Past News Items

Interior's Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Eddie F. Brown said today the President's fiscal year 1991 budget request of $1.7 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will reverse a decade-long trend of reducing resources available to carry out the Bureau's responsibilities to the Indian people of this country.

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior announced today the third set of awards which are being made "in recognition of long and outstanding services in the preservation, encouragement and development of the arts and crafts of the American Indians."

These awards, consisting of certificates of appreciation, are being presented today in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Recipients, and the categories for which they on, include:

Interior's Assistant Secretary Ross Swimmer today announced the appointments of C. L. Henson as Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Colorado River Agency in Parker, Arizona; and George E. Keller as Superintendent of the Truxton Canon Agency in Valentine, Arizona.

Award of a $181,400 contract for construction of a new 80-pupil dormitory and additional dining facilities to provide for Indian school children at Ramah, New Mexico, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Completion of the work will make it possible for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to accommodate additional children at the existing Ramah facility while they attend the local public schools under arrangements worked out with the school district. This will also relieve the present overcrowding.

The Department of the Interior announced today plans to contract for services to strengthen internal management and administration of more than $1.5 billion of Indian trust funds. Ross Swimmer, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, said that sound administration of the trust funds is one of Interior's paramount Indian trust responsibilities. He said that after assessing the consequences of further delay that he, as the manager for the trustee, decided to move ahead and take immediate steps to improve federal management of the funds.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons today strongly urged the Army Corps of Engineers to take action "at the earliest possible date” to eliminate a flood threat to tribally developed pasturelands on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in Florida.

Continuing a program he initiated in July to speed the settlement of Indian water claims through negotiation rather than litigation, Interior Secretary James Watt will meet today with a delegation of Indian leaders, western industry spokesmen and Governors.

"This is part of our cooperative, Good Neighbor Policy of discussing and negotiating problems facing the Indian tribes, the State and the Federal Governments," Watt said.

Bonus bids running as high as $5,505.55 per acre have been received for oil and gas leases on lands of the Navajo Indian Tribe in Utah and New Mexico which brought tribally rejected bids of only $257 an acre just 13 months ago, the Department of the Interior announced today.

These were part of the results of a January 13 bid opening at Window Rock, Arizona, involving 36 Navajo tracts with a total of 72,370 acres. The total of the high bids received was $3,603,927.54.

Public hearings to obtain comments on a proposed reservation plan for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah have been scheduled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This plan has been recommended to the Secretary of the Interior by the Paiute Tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Appointment of Kenneth L. Payton as superintendent of the Mescalero Indian Agency, Mescalero, N. Mex., effective November 12 was reported today by the Department of the Interior.

He succeeds Hobart Johnson who transferred from Mescalero in September to be superintendent of the Indian Bureau's Intermountain School at Brigham, Utah.