KEY POINTS

Barack Obama and Donald Trump nominated Latter-day Saints to be their secretaries for Indian Affairs.

Billy Kirkland testified before a Senate committee but is stuck in a confirmation backlog.

Trump's 2026 budget proposal cut nearly $1 billion from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Soon after President Donald Trump nominated William “Billy” Kirkland to oversee the country’s Indian Affairs in February, Kirkland called one of his predecessors, Larry Echo Hawk, a fellow member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Echo Hawk was the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department from 2009 to 2012, during the Obama administration, when he was called to serve as a General Authority Seventy of the church, where he remained until he was released in 2018

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