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White House pledges $135 million to relocate Indigenous communities
CGTN
White House pledges $135 million to relocate Indigenous communities

U.S. President Biden announced on Wednesday a $135 million commitment “to help 11 tribal communities from Maine, Louisiana, Arizona, Washington State and Alaska to move, in some cases, their entire communities back to safer ground,” as rising sea levels put their homes and lands at risk. 

 The package will help create systematic steps the U.S. federal government can use to help other communities in the United States that need to relocate from areas at risk from a changing climate.Some Indigenous American communities have already become federally-funded climate transplants.  

In 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development distributed $48 million for the Isle de Jean Charles residents, most of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw heritage, to move off the island, part of a $1 billion federal grant package to help areas impacted by climate change.

The Biden administration pledged $75 million to three Native tribes, one in Washington state and two in Alaska, to use to move their central buildings and eventually their housing away from coastal areas and rivers to what Biden called “safer ground,“and another eight tribes will receive $5 million to relocate in the future.

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White House pledges $135 million to relocate Indigenous communities
White House pledges $135 million to relocate Indigenous communities

Biden spoke on the opening day of the two-day White House Tribal Nations Summit to representatives from hundreds of Native American and Alaska Native tribes at the Department of the Interior.

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