Past News Items

The Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) today announced it will increase the reimbursement of auditing costs from 50% to 100% for Indian Tribes participating in the Service's Cooperative and Delegated Audit Program. The program enables States and Tribes to join with MMS in providing additional audit coverage of revenues derived from oil, gas and other mineral leases.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan announced today he has established a Water Policy Council designed to coordinate departmental policy decisions and management activities in the area of water resources.

The Reagan Administration has announced support for a bill to transfer title to 25,000 acres of land within Caja del Rio National Forest to the Indians of Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico Interior Assistant Secretary Ken Smith, testifying before the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee July 26, said the land had been fraudulently taken from the Pueblo in the early 19th century and failure to return it to its rightful owners would be a grave injustice.

The land has "considerable symbolic, religious and economic significance to the Pueblo," Smith said.

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kenneth L. Smith today pledged involvement of tribal leaders through a more effective consultation process and warned that budget cuts will require sound management of all Indian programs.

Addressing the 38th annual convention of the National Congress of American Indians in Anchorage, Alaska, Smith said he had made consultation with tribes a priority item and stressed the need for recommendations and suggestions from tribal leaders.

“We are going to do things openly," Smith said, "so you can see and know and comment.”

Interior Secretary James Watt today announced the establishment of a 11Commission on Fiscal Accountability of the Nation’s Energy Resources11 to develop solutions to minerals management problems, focusing on royalty accounting and oil theft.

Secretary of the Interior James Watt said today the Department will initiate deep cuts and funding shifts and realign responsibilities among bureaus as part of President Reagan's program for economic recovery. Several major initiatives are being announced today as steps in that program, with other announcements to follow March 10.

Recommendations designed to eliminate certain management practices and to strengthen the organizational structure of the Washington headquarters Office of Territories, Department of the Interior, have been approved by Under Secretary Ralph Tudor.

A four man survey team which was assigned the task of surveying the operations of the Office said in its report that its recommendations would correct internal operating procedures by clarifying lines of authority and improving organizational relationships.

The largest oil and gas mining lease sale ever made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs will be offered prospective bidders at a sale to be held at Window Rock, Arizona, April 21, May 1, May 12, and May 22, Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay announced today.

Transfer of Frell M. Owl on January 26 from the position of superintendent of the Northern Idaho Indian Agency, Lapwai, Idaho, to the same position at the Fort Hall Agency near Pocatello was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

A $3,000,000 program of public school expansion to accommodate nearly 3,000 Navajo Indian children by September 1955, in communities of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado bordering the Navajo Reservation was announced today by Acting Secretary of the Interior Fred G. Aandahl.