Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Affairs Director W. Patrick Ragsdale today announced that he has appointed Vicki L. Forrest as the new deputy director for the BIA’s Office of Trust Services. Forrest, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, came to the BIA from the Interior Department’s Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST).

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced the appointment of James J. Thomas, 29, a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, to head the Field Employment Assistance Office, at Cleveland, Ohio. He has been acting in that capacity since July of this year.

Thomas, born and reared on the Winnebago Indian Reservation, in Nebraska, recently completed the Indian Administrator Development Program of the Bureau.

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Education Director Thomas M. Dowd today announced that the Enemy Swim Day School, a BIE­ funded K­8 school in Waubay, S.D., is one of four non- profit organizations named by the Verizon Foundation last month as the first winners of its Verizon Tech Savvy Award. Enemy Swim, operated by the Sisseton­ Wahpeton Sioux Tribe of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota, was among a national field of 85 nominees.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced the publication of "A History of Indian Policy" by Dr. S. Lyman Tyler, head of the American West Center, University of Utah, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The book is now available in paper cover from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 for $4.25.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs announces the Indian Energy Opportunity Roundtable: Tribes, Companies and Government Explore Oil and Gas Possibilities. The half-day event, which will be held in Denver, CO on October 18, 2005, is cosponsored by the Department’s Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development and the Domestic Petroleum Council. The Roundtable is being held to gather all interested stakeholders to discuss the development of the vast energy resources owned by American Indian tribes.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today called passage of the Indian Financing Act of 1974 "a giant step toward viable Indian reservation communities that will be a credit to this Nation." The law, signed by President Richard M. Nixon April 12:

1. Consolidates existing Indian revolving loan funds already administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and authorizes the appropriation of an additional $50,000,000 for the consolidated fund from which direct Federal loans will be made to Indian organizations and individuals.

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Affairs Director W. Patrick Ragsdale today announced that BIA Special Agent Selanhongva McDonald, an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and a 13-year veteran of BIA law enforcement, successfully completed his training at the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy (FBINA) in Quantico, Va., last month, graduating with his class on March 18. He is now one of a select group of BIA law enforcement officers who are FBINA graduates.

A plan for the use and distribution of more than $9 million awarded to the. Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation by the Indian Claims Commission is being published in the Federal Register, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The award is compensation or reservation land taken by the united States in the early part of this century. The reservation is in North Dakota.

Washington - Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will speak at the Circle of Cultures: Time of Renewal and Exchange Opening Ceremony held at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND on October 22, 2004.

"Lewis and Clark played a significant role in shaping the history of our nation," said the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs. "But without the involvement of the American Indians they met along the way, it would have never been possible for them to achieve their goals."

The Reflector City portion of the Badlands Air Force Gunnery Range, South Dakota --some 5,280 acres of land --is now available for sale to its former owners, mostly Oglala Sioux Indians, Morris Thompson, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, said today.

The lands have been declared excess to the needs of the Air Force and administrative jurisdiction has been transferred to the Department of the Interior. Notice was published in the Federal Register of January 3.