Bureau of Indian Affairs

Mission Statement      The Bureau of Indian Affairs' mission is to fulfill its trust responsibilities and promote self-determination on behalf of Tribal Governments, American Indians and Alaska Natives.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) responsibility is the administration and management of 55.7 million acres of land held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. Developing forestlands, leasing assets on these lands, directing agricultural programs, protecting water and land rights, developing and maintaining infrastructure, providing for health and human services, and economic development are all part of this responsibility taken in cooperation with the American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Since its inception on March 11, 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been a witness to and the principle player  in the history of federal-tribal relations.  Once an instrument of federal policies to subjugate and assimilate American Indian tribes and their peoples, the BIA has changed dramatically as have those policies over the past 177 years.

In the early years of the United States, Indian affairs were governed by the Continental Congress, which in 1775 created a Committee on Indian Affairs headed by Benjamin Franklin.  Fifty years later, the BIA was established under the War Department, and eventually moved to the Interior Department in 1949.

For well over a century-

• starting from the General Allotment Act of 1887 which opened Indian lands west of the Mississippi to non-Indian settlers, 
     
• through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 when American Indians and Alaska Natives were granted the right to vote,
     
• through the New Deal and enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 that established modern tribal governments,
     
• through the World War II period of relocation and the post-War termination era of the 1950's,
     
• through the activism of the 1960s and 1970s that saw the takeover of the BIA's headquarters,
     
• to the passage of landmark legislation such as the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and the Tribal Self-Governance Act of 1994 which have fundamentally changed how the BIA and its constituency do business with each, 

The Bureau has continued to embody the trust and government-to-government relationships between the United States and the 562 tribal nations and Alaska villages.

Since 1824, there have been 45 Commissioners of Indian Affairs, six of whom have been American Indian or Alaska Native. 

Since 1977, when the Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs position was created, there have been six men and one woman, all American Indians in the position.

The past thirty years have also seen the largest number of American Indian and Alaska Native people working for the BIA -- about 89 percent of its 10,786 employees.

BIA currently provides federal services to approximately 1.5 million American Indians and Alaska Natives who are members of more than 562 federally recognized Indian tribes and Alaska villages in the 32 contiguous United States and in Alaska.    The Bureau administers 45.6 million acres of tribally-owned land, 10 million acres of individually-owned land, and 309,189 acres of federally-owned land which is held in trust status.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is a rarity among federal agencies.  With roots reaching back to the Continental Congress, the BIA is almost as old as the United States itself.  For most of its existence, the BIA has mirrored the American public's ambivalence towards the Nation's indigenous peoples by carrying out federal policies that had helped or hurt them.  But, as federal policy has evolved away from the subjugation and assimilation of American Indian and Alaska Native people and into one of partnership and service to them, so has the BIA's mission.

For more information on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, please visit the BIA web site.