While politicians fight over the budget impasse, the nation's Indian reservations are just trying to hang on.
Without federal money, the Hopi Reservation, for example, can't buy gas for police cars or food for its five day schools. As a result, hundreds of children may not be able to return to classes on Tuesday after the holiday break.Police layoffs and an increase in already rampant unemployment are also looming, Hopi Chairman Ferrell Secakuku said Thursday.
Secakuku and other tribal leaders in Arizona - where the Indian population of 285,000 is the nation's largest - say reservations are especially hard hit by the lack of a budget agreement because of their heavy reliance on federal money. Congressional Republicans and President Clinton cannot agree on how to balance the budget.
Perhaps the only people happy about the shutdown are those in the Hopi Reservation Detention Center: They may be released because there is no money for heat.
"We have 1.6 million acres to oversee, and there's about 11,000 to 12,000 people living on this land and needing services. But those services will be drastically" reduced without a budget agreement, said Secakuku, who hopes to go to Washington this weekend with other tribal leaders.
The Hopis are living off money carried over from last year's budget. The money will run out sometime in early January, Secakuku said.
The Navajo Nation is faring better, said Thomas Atcitty, vice president of the tribe. The Navajos have the largest reservation in the country, covering about 17 million acres and spreading into parts of New Mexico and Utah. Navajos account for 207,000 of the Indians in Arizona.
"By using some carryover funds, most of our workers are prepared to work into the middle of March," Atcitty said.
The Navajos have been helped by having their own area office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which deals only with the Navajo nation. Other tribes must deal with the Phoenix area BIA office.
"What happens with the other tribes is there is a real tug of war for funds," Atcitty said.
Elsewhere, the shutdown is threatening San Diego's American Indian health clinic, which provides free medical and dental care, mental health counseling and HIV testing for the area's 17,000 Indians.
The state Indian Health Service Office is giving the clinic two week's worth of emergency cash so that it can stay open - for now.
"I deal with the human side of this budget shutdown," said Ron Morton, the clinic's director. "When an issue like health care becomes a political football, there is no honor, no integrity."