Past News Items

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is strengthening its Office of Indian Education Programs, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Under a new organizational structure, approved July 13, the authority of the office will be extended and some major functions transferred from field units to the Washington headquarters.

WASHINGTON – Office of Indian Education Programs Director Edward Parisian will join students, parents and tribal officials on August 31, 2004, to celebrate the opening of First Mesa Elementary School, a newly-constructed Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) operated elementary school located in Polacca, Ariz., a Hopi community situated at the eastern base of First Mesa on the Hopi Reservation.

Award of a $5,855,200 contract for the construction of school facilities in Many Farms, Apache County, Arizona, on the Navajo Indian Reservation, was announced today by the :Department of the Interior. The facilities will serve to relieve the overcrowded conditions prevailing at Pinon and Low Mountain schools and will provide needed school accommodations for many Navajo children in the area who are not presently in school.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced his first two executive appointments since he took office December 3 --both Indian, one a woman. The woman is Mrs. Shirley Plume, an Oglala Sioux, who will be Superintendent of the Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, North Dakota. She is the first Indian woman appointed to such a post. The second executive appointment is Frank Self, Choctaw, who will be Superintendent of the Phoenix Indian School, Phoenix, Arizona.

Other similar appointments to key Bureau of Indian Affairs posts will be forthcoming soon, Thompson said.

WASHINGTON – Interior Assistant Deputy Secretary Abraham E. Haspel, Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson and Special Trustee for American Indians Ross O. Swimmer will join Thomas E. Mills of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on May 14 in a dedication ceremony to officially open the new American Indian Records Repository in Lenexa, Kan. The repository is part of NARA’s underground regional records service facility in Lenexa.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today authorized release by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation of its report recommending that federally controlled recreation lands at Allegheny Reservoir (Kinzua Dam) in western Pennsylvania be administered by the Forest Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Secretary Udall has sent copies of the report to Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for review and comment.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM (January 12, 2010) – U.S. Department of the Interior officials today welcomed college football All-American and Rhodes Scholar Myron Rolle to Isleta Elementary School at the Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico, American Indian Reservation to kick off the new Our Way to Health™ Program.

WASHINGTON – Interior’s new Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs, David W. Anderson, pledged to work with tribes for the betterment of Indian people and to put greater emphasis on supporting Bureau of Indian Affairs employees in the field during his public swearing-in ceremony today with Secretary Gale Norton. Accompanied by his sister in full tribal dress who held a bible for his swearing-in, Anderson took the oath of office administered by Secretary Norton in front of over 100 attendees comprised of tribal officials and departmental employees.

Robert L. Bennett, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, has announced the appointment of Howard E. Euneau, a program staff officer in the Interior Department's Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, as Superintendent of the Rosebud Agency in South Dakota.

Euneau, 45, was born on the Turtle Mountain Reservation at Belcourt, N.D., and is a member of the Chippewa Tribe. He received a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of North Dakota in 1949 and prior to that served in the Army during World War II.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Katuk Sweeney today hosted the fourth in a series of Reclaiming Our Native Communities roundtables in Rapid City, S.D. The purpose of the roundtables is to hear from tribal leaders, public safety and domestic violence prevention advocates, law enforcement, and health care providers on what the federal government in general and Indian Affairs, in particular, need to do to seriously address the issue of missing and murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women, children and men.