Past News Items

Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Ross Swimmer said today the President's fiscal year 1988 budget request of $985 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will enable the Bureau to carry out its responsibilities to the Indian people of this country and still hold the line against increased deficit spending.

The FY 1988 budget request for the main operating account, Operation of Indian Programs, totals $910.2 million, about $11 million less than the current 1987 estimate or about a one percent reduction.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan hosted the first gathering of the Advisory Committee for the White House Conference on Indian Education in Washington, D.C., on April 17, 1991.

"Our program for Indian education must have one important objective in mind -- achieving the highest quality education for the children it serves," Lujan said in greeting the group. "As we strive to achieve this goal we realize that the essential roots of Indian heritage must be implicit in any program of Indian education. We can not separate Indian education from Indian communities."

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan announced today the formation of a Working Group on Indian Water Settlements, which will report to Interior's Water Policy Council.

The Group's primary tasks will be to establish a set of principles to guide Indian water settlements; assist in the work of negotiating teams dealing with such settlements; and. keep the Council apprised of upcoming actions and report to the Council on the progress of ongoing negotiations, particularly when key decision points are approached.

Interior Assistant Secretary Ken Smith has approved an economic development grant of $358,666 to a Navajo tribal enterprise for the expansion of a potato production and processing business.

The grant is part of a Bureau of Indian Affairs program to provide "seed money" for the development of profit-making enterprises on Indian reservations. At least 75 percent of the project funds must come from non-federal sources.

John W. Fritz, senior corporate counsel for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, has been named Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Interior Secretary James G. Watt announced today.

A $10,998,701 Bureau of Reclamation contract to provide, install and test 30 electric motors to drive pumps at three Central Arizona Project (CAP) pumping plants has been awarded to Siemens-Allis, Inc., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Commissioner Robert N Broadbent announced today.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has announced that a partial per capita payment of judgment funds awarded to the Mississippi Sioux Indians by the Indian Claims Commission will be made before the end of April. The award was for land taken in Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota in the early 1800's.

Appointment of Leon V, Langan, Gallup, N. Mex., and Thomas M. Heid, Albuquerque, N. Mex., as assistants to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and of Carl Beck, Springerville, Ariz., as the Commissioner 1s field representative was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay. They have been serving as consultants.

Legislation is being drafted in the Bureau of Indian Affairs which will authorize transfer to the State of Texas complete trust responsibility over the affairs of the 410 Alabama-Coushatta Indians living on an approximately 4,000-acre reservation in Polk County, Texas, Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay announced today.

In a resolution commending the Eisenhower Administration's program to provide school facilities for reservation children, the Navajo Tribal Council declared that for the "first time in American history since the Treaty of 1868 the Congress of the United States has taken effective action to provide adequate schools for Navajos."

The Navajo emergency education program, which is designed to put every Navajo child of school age in school within two years, has had the personal support of President Eisenhower and Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.