James Whittier Parker: “We do not achieve the purpose that we are looking for if we penalize individual tribes out there that have been trying…”

“We do not achieve the purpose that we are looking for if we penalize individual tribes out there that have been trying to do what we ask them to do. We have changed the rules on them again. It is not the first time the Federal Government has done that to Indian nations. I think sometimes we all forget, it is a little basic thing in American history, but these are sovereign nations and we should treat them as such. We would never do this type of a thing to another nation without understanding that there would be retaliation of some type. These nations can very easily, that have paid for their own contracting costs, they could very easily sit back and say, ``Then it is up to you. You have a statutory obligation to provide health service to our people. You pay for it. You handle the whole thing.'' That, in effect, would put IHS in a situation that they do not want to be put in. They know that they could not provide those services. They know that these Indian nations have saved them tremendous amounts of money, tremendous amounts of work, and that there would be no way that they could do that. So I think that in all fairness, this needs to move to the authorizing committee. We need to work something out so that we can eventually move toward full funding. These Indian nations that are in the queue are receiving health services.”