Althea Bowekaty of Zuni Pueblo says her 7-year-old daughter Amanda is doing well since a therapist from the federal Indian Children's Program taught Bowekaty how to help improve the little girl's speech.
The program, handled through contract with Utah State University in Logan, has also helped Frances Aragon. A resident of Laguna Pueblo, Aragon says her 2-year-old son, Cody Manuelito, has improved since the program suggested leg braces to help him overcome the trouble he has moving his right side because of cerebral palsy.Jane Witter of Crownpoint says her 3-year-old Navajo foster son Toby is able to make short, unaided trips in the walker the program recommended for him.
But the program could be on the chopping block. The federal government presented its case before the U.S. Supreme Court last week to argue that the Indian Health Service has the authority to cancel it without notice and without judicial review.
Ending the program "would be a disaster" for hundreds of handicapped Indian children, said Dr. Stanley Handmaker, director of New Mexico's University Affiliated Program, which handles the Indian Children's Program.
New Mexico's $300,000 share of the program is meant to reach its 19 pueblos, the eastern Navajo reservation, the Mescalero and Jicarilla Apache tribes as well as the Ute Mountain Utes in Colorado.
The program is designed to evaluate and provide physical and speech therapy and other services to handicapped children in Indian communities in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado - isolated rural areas where services are hard to get.
The Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs started the program in 1979 and served 2,400 children before canceling it in 1985 in a round of budget cuts.
Indian families in New Mexico and Arizona sued in 1986, arguing that children were being "irreparably harmed."
A federal judge and an appeals court ruled for the families and the program was reinstated 21/2 years ago.
Witter said it's important Toby get help at home in Crownpoint, 60 miles from the Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup and 140 miles from services in Albuquerque.
Toby, who suffered a stroke at age 2, was able only to pull himself around by his elbows when he came to live with Jane and Leonard Witter last April.
The Witters began taking him to a physical therapist in May, but he began improving quickly after the Indian Children's Program evaluated him in September and suggested a walker and ankle braces, Witter said.
"Without their intervention or suggestions and evaluation, he might still be back where he was in September," she said.
Sarah Huber, manager of the Shiwi Ts'ana early intervention program at Zuni Pueblo, said her organization wouldn't be able to meet state and federal requirements to evaluate children within 45 days without the Indian Children's Program.
"We'd be looking at probably a six-month delay in terms of getting children tested," she said. The Zuni intervention program handles developmentally disabled children from birth to age 2.
She said another program comes to Zuni once a year to evaluate children; otherwise families have to go to Albuquerque, 170 miles away.
June Eustis of the Native American Protection and Advocacy Project in Window Rock, Ariz., said children in the program can't get help anywhere else.
"At least 350 children . . . would be left without any services at all," said Eustis, who filed a friend of the court brief Dec. 28 supporting the program's continuation.
U.S. District Judge Juan Burciaga of Albuquerque ordered the program reinstated in 1990, ruling the federal government violated procedures in ending the program since it gave no notice and held no hearings.
Government lawyers argued the Indian Health Service had the discretion to end the program and the action should not be subject to judicial review. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver rejected that argument last year.