Past News Items

Washington, D.C.— On Tuesday, September 27, 2011, the Associate Deputy Secretary Meghan Conklin at the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) and Principal Deputy Special Trustee Ray Joseph will attend the fourth regional government-to-government tribal consultation regarding the Trust Land Consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement.

BACKGROUND ON COBELL SETTLEMENT:

Award of a $1,119,100 contract for the expansion and improvement of Federal Indian school facilities on the Navajo Reservation at Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The project involves an enlargement in the capacity of the existing boarding school at Teec Nos Pos to provide space for 334 Indian pupils. When completed, it will relieve the present overcrowding and furnish educational opportunities for 252 additional Navajo youngsters.

The work is scheduled for completion in the fall of 1961.

The Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Chippewa Indians of Northern Wisconsin has taken action to correct accounting deficiencies and other irregularities in the administration of Federal funds received under contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Interior Assistant Secretary Forrest J. Gerard said today.

A BIA audit, completed this spring, revealed several problems including the failure to maintain adequate records, violation of contract terms, unauthorized payments to a tribal official and a total lack of accounting controls.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced $4.4 million in grants from the Historic Preservation Fund to 117 American Indian tribes to assist with the preservation of important historic and cultural sites and to promote education and interpretation programs.

Persons who are not enrolled members of the present-day Omaha Indian Tribe of Nebraska but are descendants of the Aboriginal Omaha Tribe and Nation should be permitted to share in the judgment fund recovered by the Tribe before the Indian Claims Commission last February, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Roger Ernst said today.

The Secretary of the Interior has disapproved a lease entered into in 1970 between the Tesuque Pueblo and the Sangre de Cristo Development Company.

Under the terms of the 99-year lease Sangre de Cristo planned to develop approximately 5,400 acres of tribal lands north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, for commercial, residential and recreational purposes.

WASHINGTON –The Office of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! Initiative and four federal agencies today launched Let’s Move! in Indian Country (LMIC). LMIC is an initiative to support and advance the work that tribal leaders and community members are already doing to improve the health of American Indian and Alaska Native children. As a part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative, LMIC brings together federal agencies, communities, nonprofits, corporate partners and tribes to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in Indian Country within a generation.

Education and training programs of the Bureau of Indian Affairs benefited an increasing number of Indians of all ages during the fiscal year 1959, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton said today in releasing the Department1s annual report.

Adult vocational training under Indian Bureau contracts with trade schools throughout the country was furnished to 1,547 Indians during the year. This contrasted with 376 trainees in 195B, the first year of the Bureau's adult vocational training program.

William V. Battese, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Kansas, has been named Superintendent of the Anadarko Indian Agency in Oklahoma, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today. His appointment is effective July 3.

Battese has been, since 1974, Assistant Area Director for Administration in the BIA's Portland, Oregon office. He succeeds Stanley Speaks who is now the Area Director at Anadarko.

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s proposed fiscal year 2012 budget request for Indian Affairs, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), is $2.5 billion – a $118.9 million decrease from the FY 2010 Enacted/FY 2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) levels. Included in the reduction are the elimination of a one-time increase in 2010 to forward fund tribal colleges ($50 million) and the completion of Public Safety and Justice construction projects ($47 million).