The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the U.S. Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of 55,700,000 acres (225,000 km2) of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American Tribes and Alaska Natives.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is one of two bureaus under the jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, which provides education services to approximately 48,000 Native Americans.
The BIA’s responsibilities once included providing health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives. In 1954 that function was legislatively transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, now known as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where it has remained to this day as the Indian Health Service.
Read more about Bureau Of Indian Affairs: Organization, History, Mission, Commissioners and Assistant Secretaries
Famous quotes containing the words bureau of, bureau, indian and/or affairs:
“We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
—native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)
“If this bureau had a prayer for use around horse parks, it would go something like this: Lead us not among bleeding-hearts to whom horses are cute or sweet or adorable, and deliver us from horse-lovers. Amen.... With that established, let’s talk about the death of Seabiscuit the other night. It isn’t mawkish to say, there was a racehorse, a horse that gave race fans as much pleasure as any that ever lived and one that will be remembered as long and as warmly.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)
“As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)