Why is there a BIA?
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 9:31PM “Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs? There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse.” Liberals from one end of the nation to the other have attacked that recent statement by John Stossel.
I originally found this piece in the Huckleberries Online blog. That blog noted that the Coeur d’Alene Tribe was demanding an apology. Notice that the liberal comments on the post are largely ad hominem attacks on Stossel, they don’t refute his arguments they merely attack him. Huckleberries Online asked their readers if they thought Stossel owed the tribe and other Native Americans an apology.
Stossel, on Fox News, was commenting that the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs wanted to hire someone to run their Facebook page. The pay for the position would be up to $115,000. (I’ll do it for half that amount) He then went on to ask why we need the BIA.
As he often does, Stossel was making the argument for small government. Most of the grief he received was for the remark, “And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians.”
While it is true that Native American culture was devastated and their lands lost, we cannot go back. The Indian wars are over and the government has been trying to help the tribes for more than 100 years. Has the billions of dollars in aid really helped? That is the question Stossel was really asking and, looking to the future, what would be best for Native Americans and this nation.
I encourage my readers to watch the embedded video and decide who should be apologizing. Liberals may shout profanity and get red in the face, but Stossel's basic question is valid and needs to be discussed.
John Stossel in Libertarian, Politics National
Reader Comments (4)
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You can't be serious! I am not Indian, but Indian Tribes are clearly sovereign governments, individual Nations with their own governments. Comparing them to other ethnic groups is apples to oranges. It's not the same thing. A government agency dedicated to their needs is the least the government can do! Get real. Apologize already, Stossel.
Well, I’m not John Stossel and I won’t speak for him, but if Native American tribes are governments in the sense that you seem to mean then the State Department should handle relations with them. But tribes are not “individual nations with their own governments” in any real sense of the word.
Native Americans are U.S. citizens. They vote in all elections. Tribe members get in-state tuition at state colleges and universities. Tribe members serve in the U.S. military. Native Americas whether on or off the reservation are counted in the U.S. census as an ethnic group of this country.
Do tribes have embassies? Do they negotiate treaties with counties other than the U.S.? Do they conduct foreign policy?
Native Americans are an ethnic group within this country and the BIA should be abolished.
I respectfully disagree. The fact that there was an attempt to force assimilation on Indian Tribes does not take away their current sovereignty, based on the treaties that they have signed. They have their own elected officials, their own courts, their own police forces, schools, etc. It is in a sense "local sovereignty", that is true, but they are still their own governments with the right to make their own laws and be governed by them. When the federal government works with Tribal governments, they work government-to-government, and that's the way it should be. This is the role of the BIA, to work government-to-government with the more than 500 federally recognized Tribes. Their work is essential.