Policy Brief  

Assessing the U.S. Treasury Department’s Allocations of Funding for Tribal Governments under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (“the Act” or “ARPA”) has resulted in the single largest infusion of federal funding for Native America in U.S. history. The core of this funding is $20 billion for the more than 570 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments. As required by the Act, the Department of the Treasury (“Treasury” or “the Department”) devised and has now implemented a formula for allocating these monies. In this report, the authors find that the allocations that have been made are grossly inequitable and contrary to the policy objectives of Congress, the Biden Administration, and the Treasury Department itself.

This study uses publicly available information to estimate enrollment and employment counts for tribes. These figures are only estimates created for the express purpose of analyzing the appropriateness of the US Department of the Treasury’s American Rescue Plan Act allocations. Our estimates have not and cannot be verified against actual enrollment or employment data submitted to the Department of Treasury by each tribe.  We believe the estimates are as accurate as possible and reliable for the purpose of assessing the relative positions of tribes under Treasury’s ARPA allocations, but should not be extracted and used as accurate for any individual tribe or for any purpose other than how they are used here.

More from this Program

Social and Economic Changes in American Indian Reservations: A Databook of the US Census and the American Community Survey, Third Edition 1990-2020
Per Capita Income Change 2010-2020 graph

Book

Social and Economic Changes in American Indian Reservations: A Databook of the US Census and the American Community Survey, Third Edition 1990-2020

From the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development comes an updated third edition of a data book providing summary statistics for American Indian tribal communities in the lower 48 states using the public-use US Census and the American Community Survey data.

Six Programs Advance to the Site Visit Round for the 2025 Honoring Nations Awards

Media Release

Six Programs Advance to the Site Visit Round for the 2025 Honoring Nations Awards

The Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development’s Honoring Nations program is thrilled to announce the selection of six outstanding tribal programs advancing to the site visit round for the 2025 awards.

More on this Issue

Social and Economic Changes in American Indian Reservations: A Databook of the US Census and the American Community Survey, Third Edition 1990-2020
Per Capita Income Change 2010-2020 graph

Book

Social and Economic Changes in American Indian Reservations: A Databook of the US Census and the American Community Survey, Third Edition 1990-2020

From the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development comes an updated third edition of a data book providing summary statistics for American Indian tribal communities in the lower 48 states using the public-use US Census and the American Community Survey data.

Six Programs Advance to the Site Visit Round for the 2025 Honoring Nations Awards

Media Release

Six Programs Advance to the Site Visit Round for the 2025 Honoring Nations Awards

The Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development’s Honoring Nations program is thrilled to announce the selection of six outstanding tribal programs advancing to the site visit round for the 2025 awards.