Past News Items

PAGE, Ariz. – On Monday, November 19, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will join Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Anne Castle, National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor to trigger the first “high-flow experimental release” at Glen Canyon Dam since 2008.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs on or before June 15 will conduct a poll by mail among members of the Choctaw Tribe of Oklahoma in order to have an expression of their views regarding the selection of a principal chief. The term of the present principal chief expires June 30.

A $2.5 million supplemental appropriation for the Bureau of Indian Affairs will make it possible for some 3,000 Indian youth to receive scholarship grants enabling them to begin or continue their education in 1973 at the college level.

In making the announcement, Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton said the additional funds will enable the Bureau to meet the needs of all eligible Indian applicants. The 3,000 youths are in addition to the record high of 11,009 students already receiving higher education assistance under the Bureau's regular appropriation.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In keeping with its mission to establish responsive, accountable, transparent, and customer-friendly management of Indian trust funds and assets, the Secretarial Commission on Indian Trust Administration and Reform reached out to Indian Country at its fifth public meeting of the year in Bismarck, N.D. All five Commission members – Chair Fawn Sharp, Tex G. “Red Tipped Arrow” Hall, Stacy Leeds, Dr. Peterson Zah, and Robert Anderson – participated in the September 13-14, 2012, conference.

Transfer of 603.2 acres of land in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, together with the buildings, from jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Wisconsin Department of Public Welfare was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B. Korton announced today that he has notified the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District in Nevada that its contract for management of the irrigation works of the Newlands Reclamation Project will be terminated October 31, 1974.

The Secretary said that the immediate reason for the action is the repeated violations by the District of the Department's operating criteria and procedures for the Project.

Billings, MT - The second consultation on the Buy Indian Act will be held Wednesday, August 15, 2012. The Buy Indian Act provides Indian Affairs with the authority to set-aside procurement contracts for qualified Indian-owned businesses. This proposed rule describes uniform administrative procedures that Indian Affairs will use in all of its locations to encourage procurement of goods and services from eligible Indian economic enterprises, as authorized by the Buy Indian Act.

The Indian youths of America are going to college and other institutions of higher learning in ever-increasingly numbers, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glen L. Emmons said today.

According to a nationwide Indian Bureau survey, there are over 2,300 young Indian men and women who are now taking courses in schools above the high school level. The total twenty years ago was about one-third that number.

Many of these education-seeking youngsters are able to pay their own ways; others are being aided by scholarships, grants and working in nonclass periods.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs ship North Star III sidled up to craggy Little Diomede in the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska last month and the, skilled crew worked for 43 straight hours --helped by the fact that there are now only about four hours of darkness a day on the tiny island to upload more than 400 tons of building material under conditions that would have challenged the Navy Seabees.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Acting Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Donald E. “Del” Laverdure lauded Darwin Cajero, a student at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in Albuquerque, N.M., who was a featured speaker at the sesquicentennial celebration of the Morrill Land-grant Act of 1862, this past Tuesday, June 26, 2012, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.