Past News Items

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has published eligibility criteria and application procedures for Indian tribes interested in participating in the Tribal Managers Corps program, Commissioner of Indian Affairs William E. Hallett said today.

The Department of the Interior today announced completion of plans developed by Indians on seven rancherias in California for distributing group property among themselves and taking it out of Federal trust supervision, under a 1958 law. The Indians accepted the plans at referendums at each rancheria.

WASHINGTON – Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs John Tahsuda announced today that the Department of the Interior has signed an agreement with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon to guide implementation of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations.

A meeting of the American Indian Art and Culture Review Panel, scheduled to be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 26, has been transferred to Washington, D. C.

The group will meet January 26 in the Interior Department building.

The future location of the Institute of American Indian Art will be one of the agenda items.

The Department of the Interior today announced award of a $963,560 contract for construction of 8.1-miles of roadway on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona from Marsh Pass, approximately 58 miles northeast of Tuba City, running northeasterly towards Kayenta.

This section of road is part of Navajo Route 1, which was authorized by the Anderson-Udall legislation of 1959.

WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior today released the 2015 Status Report for the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Program), which summarizes its implementation to date and significant economic impact in Indian Country. Since 2013, the Buy-Back Program has paid nearly $715 million to landowners and restored the equivalent of approximately 1.5 million acres of land to tribal governments.

Washington, D.C. -- Hazel E. Elbert, a Creek Indian and Legislative Specialist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has been named a Fellow for the 1972-73 Congressional Operations program, Louis R. Bruce, Commissioner of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, announced today.

The objective of the program is to give promising young Federal executives, journalists, political scientists and educators a thorough understanding of congressional operations. It is administered jointly by the Civil Service Commission and the American Political Science Foundation.

The way has been cleared for construction of a $50-million dam and reservoir on Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico with approval of an easement agreement by the Pueblos, the Army's Corps of Engineers and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The agreement covers 4,000 acres of Cochiti Pueblo land, for which the Pueblo will receive a settlement of $145,200, plus all right to develop recreation facilities in the area.

WASHINGTON – Acting Bureau of Indian Education Director Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes will address the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute’s (SIPI) graduating class of 2016 at a commencement ceremony on Friday, April 15, at the SIPI campus in Albuquerque, N.M.

Established in 1971 at the request of the 19 Pueblo tribes in New Mexico and other federally recognized tribes to help train American Indians and Alaska Natives for employment, SIPI is a National Indian Community College and Land Grant Institution with a national, tribally appointed board of regents.

Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton today announced that the Department of the Interior has entered into a use agreement with the Department of the Air Force to preserve Wildwood-Air Force Station near Kenai, Alaska, in good condition until arrangements can be made to transfer title to the base to the Kenai Native Association. Interim uses planned for the 'facility include a program for boarding high school students and Indian Action Team activities.