Past News Items

WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Obama’s proposed $12 billion budget for the Department of the Interior in FY2010 will allow the nation’s largest land manager to play a central role in carrying out the President’s vision for addressing the challenges of our times, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said today.

Appointment of Kendall Cumming, land operations officer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Fort Defiance, Ariz., as superintendent of the Jicarilla Apache Agency, Dulce, N. Mex., effective August 19, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

He succeeds the late John B. Keliiaa, who died in Washington, D. C., last January.

Procedures for updating the membership renewal of the Menominee Indian Tribe were published in the Federal Register of October 17th, 1974 the Department of the Interior announced today.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson said that “the Menominee tribal membership roll has been closed since June 17, 1954, when legislation was passed to terminate the tribe’s special relationship with the Federal Government. The restoration of this relationship by Public Law 93-197, passed December 22, 1973, requires the updating of the roll.”

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman will appear on the afternoon of Monday, November 12, 2007, at the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) 64th Annual Convention, where he will address delegates at the Second General Assembly and attend NCAI’s session for tribal leaders on the Indian Affairs Modernization Initiative scheduled for that evening. The event will take place in Denver, Colo., at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center.

Canadian administrators of Indian affairs will be guests of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs at a three-day joint meeting starting October 7 in Phoenix, Ariz., the Department of the Interior announced today.

The conference is an outgrowth of a visit made to the University of Toronto last December by United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash. Its major purpose is to provide for an interchange of information between the administrators of Indian affairs in the two countries on a wide array of topics of mutual interest.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced the first in a series of steps that must be undertaken by the nearly 3,000 Menominee Indians of Wisconsin to restore their tribal government which was terminated in 1961.

Tribal candidates for the Menominee Restoration Committee will be nominated January 19, with elections to be held no later than March 5.

PHOENIX - Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne opened the first-ever National Native American Economic Policy Summit with a video-taped message to over 500 tribal leaders, federal officials and leaders of Native organizations encouraging Summit participants to “work together collaboratively to formulate policy recommendations that will improve the quality of life in America’s diverse and growing indigenous communities.”

Hailing it a "landmark study II Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today made public the report of a three-man task force which last year studied the problems of the 43,000 Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts of Alaska.

The study group, which was headed by William W. Keeler, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Indian Nation, and chairman of the executive committee of the Phillips Petroleum Company, traveled more than 5,000 miles throughout Alaska, visiting many of the native villages and holding conferences with native leaders.

Almost $1 million to be used to help Indian students in public schools has been awarded under contracts this month to Indian tribal groups in the Great Lakes Area, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today. The contracts were let by the BLA's Minneapolis Area Office.

The Minnesota Chippewa Resource Development Corporation received the bulk of the money, $863,668, for the benefit of the six Chippewa Indian reservations in Minnesota - Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs and White Earth.

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today praised the U.S. Senate's confirmation of Carl J.' Artman to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs.

Artman, an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin, currently serves as the department's Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs. He previously was chief counsel of the Oneida Tribe and served on the staff of U.S. Rep. Michael Oxley.