Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Katuk Sweeney today announced she has approved leasing regulations for the San Pasqual Band of Diegueno Mission Indians in California.

WASHINGTON – Interior Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb today announced that he has confirmed Aurene Martin as his Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs. She had been acting deputy assistant secretary since May 28, 2002. Ms. Martin, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, came to the Interior Department in October 2001 as Counselor to Assistant Secretary McCaleb.

Five Bureau of Indian Affairs offices have been presented awards for rescue and supply operations following the December snow and rain storms in the Southwest, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today.

Receiving the unit awards for excellence of service were staffs of the Navajo and Phoenix Area Offices and of the Hopi, Fort Apache and Papago Agencies, all headquartered in Arizona.

WASHINGTON - A cooperative agreement between the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of the Interior's (DOI) Indian Affairs eGovernment initiative will allow Federally recognized Indian tribes to participate in a program that will provide a domain name suffix identifying the tribe on the World Wide Web as a government entity.

Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Chairman of the National Council on Indian Opportunity, announced at the Council's first meeting, July 16 that a commemorative stamp saluting the American Indian will be issued by the Post Office Department.

Humphrey said he was informed of the new issue by Postmaster General W. Marvin Watson who said first sales of the stamp are planned for October.

The 6-cent stamp will carry a portrait of Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce warrior who reluctantly fought U.S. troops in 1877 as the Indian wars entered the last tragic phase.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs will hold a historic signing ceremony to formalize consultation procedures for the agency, as to agency actions effecting the 558 federally recognized tribes. The procedures establish guidelines to be used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs when consulting with the tribes on policy, regulatory statutes and executive orders. The ceremony is being held on December 13, 2000 at the Daybreak Star Center, Discovery Park in Seattle, Washington.

American Indian schools, fortified with a recent $9 million grant from the U.S. Office of Education, are trying out new ways to overcome the communications gap between Indian customs and conventional school methods.

Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs, Kevin Gover has approved immediate distribution of $108 million to build roads and bridges on Indian lands proposed by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) Regulatory Negotiations Committee. The Assistant Secretary also set into motion a process for distributing the remaining funds within 45 days.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert Lo Bennett announced today an Adult Education Training Seminar for Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel, November 27 through December 2, at the University of Oklahoma at Norman.

The Seminar will be held at the Oklahoma Center for Continuing Education on the university campus. It will be the first national effort by the Bureau to train its adult educators intensively about the current problems of the profession.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Kevin Gover announced today that he is transferring the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Division of Accounting Management from BIA's regional office in Albuquerque to a new Policy, Management and Budget Office in Washington, D.C. The new office will assist him in more effectively allocating BIA's resources.