Past News Items

Dr. Gerald E. Gipp, a 39-year-old member of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian tribe of North Dakota, has been named President of Haskell Indian Junior College.

Presently Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Education in the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., Gipp will assume his new duties upon the retirement of President Wallace Galluzzi in early January. He will be the first Indian ever to head the junior college.

Indian children in three Bureau of Indian Affairs schools will be given special education services and assistance next school year with the help of funding by the Office of Education.

Schools in which the programs will be initiated include Wahpeton Indian School, Wahpeton, N.D.; Phoenix Indian School in Phoenix, Ariz. and Intermountain School, Brigham City, Utah.

The three programs are intended to establish guidelines for Similar, future operations in other Bureau schools, where they are applicable.

Regulations governing the acquisitions of trust land for Indians published today (September 18) in the Federal Register. Commissioner of Indian Affairs William E, Hallett said today. The regulations are to be effective on October 18, 1980.

The Department of the Interior today announced the selection of Clyde W. Hobbs, superintendent of the Crow Indian Agency in Montana for the past four years, to head the Wind River Agency, Fort Washakie, Wyoming, effective June 4.

He succeeds Arthur N. Arnston who has been superintendent at Wind River since 1954 and is being assigned to complete the wind-up of Indian Bureau responsibilities on the Catawba Reservation in South Carolina as provided by a 1959 law.

WASHINGTON – Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Principal Deputy Secretary for Indian Affairs John Tahsuda met with a group of high school students from across Indian Country. The students are in Washington, D.C., with George Washington University's INSPIRE Pre-College Program which is an abridged version of the school's Native American Political Leadership Program, a semester-long internship program for college and graduate students.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs William E. Hallett said today that Indian self-determination will be boosted by a recent decision by the President's Management Improvement Council, agreeing to sponsor the Tribal Manager Corps (TMC), a new initiative to strengthen and improve Indian tribal governments. The TMC project is designed to make professional managers/administrators from government agencies and private industry available to work with Indian tribe’s to help meet tribal management needs and, thereby, further Indian self-determination capabilities.

Award of a $139,235 contract for the improvement of utility systems at Haskell Indian Institute, Lawrence, Kansas, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract provides for the replacement, enlargement and extension of the water, sewer and steam distribution systems. These improvements are necessary not only for adequate service to existing buildings but to provide service to the new school building and two new dormitories being constructed under another contract.

WASHINGTON -- To address concerns regarding mineral leasing and development activity adjacent to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Michael L. Connor today announced the U.S. Department of the Interior will expand the resource management planning effort underway in the Farmington, New Mexico area.

A field study program in American Indian culture, language, art, history and contemporary life will be offered this summer in the heart of the Southwest's "Indian country" by the non-profit American Forum for International Study in cooperation with the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The four-week program, July 5 through August 1, 1970, is designed for teachers, advanced college students and those whose professions require an understanding of American Indian groups.

The Justice Department has concluded after an F.B.I. investigation that allegations of brutality against students at the Chilocco, Okla., Indian School by some staff members were without foundation, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Harrison Loesch said today.