Past News Items

Award of a $33,014.25 bridge and flood-control construction project on the Hoopa Indian Reservation, Humboldt County, California, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The project, on the main route to Hoopa Agency, involves the construction of a continuous slab bridge on existing substructures, and protecting levees which will include roadway approaches to the bridge and the developed areas inundated by the floods of the winter of 1955-56. The road is on a school bus route and serves a substantial number of the reservation population.

Enactment of legislation that would add about 845 acres of public land to two Indian reservations in southern California and 80 acres to a reservation in Nevada has been recommended to Congress by the Department of the Interior, Assistant Secretary Roger Ernst announced today.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons announced today that he has accepted “with regrets’ the resignation of William R. Olsen, effective May 12, as Area Director of the Interior Department’s Indian Bureau at Juneau, Alaska.

Legislation that would make it a Federal criminal offense to trespass for hunting, fishing or trapping purposes on Indian reservations and other Indian lands held in trust by the United States is needed to protect the property rights of Indian tribal groups, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Roger Ernst said today.

The Interior Department, Mr. Ernst pointed out, has reported favorably to Congress on H.R. 7240, a bill which would provide such protection by amending appropriate sections of the United States Code.

The Department of the Interior announced today the award of a $813,533 contract for the expansion of school facilities that will provide for 150 additional Indian children at Kinlichee School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.

The contract covers the construction of a 256-pupil dormitory, a five-classroom school building, twenty employees' quarters, a kitchen and dining hall, and a generator building. The existing school is also to be remodeled under this contract.

The Department of the Interior today recommended the enactment of legislation that would transfer about 10,500 acres of federally owned land to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Tribe of South Dakota.

The lands to be transferred are located on the Rosebud Reservation and were acquired by the Federal Government between 1933 and 1950 for use in farming and ranching operations of the Rosebud Indian Boarding School. They are no longer needed for this purpose.

Award of a $1,176,800 contract for construction at the Wingate School at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, to provide facilities that will increase the school's capacity by about 325 Indian students, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton today said he will send a representative of his office to Kansas City, Kansas, to participate in a hearing to be held soon by the House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs on bills affecting the future status of the community's controversial Huron Cemetery. The date for the hearing ill be announced later.

Subcommittee Chairman James A. Haley, who will conduct the hearing, invited the Secretary to send a representative.

The Department of the Interior announced today that it has taken joint action with the Department of Agriculture in designating 11 units of the Klamath Indian Forest in Oregon to be offered for sale over & period of about 16 months starting sometime after April 1.

The two Departments have also agreed upon specifications and minimum require9nts for sustained-yield management of the units which must be followed by purchasers under provisions of the Klamath Termination Act of 1954, as amended.

Trust restrictions on allotted Indian lands, scheduled to expire in calendar year 1959, have been extended for an additional five years, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today.

The order reverses a custom, started in 1951, of limiting such extensions to a maximum of only one year. In 1951, the then Acting Secretary was considering terminating trust status on individual Indian lands on a year-by-year basis. Each trust case would be subject to review every year.