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6 unusual facts about Bureau of Indian Affairs


Black Elk Speaks

In the summer of 1930, as part of his research into the Native American perspective on the Ghost Dance movement, the poet and writer John Neihardt, already the Nebraska Poet Laureate, received permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation with his two daughters to meet an Oglala holy man and shaman named Black Elk.

Greenville Goodwin

Following the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which enabled tribes to create self-government again, H. Scudder McKeel, a social anthropologist for the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, hired Goodwin to help work with the possible formation of a San Carlos Apache government.

Hagbard Celine

A former naturalized United States citizen, Hagbard supposedly relinquished his citizenship after representing a Mohawk reservation in court against the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Hazel Pete

In 1934, Pete was given a teaching position by the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) at Warm Springs Indian School in Oregon.

Morris Thompson

When President Nixon named Hickel to serve as Secretary of the Interior in 1969, Thompson went to Washington, D.C., as special assistant for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Resource Ordering Status System

Participating agencies include many state fire suppression organizations such as CAL FIRE, and federal entities such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, National Information Technology Center, and the United States Forest Service.


Battle of Sugar Point

The Battle of Sugar Point, or the Battle of Leech Lake, was fought on October 5, 1898 between the 3rd U.S. Infantry and members of the Pillager Band of Chippewa Indians in a failed attempt to apprehend Pillager Ojibwe Bugonaygeshig ("Old Bug" or "Hole-In-The-Day"), as the result of a dispute with Indian Service officials on the Leech Lake Reservation in Cass County, Minnesota.

Chief Kamiakin

Ranchers led by William Henderson repeatedly tried to drive Kamiakin from his ancestral lands, but superintendent of Indian Affairs, Robert Milroy, intervened and vowed (successfully) to allow Kamiakin to live out his days there.

Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians

The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, known to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) as the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians of Oregon is a federally recognized Native American tribal government based in Canyonville, Oregon, United States.

Cultural assimilation of Native Americans

The Office of Indian Affairs (Bureau of Indian Affairs as of 1947) was established March 11, 1824, as an office of the United States Department of War, an indication of the state of relations with the Indians.

Edward L. Keithahn

He became interested in totem poles at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, Washington, in 1909 and later traveled to southeast Alaska and eventually lived there working "in the Indian service," as he put it (meaning perhaps employment with the Bureau of Indian Affairs), living mainly among the Tlingit and Haida people.

Eugene Little Coyote

The Constitutional Court was however overruled by Bureau of Indian Affairs' regional director Ed Parisian, and later the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman.

Famous Dave's

Dave Anderson, an Ojibwe who served as the head of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs from 2004 to 2005, started the first Famous Dave's restaurant near Hayward, Wisconsin in 1994.

John C. Ewers

In 1941 he was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to design and establish the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Montana, duties which he combined with his own extensive field work on the art, culture, and history of the Blackfeet Tribe.

Les Whitten

In 1972 he was arrested with Hank Adams for removing boxes of documents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs after the Trail of Broken Treaties protest led to the occupation of the BIA offices, but the case was quickly dismissed.

William Y. Adams

Following the death of his father in 1935, the family moved to Window Rock, Arizona where the widowed Lucy Adams took a position with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.


see also

Donald Laverdure

Starting on April 27, 2012, he replaced a retiring Larry Echo Hawk to serve as Acting Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of Indian Affairs until President Barack Obama nominates a new Assistant Secretary to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Ryan Air Services

In 1960s, the company began handling USPS mail delivery and transportation of schoolteachers for the Bureau of Indian Affairs between communities along the lower Yukon River.