Photo: Blackfeet Community Hospital benefits from Montana’s Medicaid expansion. (courtesy Blackfeet Community Hospital)

Montana tribal leaders say the health of their people hinges on whether lawmakers renew the state’s Medicaid expansion program.

Montana Public Radio’s Aaron Bolton reports.

If state lawmakers don’t act, nearly 14,000 Indigenous Montanans could lose health coverage under Medicaid expansion.

When legislators renewed the program in 2019, they implemented a sunset for mid-2025.

There are two bills in the Legislature that would make the program permanent. Another bill would end expansion.

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council member Jennifer Finley told lawmakers Medicaid expansion is a vital lifeline in tribal communities.

“It provides economic growth on every reservation in Montana with the creation of jobs. This had meant tribal members that follow their dreams to become doctors, pharmacists can return home to provide much needed services to our people, which builds confidence and trust in our health care system.”

Finley and others also say expansion in crucial because the Indian Health Service is woefully underfunded.

Medicaid is often the only way tribal members can pay for care.

Two sea otters frolic in the waters near the Alaskan coast. (Courtesy Alaska Region, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

After centuries of overhunting by fur traders, sea otters have largely disappeared from the Oregon and Northern California coasts.

But as KLCC’s Brian Bull reports, the Siletz Tribe is trying to bring them back with the help of a $1.5 million grant.

The three-year grant comes from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation – and will bolster efforts made by the Siletz and other regional tribes.

Siletz Tribal member Robert Kentta says sea otters have a revered role in his culture.

“They figure prominently in our stories as a relative and a near neighbor, I guess. They bring wealth and good times, and abundance.”

Sea otters also serve an important role in the environment, by eating invasive crustaceans like green crabs, and by restoring and maintaining kelp forests.

“There’s also oxygenation and coastal erosion buffering when we have kelp forest habitat in the near-shore ecosystem. So there’s lots of benefits, and we just see a degrading habitat with sea otter absence.”

Kentta says the tribe and its partners will likely relocate sea otters from locations on the Pacific coast where the population is healthier.

U.S. Sen Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) during a May 23, 2024 Senate debate on the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. (Courtesy CSPAN)

Last week, U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) joined three other Senators to reintroduce the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act (RECA).

The program compensates Americans exposed to radiation by government nuclear programs.

The Senate passed the bill last Congress, but the House of Representatives failed to pass reauthorization before its expiration deadline.

Indigenous people in the Southwest are among those who’ve been impacted, including the Navajo Nation, where uranium mining was critical in the making of the atomic bomb.

Indigenous people have been advocating for RECA’s reauthorization.

Last fall, members of several tribes including the Navajo Nation, Laguna Pueblo, and Zuni Pueblo raised funds to travel by bus from New Mexico to Washington D.C. to urge lawmakers to revive the program.

Senss Heinrich and Luján say it’s long overdue for Congress to pass RECA, and say they remain committed to getting it extended and expanded.

Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today.