Past News Items

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As part of President Obama’s commitment to empower tribal nations, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, on behalf of the United States, today signed an historic agreement at the Department of the Interior guaranteeing water rights for the White Mountain Apache Tribe of Arizona. The agreement will also provide funding for infrastructure to deliver clean drinking water to the Reservation, as well as water security for the City of Phoenix and other downstream water users.

A 36-year career in the Bureau of Indian Affairs ended on July 31 when Leroy D. Arnold, Chief Forest and Range Managemen, retired, Mr,. Arnold who lives at 2110 Hildarose Drive, Silver Spring, Md., began work with the Indian service as a forest fire guard at Warm Springs Indian Agency, Oregon, June 1917. He has served as forest ranger at Warm Springs and Yakima agencies and was deputy forest supervisor at Tulalip Agency, Washington. He also served for a time as superintendent of Klamath Agency, Oregon and since 1941 has been chief of the Bureau's Forest and Range Management branch.

Sidney L. Mills, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has been named Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Albuquerque area, Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard announced today. Mills was formerly Executive Assistant to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Gerard also announced the appointment of Roland Johnson as Deputy Director of the Albuquerque area. Johnson, a former tribal operations officer in the area office, has been on leave from BIA to serve as the Governor of the Pueblo of Laguna.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin K. Washburn today announced that Charles Addington, associate director of field operations for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Justice Services, has been named a finalist by the Partnership for Public Service for its 2013 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals. Addington, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, is among 31 finalists, and the only Interior Department employee, in seven medal categories who were announced on May 7.

Promotion of Elmo F. Miller on January 16 from the position of agricultural extension agent at the Colville Indian Agency, Nespelem, Wash., to the job of superintendent of the Northern Idaho Agency, Lapwai, Idaho, was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus has asked the Congress to extend the January 31 deadline for completion of projects authorized under the 1977 Emergency Drought Act to keep them eligible for Federal funding.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday, Jan. 31., 2013, the Department of the Interior will hold the first of three tribal consultation sessions on its Initial Implementation Plan outlining how Interior will carry out the land consolidation component of the historic Cobell Settlement. The first meeting will take place in Prior Lake, Minn., with the remaining sessions to be held Feb. 6 in Rapid City, S.D., and Feb. 14 in Seattle, Wash.

Appointment of Peru Farver, a veteran of 44 years' service with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to head the Bureau's work in tribal affairs was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

Mr. Farver, a Choctaw Indian, first entered the Bureau service in 1910 as a teacher at Union Agency, Muskogee, Okla., and has been superintendent at Fort Hall Agency, Fort Hall, Idaho, since August 1953. In the years between he held a variety of assignments and was superintendent at Tomah Agency, S. Dak.; Red Lake, Minn.; Cheyenne River, S. Dak., and Belcourt, N. Dak.

In remarks at the dedication of Block I of the Navajo Irrigation Project in Farmington, New Mexico, today Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe hailed the opportunities the project will provide for the Indian people.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to promote and sustain prosperous and resilient Native American tribal governments, it is hereby ordered as follows: