Bureau of Indian Affairs

Established in 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the oldest federal agency within the US Department of the Interior. The current principal responsibilities of the BIA involve implementing federal laws and policies that affect 1.9 million Indigenous Americans, upholding the US government's responsibilities under the Federal-Tribal trust, and overseeing the official relationship between the federal government and 574 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments.

For most of the agency's history, BIA policies sought to subjugate Indigenous Americans by forcibly removing them from their homelands to gain control of land for white settlers; moving Indigenous Americans to undesirable lands, called reservations; forcing their assimilation into white, European culture; and then neglecting the needs of reservations. The...