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  • 2018-09-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Donald Trump Appoint the First Native American to Lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs? (en)
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  • In September 2018, a widely-shared Facebook post claimed that President Donald Trump had appointed a Native American to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for the first time in United States history: On 16 October 2017, President Trump nominated Tara Sweeney to become the U.S. Department of the Interior's next Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. That position involves overseeing the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, two agencies within the Department of the Interior,. However, both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education each has their own directors. In a press release to accompany President Trump's nomination of her, the White House provided this overview of Sweeney's career: In June 2018, the U.S. Senate confirmed Sweeney's appointment to the role by voice vote (that is, unanimously), and in August she was sworn in as Assistant Secretary. In announcing Sweeney's swearing-in, the Bureau of Indian Affairs provided more detail about her upbringing and Native American heritage: Tara Sweeney is a Native American, and the first Alaska Native (as well as only the second woman) to hold the position of Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. However, she is not the first Native American to take up that role, despite what the Facebook post claimed. Since the foundation of the United States, the title given to the person in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs has changed, but several of those individuals, operating under various titles, have been Native Americans. The first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs was Ely S. Parker, a member of the Seneca nation who served in that role from 1869 to 1871. Since the creation of the position of Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in 1977, all 12 persons who have held that position have been Native Americans. The agency's web site provides this brief helpful history of the role: President Donald Trump's nomination of Tara Sweeney was historic, and her confirmation was bipartisan and unanimous. However, a September 2018 Facebook post that described her appointment as the first time in American history that a Native American would be in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. was far from accurate. (en)
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