Government

How Native Tribes Are Using $20 Billion in Pandemic Aid

With historic funding, Indigenous communities from Alaska to Wisconsin are shoring up housing, internet, health care and more.

Leonard Forsman, chairperson of Suquamish tribal government, outside an affordable home on the tribe’s reservation near Seattle. Suquamish is using federal pandemic aid to create affordable housing.

Photographer: Amy Yee/Bloomberg

Native American tribes across the US are using about $20 billion in federal pandemic relief for projects aimed at economic and social recovery —a sum that amounts to “the largest single infusion of federal funding into Indian Country,” according to the US Treasury, which manages aid from the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP). A Treasury report released late last year shows how more than 570 tribes are using that funding after “the pandemic made pre-existing inequitable conditions even worse.”

In all, they’re rolling out some 3,000 projects and services — including affordable housing, health care, broadband internet and job training — that will affect more than 2.6 million tribal citizens, according to the report.