KVIG Informative

Several Nevada tribes were awarded federal grants to bring broadband internet and utility support to their communities. Records show some of that money has since been deobligated — clawed back before the projects finished.

The Fort Mojave Indian Tribe was awarded $714,000 through a federal broadband subgrant program, according to Nevada Department of Native American Affairs records. That funding is now listed in state records as “deobligated,” a status marked as a clawback allocation, meaning the money was reclaimed before the tribe’s project could be completed.

Fort Mojave isn’t alone. State tracking records show the Elko Band Council and the South Fork Band Council also had portions of their federal broadband subgrants deobligated under the same clawback designation.

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Other tribes fared differently under the same program. The Fort McDermitt Paiute Shoshone Tribe’s $714,000 broadband project is listed as ongoing, continuing to assist tribal homeowners with utility, internet and repair costs. The Ely Shoshone Tribe, Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and Reno-Sparks Indian Colony all had their subgrant projects marked complete.

The Moapa Band of Paiutes and the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, Southern Nevada’s two federally recognized tribes with reservation land, received subgrants of $539,188 and $565,000 respectively. Both projects are listed as in the closeout process rather than facing clawback status.

The funding sits within a broader pattern tribal leaders raised at a national economic summit held in Las Vegas earlier this year. The Northern Cheyenne Tribe specifically raised concerns about difficulty accessing federal funds that had already been approved, a challenge echoed by tribal leaders and organizations from across the country attending the same gathering.

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A survey circulated this year by the Native American Finance Officers Association, in partnership with the Native American Contractors Association and the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, is specifically seeking feedback from tribal nations on how current federal administration actions and policies are affecting tribal economies.

For Fort Mojave and the other tribes whose broadband funding got clawed back, the promise of federal infrastructure money didn’t disappear on paper — it just stopped showing up in the bank account. Whatever gets built without it is now the tribe’s problem to solve, on a timeline the federal government no longer feels bound to.