Past News Items

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan today announced the appointment of Dr. Jonathan Haas as the seventh member of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee. Haas is Vice President for Collections and Research at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He joins Rachel Craig, Dan Monroe, Tessie Naranjo, Dr. Martin Sullivan, William Tallbull and Dr. Philip Walker as members of the committee. Lujan selected Haas from a list of nominees developed by members of the committee at their first meeting April 29-May 1 1992, in Washington, D.C

Transfer of Narolf Nesset from superintendent of the Cheyenne River Indian Agency in South Dakota to superintendent at Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, North Dakota, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Mr. Nesset succeeds Harold W. Schunk, recently transferred to the Rosebud Agency in South Dakota. The new move is effective December 13, according to Indian Commissioner Glen Emmons.

David J. Matheson, an enrolled member of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe of Plummer, Idaho, and its former chairman, has been named Director of the Office of Construction Management in the Department of the Interior.

Martin M. Zoller, Superintendent of the Klamath Indian Agency in Oregon since 1956, will be the new superintendent at the Uintah and Ouray Agency, Fort Duchesne, Utah, effective October 4, the Department of the Interior announced today.

He succeeds Darrell Fleming who recently transferred to the Cherokee Agency in North Carolina.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan today announced that he has directed Interior officials to develop "better and stronger" policies to govern the protection and treatment of sacred objects and human remains on Federal lands.

Lujan told Interior bureau heads that the new policies should be based on four areas of special emphasis:

The Department of the Interior has recommended changing the law under which adult Indians are being provided with vocational training at Federal expense to establish three priorities of eligibility among the Indian candidates, Assistant Secretary Roger Ernst announced today.

First priority would be given to Indians residing on trust or restricted lands r Federal lands under jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior.

Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Ross Swimmer today announced the appointment of Joe C. Christie as actin~ director of the new Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse. Christie, Superintendent of the Northern California Agency in Redding. California, since 1984, will assume the new post created in the Office of the Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs by P.L. 99-570, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 signed by President Reagan last month. He will begin his duties in Washington, December 2

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Roger Ernst announced today that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has contracted with the University of Idaho for a comprehensive survey of the human and physical resources of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in southeastern Idaho.

In commenting on the significance of the contract, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs H. Rex Lee pointed out that for several years the Bureau has been seeking a more effective way to help the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation in improving their economic and social status.

Assistant Secretary Ross Swimmer today emphasized there will be no action by the federal government next month to forcibly remove Navajo families from land belonging to the Hopi Indian Tribe in Arizona.

The Department of the Interior today announced two actions looking toward a greater equalization in the value of extremely valuable individual Indian land holdings on the Agua Caliente Reservation at Palm Springs, California.

One was the recent submission to Congress of a report favoring the enactment, with amendments, of H.R. 5557, a bill that deals with the equalization problem.

The second action taken was the adoption in final form of a set of administrative instructions for equalization. These were published as a proposal in the Federal Repository last January 23.