Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Northern Cheyenne Agency on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation has deployed Tribal Access Program (TAP) biometric/biographic kiosks at its offices in Lame Deer, Montana. This state-of-the-art equipment will help the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe ensure the safety of on-reservation American Indian children in foster care through expedited background checks on foster parents and the adults in their homes prior to placement.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Historical Trust Accounting (OHTA) has mailed detailed accounting statements to 560 Individual Indian Money (IIM) account holders in Arizona. OHTA Executive Director Bert Edwards says the mailing is the first phase of an effort to notify thousands of IIM account holders across Indian country that their trust fund balances have been investigated, audited and reconciled.

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I return to Shiprock for the dedication of this splendid new factory constructed by Navajo effort to house the largest industrial facility in the entire State of New Mexico.

The Navajo people have indeed moved into the, space age. In this plant, a subsidiary of the world-wide Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, Navajos are today assembling some of the components that go into our Apollo rocket systems.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney announced today that she has signed reservation proclamations for two land parcels totaling approximately 222.63 acres for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, a federally recognized tribe in Minnesota located southwest of the city of Minneapolis. The parcels will be added to the tribe’s existing reservation under the authority of the Indian Reorganization Act of June 18, 1934 (48 Stat. 984; 25 U.S.C. 5110).

WASHINGTON – The Joint Tribal Leaders/DOI Task Force on Trust Reform will hold its next meeting on July 22-24, 2002 in Portland, Ore. The task force was established in February of 2002 to review and propose plans for improving the Department’s management of individual Indian and tribal trust assets.

Howard F. Johnson, 54, a veteran of more than 32 years Federal service, has been appointed Special Liaison Representative to the Seneca Nation of Indians, it was announced today by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett.

Bennett also announced that John L. Pappan, 40, now superintendent of the Fort Hall Agency, Fort Hall, Idaho, will succeed Johnson as superintendent of the Osage Agency, Pawhuska, Okla.

WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb today joined a ground blessing ceremony for a $38 million classroom and dormitory complex in Santa Fe, New Mexico, emphasizing President Bush's Indian Education Initiative and commitment to nationwide educational reform.

New superintendents have been named for two Bureau of Indian Affairs agencies -- the Zuni in New Mexico and the Fort Hall in Idaho -- Robert L. Bennett, Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, announced today. Both superintendents are Oklahoma men and transfer from North Dakota agencies.

I James D. Cornett, Superintendent of the Fort Totten, N. D., and Agency has been reassigned to head the Zuni Agency, and William A. Mehojah, Superintendent of the Turtle Mountain Agency, Belcourt, N. D., is to be Superintendent of the Fort Hall Agency.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Interior Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb today announced his approval of the reconsidered final determination in favor of Federal acknowledgment for the Cowlitz Indian Tribe of Washington. The reconsidered final determination, which McCaleb signed on December 31, 2001, affirms the final determination signed by his predecessor, Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin Gover, on February 14, 2000 acknowledging that the Cowlitz Indian Tribe exists as an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law.

I remember Winslow from my boyhood. It was a busy town in those days, a rail center for an otherwise remote part of Arizona. In more recent years, however, Winslow became one of the many communities throughout America adversely affected by the transportation revolution and other changing patterns in our national economy.