Tribes and the Recovery Act

In addition to the multiple funding streams made available to state governments by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), tribal governments are also in line to receive substantial assistance for programs serving Native Americans. This website of the National Congress of American Indians provides detailed and comprehensive information, including a handy tribal summary spreadsheet (PDF) available for download. As with state governments, tribes will receive some funds through formula allocations, while in other cases, tribal governments will be eligible to apply along with other government entities for competitive grants.

For Oklahoma, tribal funding can amount to considerable sums of money. For example, in the case of housing, Oklahoma’s formula-based allocation allocated to native housing authorities through the Native American Housing Block Grant is $37.4 million, which is considerably more than the $25.1 million going to non-native public housing authorities in Oklahoma through the Public Housing Capital Fund.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Former Executive Director David Blatt joined OK Policy in 2008 and served as its Executive Director from 2010 to 2019. He previously served as Director of Public Policy for Community Action Project of Tulsa County and as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma State Senate. He has a Ph.D. in political science from Cornell University and a B.A. from the University of Alberta. David has been selected as Political Scientist of the Year by the Oklahoma Political Science Association, Local Social Justice Champion by the Dan Allen Center for Social Justice, and Public Citizen of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers.

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