The Senate Indian Affairs Committee held a field hearing on Indian education on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota on Saturday.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), the chairman of the committee, and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota), a member of the committee, attended the hearing. They heard from tribal leaders who said the schools on their reservations desperately need upgrades and repairs.

"The current high school is a metal-clad pole barn, formerly used as an agricultural building. One third of the high school was destroyed in a gas explosion in 1992," Leech Lake Band Secretary-Treasurer Mike Bongo told the committee, The Worthington Daily Globe reported.

At a hearing in February, Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk acknowledged there was "no way" to clear a $1 billion backlog in construction, maintenance and repair at Bureau of Indian Education schools under current funding levels.

Get the Story:
Sens. Franken, Dorgan in White Earth for field hearing on schools (The Worthington Daily Globe 9/13)
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Committee Notice:
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING on Preparing Our Students for Tomorrow in Yesterday's Schools: Construction and Facility Needs at Bureau of Indian Education Schools (September 11, 2010)

OIG Report:
Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education: Schools in Need of Immediate Action (May 2007)

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