Bureau of Indian Affairs established

On March 11, 1824, U.S. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun establishes the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) within the War Department. The agency is charged with managing the nation-to-nation relationships between the United States and Indian tribes, overseeing trade, treaty-making and other administrative matters.

For much of its history, however, those relationships were shaped by federal policies that undermined tribal sovereignty and dispossessed Native nations of their ancestral lands.

Before 1824, federal leaders liaised officially with Indigenous groups through the Committee on Indian Affairs, created in 1775 by Benjamin Franklin, and later through the Office of Indian Trade, established in 1806 under the secretary of war. In 1849, the BIA was transferred to the newly created Department of the Interior. During much of the 19th century, federal Indian policy—carried out in part through the BIA—focused on removal and relocation, including the forced migration of tribes from the Southeast and other regions to lands west of the Mississippi River.

Across the 20th century, the BIA’s role shifted along with federal Indian policy. In the early decades, it continued to implement the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided communally held tribal lands into individual allotments, undermining social cohesion and ultimately transferring more than 90 million acres of Native land to non-Native people. During this period, the BIA also oversaw a network of boarding schools aimed at assimilating Native children, forcing them to abandon their traditional languages, dress and cultural practices.

The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, also called the “Indian New Deal,” marked a significant policy shift. It ended further allotment of tribal lands and encouraged tribes to adopt written constitutions and establish self-governing bodies. The BIA pivoted to supporting Native political sovereignty and economic development, including administering loans and expanding Native employment within its ranks. Although the government began formally easing its policy of assimilation, many boarding schools continued operating through the 20th century.

After World War II, federal policy turned toward “termination.” Between 1953 and 1970, Congress sought to dissolve certain tribal governments and end the federal trust relationship with dozens of tribes. At the same time, BIA-administered relocation programs encouraged Native people to move from reservations to urban centers. Mounting opposition from Native activists and tribal leaders—expressed through the broader American Indian “Red Power” Movement and high-profile occupations at places such as Alcatraz Island (1969-71), Wounded Knee (1973) and at the BIA offices themselves (1972)—helped bring about another shift.

Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, federal policy entered an era of self-determination. Congress passed legislation allowing tribes to administer federal programs themselves and reaffirmed the government-to-government relationship between tribes and the United States. Today, the BIA states that its mission is to “enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes and Alaska Natives.”

Since that era, the BIA, combined with the Indian Health Service, has become the nation’s largest employer of American Indians, according to Valerie Lambert, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The second largest? Walmart.

Between 1824 and 1977, only six appointees who ran the Bureau of Indian Affairs had any Native heritage; since that time, the agency has been led exclusively by American Indians. In 2020, then President-elect Joe Biden appointed Representative Deb Haaland, of the Laguna Pueblo nation, as the first Native secretary of the Department of the Interior. In that role, she oversaw the federal department not only administering the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but managing all federal lands as well.