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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (130106)	4/26/2004 11:00:00 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

It's not the duty of state governments to draw up vaccination plans for Indian reservations. Indian reservations are sovereign nations, not subject to state law or state control (in general). You're disagreement is not that the statement is inaccurate, it's you're argument that the statement is accurate but it is appropriately accurate. The States have no duty to include vaccination plans for the Indian reservations, therefore they don't. You see no difference between Mexico and a reservation in, e.g., Wyoming, because they are sovereign nations. That's myopic. The substantive difference is that an Indian reservation is an enclave within a State's border. Occupied by persons that can contract smallpox and further spread it within State borders. Hardly comparable to Mexico. The State can pretend that Mexico doesn't exist, but it would be folly to take the attitude that the reservation doesn't exist or it's not my job. The particular State, at a minimum, has to know how and when the populace will be receive vaccine. That includes the reservations. This is not a situation where normal day to day relationships between Federal Agencies and the reservations are sacrosanct. This is an emergency plan that is being put into play. Being a sovereign territory does not preclude or prohibit communication between the reservation and the particular State. It is both appropriate and respecting of sovereignty for the particular State to approach the reservation and ask along the lines of...I'm guessing that you folks might be interested in smallpox vaccine, how do you expect and when do you expect to receive it? What measures do I have to take to make sure that the distribution occurs? How will I find out when you've vaccinated those persons on the reservations? You can expect if there is a significant outbreak of smallpox, the "plan" is more extensive than vaccinations. It will include road blocks, airport closings and other activities designed to limit the spread of the disease while vaccinating the population is occurring. There is nothing that would prohibit a particular State, to be the distributing agent for the CDC in such a circumstance. Nor do I see any requirement that all reservations within all States have exactly the same method of distribution. The States, the IHS, the CDC, and the reservations should all be working and communicating. I would also expect that the D.C. vaccination plan would include foreign embassies as well. For the same reason, it's a foreign enclave within D.C. whose occupants can contract and spread the disease. It would be utterly stupid for D.C. to ignore the embassies because the are "sovereign territory". jttmab