If you’ve ever driven Arizona’s State Route 86 through the Tohono O’odham Reservation, you’ve seen how it starts as a nice, wide, two-lane highway with ample shoulders and ends up as a skinny little two-lane highway with no shoulders at all.

Considering how many tourists, trucks, and Border Patrol vehicles share that road with the local O’odham people, that’s a highway that needs improvement. But most roads meandering through your friendly neighborhood rez are usually maintained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which never has enough money to do the job. The state or county that has leased a right of way doesn’t have much money either, especially these days.

Those expensive little stickers you attach to your license plates each year pay for a lot of road crew stuff, like building, paving, and maintaining roads. But obviously there haven’t been funds for fixing all the potholes on Indian Highway 15, or for a bigger road through Bylas.

Well, in Wisconsin, the tribes all got together and decided to issue their own plates to vehicles registered on their reservations. And then they and the state entered into an agreement respecting each other’s plates for registration purposes.

So now the Wisconsin tribes have another revenue stream to fix their roads, the state is happy because it doesn’t have to hear complaints from the tribes about why their roads are so lousy, and everybody’s happy not to drive on bumpy rez roads. Tribal sovereignty can really work when a tribe exercises its right to self-governance.

Other states, like Arizona, have a slightly different way of getting road money to the reservation. The system here uses fuel tax reimbursements to the tribes. Special plates issued by the state generate money to some Arizona tribes for transportation purposes. (So far, only two, Navajo and San Carlos Apache, have sprung for the deal.)

California’s tribes, though, are too small for each one to have a separate plate. Instead of generating enough funds for a half-mile or so of rez road, California plans to issue an Indian license plate next year that will be available to any car registered in the state. A portion of the $70 per plate is intended to fund a new museum and cultural center near Sacramento.

Right now, the California State Indian Museum is located in back of Sutter’s Fort. That’s a place that doesn’t exactly hold warm, fuzzy memories for those of us who are still reeling from the California Gold Rush. A gorgeous new license plate adorning visitors’ cars in front of a nice new museum would be sweet. So would the message that the extinction of California Indians has been greatly exaggerated.

And it all starts with a license plate.

Debra Utacia Krol, an enrolled member of the Xolon (or Jolon) Salinan Tribe of central California, is a freelance journalist based in Arizona.

There's a reason he's called a fancy dancer.

1 – The latest powwow guide.
Powwow is really a tradition of tribes of the Great Plains. I’m a member of a California tribe, and us California types go more for Big Times than double-eagle-feathered war bonnets, breastplates, jingles and fancy dance. Somehow all that has become pan-Indian.

I blame the Bureau of Indian Affairs for that. They attempted to bust up tribes by scattering them all over the place, thus leading to the phrase “No matter where you go, you’ll find a beer can, an Elvis sighting and a Navajo.” No matter: today everybody wants to go hang out at a powwow.

2 – Pendleton blankets.
Once a genuine trade item, these blankets have now become haute stuff in Native popular culture. Smartly-dressed Native executives tote around Pendleton briefcases. Graduations, weddings, and other events are always highlighted with these colorful blankets—even bar mitzahs are Pendleton-worthy for those folks who married into Jewry, and there are some!

Occasionally, the Pendleton doubles as a seat cover for…

3 – A pickup truck or SUV.
When you’re living 23 miles down a rutted track from the nearest paved one-and-a-half lane road, you need something that can take a beating! And pickup trucks are always the big sellers in border town dealerships. Throw in a bunch of kids, a couple rez dogs, a “Proud to be Native” bumper sticker and you’re set. And while we’re at it…

4 – Rez dogs.
Everybody’s favorite feral pups are immortalized in Cupeno author Gordon Johnson’s evocative book of essays “Rez Dogs Eat Beans.”

