1 CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION AND ...

Access to and control over such funds were critical. For
one, the situation meant the BIA's virtual monopoly over
Indian policy and programs had been broken. The new money
facilitated the creation of tribal bureaucracies. Such
Indian-run bureaucracies enhanced self-determination by
making it easier to tribes to use their inherent sovereign
powers--powers which, because of a lack of resources, most
tribes had been unable to exercise. 92
The War on Poverty also transformed the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA). The BIA (usually called the Indian Department
or Indian Office until a 1947 government reorganization) had
been created in 1824 to handle the administration of Indian
policies dictated by Congress and the President. Reflecting
the War on Poverty's emphasis, the Bureau sponsored a number
of programs during the 1960s to increase economic
opportunities for reservation residents. 93 According to
attorney John Echohawk (Pawnee), the OEO's example and
antipoverty efforts helped transform the BIA. Previously,
the agency had been virtually synonymous with paternalism,
92 Echohawk, interview; Gerard, interview; Nagel, American
Indian Ethnic Renewal, 124. Harris made this observation in
Philp, Indian Self-Rule, 223.
93 Information on the BIA's formation and implementation
of policies can be found in Prucha, Great Father, vols. I and
II. See also Philleo Nash, "Twentieth-Century United States
Government Agencies," in Handbook of North American Indians,
vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E.
Washburn (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), 264-
275; Theodore W. Taylor, American Indian Policy (Mt. Airy,
Maryland: Lomond Publications, 1983).
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