Past News Items

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has prepared a 13-booklet series suitable for use by classroom teachers, youth groups and others interested in the story of the American Indian.

The illustrated publications describe the culture and eventful history of tribes whose past is linked with various States or regions of the country. The reader is brought up to date with facts about Indian life today and the Federal programs that serve reservation dwellers.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Interior Deputy Secretary Mike Connor will deliver the keynote address at the 24th Annual Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Service being held Thursday, May 7, 2015, at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Indian Police Academy in Artesia, N.M. Also scheduled to speak is BIA Director Michael S. Black.

Solon G. Ayers, a career educator and employment assistance officer with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, has been named Superintendent of the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico, the Bureau announced today.

Ayers has been on detail to the Albuquerque office of the Bureau since June, working with Bureau architects in planning a new structure to replace the century-old Indian boarding high school there.

Washington, DC – At the invitation of the Alaska Federation of Natives, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell will attend the organization’s leadership meeting in Alaska next week.

This will be Secretary Jewell’s second visit to the state in her official capacity. Jewell has visited Alaska more than a dozen times in previous roles, including as an oil and gas engineer, commercial banker and outdoor recreation business leader.

Alaska is home to three native peoples. The Eskimos, although best known, share the vast land with their island relatives, the Aleuts, and with a large number of Indians.

The story of these native residents of the great northern peninsula that became a State in 1959 is told in a booklet just published by the Bureau of Indian Affairs--Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts of Alaska.

Here is a sampling of some little known facts revealed in the new publication:

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs George T. Skibine has issued a proposed finding not to acknowledge the petitioner known as the Tolowa Nation (TN), Petitioner #85, located in Fort Dick, Calif., as an Indian tribe under the regulations governing the federal acknowledgment process at 25 CFR Part 83. The evidence in the record is insufficient to demonstrate that Petitioner #85 meets the criterion 83.7(b), one of the seven mandatory criteria of the regulations for a determination that the petitioning group is an Indian tribe.

The war on poverty, and our strivings toward a Great Society, have brought the American Indian people into the forefront of the national conscience. There are organizations, such as the Indian Rights Association, which have for years plugged away in behalf of reservation Indians, but the voices have been like whispers under the din of other issues. The voice of the Indian people themselves has not yet been raised in one chorus, although there are signs that this is happening now.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that he has taken steps to address the change in accreditation status of the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), a Bureau of Indian Education post secondary institution of higher learning in Albuquerque, N.M., by its accrediting organization, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

The Miccosukee Indians of Florida and the Red Lake Chippewas of Minnesota soon will have new agency heads, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash has announced.

Reginald C. Miller, the first superintendent of the four-year-old Miccosukee Indian Agency in Florida, leaves that post this month for a new assignment as superintendent of the Red Lake Chippewa Reservation.

Lawrence J. Kozlowski will succeed Miller at Miccosukee Agency headquarters in Homestead, Florida. Kozlowski formerly was assistant superintendent of the Great Lakes Indian Agency at Ashland, Wisconsin.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED), is soliciting proposals from tribes. The grants will be funded through IEED’s Energy and Mineral Development Program (EMDP) that enables tribes to assess, evaluate and promote the development of tribal energy and mineral resources. A formal solicitation was published in the Federal Register on April 27, 2010, by the Department of the Interior.