WASHINGTON, DC-The shutdown of the U.S. government, coming on top of the sequestration of the budget, hit Indian Country particularly hard. Programs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service were already underfunded. Sequestration, in the form of across the board cuts, took its toll earlier this year and the shutdown has led to a second round of pain.

"You're already looking at a good number of tribes who are considered the poorest of our nation's people," Jacqueline Pata, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, told The New York Times. "When yo...