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The problem with the Bureau of Indian Affairs... is EVERYTHING.
Since its inception, this oldest sub-agency of our federal government has been responsible
for stealing Native land and eradicating their culture through failed "Indian Problem" policies
of assimilation, termination, and since the Nixon era, "self-determination", whatever
the heck that means. In 1849 the BIA was removed from the War Department
and put under the newly created Department of the Interior, The BIA was actually created
in 1824 by Vice President John C. Calhoun, as a matter of quid pro quo, and a political
favor to his friend Thomas L. McKenney. McKenney had served for eight years under
Calhoun in the War Department as the Superintendent of Indian Trade.
No act of Congress was passed, nor did President John Quincy Adams sign into law any Act that
created what was commonly referred in that day as the "Indian Office".
McKenney was appointed to this position and held it from 1824-1830. He was a strong advocate
of the assimilation and "civilization" program and became an avid promoter of Andrew Jackson's
Indian removal policy that forced Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi River.
Over the course of the past 200 years, the BIA has continuously forced or coerced Native
Americans into handing over their ancestral land to the Interior Department. The last
continental state admitted into the Union is where the Trail of Tears ultimately led
Native Americans, and Arizona holds a third of all "Indian Country" in the nation today.