Bureau of Indian Affairs

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the U.S. federal executive agency charged with oversight of “recognized” Indian tribes and discharge of its “trust” responsibility over them. The BIA is the oldest federal agency in continuous existence. In what has been described as “the largest land trust in the world,” the BIA has jurisdiction over 55.7 million acres of land (“Indian Country,” i.e., lands created by statute: reservations, dependent communities, and allotments) held in trust by the United States for American Indians and Alaska Natives. (Some federally recognized tribes, however, are landless.) The Snyder Act of 1921 authorizes the BIA to “direct, supervise, and expend such moneys as Congress may from time to time appropriate, for the benefit, care, and assistance of the Indians throughout the United States”; for “administration of Indian affairs,” including “general support and civilization”; and for “relief of distress and conservation of health.” In executing its federal trust obligation to American Indians, the BIA oversees Native land and water, heritage preservation, energy and minerals, probate, Indian gaming, law and order, fish and wildlife, health and human services, housing, education, tribal economic development, trust fund management and reform, and self-determination and self-governance. Thus, the BIA exercises federal superintendence on a massive scale.

American Indians have a unique status under American law. Administrative responsibility for congressional policies affecting American Indians and Alaska Natives rests primarily with the BIA. BIA history, therefore, is closely tied to congressional policies, which have undergone dramatic shifts over the course of the BIA's existence. Indian history—and the history of the BIA as an integral part of it—may be periodized in time periods reflecting distinctive phases of American Indian policy: Removal and Relocation (1828–1887), Reservation and Allotment (1887–1934), Reorganization and Self-Government (1934–1946), Termination and Relocation (1946–1961), and the Self-Determination Era (1961-present). Consequently, the BIA has an anomalous and complex relationship with Indian nations.

Tribal recognition is a requirement for BIA services. By 1871, when Congress abolished treaty making with Indian nations, a total of 372 distinct tribes were recognized. Of these, 258 tribes were acknowledged under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. As of 2007, there are a total of 561 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, which now maintains “government-to-government” relationships with these American Indian nations. BIA services do not extend to unacknowledged Native tribes, however. In theory, while BIA nonrecognition may deprive a tribe of statutory benefits, it cannot divest that tribe's vested treaty rights. Thus, the BIA panoptically “sees” only “recognized” American Indian tribes (as opposed to unacknowledged Indian “groups”) and oversees these Indian nations as “wards”—while now committed to respecting their internal sovereignty and taking measures to restore to American Indian nations some measure of their precolonial independence. This is far easier said than done.

As a general rule of policy, the BIA oscillates between two polar opposites: Native American sovereignty and tribal dependence. Despite colonial recognition of Native American sovereignty, Native tribes constitute, under U.S. law, “domestic, dependent [Page 216]nations”—thus precluding domestic and international political recognition yet theoretically ensuring them self-government. “Domestic, dependent nations” are powerful federal Indian law words that sound in U.S. Supreme Court cases and resound throughout the entire body of federal Indian law and corresponding BIA regulations.

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