Deb Haaland Calls on Republicans to End Shutdown as SNAP Benefits Lapse

Their cruelty is not uncommon... This whole mess is a test - to see how far they can go with digital ID, control, to capture us with digital surveillance and digital money, and no more cash. RESIST! Trace

By Native News Online Staff|  November 03, 2025

Native Vote. New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland released a statement Monday as the federal government shutdown entered its 31st day, warning that thousands of New Mexicans are facing food insecurity and healthcare challenges.

“For the last 31 days, federal workers across the country have been furloughed, working without pay, missing paychecks, and facing the uncertainty of being fired,” Haaland said. “Today, millions of Americans face an added hardship as SNAP benefits lapse. That’s at least 460,000 New Mexicans who won’t know where their next meal will come from.”

Haaland said she appreciates state leaders who extended funding for food programs by 10 days and acknowledged that recent court intervention has offered temporary relief.

“In New Mexico, we are proud to have leaders who are funding the program for an additional ten days, and while the courts have stepped in for now, these are not long-term solutions,” she said. “I am grateful to all of the community groups, volunteers, churches, and others who are working to stock and expand food banks in their neighborhoods. The only real solution however is for Republicans to do their jobs and have the backbone to fight for what’s right.”

She also criticized Republican lawmakers for contributing to rising healthcare costs, noting the start of open enrollment amid the shutdown.

“Today also marks the first day of open enrollment. Republicans passed a law that forced healthcare premiums to skyrocket, and New Mexicans will pay the price,” Haaland said. “This means in a state that is already facing a shortage of healthcare workers, New Mexicans won’t get the coverage they need, won’t be able to see a doctor when they need to, and will have even longer wait times between appointments.”

Haaland warned that the shutdown’s effects extend beyond food and healthcare.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “The wellbeing of New Mexicans and Americans across the country is on the brink. Republicans in Washington, D.C. need to do their job. In the meantime, it’s more clear than ever that state governments are the front lines and as governor, I will always fight for solutions to make sure that New Mexicans are fed, healthy, and safe.”

SOURCE:  https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/deb-haaland-calls-on-republicans-to-end-shutdown-as-snap-benefits-lapse 

IN ALL THE TREATIES, tribes are promised food (as in health, education, welfare.)

WHAT ABOUT COMMODITIES:

The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) provides USDA Foods to income-eligible households living on Indian reservations, and to American Indian households residing in approved areas near reservations and in Oklahoma. Many households participate in FDPIR as an alternative to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

FNS, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), oversees FDPIR at the federal level. The program is administered by FDPIR administering agencies, which are either Indian Tribal Organizations (ITOs) or state governmental agencies. As of fiscal year (FY) 2024, 110 agencies administer FDPIR, including 107 ITOs and 3 state agencies.

USDA purchases and ships USDA Foods to administering agencies, which then store and distribute the foods, determine applicant eligibility, and provide nutrition education to recipients. USDA also provides administering agencies with funds for program administrative costs.

FDPIR is authorized under Section 4(b) of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 and Section 4(a) of the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973. Federal regulations governing the program can be found at 7 CFR Parts 250, 253, and 254.

For a complete list of available foods, see the USDA Foods Available List for FDPIR.

 

Funding

In FY 2024, $170 million was appropriated for FDPIR – approximately $68.6 million for the federal share of administrative costs, and the remainder for food purchases.

Participation

Average FDPIR monthly participation for FY 2023 was 49,339 individuals. For more information visit the interactive FNS Program Participation Dashboard.

https://www.fns.usda.gov/fdpir/food-distribution-program-indian-reservations 

 

Cutting Commodities?

 

Trump Pledged to “Make America Healthy Again,” Then Cut a Program Many Tribes Rely on for Healthy Food

by Mary Hudetz

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

As he has promoted the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, has lamented the toll that processed foods have taken on the health of Americans, in particular Native Americans.

Prepackaged foods have “mass poisoned” tribal communities, he said last month when he met with tribal leaders and visited a Native American health clinic in Arizona.

Weeks later, in testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, he said processed foods had resulted in a “genocide” among Native Americans, who disproportionately live in places where there are few or no grocery stores.

“One of my big priorities will be getting good food — high-quality food, traditional foods — onto the reservation because processed foods for American Indians is poison,” Kennedy told the committee. Healthy food is key to combating the high rates of chronic disease in tribal communities, he said.

Yet even as the president tasks Kennedy’s agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture with improving healthy eating programs, the USDA has terminated the very program that dozens of tribal food banks say has helped them provide fresh, locally produced food that is important to their traditions and cultures.

That program — the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program — began under President Joe Biden in late 2021 as a response to challenges accessing food that were magnified by the pandemic. Its goal was to boost purchases from local farmers and ranchers, and the funding went to hundreds of food banks across the country, including 90 focused on serving tribes.

