Forty-three Indian tribal leaders and officials of the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will meet January 27-29 at Washington, D.C.'s Dulles Airport to finalize a report to the Secretary of the Interior on the reorganization of the BIA.
The tenth meeting of the Joint Tribal/BIA/DOI Advisory Task Force for the organization of the BIA will be held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day at the Remada Renaissance Hotel at Washington Dulles Airport locate in Northern Virginia. The Task Force will hear testimony from Indian tribal leaders and Indian organizations from Eastern Area states 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.
The report to be submitted to Secretary Manuel Lujan is expected to include recommendations on the organizational structure at both the central and field offices of the BIA as well as budgetary recommendations.
Established for a two-year period last January by Interior Secretary Lujan, the Task Force is comprised of 36 Indian tribal leaders, two D I officials and five BIA personnel. A status report on their reorganization efforts was submitted to Secretary Lujan and the U.S. Congress last April. The Dulles meeting will be the fifth since that report was submitted. The Task Force last met in Tampa, Florida in December.
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 in New Mexico, is co-chair as the tribal leader’s representative.
The names of Task Force members are enclosed as well as a briefing paper that summarizes the Task Force's actions to date.
