Are Native American students with disabilities getting the services they need? Some in Bureau of Indian Education schools may not be. Each of these students has an individualized education plan outlining the type, frequency, and duration of services the school is legally required to provide—e.g., physical therapy. Schools must log when and for how long the services in each plan are provided to...

American Indian and Alaska Native students enrolled in public schools have consistently performed below other students on national tests. The Bureau of Indian Education’s Johnson-O’Malley program provides these students with academic support and enrichment activities, such as Native language classes. The Bureau needs to improve how it manages the program by: having key information such as an...

Environmental justice seeks to address the disproportionately high health and environmental risks found among low-income and minority communities by seeking their fair treatment and involvement in environmental policy. California's mostly minority and low-income community of West Oakland, for example, is surrounded by 3 freeways and a port. Its residents are exposed to diesel air pollution 3 times...

While federal agencies that serve Indian tribes have made some progress on management issues, our 2019 High Risk List found that agencies like the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) still face challenges. For example, although BIE has conducted hiring in recent years as part of an effort to reorganize the bureau, about 50 percent of all BIE positions have not bee...

The Department of the Interior and the Department of Health and Human Services offer education, energy resource management, health care, and other programs for Indian tribes and their members. We testified on both Departments' weaknesses in managing these programs. These weaknesses have contributed to unsafe conditions at Bureau of Indian Education schools, limited or missed opportunities for tri...

The Department of the Interior (Interior) and its Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs (Indian Affairs) have not taken actions to address identified weaknesses in the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) safety program, despite internal evaluations that have consistently found it to be failing. Specifically, Interior's internal evaluations conducted since 2011 identified major deficiencies...

The Department of the Interior's (Interior) Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs (Indian Affairs) does not have a comprehensive capital asset plan to guide the allocation of funding for school construction projects across its 185 Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools. Indian Affairs is in the process of replacing 3 schools and plans to replace 10 additional schools from a list of 54...

The two databases maintained by the Department of the Interior's (Interior) Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) include some data fields useful for identifying tribal roads eligible for federal funding, but other fields may be too inaccurate to be useful for performance reporting and oversight. Specifically, the National Tribal Transportation Facility Inventory (NTTFI) provides useful data for identify...

In examining the history of the Kachemak Bay ferry project, GAO found that the Seldovia Village Tribe’s federally funded ferry differs significantly from its original proposal. In 2002, the tribe proposed a vehicle and passenger ferry with year-round service between Homer, Alaska, on the north shore of Kachemak Bay and multiple southern ports, including the city of Seldovia. Federal funding was...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has reported that crime rates experienced by American Indians are two and a half times higher than those experienced by the general population in the United States. Specifically, from 1992 to 2001 American Indians experienced violent crimes at a rate of 101 violent crimes per 1,000 person annually, compared to the national rate of 41 per 1,000 persons. The federal g...