In March, the Trump administration decided the program did not align with its priorities. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins defended the cut of a half-billion dollars by calling the program a remnant of the COVID era.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a statement, a USDA spokesperson said the department continues to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars through more than a dozen other nutrition programs that help families meet their nutrition needs. For tribal communities, the spokesperson said, that includes the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations for low-income households.

Starved into Submission

Herb shot this photo in the Badlands. He was so happy.

Now is the time, we are the ones we have been waiting for... —Hopi Prophecy

By Trace Hentz, blog editor

My entire childhood I had plenty of food.  This is not true for all humans, I know.  Look at the news across the world, like in Gaza.   When it comes to writing about adoption or world events, I know I’m doing something right if I am afraid.

I spent most of my life afraid of upsetting people, avoiding that.  Some might say that is low self-esteem but I think being afraid, fear itself, is a call to action.  If you are afraid, then you know you are doing something right.  You are challenging yourself and breaking down your thoughts into something you can fix or not.

I could not change what happened in my childhood but I could change how I looked at being adopted.  I could drop judgment.  I could stop blaming my adoptive parents and my natural parents.  I could turn “being adopted” into something good—or try to make my life and other lives better.

Years ago, I heard Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now describe how the occupiers of Palestine are using food insecurity to keep Palestine children alive but not enough to thrive!  Too little food and starvation can be used as a weapon of war—with long-term consequences.  Brains and bodies are affected long-term.

That is exactly what has happened here on American soil. YES!  The American government only feeds American Indians junk with commodities (boxed or canned food and very little vegetables).  The diabetes epidemic is living proof it’s working.  Plus there are not enough jobs to feed ourselves.  That way we Indians will be too weak to protest reservation living conditions. That way we’ll stay depressed or immobile.  That way we’ll self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. That way many of our men will be imprisoned.  That way we won’t be in the way when the government and industry wants to take more resources like copper, coal, uranium and shale gas.  Reservations were purposefully isolated so American (and Canadian) governments could totally control what we received—especially food, blankets, housing, medical care, etc.

Governments still keep Indians poor.  The occupiers claimed they wanted Indians to be farmers, settle in one place, but not exactly on “farm-able land.”  Think of the Badlands, a dry arid remote place, not exactly farmland.

Most of us Lost Birds who were adopted out didn’t have food insecurity or starvation growing up.  It was not something we had to worry about.  Lost Birds/Adoptees need to realize the WAR is still being waged on Indians in many subtle ways.  And if we use our minds in a good way, and come together, maybe WE can tackle food insecurity on reservations that still exists!

Maybe just maybe being adopted out was destined to give us the mind and ideas and courage necessary to feed our tribal families who have been occupied and starved into submission.

 

2004:

When I got married in 2004, my husband Herb flew out to Rapid City, South Dakota (where I was visiting my relatives) and I drove us through the Badlands to Porcupine (Oglala Lakota Reservation) to see my relative Ellowyn Locke.  (Herb had never been to South Dakota and I also drove him to see the town of Deadwood.)

One of the chores we needed to do was to go pick up commodities.

We drove my Chevy Tracker to the distribution center and Herb had many boxes of canned food on his lap.  My small SUV was stacked and packed and Ellowyn was holding a box of cans as I drove us to her house.

Mostly this food was canned, but there were some cans of peanuts, powdered milk, lard, flour, boxed cereal, etc.  None of this food is good for you... long-term. Ellowyn was on dialysis for her diabetes, and it's true the food sent from the federal government is not healthy and meant to harm their health.  (Porcupine and Wounded Knee is a food desert, with no grocery stories close by, but Sharp's Corner had a gas station filled with junk food, snack foods, and sugary drinks.)

Herb told Ellowyn that he grew up in Harlem (New York City) and his family had the same commodities - boxed cheese, powdered milk, and cans of fruit and vegetables. Nothing was fresh.

It was not the first time I noticed that Ellowyn had one head of cabbage to last one month, along with a few carrots and a few potatoes.  That was all the fresh food she had until the next distribution.  We usually drove south to Chadron, Nebraska to buy meat, when I was there every summer.

Ellowyn tried to grow fresh vegetables on her land, and had a small patch down by a creek that was totally hidden from the road and her brother's roaming horses could not get to it, or they'd eat it all.

Since the 1990s, if I drove to Pine Ridge, I'd stop at a grocery store first to buy fresh lemons, oranges, veggies and fresh meat, before I got to her house.  And I'd buy the biggest bag of dog food I could carry, since Ellowyn usually had at least one big dog guarding her house in Porcupine.

I also brought her supplies, like beads and fabric, since she sewed quilts, to sell to tourists.  I never went there without a carload of gifts and supplies.  And I never left without a carload of gifts she made me!  (She made my wedding dress!)

Please be generous with your relatives, and send money, or bring gifts and supplies if you go to visit.  Many of us do not live on the rez, and we don't learn generosity growing up.  

If you do go home, bring them seeds and fresh ideas on ways to grow fresh food.