"If his confirmation passes the U.S. Senate, former Farmington High School graduate Larry Echohawk certainly will have his work cut out for him.

As assistant secretary of Indian Affairs, Echohawk would oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education.

The job is teeming with difficulties, because it focuses on serving the many interests of the hundreds of tribes throughout the nation, while still being part of a federal government that sometimes has divergent interests.

The embattled BIA has been without a leader for some time. The most recent head, Carl Artman, took the post in March 2007 after it was vacant for two years and then resigned a little more than a year later.

The agency manages 66 million acres of land and oversees Indian schools, hundreds of treaties, federal policies and court decisions that govern how the federal government protects and administers lands held in trust for Indians."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Echohawk a good choice to lead BIA (The Farmington Daily Times 4/28)

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