Past News Items

WASHINGTON – President Bush has proposed a $2.2 billion budget for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) for Fiscal Year 2008. The 2008 request is $7.0 million above the President’s 2007 budget request and $1.0 million below the 2007 continuing resolution. The budget includes two initiatives to ensure that future generations of Native Americans have safe and secure communities to call home and that Indian children attending BIE schools can fulfill their potential through education.

Award of a $126,550 contract for the construction of a municipal center at Lame Deer, Montana, on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The new center, when complete, will provide space for tribal meetings and activities. It will also furnish a replacement for the old tribal jail building.

The successful bidder was Thrif-T Const. Co., Miles City, Montana. Seven higher bids, ranging from $126,600 to $199,000, were received.

American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut year 'round events that help non-Native Americans appreciate the unusual contributions of those whose home this was before the arrival of the Europeans are now listed in "American Indian Calendar 1974" available from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C. 20402 for 65 cents.

WASHINGTON – Acting Office of Indian Education Programs Director Edward Parisian today announced that the OIEP will hold its 2005 Tribal Consultation Meetings on August 29 and 30 to obtain oral and written comments on potential issues concerning Bureau of Indian Affairs-funded schools under authority provided by Public Law 95-561, the Education Amendments Act of 1978. The BIA published a notice on the 2005 Tribal Consultation Meetings in the Federal Register on August 8.

The Miccosukees of Florida, kin to the Seminoles and Creeks, but consistently aloof from both tribal organizations, have emerged from the Everglades after more than a century and are now going into their own tribal business.

With a constitution and bylaws that were formulated and approved in January 1962, the Miccosukees are now, for the first time in the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, accepting Federal aid from the United States.

The Navajo Indian Tribe will receive more than $7.3 million, under a contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to be used in public schools
serving Navajo students, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The contract, awarded August 11, gives the tribe administrative responsibility for the Johnson-O'Malley (JOM) programs serving the reservation.

WASHINGTON – President Bush has proposed a $2.2 billion budget for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for Fiscal Year 2006. The budget continues the Department’s commitment to reform trust management and provides increases for law enforcement and detention centers, an economic development commission, and a leadership academy pilot program.

The Department of the Interior reports that the volume of timber cut from Indian lands in lq63 was the highest on record. Not included in the report was the volume cut on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin and the Klamath Reservation in Oregon, where Federal supervision ended in 1961.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that representatives of each Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs will meet in Albuquerque to discuss energy conservation on the part of the agency March 20, 21, and 22.

This is the second meeting of its kind. The first was held in Washington.

“Fuel shortages and fuel costs within the scope of the Bureau’s plant management unit will be the topic under discussion,” Thompson indicated.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will be joined on July 8 by representatives of the Zuni Tribe of New Mexico and other departmental officials at a signing ceremony at the Interior Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., to formalize the Zuni Indian Tribe Water Rights Settlement Agreement.