"It's something I do, honoring those who died before me and honoring those on active duty," said Michel, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and a 20-year Navy veteran who belongs to the Mission Valley Honor Guard.
On Thursday, at a cemetery on the Flathead Indian Reservation, he and other vets will pay tribute to the 12 Natives who have died in the war in Iraq. Commemorations will continue Friday at a Veteran's Warrior Society Powwow at Kicking Horse Job Corps.
They have plenty to honor. More Natives per capita have died in foreign wars than any other ethnic group, according to the Department of Defense.
But these warriors continue to be the most shortchanged by Congress when it comes to using homeownership benefits on reservation lands, said David DeHorse, a leading researcher of the 1993 Native Veterans Home Loan Program.
Veterans - Native or non-Native - who build homes off reservations are eligible for $240,000 home loans. But veterans building on reservation trust lands are limited to $80,000 loans under the Native veterans loan program.
Factor in the estimated $35,000 often needed for roads, electricity and sewer on reservation parcels, and they're left with $45,000 for home construction, said DeHorse, a law fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School at Madison, Wis.
The government is trying to make changes, said Grace Cooper, a loan guarantee officer at the Veteran Affairs regional office in Denver.
"We have been very liberal in raising that $80,000 where necessary," she said. "We are making changes to increase the maximum loan amount. Nothing has been finalized yet. We recognize there is a discrepancy."
It used to be worse. For nearly 50 years, Native veterans weren't allowed a home loan on trust lands at all, making the 1993 act a milestone. Yet the program has several roadblocks, including a provision asking tribes to relinquish a portion of sovereignty. Only 68 of 560 tribes have agreed to the provisions, further limiting homeownership.
In Montana, four Native veterans have used the loan program to build on trust land.
Additionally, thousands of widows and spouses of Native veterans don't know they are eligible to build on trust lands because of a lack of advertising by the Department of Veterans Affairs, DeHorse said.
VA officials do outreach to Native communities, Cooper said, and it advertises its loan programs.
Since the 1993 loan program became law, about 50 of an estimated 200,000 Native veterans have used the loans within the continental United States. "It was predestined to fail," DeHorse said. "I'd say 52 loans is a failure."
For too long, Native veterans have lacked advocates, including their own tribes, said David Mann, past president of the National Congress of American Indians Veterans Affairs Committee. With 4,394 Native people on active duty, the number seeking to use military entitlements will only increase.
Now a new group of vets is trying to protect their rights.
In October, veterans from 44 tribes met in Phoenix to ratify a charter creating the National American Indian Veterans Inc. The group hopes to serve as a political force for Native interests, provide benefit assistance and become a forum for concerns.
"This is the very first time there has been a national organization of veterans completely focused on Indian veteran issues," said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Mara Cohen, a group member.
Cohen, also a Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee for Minority Veterans, said tribes could assist their veterans by establishing VA administrative offices within tribal governments. But no tribes operate those offices and, as it stands, all money used to assist veterans' needs goes to states, she said.
As for changing the home loan law, that's up to lawmakers.
"Congress has the ability to modify that basic entitlement, to bring it up to equity with the rest of the population with a stroke of a pen," DeHorse said.
Jodi Rave covers Native issues for Lee Enterprises. She can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or
jodi.rave@missoulian.com.
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