Past News Items

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The fiscal year 2009 budget requests $2.2 billion for Indian Affairs, which includes Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) programs. The budget request includes increased funding for the Interior Department’s Safe Indian Communities and Improving Indian Education initiatives as well as for the Indian Guaranteed Loan and Job Placement programs to meet tribal and individual Indian business financing needs and to help alleviate high unemployment rates in Indian Country.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne will discuss Indian issues and be joined by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson and other Administration officials to launch a new Native American-focused online training course for federal employees at a press conference at the National Press club on Thursday, January 31.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman this week invited leaders from the 562 federally recognized tribes to attend a national meeting in Washington, D.C., on January 30, 2008, on the Indian Affairs Modernization Initiative. The one-day event will take place at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Horizon Room, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (EST).

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Department of the Interior has completed its review of the Environmental Analysis (EA) of the proposed Monticello Raceway Casino project submitted by the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe of New York. Cason has determined that, under the National Environmental Policy Act, the EA is sufficient and an Environmental Impact Statement is not required. Cason has signed and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is issuing a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the project.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) has approved a $106,000 grant to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota for the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (ICOUP) to train tribal members for employment in the wind turbine construction, installation, operation, and maintenance industry.

WHITERIVER, Ariz. – The Bureau of Indian Affairs Task Force located on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona today announced the arrest of a suspect in a series of sexual attacks that have occurred there. Jimi Aday, 29, an enrolled member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, has been charged with 18 U.S.C. 1153, Offenses Committed in Indian Country, 18 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2) Kidnapping, and two counts of 18 U.S.C. 2244(a) (1) Aggravated Sexual contact. Aday will be transported to Flagstaff, Ariz., for his initial arraignment.

WASHINGTON – Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today issued a Final Determination in which he declined to acknowledge that a group known as the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Inc. (BLB), located near Brutus, Mich., is an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law. The evidence reviewed for this Final Determination showed that the petitioner failed to meet three out of seven mandatory criteria – 83.7(b), (c) and (e) – under 25 CFR Part 83, the regulations that govern the Federal Acknowledgment Process.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) has published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding tribal energy resource agreements (TERAs) designated under Title V, Section 503, of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in the August 21, 2006, issue of the Federal Register.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) has given final approval to the Tulalip Tribes of Washington State to participate in DOI’s 477 Program, a comprehensive employment, education, training and welfare program for federally recognized tribes to address economic and workforce needs in their communities. According to the 2000 Census nearly 40 percent of the Native Americans who reside on the Tulalip Reservation live below the federal poverty level.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) has approved a $140,000 grant to the Pueblo of Laguna Utility Authority to study the feasibility of having the PLUA provide affordable electricity service throughout the tribe’s lands in west-central New Mexico. The Pueblo of Laguna is located approximately 45 miles west of the city of Albuquerque.