Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will give the main address at the May 8 commencement ceremony for graduates of Sitting Bull College, a tribally controlled community college in Fort Yates, N.D., located on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, an area bisected by the North Dakota-South Dakota border. The event will be held at the tribe’s Prairie Knight Casino and Lodge Pavillion located south of Mandan, N.D., starting at 2:00 p.m. (CDT). The 2003-2004 graduating class of 54 students will be the largest in the college’s history.

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I am delighted to be with you again at your annual meeting and to help you celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. In the martyrdom of Lincoln,

Jenkin Lloyd Jones saw the interruption of an unfulfilled task. In memory of the Great Emancipator, he determined to create an institution that would be truly equalitarian, both as to people and as to ideas.

Robert Abbey will hold a news media teleconference regarding domestic oil and gas production on public and Tribal lands.
Credentialed media may also participate in the teleconference media roundtable by telephone by dialing 1-888-972-9240 and entering the access code INTERIOR.

SELLS, Ariz. – Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin today announced that President Bush has requested $1.4 million for Fiscal Year 2005 to support border security efforts of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose reservation in southern Arizona shares a 75-mile border with Mexico. The President’s request will help the tribe address law enforcement border issues on the Tohono O’Odham Nation reservation as part of the administration’s efforts to improve homeland security in Indian Country.

Robert L. Bennett, Commissioner of Indian. Affairs, announced today that Wallace E. Galluzzi has been named Superintendent of Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kan.

Haskell is a post high school vocational training school for Indians. Galluzzi was principal at the Institute and has been acting superintendent the past two months since the former 3uperintendent, Thomas Tommaney, became assistant area director for education at Muskogee, Okla.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney announced the appointment of two leadership posts within the Bureau of Indian Affairs: Johnna Blackhair, a member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe in Montana, will serve as Deputy Bureau Director for Trust Services at the Bureau of Indian Affairs’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and Patricia Mattingly, of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in New Mexico and the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, will serve as Regional Director of the Bureau’s Southwest Regional Office in Albuquerque, N.M.

WASHINGTON - Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb today announced the formation of the National Indian Country Telecom Infrastructure Consortium (NICTIC) to coordinate an effort to build and improve the telecommunications infrastructure throughout Indian Country. "Creating this consortium supports the President's National Strategy for Homeland Security by providing critical direction to improving the telecommunications infrastructure in Indian Country," said Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb.

Timber sales on Indian owned land reached a record high of $26.7 million in calendar year 1968, topping a stumpage receipts of the previous year by almost $8.8 million, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced.

Although the amount of timber harvested also reached a record 998 million board feet -- 98 million board feet over 1967 Bureau officials said rapidly rising timber prices were largely responsible for the income increase.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Mac Lean Sweeney announced today that the Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) is soliciting applications for its Native American Business Development Institute (NABDI) grant program, which has a total of $900,000 to fund feasibility studies for tribal economic development projects in Opportunity Zones.

WASHINGTON - The Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb has announced that the Department of the Interior published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Indian Reservation Roads Program in the Federal Register on August 7, 2002. The proposed rule is the product of negotiated rulemaking between tribal representatives and Federal representatives from the Department of the Interior and the Department of Transportation under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.