These damages in Indigenous communities represent a small share of total damages in the US (1 percent) but amount to more than five times the federal disaster recovery grant funding Indigenous communities received over the same period from FEMA. By contrast, damages to non-Indigenous communities in the US were only slightly greater than total recovery grant funding from FEMA (roughly 1.2 times). Though FEMA is not the only source of federal recovery funds, this highlights how disasters are a constant and disproportionate drain on Indigenous economies

Our analysis shows that since 2016, Indigenous communities have been frequently affected by major disasters, with more than half of all Indigenous communities experiencing two or more presidentially declared disasters.

About 53 percent of these communities have experienced two or more disasters within a two-year span during the last decade. Back-to-back disasters can compound the difficulties communities face in responding and recovering because their economic and social infrastructures are already destabilized. These challenges underscore the need for communities to be prepared and have the resources to recover quickly.

Indigenous communities face disproportionately high risks from future disasters

Using FEMA’s National Risk Index (NRI), we find that the median Indigenous community is more likely to experience higher per capita damages—including harms to buildings, agriculture, and people—from future disasters than the median US county.

Though projected per-capita damages vary across communities, a small number of communities are disproportionately burdened because of their exposure to catastrophic, low-probability events such as tsunamis, avalanches, and wildfires.

Our analyses reveal that Indigenous communities not only have relatively higher levels of disaster exposure (as shown by their Estimated Annual Losses), but also have higher NRI risk scores. These risk scores combine three factors:

1. Exposure: whether people and assets, such as buildings, infrastructure, crops, and cultural places, are likely to be damaged by hazards;
2. Social vulnerability: conditions that make hazards more harmful and harder to recover from. For example, a wildfire could be more harmful in a community with a high rate of chronic health conditions, because smoke can exacerbate such conditions and lead to acute health crises; and
3. Resilience to hazards: physical and social assets that minimize the effects of hazards and allow communities to recover more quickly, such as a backup power source that could sustain critical healthcare facilities during a hurricane-induced power outage.

Indigenous communities are more exposed to and have greater risks from disasters, reflecting historic and persistent federal policies that have contributed to economic instability, poor health outcomes, and inadequate infrastructure in Indigenous communities.

Disproportionately higher rates of poverty (PDF) and lower rates of home and flood insurance coverage make it more difficult to repair damage quickly. Higher rates of chronic health conditions and undermaintained infrastructure, such as housing, roads, and sewer and water, imperil residents’ safety and well-being, slow evacuation and recovery efforts, and increase recovery costs and timelines.

Hazards may be unavoidable, but the systemic conditions that put Indigenous communities at greater risk can be addressed. Access to federal funding is key to ensuring Indigenous communities can recover from disasters and mitigate the impacts of future disasters.

Disaster declarations can help Indigenous communities access recovery funding

Presidential disaster declarations are a key mechanism for accessing federal funding when a disaster exceeds a community’s resources and capacity to respond.

Until 2013, federally recognized tribes and ANVs couldn’t request a presidential disaster declaration—they could only participate in state-led requests. Federally recognized tribes and ANVs gained the ability to request a declaration directly under the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013. This change both recognizes their status as sovereign nations and enables them to pursue declarations when a disaster’s effects are concentrated within an Indigenous community but have limited impacts across the state more broadly.

In 2013, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a tribal nation in North Carolina, became the first federally recognized tribe to directly request and receive a presidential disaster declaration after torrential rain, severe flooding, and landslides caused more than $54 million in damages. The declaration triggered $3.3 million in federal assistance, of which about $1.3 million was contingent on the Tribe having a FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan in place. These funds helped the Tribe stabilize slopes, repair roads, and resume operations at the Sequoyah National Golf Club, a major source of tourism revenue.

The Tribe’s experiences highlight the magnitude of recovery funding that presidential disaster declarations can unlock, as well as the importance of having a FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan before a disaster occurs.

FEMA is the largest federal funder of disaster recovery in Indigenous communities. From 2015 to 2025, FEMA awarded just over $860 million in recovery funding to federally recognized tribes, ANVs, and the territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands communities. This included roughly $610 million in Public Assistance (PA) funding for government entities and just over $250 million through the Individuals and Households Program (IHP), which provides recovery resources directly to households.

Funding from FEMA’s Public Assistance and Individuals and Households Programs Can Help Indigenous Communities Recover After a Disaster

Funding FEMA awarded to Indigenous communities, by program and year, 2015–25

Sources: OpenFEMA data from Public Assistance Funded Project Summaries V1 and Individuals and Households Program – Valid Registrations V2.

Notes: FEMA = Federal Emergency Management Agency; IHP = Individuals and Households Program; PA = Public Assistance. Funding is denominated in 2025 dollars. Indigenous communities captured in the figure include federally recognized communities in Alaska and the contiguous US as well as the county equivalents in the US territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Awards to the US territories are weighted by the share of the population that is Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. PA awards are net of deobligated funding.

