Past News Items

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin today announced that August 2003 is “Back to School Month” for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) funded schools. “August is the time of year when BIA school administrators and teachers are hard at work preparing for the coming school year,” Martin said. “These dedicated professionals provide our students with the foundation they need to achieve personal growth and academic success. BIA students are learning what they need today to become Indian Country’s leaders of tomorrow.”

Award of a $73,494.33 contract for construction of additional floor space in the dormitory facilities for Indian children at Snowflake, Arizona was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The successful bidder is D. H. Walker Construction Co., Inc. of Phoenix. The only other bid was submitted by Bob Roberts & Associates in the amount of $87,430.

The dormitory is operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for Navajo children attending the public school at Snowflake. Approximately 120 Indian students above grade 5 or 12 years of age are enrolled there.

Secretary of the Interior Fred. A. Seaton called attention today to the publication of a proposed membership roll of the Peoria Indian Tribe of Oklahoma in the Federal Register of May 9, 1957.

The roll was prepared by the tribe under terms of a 1956 congressional law which provides for termination of Federal supervision over the property of the tribe by 1958.

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin will visit New Mexico on Tuesday, February 4, 2003, to inspect two Bureau of Indian Affairs-operated schools – Wingate High School in Ft. Wingate, N.M., and Baca Community School in Prewitt, N.M. – that are on the Bureau’s list of schools slated for replacement within the next few years.

Designation of new Indian Bureau superintendents at the Fort Belknap Agency, Harlem, Mont., and the Uintah and Ouray Agency, Fort Duchesne, Utah, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Darrell Fleming, who has been superintendent at Fort Belknap for nearly five years, will take over the Utah post April 13 replacing John O. Crow who transferred to the Bureau’s Washington office as a program officer March 24. At Fort Belknap Mr. Fleming will be succeeded April 5, by Howard Dushane who has been program officer in the area office at Portland, Oreg., since 1955.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb today announced he has issued a Notice of Proposed Finding whereby he proposes to decline to acknowledge that the Nipmuc Nation headquartered in Sutton, Mass., (petition #69A) exists as an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law.

Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton and Acting Secretary of Agriculture D. Morse today announced the signing of an agreement with the Department of Agriculture for the free distribution of feed grains to Navajo Indians in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, for the maintenance of subsistence livestock.

The program is being initiated, Secretary Seaton said, because of the acute economic distress produced among Navajo tribal members as a result of drought conditions in previous years.

(WASHINGTON) – Interior Secretary Gale Norton, accompanied by Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb, will be the keynote speaker at the National Indian School Board Association’s 2001 Summer Institute conference on Tuesday, July 24, at 8:30 a.m. (PST) at the Doubletree Jantzen Beach Hotel in Portland, Ore.

Award of a $68,257.15 contract for the construction or a road and bridge on the Bad River Indian Reservation, Ashland County, Wisconsin, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.