SALT LAKE CITY — Congress must immediately bolster federal aid for the beleaguered Navajo Nation and other Native American tribes to combat the coronavirus, retired Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said Friday.
And lawmakers also need to update a law he passed three decades ago to compensate Navajos who developed severe forms of cancer and respiratory illness as a result of uranium mining and nearby nuclear testing during the Cold War.
“Doing so would provide much-needed assistance for members of the Navajo Nation, including families that are simultaneously suffering from the effects of COVID-19,” Hatch wrote in an Orrin G. Hatch Foundation op-ed that appeared in The Hill.
Even before the outbreak, Native American reservations were suffering from a glaring shortfall in federal health care funding, he said, noting the government spent $2,834 per person in Indian Country compared to $9,990 per person in the rest of the country.
“Our Native American friends deserve better than this,” Hatch wrote.
The Navajo Nation in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico is one of the regions hardest hit by the coronavirus.
As of Thursday the tribe had 3,632 confirmed cases and 127 deaths. Tribal leaders issued another 57-hour weekend curfew through Monday morning to reduce travel to and from the reservation.
“To make matters worse, federal funding for the Navajo Nation has been slow coming,” Hatch wrote.
Tribal governments and health care centers were in line to receive $8 billion through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. But much of that money took weeks to reach the most severely impacted indigenous communities, and 40% of the funds have yet to even be released, he said.
Hatch said Congress can help alleviate the pain in those communities in the short term by ensuring that future relief funding gets to the tribes that need it most without delay. And he said lawmakers can show their long-term commitment to the health and well-being of the Navajo Nation by reforming the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which expires in 2022.
Updating the legislation is a “moral imperative” and letting it expire would leave hundreds of Navajo men and women unable to pay their medical bills for issues directly related to radiation poisoning, Hatch said.
“As the original Senate sponsor of RECA, this issue is personal to me,” he said. “Utah’s Navajo families are my friends and former constituents, and I watched as many of them passed away from cancer and respiratory illness as a result of working in uranium mines and living downwind of the military’s nuclear testing sites during the Cold War.”
Today, he said, a different respiratory illness is ravaging the Navajo Nation in the form of COVID-19.
Just as lawmakers came together in a bipartisan way to reauthorize the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, they should do the same to extend RECA beyond 2022, he said.
“This is a critical time for the Navajo Nation,” Hatch wrote. “But by taking simple steps to ensure continued COVID-relief funding and continued compensation for victims of radioactive exposure, Congress can help strengthen the public health infrastructure of our Native American communities.”