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For many Americans, a shutdown is a minor inconvenience. But for Native American tribes, it can cripple the most basic community functions. Among the programs curtailed: a food program that fed 90,000 last year. My first report of 2019, with @MitchKSmithhttps://nyti.ms/2GNmym8
The program I mentioned, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, is designed to make sure some of the poorest Americans can eat; it delivers food directly to distribution centers on reservations, where families with qualifying incomes can pick up milk, meat, etc.
It is an alternative to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as the food stamp program, because many people in remote areas do not have easy access to SNAP offices or SNAP qualifying stores.
The program fed about 90,000 people last year.
No additional federal funds will be spent on this during the shut down, according to the Department of Agriculture.https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2018/12/29/usda-updates-available-functions-during-lapse-funding …
This is of great concern for Chairman Joseph Rupnick of the Prairie Band Potawatomi, a tribe of about 4,600 people headquartered on a reservation in northeast Kansas. About 100 families rely on the program, he told me.
“Those stores will be depleted," he said of the tribe's distribution center. “When they’re going through a shutdown, they're thinking: 'I need five billion for a wall. I need dollars for this or that.' The bottom line is it always impacts the neediest people in the country.”
They might have to get a job, how awful
Businesses can’t own land on a reservation. People want jobs, but few businesses will take the chance of opening on a reservation. People can’t leave, because they can’t afford to survive without aid, and can’t get the aid off reservation. It’s a trap.
Shouldn't 'America First' apply to the First Americans?
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