Past News Items

CORRECTED COPY 11/27

Washington, D.C. – The Department of the Interior today launched a new effort to develop a Department-wide policy on tribal consultation, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk announced today. The new consultation policy will be developed with input from the nation’s 564 federally recognized tribes.

Award of a $729,911 contract for the construction of school facilities on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at Fort Yates, North Dakota was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract calls for the construction of a l2-classroom elementary school building, a high school general shop building, and other related facilities, The construction, when completed, will replace the old frame structure now housing ,he elementary school, which is over-crowded and substandard, and will allow an increase of 30 pupils in the school enrollment.

The contributions of Dr. William J. Benham, Jr., to Indian education programs in the United States were cited in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on March 23.

Benham, a Creek Indian from Holdenville, Oklahoma, is the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Indian Education Resources Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Bismarck, N.D. – Surrounded by fourth through eighth grade students at the Theodore Jamerson Elementary School, who joined him in viewing President Obama’s address on the importance of learning to their future, Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk underscored the President’s message by relating to them the importance of education in his own life.

Selection of Dale M. Baldwin, superintendent of the Fort Peck Indian Agency, Poplar, Mont., as the new superintendent of the Nevada agency, Stewart, Nev., effective April 29, was announced today by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior.

Baldwin succeeds Burton A. Ladd, who is retiring after nearly 34 years' service with the Indian Bureau. A new superintendent for the Fort Peck Agency has not been selected.

John Buffalohorn has been appointed Superintendent of the Northern Cheyenne Agency at Lame Dear, Montana, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

Buffalohorn, who is a full-blood member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, has been Superintendent of the BIA Fort Totten Agency in North Dakota.

An Army veteran, Buffalohorn, began his career with the BIA in 1954, at the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Junior College). He has been stationed at agencies in Oklahoma, North Dakota and Montana.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today praised the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Larry Echo Hawk, an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and the first American Indian in U.S. history elected as a state attorney general, to serve as the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, in cooperation with the Navajo Trail Association, is organizing an unusual three-way observance to be held September 16 at Four Corners where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson has changed the Bureau of Indian Affairs' service structure in the State of Nevada. Official notice of the changes is being published in the Federal Register.

Formerly served by a single agency office, the state will now have an Eastern Nevada Agency at Owyhee and a Western Nevada Agency at Stewart. This change was requested by Indian Tribal and community groups in Western Nevada. Splitting the state into two agency jurisdictions is expected to improve services.

WASHINGTON – The latest class to graduate from an Indian Affairs-supported pilot project to train American Indians in the commercial building trade will hold its commencement ceremony on January 16, 2009, in Phoenix, Ariz. The current class has 12 trainees, all of whom are from the Navajo Nation, the largest federally recognized tribe in the state. The ceremony will take place at the Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen in Phoenix immediately following a luncheon for graduates and guests that starts at 11:30 a.m. (local time).