Past News Items

Approximately 20 percent of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) agricultural water supply available under Arizona's basic entitlement to water from the Colorado River has been allocated to five Indian tribes by Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman will be the keynote speaker on Tuesday, July 24, 2007, at the Bureau of Indian Education’s first National Partnership Conference on improving Indian education. The event “Partnerships for Student Success” will take place on July 24-26 at the Renaissance Denver Hotel in Denver, Colo.

A meeting of the general council of the Cherokee Delaware Tribe, scheduled to be held September 11 in Dewey, Okla., has been cancelled, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

RAPID CITY – “Native Americans Entrepreneurs: Blueprint for Economic Development in the Great Plains” is the theme of the 9th Annual Great Plains Regional/Tribal Economic Summit to be held April 17­18, 2007, at the Ramkota Hotel in Rapid City, S.D. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Great Plains Regional Office in Aberdeen, S.D., is a sponsor of this annual event.

I have just returned from nearly a week in Alaska, and it has been a real eye-opener. Every time I go to Alaska I develop some new perspectives. This week I returned with an especially strong feeling of the urgent challenges which must be met in the near future.

Today, Alaska is America's last frontier. Its history, its distances and climate and natural resources, and the many human factors involved, all combine to make it a unique land indeed.

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Director W. Patrick Ragsdale today announced that BIA Special Agent Leonard Merriam, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Michigan, is now a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy (FBINA). Merriam, who works in the Bureau’s Office of Law Enforcement Services (OLES) in Washington, D.C., joins a select group of BIA law enforcement officers who are also graduates of the Academy. The graduation ceremony took place on September 16 at the FBINA campus in Quantico, Va.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced the appointment of Karen R. Ducheneaux, enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, South Dakota, to be his Special Assistant. She will prepare Bureau position papers and help present the Bureau’s policies, goals, and objectives to the public.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James Cason today announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP) has published in the Federal Register a final rule implementing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), President Bush’s signature education legislation, in the BIA-funded schools.

Sidney L. Mills, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has been named Executive Assistant to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson, it was announced today.

Mills, who has been Assistant Director for Management Services in the BIA's Office of Administration, succeeds Ronald L. Esguerra who was recently appointed Director of the BIA's Albuquerque Area.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will be in Albuquerque, N.M., on Wednesday, October 27, to lead a delegation in a groundbreaking ceremony for the new National Indian Programs Training Center. The delegation of the nation’s top Indian Affairs officials will also be joined by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, who will be honored in ceremonies dedicating Bureau of Indian Affairs offices on the Albuquerque site as the Pete V. Domenici Indian Affairs Building.