Different Choirs Same Song

The events of 2025 reveal an old truth to new eyes: when the cuts arrive, there is no difference between red and blue.

Across generations and geography, Native people watch and rewatch Republican and Democrat politicians draw lines in campaign seasons and then agree, together, to take away support when it matters most. That's the story that echoes from South Minneapolis to Twin Buttes, from Phoenix to Fort Hall, especially during Native American Heritage Month, but with roots deeper than any headline.

The 2025 shutdown, the longest in America's teeny tiny history, did not invent this hardship; it just pumped up the volume on the bipartisan tv show. Native governments rely on federal appropriations that Congress, year after year, treats as bargaining chips instead of the fulfillment of treaty and trust responsibilities. Sovereignty for c-store freedom fries. Whether it’s balancing the budget or streamlining government, the red and blue on ugly marble floors blend into one purple mess when the cuts come. The result is always the same in Indian Country. Leaders gather in chilly offices, food pantries scramble, clinics cut hours, and Native Nation funds are drained to shore up programs Congress promised to support.

This shutdown doesn’t stand alone; it wears the same stinky socks. In recent years, both parties have signed off on sequesters and "indiscriminate cuts", classic bipartisan deals that slash aid across the board, breaking promises and damaging trust, whether the president’s name was Trump, Obama or Washington. Indian Health Service budgets lag behind rising costs under both Republican and Democrat controlled Congresses. Community Development Block Grant cuts have forced Indigenous Nations to put off badly needed housing repairs. The Bureau of Indian Affairs saw nearly $700 million in cuts proposed this spring; Native housing programs lost $239 million.

This is history in a time loop. In the 1870s, both parties passed "civilization" laws that stole children away to boarding schools and outlawed Indigenous spirituality. In the 1930s, New Deal programs only partly included Native nations, and by the 1950s, bipartisan termination policies stripped Nations of federal recognition and support. Each era delivered the same results: decisions made about Native people, not with them, always promising partnership, almost always delivering the cold shoulder.

For the Indigenous families in Minneapolis' East Phillips neighborhood, the dinner line at Holy Rosary church grows longer, not because one party "won" the debate, but because neither party was willing to prioritize, or even protect, what is owed. In Native Nations across Indian Country, departments log the latest round of delayed funds. Moms and dads in Phoenix double up on foodbank trips while old people watch state and federal officers ask for papers, just like they have for generations. At places like Fort Hall, nurses and teachers, as usual, get paid from rainy day reserves as Congress argue through social media posts.

These patterns are not accidents. They're bipartisan choices, stitched into the nation's laws and budgets, from treaty days to shutdown days. The trust responsibility, exchanged for land and peace, is meant to last "as long as the grass grows and the rivers flow." Instead, every round of shared sacrifice in Washington ends up as lost meals, unheated homes, and a hard reminder that, for Indigenous communities, on and off their lands, the bipartisan Venn diagram is a circle. What has been taken has always been taken with 2 hands from a single body.

And as always, Indigenous people push forward, braiding public data, living memory, and tradition to outlast the politics of the moment. This story, old as first points of contact, runs through every law and debate. It's sewn into every cold November rain and sunrise that finds Natives still gathered and dancing their style around the arena of survival.

And don’t it make our brown eyes blue.