Saturday, July 18, 2015

In Spike Lee's movie..............Do the right thing...........he complains to the white restaurant owners that they do not have any pics of famous blacks in their restuarants..................but do u backstabbing cowards have any pics of Indians in yours??????  I doubt it................cowards.........whores......pimps and prostitutes...................and hypocrites.......just what is so great about u?



Bureau of Indian Affairs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Indian Office" redirects here. For the former British government department, see India Office.
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Seal of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs.svg
Seal of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
Flag of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs.svg
Flag of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
Agency overview
FormedMarch 11, 1824
Preceding AgencyOffice of Indian Affairs, United States Department of War
JurisdictionFederal Government of the United States
Headquarters1849 C Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20240
Employees8,701 Permanent (FY08)
Annual budget$2.4 billion (FY08)
Agency executivesKevin K. Washburn, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs
Michael R. Smith, Deputy Bureau Director (Field Operation)
Parent agencyUnited States Department of the Interior
Websitewww.BIA.gov
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the U.S. Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of 55,700,000 acres (225,000 km2) of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American Tribes and Alaska Natives.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is one of two bureaus under the jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, which provides education services to approximately 48,000 Native Americans.
The BIA’s responsibilities once included providing health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives. In 1954 that function was legislatively transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, now known as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where it has remained to this day as the Indian Health Service.

Organization[edit]

Located at 1849 C Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., since May 22, 2009, the BIA is headed by an Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. The current appointee is Kevin K. Washburn, an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.
The BIA serves the 566 federally recognized tribes through four offices:
  • The Office of Indian Services: operates the BIA’s general assistance, disaster relief, Indian child welfare, tribal government, Indian Self-Determination, and Indian Reservation Roads Program.
  • The Office of Justice Services (OJS): directly operates or funds law enforcement, tribal courts, and detention facilities on federal Indian lands. OJS funded 208 law enforcement agencies, consisting of 43 BIA-operated police agencies, and 165 tribally operated agencies under contract, or compact with the OJS. The office has seven areas of activity: Criminal Investigations and Police Services, Detention/Corrections, Inspection/Internal Affairs, Tribal Law Enforcement and Special Initiatives, the Indian Police Academy, Tribal Justice Support, and Program Management. The OJS also provides oversight and technical assistance to tribal law enforcement programs when and where requested. It operates four divisions: Corrections, Drug Enforcement, the Indian Police Academy, and Law Enforcement.[1]
  • The Office of Trust Services: works with tribes and individual American Indians and Alaska Natives in the management of their trust lands, assets, and resources.
  • The Office of Field Operations: oversees 12 regional offices; Alaska, Great Plains, Northwest, Southern Plains, Eastern, Navajo, Pacific, Southwest, Eastern Oklahoma, Midwest, Rocky Mountain, and Western; and 83 agencies, which carry out the mission of the Bureau at the tribal level.

History[edit]

Ely S. Parker was the first Native American to be appointed as Commissioner of Indian affairs (1869–1871).
Cato Sells, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1913.
First called the Office of Indian Affairs, the agency was created as a division in 1824 within the War Department. Similar agencies had existed in the U.S. government since 1775, when the Second Continental Congress created a trio of Indian-related agencies. Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry were appointed among the early commissioners to negotiate treaties with Native Americans to obtain theirneutrality during the American Revolutionary War.
In 1789, the U.S. Congress placed Native American relations within the newly formed War Department. By 1806 the Congress had created a Superintendent of Indian Trade, within the War Department, who was charged with maintaining the factory trading network of the fur trade. The post was held by Thomas L. McKenney from 1816 until the abolition of the factory system in 1822.
The government licensed traders to have some control in Indian territories and gain a share of the lucrative trade. In 1832 Congress established the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. In 1869, Ely Samuel Parker was the first Native American to be appointed as commissioner of Indian affairs.
The abolition of the factory system left a vacuum within the U.S. government regarding Native American relations. The current Bureau of Indian Affairs was formed on March 11, 1824, by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who created the agency as a division within his department, without authorization from the United States Congress. He appointed McKenney as the first head of the office, which went by several names. McKenney preferred to call it the "Indian Office", whereas the current name was preferred by Calhoun.
In 1849 Indian Affairs was transferred to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The bureau was renamed as Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947 (from the original Office of Indian Affairs). The Bureau of Indian Affairs has been involved in many controversial policies. One of the most controversial was the late 19th to early 20th century decision to educate native children in separate boarding schools, with an emphasis on assimilation that prohibited them from using their indigenous languages, practices, and cultures. It emphasized being educated to European-American culture.[2] Some were beaten for praying to their own creator god.[3]

20th century[edit]

1940 Indians at Work magazine, published by the Office of Indian Affairs, predecessor agency to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
With the rise of American Indian activism in the 1960s and 1970s, and increasing demands for enforcement of treaty rights and sovereignty, the 1970s were a particularly turbulent period of BIA history.[4] The rise of activist groups such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) worried the U.S. government; the FBI responded both overtly and covertly (by creating COINTELPRO and other programs) to suppress possible uprisings among native peoples.[5]
As a branch of the U.S. government with personnel on Indian reservations, BIA police were involved in political actions such as:
Feeling the government was ignoring them, the protesters vandalized the building. After a week, the protesters left, having caused $700,000 in damages. Many records were lost, destroyed or stolen, including irreplaceable treaties, deeds, and water rights records, which some Indian officials said could set the tribes back 50 to 100 years.[7][8][citation needed]
The BIA was implicated in supporting controversial tribal presidents, notably Dick Wilson, who was charged with being authoritarian; using tribal funds for a private paramilitaryforce, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (or "GOON squad"), which he employed against opponents; intimidation of voters in the 1974 election; misappropriation of funds, and other misdeeds.[10] Many native peoples continue to oppose policies of the BIA, particularly problems in enforcing treaties, and handling records and income for trust lands.

