Weldon “Bruce” Loudermilk has been named to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. He succeeds Michael S. Black, who has served since 2010.
Loudermilk is an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. He takes the BIA’s top job as the bureau has recently implemented new rules for granting federal recognition, and has begun to create a bigger role for tribes in the management of federal lands.
He has been BIA regional director for Alaska since 2014. He was Great Plains regional director from 2010 to 2014. Before joining the BIA, he worked at the department’s Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) as a financial trust services officer and as a fiduciary trust officer.
