“It has been nearly 40 years since President Nixon issued his famous special message to Congress on Indian affairs, which outlined his new and more enlightened Federal Indian policy of tribal self-determination. By enacting the Indian Self-Determination Education and Education Assistance Act, Congress set in motion the transition from Federal domination of Indian programs to meaningful tribal control of these programs to make them more responsive for their Native communities.
In 1988, Congress expanded upon that approach by enacting a
tribal self-governance demonstration project and then several years later, made self-governance a permanent program within the BIA and the IHS. After 20 years, the humble beginning of self-governance as an experimental demonstration project, with only 7 tribes compacting $27 million in BIA programs, has expanded to over 230 tribes compacting an estimated $350 million for the BIA and over 380 tribes and tribal organizations compacting over $1.2 billion within the IHS.”