21st century[edit]

In 2013 the Bureau was greatly affected by sequestration funding cuts of $800 million, which particularly affected the already-underfunded Indian Health Service.[11][12]

Legal issues[edit]

Employee overtime[edit]

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has been sued four times in class action overtime lawsuits brought by the Federation of Indian Service Employees,[13] a union which represents the federal civilian employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education, the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs and the Office of the Special Trustee for Indian Affairs. The union is represented by the Law Offices of Snider & Associates, LLC,[14] which concentrates in FLSA overtime class actions against the federal government and other large employers. The grievances allege widespread violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act [15]and claims tens of millions of dollars in damages.

Trust assets[edit]

Cobell vs. Salazar, a major class action case related to trust lands, was settled in December 2009. The suit was filed against the U.S. Department of Interior, of which the BIA is part. A major responsibility has been the management of the Indian trust accounts. This was a class-action lawsuit regarding the federal government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 individual American Indian and Alaska Native trust accounts. A settlement fund totaling $3.4 billion is to be distributed to class members. This is to compensate for claims that prior U.S. officials had mismanaged the administration of Indian trust assets. In addition, the settlement establishes a $2 billion fund enabling federally recognized tribes to voluntarily buy-back and consolidate fractionated land interests.[16]

Mission[edit]

The Bureau is currently trying to evolve from a supervisory to an advisory role; however, this has been a difficult task as the BIA is known by many Native Americans as playing a police role in which the U.S. government historically dictated to tribes and their members what they could and could not do in accordance with treaties signed by both.[17]

Commissioners and Assistant Secretaries[edit]

Commissioners of Indian Affairs[18]

Heads of the Bureau of Indian Affairs[edit]

Commissioners of Indian Affairs[edit]

Assistant Secretaries of the Interior for Indian Affairs[18][edit]

See also[edit]

Portal iconIndigenous peoples of North America portal
Portal iconGovernment of the United States portal

References[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bureau of Indian Affairs (United States).
  1. Jump up^ "Who We Are", BIA
  2. Jump up^ Dennis Banks, "Ojibwa Warrior," 2004: 29–28
  3. Jump up^ Dennis Banks, "Ojibwa Warrior," 2004: 24
  4. Jump up^ Philip Worchel, Philip G. Hester and Philip S. Kopala, "Collective Protest and Legitimacy of Authority: Theory and Research," The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 18 (1) 1974): 37–54
  5. Jump up^ The COINTELPRO PAPERS – Chapter 7: COINTELPRO – AIM[dead link]
  6. Jump up^ Paul Smith and Robert Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, New York: The New Press, 1996.
  7. Jump up^ "Stop bandwidth theft!". Maquah.net. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  8. Jump up^ "Stop bandwidth theft!". Maquah.net. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  9. Jump up^ "American Indian Rights Activist Vernon Bellecourt", Washington Post, 14 October 2007
  10. Jump up^ Ward Churchill, Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, South End Press, 2002.
  11. Jump up^ Gale Courey Toensing (March 27, 2013). "Sequestration Grounds Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs". Indian Country Today. Retrieved March 28, 2013.
  12. Jump up^ Editorial Board (March 20, 2013). "The Sequester Hits the Reservation" (EDITORIAL). The New York Times. Retrieved March 28, 2013.
  13. Jump up^ "FEDERATION OF INDIAN SERVICE EMPLOYEES - AFT - AFL/CIO, Local 4524 - Home". Ief.aft.org. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  14. Jump up^ "Overtime Lawyer Website". Overtime.com. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  15. Jump up^ Wikipedia Article on FLSA
  16. Jump up^ “Cobell vs. Salazar Lawsuit”. doi.gov/tribes/special-trustee.cfm. Office of Special Trustee, n.d. Web. April 24, 2011
  17. Jump up^ author (2011-05-25). "From War to Self-Determination: the Bureau of Indian Affairs". Americansc.org.uk. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
  18. ^ Jump up to:a b "U.S. government departments and offices, etc". Rulers.org. Retrieved 2012-06-08.

Additional reading[edit]

  • Belko, William S. "'John C. Calhoun and the Creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs: An Essay on Political Rivalry, Ideology, and Policymaking in the Early Republic," South Carolina Historical Magazine 2004 105(3): 170–197. ISSN 0038-3082
  • Cahill, Cathleen D. Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (U of North Carolina Press, 2011) 368 pp. online review
  • Deloria, Jr., Vine, and David E. Wilkins, Tribes, Treaties, & Constitutional Tribulations (Austin, 1999)
  • Jackson, Helen H. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the U. S. Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes (1881) online edition
  • Leupp, F. E. The Indian and His Problem (1910) online edition
  • Meriam, Lewis, et al., The Problem of Indian Administration, Studies in Administration, 17 (Baltimore, 1928)
  • Pevar, Stephen L. The Rights of Indians and Tribes (Carbondale, 2002)
  • Prucha, Francis P. Atlas of American Indian Affairs (Lincoln, 1990)
  • Prucha, Francis P. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Abridged Edition 1986) excerpt and text search
  • Schmeckebier, L. F. Office of Indian Affairs: History, Activities,and Organization, Service Monograh 48 (Baltimore 1927)
  • Sutton, I. "Indian Country and the Law: Land Tenure, Tribal Sovereignty, and the States," ch. 36 in Law in the Western United States, ed. G. M. Bakken (Norman, 2000)

Primary sources[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bureau of Indian Affairs (United States).
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