Word: bia
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...began in 1939. But family members say Grandpa Bruno never knew how much oil and gas were being taken out of his land or how much money he was due from their sale. All his royalty payments went into a trust fund managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). If Bruno needed to buy something, he had to appeal to the local BIA agent, and he was rarely given cash. When he wanted to buy a cow, the price was deducted from his account and given directly to the seller. When he bought groceries, he paid for them with...
...holdings under the Dawes Act of 1887. Its allotment program was an effort by Congress to break up the tribal structure by encouraging self-sufficiency among the Indians. The Dawes Act mandated that the land given to Natives be managed by the Department of the Interior's local BIA agent and promised that any profits from the property would be held in trust for its owners. The problem, say hundreds of families like the Brunos, is that the owners received relatively little of the money coming to them...
Consider the BIA's distribution of tribal-priority-allocation (TPA) funds to tribes. Each year the BIA hands out about $800 million for basic programs such as general assistance to individual Indians and families, vocational training and child welfare. While TPA funding is a small fraction of the BIA's total spending on Native Americans, it underscores how awry the system has gone. In President Bush's 2003 budget proposal, the 28,000 Turtle Mountain Chippewa in North Dakota, 68% of whom are unemployed, will receive the equivalent of an average $154 each. But the 400 members of the Miccosukee...
...twice criticized the BIA's distribution system, pointing out that "tribes with the highest reported revenues can receive more TPA base funds than other tribes with no revenues or with losses." Congress directed the BIA to report by April 1, 1999, "on alternative methods for distributing TPA funds, taking into account tribal revenues and the relative needs of tribes and tribal members." While acknowledging funding inequities, the BIA will not change the system. One reason: the tribes view such government funding as an entitlement. As an official of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians--a tribe in Minnesota with...
Such inequities occur not only with BIA funds. A TIME examination of spending by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shows that tribes with casinos often pull in more HUD money per capita than casino-less, poor tribes. Over the past four years, while HUD has handed the Florida Seminoles housing funds averaging $2,800 per member, the tribe's five casinos have generated nearly $1 billion in revenue. The Mississippi Choctaw tribe, with its lucrative Silver Star Resort & Casino, pocketed an average of $5,900 in HUD funds per person. By contrast, the Navajo, the country...