You are currently viewing President Biden Touts Historic Support for Indian Country and Transformation of the Nation-to-Nation Relationship with Tribal Nations

President Biden Touts Historic Support for Indian Country and Transformation of the Nation-to-Nation Relationship with Tribal Nations

President Biden Delivers Remarks at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona
Today, on October 24th, 2024, President Biden will discuss the Biden-Harris Administration’s record of delivering for Tribal communities, including keeping his promise to make this historic visit to Indian Country – his first as President.. 
 President Biden Delivers Remarks at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona
Friday, October 24th, 2024 at 1:30 PM ET
Watch Live Here

President Biden will outline his record of transformative investment in Indian Country and relationships with Tribal Nations, advancing Tribal sovereignty and self-determination, respecting Native cultures, and protecting Indigenous sacred sites. 

President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken historic actions to support Indian Country through executive actions, historic investments, and strengthening government-to-government relationships. The President has issued three historic Executive Orders that reform federal funding to help live up to the promise of Tribal self-determination, improve public safety and criminal justice for Native Americans while targeting the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people, and improve educational outcomes and career opportunities for Native American students by focusing on systemic barriers and increasing access to high-quality education. The President has also taken further executive action through two Presidential Memoranda on Tribal consultation, including his 2021 Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Relationships and his 2022 Memorandum on Uniform Standards for Tribal Consultation.

This executive action builds on the historic investments President Biden has made in Indian Country, including:

  • $32 billion in the American Rescue Plan, the largest direct federal investment in Tribal Nations in history.
  • $13 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build high-speed internet, roads, bridges, public transit, and clean water sanitation infrastructure in Tribal communities.
  • $700 million in the Inflation Reduction Act to invest in Native communities for climate resilience and adaptation programs, drought mitigation, home electrification, and clean energy development.
  • Obligating billions of federal contract dollars—and significant percentages of agencies’ overall procurement dollars—to Native-owned or controlled businesses through the Buy Indian Act, a law that has been re-invigorated under the Biden-Harris Administration.

The Biden-Harris Administration has made honoring Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples central to our conservation agenda, including by restoring and designating multiple new national monuments that honor Tribal Nations by protecting sacred ancestral places and their historically and scientifically important features, designating the first Indigenous-focused national marine sanctuary, directing federal agencies to support First Foods including healthy and abundant native salmon and steelhead, signing over 200 new co-stewardship agreements with Tribes, issuing an updated Sacred Sites MOU and best practices, and implementing a first-of-its kind Indigenous Knowledge guidance.

The President has also sought to have an Administration that reflects the priorities of Indian Country by hiring over 80 Native appointees in historic positions, including the first Native American Cabinet Secretary with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and the first Native American Treasurer of the United States with Chief Lynn Malerba. In addition, the President followed through with his promise to reinstate the annual White House Tribal Nations Summit and the White House Council on Native American Affairs.

Dr. Biden has been a champion for Native communities. As First Lady, she has visited Native communities ten times, highlighting the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic investments in youth mental health, Native language revitalization, and infrastructure and economic development, and she has worked to improve access to cancer screening and cancer care for Native communities.

The President also believes that to usher in the next era of the Federal-Tribal relationships we need to fully acknowledge the harms of the past. That is why he is issuing a historic Presidential apology for the Federal Indian Boarding School era. For over 150 years, the federal government ran boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native children from their homes to boarding schools often far away. Native children at these schools endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and, as detailed in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report by the Department of the Interior (DOI), at least 973 children died in these schools. The federally-run Indian boarding school system was designed to assimilate Native Americans by destroying Native culture, language, and identity through harsh militaristic and assimilationist methods.

In making this apology, the President acknowledges that we as a people who love our country must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful. And we must learn from that history so that it is never repeated.

The Presidential apology builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s extraordinary accomplishments working with Tribes and Native Communities:

Strengthening Tribal Self-Determination

Addressing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons and Gender-Based Violence in Native Communities

  • Signing an Executive Order to improve public safety and criminal justice and address the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP)by directing agencies to prioritize addressing this crisis and assessing what more they can do.
  • Signed into law the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization Act of 2022, which expanded special Tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Native perpetrators of sexual violence, child violence, stalking, assaults on Tribal law enforcement officers, and sex trafficking on Tribal lands, in addition to domestic and dating violence.
  • Awarded $68 million in FY 2023 VAWA grants and more than $85 million in FY 2024 VAWA grants to support Native communities to provide services and promote justice for survivors.
  • Established the Not Invisible Act Commission to improve the federal government’s efforts to address violent crime and the high rates of people reported missing in Native communities.

Historic Investments in Indian Country

  • Historic investments in Tribal Nations, including $32 billion in the American Rescue Plan, the largest direct federal investment to Tribal Nations in history; $13 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law; and $700 million in the Inflation Reduction Act.
  • Through the President’s Justice40 Initiative, more than 500 federal programs, including programs funded and created through the President’s Investing in America agenda, are working to deliver benefits to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution. All federally recognized Tribes and Tribal entities are recognized as disadvantaged for purposes of benefitting from the Justice40 Initiative. These investments are resulting in cleaner air and water, more affordable clean energy, good-paying jobs, and other benefits that Tribes are seeing and experiencing today and into the future.

Supporting Native-owned Businesses

  • The Biden-Harris Administration has spent billions of federal contract dollars with Native-owned or controlled businesses through the Buy Indian Act, a law that authorizes the Department of the Interior and Indian Health Service (IHS) at the Department of Health and Human Services to have contract set-asides for Tribal and Native-owned businesses.
  • Under the Biden-Harris Administration, Federal spending with Native firms has increased by $8.2B between FY20 and FY23. The Small Business Administration (SBA) has expanded access to capital for Native communities by nearly doubling the total dollar amount lent to Native American small businesses. SBA now has 12 Native-owned banks and CDFIs that lend with SBA backing.

Advance Appropriations for Indian Health Service

  • For the first time ever, and after many years of Tribal advocacy, the Biden-Harris Administration successfully secured advance appropriations for the Indian Health Service (IHS), and the President has requested mandatory funding for IHS moving forward.

Regulations Supporting Tribes and Native Communities

Tribal Consultation

A Whole-of-Government Approach to the Federal Trust Responsibility

Protecting Tribal Treaty Rights, Sacred Sites and Tribal Homelands

Revitalizing Native Languages

  • Native Languages MOA: At the 2021 Tribal Nations Summit, several agencies and offices—DOI, USDA, HHS, ED, Institute for Museum and Library Sciences, NEA, NEH, DOT, and White House CEQ—signed a Memorandum of Agreement on Native Languages, kickstarting a new interagency initiative to preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native languages. Since 2021, several other agencies have signed on to the MOA including, ACHP, OPM, SSA, SBA, OMB, DHS, DOC, DOL, DOS, VA, AmeriCorps, and EPA.

Strengthening Education for Native American Students

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