110 years later, act may finally help tribal businesses

It can take the federal government a long time to do something. A really, really long time.

After 110 years, the Indian Health Service published their version of the regulations to implement the Buy Indian Act. The Buy Indian Act, passed in 1910, is an Act of Congress is the law that has the potential to improve Indian Country and Oklahoma's economic landscape significantly. Like all laws, the process requires the federal agency to develop regulations on how the law will be implemented.

Why did it take over a century to implement this law? No reason for the 110year delay has been given; apparently, it was just one of those things that happened. And why should Oklahoma be interested? Let me tell the story.

The 1887 General Allotment Act set the framework for removing reservation land from communal ownership to individual members. The "surplus" land was then opened to general homesteading by non-American Indians.

With the passage of the General Allotment Act, the government had encouraged Native Americans to become more like mainstream America. The federal government gave out tribal lands to Indian individuals in 160-acre parcels.

Later in 1910, the Federal government passed the Buy Indian Act. The Buy Indian Act of 1910 authorizes the “Secretary of the Interior to employ Indian labor and purchase Indian-owned firms' products without using the normal competitive process.”

Perhaps the only good law to come out of that era.

This was not a happy period for the American Indians. Oklahoma had obtained statehood, and the American Indian problem was relevant.

But there was a more significant problem. What is an American Indian? American Indians were not citizens. Indians were designated "wards" of the government. The federal government used a system of determining who is an Indian by their degree of American Indian blood. My mother was born in 1923. She was, therefore, not a citizen. Finally, on June 2, 1924, Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S.

The Buy Indian Act directed the federal agencies to purchase from Indian owned businesses. The law said it was at the "discretion" of the Secretary of Interior to determine when the Buy Indian Act applied. It took the Interior Department more than 100 years and 28 secretaries to decide how to define "discretion" and finish building the rules and regulations to implement the legislation. The final ruling on the law was published and put into place in July 2013. But only for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Since that date, American Indian-owned businesses have grown; endured; responded, and met the many challenges of the Buy Indian Act.

The federal government needs these businesses to grow strong and support their many needs of these tribal communities. The tribal communities in Oklahoma have shown they take the welfare of their tribal citizens as a priority.

In the past 100 plus years, our tribes and individual American Indian-owned business have built multiple strong companies that employ many American Indians and many more non-American Indians. We expect this will help increase economic activity in and around tribal communities and provide more significant employment opportunities for all Oklahomans.

The two departments, Interior and Health and Human Services, spend billions of dollars a year on purchases. Finalizing these regulations can open the doors to new partnerships and companies to grow in Oklahoma. The Buy Indian Act, fully implemented with fair regulations, will be another step in the economic viability and diversification of our Native American businesses.

Now, in 2021, the Indian Health Service has finally published regulations for the implementation the Buy Indian Act. They have agreed to republish these regulations to allow for input from the tribes, and individual Indian owned businesses to comment on “soon.”

The question for the Indian Health Service is, “How soon is soon?”