Forty-three Indian tribal leaders and officials of the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will meet October 15-17 in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss the reorganization of the BIA.
The seventh meeting of the Joint Tribal/BIA/DOI Advisory Task Force for the Reorganization of the BIA will meet from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the Anchorage Hilton, 500 West Third Avenue. The Task Force will hear testimony from Indian tribal leaders and Indian organizations from Alaska on their ideas as to how the BIA should be reorganized to better serve Indian tribes and individuals. The meeting is open to the general public.
Established for a two-year period last January by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, the Task Force is comprised of 36 Indian tribal leaders, two DOI officials and five BIA personnel. A status report on their reorganization efforts was submitted to Secretary Lujan and the U.S. Congress on May 29. The Anchorage meeting will be the third since that report was submitted. The Task Force last met in Bismarck, N.D. September 4-6.
Eddie F. Brown, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in Interior, is co-chair of the Task Force for the federal representatives, and Wendell Chino, President of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, is co-chair as the tribal leaders representative.
The names of Task Force members are enclosed as well as a recent issue of Indian News which summarizes the Task Force's action to date.
