Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman and South Dakota Senator John Thune yesterday unveiled their joint proposal for a South Dakota Indian and Tribal Business Incubator Project to help accelerate economic development throughout the state’s nine federal Indian reservations. The project will target the Cheyenne River Sioux, Crow Creek Sioux, Flandreau Santee Sioux, Lower Brule Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Standing Rock Sioux and Yankton Sioux tribes.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Carl Artman today announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Great Plains Regional office will host the 10th Annual Great Plains Tribal Economic Development Summit April 15-16, 2008, in Sioux Falls, S.D. The theme for this year’s summit, “Contemporary Economic Resources for Great Plains Tribes,” reflects a renewed commitment to the Bureau’s overall emphasis on modernization.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman today issued a Final Determination to decline acknowledgment of the Federal Acknowledgment Process petitioner known as the Steilacoom Tribe of Indians (STI), located in Steilacoom, Wash., as an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law. The petitioner has 612 members.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman today announced that the Interior Department has published final regulations in the Federal Register implementing Title V of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58) regarding Tribal Energy Resource Agreements (TERAs) under the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act. The regulations will become effective on April 9, 2008.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman, Seminole Tribe of Florida Vice-Chairman Richard Bowers and Mashantucket Pequot Vice-Chairman Kenneth Reels have signed a partnership agreement that will utilize the tribes’ purchasing power to promote Indian Country business development under DOI’s intertribal economic consortium initiative.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman will host the Interior Department’s kick-off event for its intertribal economic consortium initiative, which will take place on Monday, February 11, 2008 with a signing ceremony between the Department, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe of Connecticut and the Seminole Tribe of Florida to honor the memorandum of understanding that formalizes the two tribes’ cooperative economic relationship.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The fiscal year 2009 budget requests $2.2 billion for Indian Affairs, which includes Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) programs. The budget request includes increased funding for the Interior Department’s Safe Indian Communities and Improving Indian Education initiatives as well as for the Indian Guaranteed Loan and Job Placement programs to meet tribal and individual Indian business financing needs and to help alleviate high unemployment rates in Indian Country.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne will discuss Indian issues and be joined by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson and other Administration officials to launch a new Native American-focused online training course for federal employees at a press conference at the National Press club on Thursday, January 31.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman this week invited leaders from the 562 federally recognized tribes to attend a national meeting in Washington, D.C., on January 30, 2008, on the Indian Affairs Modernization Initiative. The one-day event will take place at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Horizon Room, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (EST).

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Department of the Interior has completed its review of the Environmental Analysis (EA) of the proposed Monticello Raceway Casino project submitted by the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe of New York. Cason has determined that, under the National Environmental Policy Act, the EA is sufficient and an Environmental Impact Statement is not required. Cason has signed and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is issuing a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the project.