Past News Items

A Navajo Indian medicine man will demonstrate the sacred art of sandpainting for visitors to the Interior Department I s Art Gallery beginning October 12.

Fred Stevens, a Navajo medicine man from the Indian Reservation at Lupton, Arizona will create sand paintings used in Navajo religious-healing ceremonies. He will appear in connection with the Gilbert Maxwell Collection of Navajo Weaving now being displayed at the gallery.

WASHINGTON – Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell will travel to Indian Country with stops in Arizona and New Mexico. Secretary Jewell will mark continued progress in the transformation of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) school process and make an historic announcement on the restoration of tribal homelands.

The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced steps are being taken to implement a ,new law which
provides for payment to the Southern Paiute Indians for lands taken from them in 1860. Regulations are being amended to permit
preparation of a tribal roll.

An Act of October 17, 1968, authorized the distribution of funds derived from a judgment by the Indian Claims Commission,
and directed the Department to prepare a roll to serve as a basis for paying the money.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Deputy Secretary of the Interior Michael Connor today announced a schedule through 2015 for the continued implementation of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Program) that identifies locations representing more than half of all the fractional interests and half of all owners across Indian Country.

Award of two contracts totaling $264,444 for road improvement projects on Fort Totten Reservation in North Dakota and Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota was announced today by Commissioner Philleo Nash of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

WASHINGTON, DC – As part of President Obama’s commitment to help strengthen Native American communities, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today announced the latest step in the implementation of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Buy-Back Program), as the Department signed its next cooperative agreement, this time with the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation located in northeastern South Dakota and in southeastern North Dakota.

For an invention that dramatically reduces accident risks and at the same time results in sizeable cost reductions, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall has awarded the highest incentive payment in the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to an engineering technician on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.

Frank H. Roderick, a Bureau of Indian Affairs employee, received a check for $1,350 in recognition of the usefulness of his design for a new type irrigation canal check.

WASHINGTON – The Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services will hold its first tribal court trial advocacy training session for tribal court personnel in 2014 on Jan. 27-30 in Albuquerque, N.M., which includes a case study on a sexual assault on an adult.

The Department of the Interior has recommended to Congress that legislation be enacted to distribute $2,500,000 in judgment funds to the Klamath Indians of Oregon.

The amount was settled upon by attorneys for the United States and for the Indians and represents redress for insufficient payment for lands ceded to the United States under Treaty in 1864. The case was adjudicated by the Indian Claims Commission last year and funds were appropriated by Congress in June 1964. The additional legislation is now needed to authorize final disposition.

WASHINGTON – The Secretarial Commission on Indian Trust Administration and Reform will hold its final public meeting on Nov. 20, 2013, via webinar. The Commission is completing a comprehensive evaluation of the Department of the Interior’s management and administration of Indian trust assets within a two-year period and will offer recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior of how to improve in the future.