Past News Items

Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Eddie F. Brown today announced the appointment of L. W. (Bill) Collier as Area Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) Anadarko Area Office in Anadarko, Okla. "We are fortunate to have someone with the talents and field experiences of a Bill Collier to take over this important position," Brown said. "His 13 years of experience at the agency and area level of working directly with tribal governments is most important in a time when BIA is moving from a direct service provider to one of technical assistance.

Sales of timber from lands belonging to Indian tribes and individual Indians brought the owners an income of $10,937,485 in the fiscal year 1959, or 17 percent more than the amount in 1958, Acting Secretary of the Interior Elmer F. Bennett announced today.

The volume of timber cut under contract on Indian lands was 551 million board feet, an increase of 98 million board feet over the 1958 total.

Interior Under Secretary Frank Bracken will open the first in a series of regional conferences with Indian tribal leaders designed to increase economic development on Indian reservations. The first conference, scheduled March 1-2 in Scottsdale, Arizona, will include tribal representatives from Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Colorado and business and industry leaders from the private sector. Interior's Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Eddie F.

Acting Secretary of the Interior Elmer F. Bennett today called attention to the results of the first sale of oil and gas leases held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the basis of a fixed bonus of $500 per acre and competitive bidding on the royalty rates. The bids were opened at Window Rock, Arizona, July 28. The total bonus offered at $500 per acre was $1,245,500.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) announced today that it will relocate the office of assistant director of education to the Navajo Area Office in Gallup, N.K. Dr. Kenneth Ross, who oversees BIA education operations in the Southwest, will move from his Washington headquarters to Gallup November 4 The director of the BIA's nearly $300 million education program, Dr. Henrietta Whiteman, said the move is Reared toward bringing management closer to the people it serves.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has awarded an $83,305 contract for grading and surfacing 8.25 miles of roadway on the Klamath Indian Reservation in southern Oregon, the Department of the Interior announced today.

With the touch of a key, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) recently opened a computer information network to states and Indian tribes receiving mineral royalties.

The State and Tribal Support System (STATSS), gives participating States and tribes access to mineral revenue information maintained at MMS's Royalty Management Program accounting center in Lakewood, Colorado. Through government-provided computer terminals, 18 state and tribal offices have been linked to the MMS system since April 30, the date the system was opened.

The Department of the Interior announced today that it has submitted to Congress a proposal for legislation exempting from Federal and State income tax the payments of more than $26,000,000 which the Government has made to four Pacific Northwest Indian tribes to compensate them for the loss of their fishing rights at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River.

The tribes involved are the Yakima of Washington, the Warm Springs and Umatilla of Oregon, and the Nez Perce of Idaho.

The course of American Indian history was drastically changed, fifty years ago, by the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Interior Assistant Secretary Ken Smith told Indian leaders in a letter marking the act's fiftieth anniversary. Smith, a Wasco Indian from Oregon, is the Reagan Administration's top Indian official.

Smith noted that the act "marked a turning point in Federal-Indian relations. It halted or reversed prior policies which had cumulatively proved disastrous for Indians."

Completion of the final membership roll of the Wyandotte Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, following the disposition of all appeals, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The preliminary membership roll, published in the Federal Register April 5, 1957, included 1,159 individuals. The net result of additions and subtractions made as a consequence of appeals to the Secretary of the Interior is a final roll of 1,154 names.