Past News Items

A four-day camp-in at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago is planned by Montana's Blackfeet Indians for March 9-12.

Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person and veteran Boy Scout Leader Francis Guardipee will preside over the event in the lobby of the windy city's biggest hotel as a promotion, not a protest.

The Tribe hired exhibit space for the national convention of the American Camping Association, hoping to interest camp owners and operators in establishing residential camps on the Blackfeet Reservation.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and NIKE, Inc. The MOU presents an opportunity for both the BIE and Nike to address health and social lifestyle choices in American Indian and Alaska Native communities that contribute to disease and other medical conditions.

The Department of the Interior announced in the Federal Register July 26 that a land use plan and a draft environmental impact statement for the addition of land to the Havasupai Indian Reservation are now available. The Department also announced that public hearings on the land use plan will be held September 11, 12 and 14.

A change in leadership of the Public Information Office of the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs was announced today by Commissioner Robert L. Bennett.

Virginia S. Hart, the Bureau's Chief of Public Information for the past three years, has been succeeded in that post by W. Joynes Macfarlan, for many years a member of the Washington Bureau of the Associated Press. Macfarlan's appointment was effective May 29. Mrs. Hart was named Special Assistant (Communications) to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on May 7.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk will give the luncheon keynote address at the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Symposium on Child Protection in Indian Country being held March 9-11, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort at the Santa Ana Pueblo in New Mexico. He will speak on Tuesday, March 9, from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m. (MST).

Proposed regulations to establish rules and procedures for the conduct of an election of an interim Yurok Tribal governing committee are being published in the Federal Register, Forrest J. Gerard, Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs announced today.

Gerard said the action is in accord with his November 20, 1978, message to the Hoopa Valley and Yurok people and is intended as one of the first steps leading to participation by the Yurok Tribe in the management of the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation.

Three American Indians, including Miss Indian America and the curator of the Navajo Tribal Museum. will fly to Germany April 1 as part of the first European promotion of Indian-made merchandise.

They will take part in an "American Week" series being launched in several foreign countries by the Department of Commerce in cooperation with the State Department.

The promotion will test the European sales potential of American Indian merchandise. It is sponsored by two German department store chains, Klingenthal and Gebreuder-Lefferso

WASHINGTON – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar kicked off the White House Tribal Nations Conference today at the Interior Department, emphasizing President Obama’s commitment to reform, restructure and rebuild federal relations with Indian Country and underscoring initiatives that are building safer and stronger American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

Anson A. Baker, an enrolled member of the Mandan-Hidatsa Tribe, has been appointed Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Billings, Montana Area Office, Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Forrest J. Gerard announced today. The appointment was effective April 8, 1979.

Baker has been Superintendent of the Blackfeet Agency at Browning, Montana since 1976.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has awarded a $98,750 contract to Twinco-Enki Corp. of San Fernando, Calif., to review and evaluate projects undertaken by the Bureau under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

The Act, which was amended in 1966 to provide funds for Indian education, requires a broad-based evaluation of projects carried out under its provisions. Twinco-Enki will direct the evaluation from its Muskogee, Okla., branch office, which is centrally located for a number of BIA education projects currently operating.