KODIAK, AK – Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland wrapped a multi-day visit to Washington and Alaska where he highlighted the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to honoring its trust and treaty responsibilities to tribal nations and supporting Indian Country through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.
With transformative funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, the Department of the Interior has focused significant resources in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska that range from the launch of a new Voluntary Community-Driven Relocation program and resources for wildfire resilience to programs that address legacy pollution left by extractive industries and a new “Gravel to Gravel” initiative.
In Washington, Assistant Secretary Newland joined the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and the Colville Business Council to participate in the release of 50 summer Chinook salmon into Rufus Woods Lake. The release supports the ongoing efforts to reintroduce salmon into the upper Columbia River. Last year, the Biden-Harris administration announced a historic agreement to support tribally-led efforts to restore healthy and abundant salmon populations in the Upper Columbia River Basin.
He also visited the Paschal Sherman Indian School in Omak, WA, a tribally-operated school serving grades K-9 with funding and support from the Bureau of Indian Education. From 1886 to 1973, the site was known as St. Mary’s Mission, one of 417 Indian boarding schools across the country identified by the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the first-ever comprehensive effort by the federal government to recognize the troubled legacy of past federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and shedding light on past and present trauma in Indigenous communities. The Department recently released the second and final volume of the investigative report called for as part of the Initiative.
In Alaska, Assistant Secretary Newland traveled to Northway to meet with tribal leadership of the Northway Village and the Tanana Chiefs Conference, a consortium of the 42 Alaska Native villages of Interior Alaska. In March, the Department awarded $9.9 million to the Tanana Chiefs Conference through the Tribal Electrification Program to construct solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage systems to bring clean energy to homes. This funding from the Inflation Reduction Act is a critical step toward the goal of electrifying all homes in the United States with clean energy sources and advances the Biden-Harris administration’s work to reach a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035.
Assistant Secretary Newland also visited Kodiak, AK, where he toured a seafood processing plant, created and owned by the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak, which is purchasing fish from local tribal and commercial sources for personal and commercial sale. Tribal businesses such as this support economic development in tribal communities, helping to improve the quality of life in the community.
Assistant Secretary Newland also visited a preschool that immerses students in the Sugpiaq language, where he discussed language revitalization. The White House Council on Native American Affairs, co-chaired by Secretary Haaland, is developing a 10-year National Plan on Native Language Revitalization to lay out a long-term, all-of-government strategy for the revitalization, protection, preservation, and reclamation of Native languages, recognizing the role the United States historically played in erasing Native languages.
