Past News Items

The Lifetime Learning and Rebuild America economic stimulus package proposed by President Clinton will provide economic development opportunities, rebuild and maintain roads, repair schools, jails and juvenile detention centers, and provide funds to operate elementary and secondary schools on many of America's Indian reservations.

The total stimulus package calls for $102.4 million, with most of the funds to be spent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for the benefit of Indians by the end of Fiscal Year 1993.

A plan for the distribution of more than $260,000 awarded by the Indian Claims Commission to the Ottawa Indians of Oklahoma is being published in the Federal Register, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

This award represents additional payment for six tracts of land in Northwestern Ohio that were ceded to the United States by four bands of Ottawa Indians under treaties of 1833 and 1831.

The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) welcomes tribal leadership and stakeholders to attend an informational virtual meeting scheduled for 2:00 pm eastern standard time on July 8 to hear BIE leadership present its plans for distributing its Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to schools to support the COVID-19 Pandemic recovery.

A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) investment that created three "business opportunity centers" last September is paying off with real jobs for Indian people.

The Rensselaerville Institute of Rensselaerville, N.Y., one of the three new centers, has been working with tribes and individual Indian entrepreneurs across the country. It has created and saved a total of 84 jobs.

A second series of regional meetings with Indians to discuss implementation of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act will begin May 28, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Draft regulations for the Act, mailed to leaders of Indian tribes and organizations May 16, will be reviewed at these sessions, conducted jointly by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service.

The first series of meetings was held in March prior to the drafting of regulations.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Richard Darman and the Intertribal Monitoring Association for Indian Trust Funds announced today the creation of a new OMB-Interior "SWAT" team. Its purpose is to address financial management problems associated with the $2 billion in Indian trust funds. The management problems include:

Failure to reconcile or audit the 300,000 trust fund accounts, some of which are more than 50 years old;

A 15-year employee at the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Turtle Mountain Agency, Belcourt, North Dakota, has been named Agency Superintendent. He is Fred E. Gillis, a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe.

Gillis, who has been acting superintendent the past five months, has held a variety of positions at the agency since his first employment there in 1959. He has been the administrative manager, realty officer and legal clerk. He started as a clerk-steno.

The Department of the Interior's Assistant Secretary .for Indian Affairs, Eddie F. Brown, today announced the appointment of Patrick A. Hayes as Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for Trust and Economic Development. The 44-year-old enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux tribe has been acting in the position for the past several months. The appointment is effective immediately.

Approximately 800 acres of federally-owned land, adjoining the Fort Sill Indian School at Lawton, Okla., has been added to the land held in trust for the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Indians of Oklahoma.

The land was administratively transferred to the Secretary of the Interior, as trustee, by Arthur F. Sampson, Administrator of the General Services Administration on March 17, 1975. Notice of the transfer has been published in the Federal Register.

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs John Tahsuda today announced the appointment of Charles Addington as deputy bureau director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) Office of Justice Services (OJS). The appointment by BIA Director Bryan Rice became effective on December 24, 2017. Addington, a member of the Cherokee Nation, had been serving as OJS’s acting deputy bureau director since October 2, 2017.

Addington has over 25 years of law enforcement experience, 20 of which are in the management of Indian Country law enforcement programs.