"After six years as elected Red Lake chairman, I thought I’d seen everything there is to see about the BIA.

Red Lake recently obtained a spreadsheet made by the agency that shows how it distributed its substantial increases in law enforcement funding in recent years.

I was shocked. This BIA spreadsheet is proof that when a tribe like Red Lake stands up for its own interests, the BIA will try to slap it down. If we take on self-governance authority to help ourselves, the BIA will punish us. Beware the vengeance of BIA bureaucrats against uppity Indians.

While overall BIA law enforcement operations funding went up 41.7 percent in the five years preceding FY 2010, the BIA spreadsheet shows that it allocated only a 6.8 percent increase to Red Lake, a self-governance tribe, over those same years, and the 230 self-governance tribes collectively got a 10 percent increase, compared to a 26 percent increase for 638 tribes in the same period.

What’s worse, year after year, increase after increase, the BIA kept the lion’s share of the law enforcement increases for its own operations (BIA District Commands up more than 50 percent; BIA Direct Service operations up more than 40 percent; BIA Central Office-controlled up 280 percent)."

Get the Story:
Floyd "Buck" Jourdain Jr: BIA shows uppity Indians who’s boss (Indian Country Today 2/12)