Policy Brief  

Federal COVID‐19 Response Funding for Tribal Governments: Lessons from the CARES Act

The federal response to the COVID‐19 pandemic has played out in varied ways over the past several months. For Native nations, the CARES Act (i.e., the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) has been the most prominent component of this response to date. Title V of the Act earmarked $8 billion for tribes and was allocated in two rounds, with many disbursements taking place in May and June of this year.

This federal response has been critical for many tribes because of the lower socio‐economic starting points for their community members as compared to non‐Indians. Even before the pandemic, the average income of a reservation‐resident Native American household was barely half that of the average U.S. household. Low average incomes, chronically high unemployment rates, and dilapidated or non‐existent infrastructure are persistent challenges for tribal communities and tribal leaders. Layering extremely high coronavirus incidence rates (and the effective closure of many tribal nations’ entire economies2) on top of these already challenging circumstances presented tribal governments with a host of new concerns. In other words, at the same time tribal governments’ primary resources were decimated (i.e., the earnings of tribal governmental gaming and non‐gaming enterprises dried up), the demands on tribes increased. They needed these resources to fight the pandemic and to continue to meet the needs of tribal citizens.

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

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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.