Tester talks tribal roads

POLSON — Tribal leaders, spokespeople and concerned members from tribes around the country converged on the KwaTaqNuk last Friday to hear testimony at a Senate Indian Affairs Committee oversight field hearing.

Chaired by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the hearing featured two panels and a public question and comment session after the panel testimony on tribal transportation in Indian Country.

The unanimous assessment made by panelists of the road system in Indian Country seemed to be that more oversight and funding was necessary to improve deteriorating conditions.

The two panels featured big names in national Indian affairs issues, beginning with Larry Echo Hawk, the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the Department of Interior. Echo Hawk said roads remain extremely important in Indian County and that subpar conditions have created major issues on reservations nationwide.

“Roads are vital in Indian country for education, safety and economic development,” he said. “They must be adequate and they must be safe.”

Next panelist John Baxter, associate administrator for federal lands highways program for the Department of Transportation, discussed some the positive impacts federal grants have had, including locally in the form of Safe Routes to Schools grant money given to Ronan and $12 million in TIGER grant funding given to Lake County. But, he said, reservation roads claim three times the number of lives as the national average.

The second panel to testify featured two local faces, including Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Chairman E.T. “Bud” Moran and CSKT councilman James Steele Jr., who appeared in his capacity as the chairman of the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council. The issues discussed during this panel seemed more pressing, as reports came in from tribal leaders who experience the poor road conditions themselves on a daily basis.

Steele, who noted that more than 60 percent of reservation roads remain unpaved, lamented the Bureau of Indian Affairs system of calculating Indian Reservation Roads, which he said have become somewhat of a misnomer.

“Many roads are Interstate highways, planned roads or roads that don’t exist,” he said. “They are not Indian Reservation Roads. This is happening because certain tribes are adding thousands of miles of off-reservation state and county roads to their IRR inventories.”

Even if roads are built, which they frequently aren’t, maintenance is usually put off, meaning roads end up in poor shape rather quickly, Moran said. He said that is only typical, as funds for such projects have dried up, including a drop of $600,000 in monies locally from 2006 levels.

“The things most Americans take for granted often are lacking in our homelands,” Moran said. “Indian tribes still have the highest vehicle and pedestrian fatality rates anywhere in the country and in a number of areas are three to four times the national average. The leading cause of death in many Indian communities is fatal car crashes and much of that is related to road conditions including both design and lack of maintenance.”

Tester seemed genuinely concerned throughout the hearing and asked what each speaker hoped to see in the next federal highway bill, due out in 2011.

“I’m willing to lend a hand in that process in any way that I can,” he said.

The question and comment section featured tribal representatives from Indian tribes around the west, from California to Arizona and Montana. Many thanked the senator for his hard work on their behalf, but the consistent message urged Tester to find a way to help a system that is as shattered as many reservation roads.