Word: bia
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...Deer, Assistant Secretary of the Interior and head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A ferocious appropriations bill passed last month by the Senate, outdoing an only slightly less severe offering by the House, slashes the bureau's $1.7 billion budget a third. Deer has announced that the BIA may lay off up to 4,000 of its 12,000 employees by month's end, the most drastic personnel cut currently being contemplated by any federal agency. Just as important, the Senate bill targets moneys that bulwark greater tribal autonomy. Says Kurt Russo, coordinator of the Treaty Task Force...
...government executives ranked it the least respected of 90 federal agencies, with the Indian Health Service close behind. An effort to restructure the bureau was halted by Congress until a task force of Native Americans could be assembled for consultation. But hope for progress runs thin: "Restructuring the BIA," one tribal leader noted, "is like rotating four worn-out tires...
Back around the turn of the century, the Federal Government's "progressive" policy toward Native Americans amounted to forced assimilation. The BIA shipped Indian children off to boarding schools, gave them Anglo names and banned their Native tongues and religious rituals. Each generation moved further from tribal tradition, to the point where languages, which were entirely oral, and skills, such as basketmaking, were in danger of disappearing. After decades of drift, tribes that have begun to focus on preserving their heritage for the next generation have also reduced their rates of teen suicide, illiteracy, addiction and despair...
...MacDonald denies the litany of charges lodged at his mahogany door. He claims that the testimony in Washington is unsubstantiated and unfair and that he is the victim of an attempt to divert attention from mismanagement in the BIA...
Real Bird said that while under the management of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Crow could not substantially promote their economy because of the bureaucracy involved in running the Montana reservation...