Communities can use PA funds to hire disaster recovery staff or restore and improve a community’s physical and economic infrastructure. For example, a community that was hit by a major flood that damaged its wastewater treatment facilities could use these funds to cover repairs and adjustments to the facility to make future storm damages less likely.

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Disaster Loans are another major source of recovery funding for Indigenous communities. SBA makes disaster loans to households (both renters and homeowners), businesses, and some nonprofit organizations. These loans are designed to supplement private insurance and FEMA's IHP by covering physical property damage to homes and businesses and supporting businesses that have suffered “substantial economic injury.”

From 2013 to 2022, we find that SBA made $280 million in loans to businesses and households in Indigenous communities—an average of about $28 million per year. More than half of the loan volume during this window was lent in fiscal year 2019, when SBA approved tens of millions of dollars each for disasters including Super Typhoon Yutu in the Northern Mariana Islands, severe storms and tornadoes in Oklahoma, and the Cook Inlet Earthquake in Alaska. 

In Most Years, SBA Disaster Loan Volumes to Indigenous Communities Are Small, but 2019 Was an Outlier

SBA disaster loan amounts by loan type, fiscal years 2013–22

Sources: Approved loan amounts from SBA’s Disaster Loan Data.

Notes: SBA = Small Business Administration. Data from 2022 is the most recent SBA has published. Funding is denominated in 2025 dollars. Indigenous communities captured in the figure include federally recognized tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and county equivalents in the US territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Funding in the US territories is weighted by the share of the population that is Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

SBA disaster loans can be a valuable resource for businesses and households. However, this support is a loan—not a grant—and thus requires full repayment, which may be a barrier for prospective borrowers. 

Because households and businesses must directly apply for SBA loans, economic development planners can help their communities access these loans by raising awareness and coordinating with SBA staff to address community members’ questions and concerns.

Post-disaster recovery support from FEMA and SBA can provide Indigenous communities critical assistance in the wake of a disaster. Ultimately, however, communities will also need mitigation funding to reduce harms from future disasters.

Hazard mitigation is key to reducing harm from future disasters

Hazard mitigation projects help limit damages from disasters, saving communities roughly $6 per $1 invested (PDF) and leading to fewer injuries and deaths. Projects such as elevating homes to avoid flooding or building a community tornado shelter can help build stronger Indigenous communities that experience less disruption from disasters and quickly rebound and grow after disasters strike.

Several FEMA programs provide funding for hazard mitigation projects. These include the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and the Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA), Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC), and Legislative Pre-Disaster Mitigation (LPDM) programs.

Between 2000 and 2019, HMGP provided the largest share of mitigation funds to Indigenous communities, a total of $71 million. In more recent years, BRIC has significantly expanded Indigenous communities’ access to mitigation funding. Though Congress created it in 2018, and the first funding cycle wasn’t until fiscal year 2020, BRIC awards through 2025 to date account for $220 million. That’s more than half of all hazard mitigation funds awarded to Indigenous communities from 2000 to 2025.

Funding awarded through BRIC fell sharply in 2025, but FEMA recently closed the FY 2024–25 funding opportunity and is likely to make new grants in the coming months. 

To apply for BRIC, LPDM, and HMGP funding for mitigation projects, communities must first have a FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan—and many Indigenous communities don’t. Beyond unlocking funding opportunities, mitigation plans are useful tools that offer a comprehensive assessment of a community’s specific disaster risks and prioritize actions to reduce those risks.

Both FEMA’s HMGP and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) offer funding Indigenous communities can use to create or update a mitigation plan and identify what projects would benefit the community most.

Economic planning efforts can also integrate hazard mitigation and resilience priorities and projects. For example, the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA’s) Planning grant program provides funds to Indigenous communities to develop economic development plans that promote economic resilience to disasters. A Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy and other qualifying economic development plans can unlock access to funding from EDA’s Public Works and Economic Adjustment Assistance grant programs—both of which can support a range of resilience-promoting projects.

Having a hazard mitigation plan in place has helped the Lummi Nation assess and prepare for riverine and coastal flooding, coastal erosion, tsunamis, and other hazards. Located between Bellingham Bay and Salish Sea, near the Nooksack River in Washington State, the tribe has experienced multiple severe flooding events in recent years, including the atmospheric rivers that swamped much of Washington state in December 2025 and prompted a presidential disaster declaration.

The Lummi Nation has been updating its multi-hazard mitigation plan for over 20 years to reflect changing conditions and publishes a recurring report on implementation progress that addresses flood insurance, road elevations, and a range of planned activities that still require funding. After storms damaged a seawall in 2017 and 2018 (PDF), the plan helped unlock FEMA funding for repairs. A separate HMGP award in 2013 helped the Tribe buy out private property located on a floodplain to mitigate the Tribe’s riverine and coastal flooding risk.

Hazard mitigation activities also present opportunities for tribes to establish working relationships with federal and local government agencies and to tailor responses to local needs.

