribal communities begin to catch up to the rest of America. I hope Congress will give the bipartisan infrastructure bill final passage in the coming days, and that it will then make sure the federal agencies get out of our way so that tribes like the Mille Lacs Band can properly administer all this money.

Melanie Benjamin is chief executive of the Non-Removable Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.