Forty-three Indian tribal leaders and officials of the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will meet September 4-6 in Bismarck, N.D. to discuss the reorganization of the BIA.
The sixth 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 Sheraton Inn Bismarck Galleria, Sixth Street and Broadway in Bismarck. The Task Force will hear testimony from Indian tribal leaders and Indian organizations from North and South Dakota, and Nebraska on their ideas as to how the BIA should be reorganized to better serve Indian tribes and individuals. The meeting is open to the 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 Bismarck meeting will be the second since that report was submitted. The Task Force last met in Seattle, Washington, July 23-25. 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 attached as well as a summary of the status report submitted to Secretary Lujan last May. A proposed reorganization chart accompanies the report.