Located in east-central Arizona, the large Fort Apache Reservation, home to the White Mountain Tribe, spans 2,500 square miles, many of which are at high risk of wildfires. The Tribe has a longstanding history of mitigation and response efforts, including the first BIA-certified Native American hotshot crew and a network of fire lookout towers.

These efforts previously relied on maps and data from the US Forest Service that focused heavily on the built environment, instead of the timber, hunting grounds and historical and sacred sites that are core to the Tribe’s economy and cultural practices.

The Tribe now coordinates with government and non-governmental partners, including the US Geological Survey, to assess risk using a tribally led quantitative wildfire risk assessment that is tailored to the Tribe’s cultural values and economic priorities. The Tribe also uses this assessment to set priorities and mitigation methods, including prescribed burns and mechanical thinning activities conducted by White Mountain Apache Tribal Forestry in coordination with staff at the BIA’s Fort Apache Agency.

Community relocation is an important hazard mitigation option for low-lying communities exposed to the highest levels of risk.

Located in Western Alaska along the Bering Sea, the Alaska Native Village of Kipnuk has faced increasingly frequent and severe flooding associated with sea level rise. Destruction of food stockpiles, houses, and infrastructure wrought by Typhoon Halong in 2025 prompted widespread community support for relocation.

Though the State of Alaska received a presidential disaster declaration that included Kipnuk, Alaska did not receive dedicated hazard mitigation assistance (PDF) as part of the declaration. The State told the Village that funds could only support recovery, which would help stabilize the community while they pursued the longer-term process of relocation planning.

Later, in 2025 and 2026, the Village received its own presidential disaster declarations, allowing it to access FEMA assistance directly. Still, the community will need more hazard mitigation funding to plan and implement a community relocation.

In the coming years, Indigenous communities are likely to face billions more dollars in disaster damages if they can’t access the resources needed to reduce their exposure, increase their resilience, and decrease their vulnerability to natural hazards.

Advancing Indigenous communities’ resilience

Federal agencies can better support Indigenous communities’ resilience by aligning program planning processes, recommendations, and funding frameworks with Indigenous priorities, contexts, and governmental structures.

Federal policymakers and agencies can do the following: 

• Consider opportunities to design disaster recovery and hazard mitigation programs in collaboration with Indigenous communities. For example, in 2013, FEMA created a pilot process to enable tribal nations to directly request a presidential disaster declaration. With input from tribes, the agency revised and standardized that process in 2024. Formal tribal consultations are another mechanism for directly soliciting and addressing tribes’ considerations. For example, EDA conducted a consultation in 2024 (PDF) to inform development of project forms tailored to projects on tribal trust lands.

  Similar collaborative, iterative processes could help to address other challenges inhibiting Indigenous disaster resilience, such as how land tenure on tribal lands can complicate the use of real estate as loan collateral, or how short grant program application windows often do not align with tribal government reviews and timelines. Collaborative approaches could also help design programs for community relocation of Alaska Native Villages, such as Kipnuk.

• Improve data relevance and standardization for Indigenous communities. Data are critical to ensuring communities have the information they need to apply for funding and plan and implement projects. Yet in many cases, federal agencies either don’t publish relevant data, or they do so at geographic scales that don’t align with Indigenous geographies. 

  Coordination across federal agencies and with Indigenous stakeholders could ensure data are more responsive to Indigenous communities’ needs, often without requiring any new data collection efforts. For example, agencies could aggregate and directly report data for each federally recognized tribe, similar to how agencies publish statistics for municipal and county governments.

  Agencies also use different identifiers for the same communities, making it difficult to link and make comparisons across data sets. Instead, agencies could adopt the Census Bureau’s standard set of identifiers for Indigenous communities.

In the meantime, there are several steps Indigenous leaders, economic development practitioners, and other staff can take to advance their communities’ disaster resilience.

• Create or update your community’s hazard mitigation plan. An up-to-date plan provides your community with a roadmap for pursuing funding, prioritizing needs and solutions, and effectively implementing projects. Many federal programs require a community to have a hazard mitigation plan to apply for funding. Aligning a hazard mitigation plan alongside other plans, such as a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy or land use plan, can help ensure that development is coordinated and responsive to hazard risk.
• Evaluate your community’s eligibility for federal, state, and philanthropic funding opportunities. FEMA and SBA are not the only sources of disaster funding. If your community was recently covered by a presidentially declared disaster, you may be eligible for the EDA’s Disaster Supplemental Grant program or broader Disaster Recovery funding. Additionally, state funding programs, including those specific to Indigenous disaster resilience, can offer more flexible funding.
• Establish planning, funding, and implementation partnerships with state, local, and non-governmental institutions. Disasters inherently span political and legal boundaries, and many Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities share similar disaster risk profiles and infrastructure. Emergency and hazard mitigation plans that codify shared responsibilities (PDF), as well as strong relationships between staff across jurisdictions, can prepare Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments to quickly and effectively collaborate after disasters occur.