Past News Items

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced he has appointed H. Rex Lee, veteran career specialist on American Indians and dependent peoples, as Governor of American Samoa.

Secretary Udall also announced that Air Force Maj. Eric J. Scanlan, whose family has lived in American Samoa for three generations, is returning to his home islands to be Government Secretary. The post is similar to that of a lieutenant governor.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced today that the Laguna Elementary School in New Laguna, New Mexico, will receive $26.2 million for the construction of a new school.

Gordon E. Cannon, an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Red Lake Agency in Minnesota, Commissioner of Indian Affairs William E. Hallett said today.

Cannon, who had been Superintendent of the Fort Totten Agency in North Dakota, began his career with the BIA in 1961.

A United States Army veteran, Cannon, 42, previously served as realty officer for the Colville, Hoopa and Western Washington agencies.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today expressed gratification over the selection of Mrs. Clara B. Gonzales, a school principal on the Zuni Indian Reservation in New Mexico, as one of the recipients of Seventh Annual Career Service Awards which are being presented by the National Civil Service League at a Washington banquet ceremony on March 21.

WHAT: In October of this year, President Obama announced a series of public and private sector efforts to address the prescription drug abuse and heroin epidemic. As part of those commitments, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Service; and the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs will host a press conference to announce an agreement to equip BIA officers with naloxone for responding to incidents of opioid overdose.

The resignation of Louis R. Bruce as Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was announced today President Nixon. The resignation is effective January 20,1973.

Bruce. 66 has served as Commissioner since August 1969. A member of the Ogala Sioux tribe of South Dakota, Bruce was born on the Onondaga Indian Reservation in New York and grew up on the State's St. Regis Mohawk Reservation.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior George W. Abbott today announced approval of a public land order restoring to tribal ownership about 1,161 acres of scattered tracts on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

The lands being restored were ceded to the United States by the Indians many years ago and were opened to settlement and entry under the homestead laws in 1911. These particular tracts, however, have not been sold or disposed of over the 50-year period.

WASHINGTON – Today, the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Michael S. Black, announced that the BIA is publishing a final rule intended to officially reinstate to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) the correct operative version of 25 CFR Part 226—Leasing of Osage Reservation Lands for Oil and Gas Mining.

Leroy W. Chief, 35, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux. Tribe from: Pine Ridge, S. D., has been named Superintendent of the bureaus of Indian Affairs Wahpeton Indian School, Wahpeton, N. D., Louis R. Bruce, Commissioner of Indian Affairs announced today. Chief replaces Joseph Wellington, who retired after 17 as superintendent at Wahpeton School.

Three Alaskan Eskimos have set out to prove that reindeer have other uses than pulling Santa's sleigh. They have joined the ever-growing number of Alaskan "reindeer cowboys" who manage the animals as livestock--a project encouraged by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs to spur the Alaskan economy.