Bureau of Indian Affairs

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Bureau of Indian Affairs File:BIA.png Full Name: Office of Indian Affairs (formerly) Bureau of Indian Affairs Alias: BIA Bossing Indians Around Apples Origin: United States Foundation: March 11, 1824 headquarters Washington D.C., United States Goals: Assimilate Native Americans into white culture (ongoing). Crimes: Institutionalized oppression Abuse of power Cultural Genocide Forced assimilation Mass kidnapping Censorship Hate Speech Anti-Native American Sentiment Xenophobia Racial segregation Human rights violations Crimes against humanity Police brutality Propaganda Torture

“	When the bureau approaches tribal leaders for support on an issue, it may be an offer they cannot refuse. The agency has so much discretion in the allocation of funds, authorization of tribal programs, and development of reservation resources, that it can if it chooses hold up on any one of a number of actions beneficial to a tribe until it agrees to pay a ransom in the form of public support. It is like the warden asking his prisoners to say good things to the inspection committee. The power of the agency to reward and punish cooperation deprives the tribes of any free choice in the matter.	„
	~ Russel Lawrence Barsh and James Youngblood Henderson, The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. It regulates the affairs of Native American nations in the United States and is responsible for many human rights violations of Native Americans living on reservations. The BIA has been characterized by some as one of the United States' most grossly irresponsible federal agencies.

Biography

“	They are lazy, drug addicts, and alcoholics who rely on the government to survive.	„
	~ A racist stigma theory projected by the BIA.

Ever since its establishment in 1824, the BIA has been regulating federal policies on Native American tribes throughout the United States and having control over their lands through federal trusts. The BIA was responsible for the forced removal of Native Americans to reservations and also implemented assimilation policies projected onto Native Americans, from removing children from their families to attend schools to forcibly relocating tribal members to cities.

To this day, Native Americans are left as disadvantaged on their own lands due to a racist stigma theory projected by the BIA that portrays Amerindians as wards who are incapable of managing their own lands as well as being primitive socialists with no understanding of property rights, as their cultures are viewed as incompatible with market institutions. In addition, the 55 million acres of land on Native American reservations are held in trust by the federal government, which deprives the reservation residents of their rights to control their property, which leaves many reservations in a state of poverty.

The BIA also uses racist blood quantum laws to define a person's "Indianess" based on the degree of their native ancestry, which is an effective way to destroy indigenous communities based on race.

Events

On March 11, 1824, the Indian Office was established under the War Department by Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to administer the relations between Native American tribes and the U.S. Government before it was eventually moved to the newly-created Department of the Interior in 1849. The BIA was responsible for the mass deportations of American Indians as well as the establishment of reservations to make space for farming for white settlers.

When Lakota chief Sitting Bull and his tribe participated in a religious movement known as the "Ghost Dance" in an attempt to restore peace with Native Americans and remove the white settlers from their land, the BIA sent Indian agents led by Lieutenant Henry Bullhead to arrest Sitting Bull. When the chief refused to comply, his warriors came to his aid and attacked the officers, which led to the assassination of Sitting Bull. After Colonel James W. Forsyth orchestrated the Wounded Knee Massacre to crush the Ghost Dance uprising, the BIA portrayed the massacre as a battle and President Benjamin Harrison awarded 20 of the soldiers Medals of Honor.

Under the Dawes Act of 1887, the BIA began to remove indigenous children from their families to hundreds of boarding schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in an attempt to assimilate them into white culture, based off Colonel Richard Pratt's ideologies to "kill the Indian and save the man". This practice remained in force until President Lyndon Johnson ended this policy. After boarding schools began to close, the BIA then forced many indigenous people to move to urban areas away from their reservations. In addition, the BIA began removing children from their families to have them adopted by white families, while claiming them to be orphans under the Indian Child Welfare Act.

In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act was passed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a means to reverse the assimilation policies on Native Americans and grant the tribes sovereignty. The act was also passed to use blood quantum laws that require tribal governments to only accept those that have native ancestry into their communities.

In 1972, a Native American activist movement known as the American Indian Movement took over the BIA office to raise awareness of the BIA's abuses of indigenous people living on reservations during a caravan referred to as the "Trail of Broken Treaties". In 1997, when Principal Chief Joe Byrd ordered the illegal impeachment of the justice system of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the BIA recklessly and illegally intervened to assume control of the political affairs of the Cherokee Nation and they remained in place until Byrd lost the election to Chad "Corntassel" Smith in 1999.

In 2007, when human rights activist Russell Means proposed that the Lakota nation should have an independent country, the BIA stated that the withdrawal "doesn't mean anything" and that the tribal governments would violate the people's rights.

There have recently been reports of reservation residents being killed by BIA officers, particularly in the Dakotas. One example involved a man named David Suarez getting fatally shot by a BIA officer in the Spirit Lake reservation in North Dakota, which led to an investigation by the FBI, who concluded that three other people were involved in the conflict and none of them were injured.

Trivia

• The BIA has been characterized as the main source of misfortunes for the lives of Native Americans living on reservations.
• The BIA played a major role in the American Indian Wars during the 1800's, as well as the Amerindian Genocide in the United States.
• Some of the residents living on the Native American reservations have referred to the indigenous employees working for the BIA as "apples", as they're considered "red on the outside and white on the inside".
• Some critics have compared the reservation system to the "Jim Crow" system that suppressed African-Americans in the South and the concentration camps under the Nazi regime.