Past News Items

John W. Fritz, senior corporate counsel for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, has been named Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Interior Secretary James G. Watt announced today.

Award of an $198,000 contract to Price, Waterhouse & Co. to aid the efforts of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to bring integrity in the use and control of funds to the Bureau's financial and accounting systems was announced today by Interior Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Mac Lean Sweeney today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association (AIANTA) to formalize that group’s role in strengthening collaboration and coordination related to travel and tourism on federal and tribal lands, in accordance with Public Law 114-221, the Native American Tourism Improving Visitor Experience Act, or NATIVE Act, of 2016.

A $10,998,701 Bureau of Reclamation contract to provide, install and test 30 electric motors to drive pumps at three Central Arizona Project (CAP) pumping plants has been awarded to Siemens-Allis, Inc., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Commissioner Robert N Broadbent announced today.

The Department of the Interior and the State of California today announced all fishing for fall chinook salmon and steelhead trout will be closed at midnight Sunday, August 27 in the Klamath River below the Highway 101 bridge, and severely curtailed above the bridge.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, November 20, U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Interior Mike Connor will host a news media teleconference to discuss the year-to-date accomplishments and next schedule for the continued implementation of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Buy-Back Program).

The Buy-Back Program implements the land consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement, which provided $1.9 billion to purchase fractional interests in trust or restricted land from willing sellers at fair market value within a 10-year period.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has announced that a partial per capita payment of judgment funds awarded to the Mississippi Sioux Indians by the Indian Claims Commission will be made before the end of April. The award was for land taken in Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota in the early 1800's.

The final environmental impact statement for the Vekol Hills Project, a proposed open pit copper and molybdenum mine on the Papago Indian Reservation in Pinal, County, Arizona, has been completed, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

Notice of the availability of the EIS is being published in the Federal Register.

The project calls for mining and related activities to be conducted under the terms of mineral and surface leases granted by the Papago Tribe, if approved by the Secretary of the Interior.

WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior today announced that purchase offers have been sent to more than 4,000 individual landowners with fractional interests at the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona and the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. These offers, totaling nearly $100 million, will give eligible landowners with interests in tribal priority tracts the opportunity to voluntarily sell their land to be held in trust for each tribe.

Appointment of Leon V, Langan, Gallup, N. Mex., and Thomas M. Heid, Albuquerque, N. Mex., as assistants to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and of Carl Beck, Springerville, Ariz., as the Commissioner 1s field representative was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay. They have been serving as consultants.