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Fugate, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
• Fugate said tribes will be able to choose whether to make a request directly to the president or to get assistance through a state disaster declaration as they do now.
• Those tribes that seek direct aid will have to meet certain requirements, including having a percentage of matching funds and disaster plans in place.
• Robert Holden, deputy director of the National Congress of American Indians, said the change is a boost to tribal sovereignty and will help eliminate delays that can be critical when responding to emergencies.
• "It was the frustration over the years in terms of the interaction and the process and how tribal lands and citizens have been shortchanged and left stranded by natural and technical disasters," he said. "It's just unfair and inequitable, and we're just trying to right what should be righted."
• Holden noted that many tribal communities are in rural areas and sometimes encompass lands larger than some states.
• At Santa Clara Pueblo, two-thirds of the tribe's forests have been charred by wildfires that have started outside the reservation's boundaries over the last 14 years. The most recent one has left the tribe with the threat of flooding for the past two summers.
• In Montana, floodwaters from the Little Bighorn River and other waterways devastated parts of the Crow Indian Nation in 2011, swamping homes, businesses and churches.
• A Havasupai village at the bottom of the Grand Canyon -- accessible only by foot, mule or helicopter -- was flooded in 2010, forcing the evacuation of tourists and causing more than $1.6 million in damages. That marked the first disaster declaration in Arizona for which a sovereign tribal nation was the sole applicant.
• "There are just numerous instances where not only property but lives have been lost and there has been economic disruption," Holden said. "It's throughout Indian Country. Disasters aren't restricted to certain areas."
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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- "Skin-freezing cold" may not be the scientific term. But the dangerously cold weather that settled over the Dakotas on Thursday was just that -- cold enough to freeze skin within minutes.
• The National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories and warnings throughout both North Dakota and South Dakota into Friday morning. Forecasters said wind

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