This data dashboard summarizes data from the United States Secretary of Interior; it features the Bureau of Indian Affairs Yearly Highlights Reports, which show BIA spending by categories, programs and subprograms for years 2022, 2023 and estimates for 2024. We digitized this static report in an effort to visualize the data interactively and bring more transparency into government spending “for tribes”, which is owed to them by the very nature of the nation to nation relationship and BIA’s self-appointed role as “trustee of Indian assets”.
This data dashboard summarizes data from the United States Secretary of Interior; it features the Bureau of Indian Affairs Highlights Reports which shows BIA spending by categories, programs and subprograms for year 2022, 2023 and estimates for 2024. We digitized this static report in an effort to visualize the data interactively and bring more transparency into government spending for tribes, which is owed to them by the very nature of the nation to nation relationship and BIA’s self-appointed role as “trustee of Indian assets”. To this day, BIA still fails to provide up to date and timely information to tribes about the management of their trust assets, which represent 56 million surface acres and 59 million of subsurface mineral estates. We hope for this dashboard to support conversations around access to tribal data by tribes, tribal data sovereignty, the trust responsibility, and the needed modernization of BIA data and program management practices direly requested by tribes and tribal members since the establishment of the Bureau.
The relationship between the BIA and tribal nations is woven within the history of the United States; a history of land-taking and dispossession of Indigenous lands, resources and livelihoods, but also a history of obligations owed by the federal government to tribal nations solidified by treaty-making and acts that are contractual obligations between sovereign nations. This nation-to-nation relationship has structured what is now the United States; a federal territory within which multiple jurisdictions interact: States, counties, cities AND sovereign tribal lands.
While this history may be hard to grasp and remains widely unknown by the general public, the recognition of tribal sovereignty today is in no way an optional side obligation on the way of other jurisdictions, but an essential element of the very legitimacy of the United States of America. While its validity as a federal nation-state relies on the US Constitution and the legal framework upon which its institutions and economies depend, the constitutional article stating that treaties are the supreme law of the land has historically largely failed to be fully applied to treaties held with tribal nations. While many improvements over the years and efforts were made by federal agencies to improve these relationships, discrimination of access to information and funding continues to impede on sovereign tribal development. This dashboard aims at increasing the transparency owed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to tribal nations in quality of its self-appointed role as trustee of Indian Lands.
This data is our best effort to digitize and visibilize data about BIA spending, which should be the government’s responsibility. By doing so, the NLIS palliates to a lack of public service, but much more needs to be done by federal agencies to honor treaties provisions and trust obligations. As a token of the crucial lack of available information to account for the $M of taxpayers money that goes into BIA’s programs, these yearly Highlights Reports only provide static total numbers, which makes it hard to track the impact of current programs on the ground. For instance, it does not show a breakdown of expenses by tribes, which the BIA should at least make widely available to tribes upon request.
We also recommend the BIA and other agencies to systematically think about how they deliver information and data and whether or not this format and granularity suits the specific needs of tribes while enforcing tribal sovereignty. The numerous tools offered by digital platforms today are absolutely sufficient to provide a useful amount of information to the right beneficiaries and it is mind-blowing to us as a data platform that the government of the United States cannot bring their systems up to date to the existing data visualization and mapping technology. For instance, BIA could start working on a live platform with various levels of access to protect tribal data while making it available on the spot for tribal planning.
We have updated our terminology from “raw data” to “source data” to better reflect the contextual nature and origins of the information we provide. This change acknowledges that all data is influenced by the context in which it is collected, and aims to promote a more inclusive and accurate understanding of the information presented. Our NLIS processed source data is available for download on the Data Tables tabs or at the bottom right corner of each dashboard.