5 – Gripes about tribal councils.
Yep, just like out here in mainstream America, the tribal citizen’s favorite pastime is kvetching about what Tribal Council is up to these days. Whether you’re bitching about elected officials in Window Rock, Washington or Walla Walla, we’re all the same inside — “Vote the bastards out!” Until the next council is elected with the promise of change across the rez, that is.

Of course, the main difference between a tribal council and a city council is that you’re not related to half of the Flagstaff City Council like you are to your friendly tribal council.

And now, the flip side –

Installing solar systems for 400 of 18,000 traditional homes without power on the Navajo Reservation. (Photo: Arizona Capitol Times.)

Top Five Big Issues Facing Tribes Today:

1 – Access to telecommunications.
You can’t do any effective Net business if you don’t have access to broadband to conduct business and upload effective Web sites–much less to telephone service. Arizona touts its AZ211 service as being a conduit to state and local services. But many people in remote reservation communities lack even basic phone service. We’ve heard tales of people having to hitchhike 10 or 20 miles into town just to reach a pay phone or a tribal or state office phone from which to phone the 211 service. And finding AZ211 on the Internet? Fuggedaboutit.

2 – Energy and other infrastructure.
The Rural Electrification Administration, a New Deal-era government agency whose mission was to wire the entire nation for electric service, somehow managed to miss wiring large segments of rural reservations, particularly in Arizona. Now tribes are trying to play catch-up to get all their residents electric service. Some are looking to the sky and sun for alternative energy sources, others are relying on the Indian Health Service or HUD for services like water and sewer, electric service and housing. Tribal housing authorities are working hard to house tribal families with, in many cases, only limited budgets.

3 – Health care.
IHS, an agency under the Public Health Service, has the principal responsibility for fulfilling treaty obligations to the majority of the nation’s 4 million American Indians and Alaska Natives who are enrolled in or otherwise associated with tribes. However, IHS has been chronically underfunded to the tune of about 50 percent of its actual need, and a congressional bill that would reauthorize the fix for at least part of the funding problem, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, has been stalled in Congress for nearly a decade.

In the meantime, the overall life expectancy for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) trails the nation by more than 10 years. Also, the AIAN population suffers from chronic diseases like diabetes at frightening numbers, which is partially due to the lack of preventive care.

4 – Law enforcement in reservation communities.
The Major Crimes Act, passed in the 19th century to prevent tribes from dealing in their traditional way with acts like murder, gave prosecutorial authority to the federal government for any felony committed on tribal lands, which are held in trust by the government for tribes. However, the U.S. Department of Justice has long shortchanged the agents, prosecutors and other justice system officials who must investigate and prosecute murder, armed robbery, drug dealing and other serious offenses committee by and against Indians.

Because some U.S. Attorneys set a lower limit on drug seizures they would prosecute, drug dealers soon learned to stash just a bit less than that limit when running drugs through tribal lands. A law passed in the 1950s, P.L. 280, also mandates that six states (Alaska, California, Minnesota except Red Lake reservation, Nebraska, Oregon except Warm Springs reservation, and Wisconsin), assume criminal jurisdiction over tribal communities—but without any extra revenues. Soon, reservations in these states became lawless havens. Although the law was formally repudiated by President Nixon, it’s still on the books.

5 – Understanding of how tribal governments work.
It would seem obvious that people who live with tribes as their neighbors would know how that tribe works, right? Wrong. For example, most people where I am in Arizona don’t even know how many tribes are here, much less how their governments work. Nor do they understand how tribal governments interact with city, county, state and federal jurisdictions. It’s especially sad when elected officials don’t understand that tribal governments have a solid legal basis for existence.

Only one state, Maine, has enacted legislation requiring tribal government structure to be taught in civics classes, along with tribal history, culture and current issues. Other states have executive orders in place or agreements through their state school systems, but only Maine has a state law.

Debra Utacia Krol, an enrolled member of the Xolon (or Jolon) Salinan Tribe of central California, is a freelance journalist based in Arizona.

+ Fancy dancer photo from about.com. +