Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will leave the Obama administration by the end of March.
Salazar came to the
Interior Department as a U.S. Senator from Colorado. He quickly brought Larry Echo Hawk,
a member of the
Pawnee
Nation, on board as the Assistant Secretary in charge of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Having served more than four years, Salazar outlasted Echo Hawk, who left the administration in May 2012. Early on his tenure, Salazar ordered the BIA to start moving on thousands of land-into-trust applications that were effectively put on hold in the Bush years.
"We've had to clean up huge messes over the last four years," Salazar said in an interview with Indianz.Com in October.
In his first year, Salazar helped clean up one of the biggest messes -- the
Indian trust fund lawsuit. In December 2009, he was joined by the Elouise Cobell in Washington, D.C., to announce a $3.4 billion settlement to the long-running case.
The settlement took a year to clear Congress and another year to overcome legal challenges.
But the first round of payments finally went out before Christmas and DOI is moving forward on the land consolidation component of the deal. Cobell passed away in October 2011.
In another significant area, Salazar brought an end to the disastrous off-reservation gaming policy that was implemented by the Bush administration.
The BIA has been processing several off-reservation casino applications, although the issue remains controversial on Capitol Hill and among state and local leaders.
As the host of the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference, Salazar helped usher in a new era of government-to-government relations. He's overhauled DOI's consultation policy and overseen changes in leasing regulations that put more control in the hands of tribal governments.
“President Obama has made it a priority to empower our nation’s first Americans by helping to build stronger, safer and more prosperous tribal communities,” Salazar said today in a
press release. “This administration has been marked by a renewed commitment to honoring a nation-to-nation relationship and ensuring tribes have a greater role in federal decisions affecting Indian Country.”
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