Past News Items

The Department of the Interior favors legislation that would authorize transferring to the Navajo Indian Tribe full title and responsibility for all irrigation projects on the 15,000,000-acre reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today.

Under its terms, the Navajos would permanently assume all operation and maintenance costs, estimated at $200,000 a year. They have borne this cost since January 1, 1958.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) today issued requests for proposals for a model business development center to serve Indian tribes and individuals. The center would be expected to provide management and technical assistance, including help in obtaining private sector financing, for starting or expanding private businesses beneficial to Indian reservation economies.

The Department of the Interior announced today it has submitted to Congress two legislative requests providing for distribution of judgment funds resulting from awards by the Indian Claims Commission to three Indian groups.

The groups affected are the Quapaws of Oklahoma with a fund of about $820,000; the Citizen Band of Potawatomis of Oklahoma with a fund of $168,735.40 plus accrued interest; and the Prairie Band of Potawatomie of Kansas with a fund of $79,624.86 plus accrued interest. The last two groups are covered by one proposal.

Resumption of livestock impoundment by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Hopi partitioned lands in northern Arizona should not deter leaders of the Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes from continuing to work toward a negotiated settlement of their differences, Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs John W. Fritz said today.

The Bureau resumed impoundment activities June 12.

"The chairmen of both tribes contacted me and were concerned that the Bureau activities would hamper their on-going attempts to reach agreement," Fritz said.

The Department of the Interior today announced a proposed revision of Federal regulations to remove restrictions against road construction that have applied for more than 20 years on 2,935,000 acres of the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and Utah.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is publishing in the Federal Register proposed revisions in the regulations governing fishing on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in northern California

The most significant change is the ban on gill net fishing during the fall chinook run from 9 a.m. Monday to 5 p.m. Wednesday of each week and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today that Paul Jones, Tribal Chairman of the Navajo Indians, has agreed to enter into negotiation looking toward the exchange of nearly 300,000 acres of tribal land surrounding Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah for public domain lands.

Secretary Udall said: “The acreage lying south and west of Navajo Mountain comprises one of the magnificent scenic areas outside the National Park System." Rainbow Bridge has long been the focal point of interest in this fantastically eroded red sandstone country.

Interior Assistant Secretary Ken Smith has offered to continue the Bureau of Indian Affairs' operation of 21 village day schools in Alaska in 1982-83.

In a March 10 letter to Alaska Governor Jay Hammond, Smith offered two options, both of which included BIA operation of Mt. Edgecumbe boarding high school for one more year.

Option 1 called for the 1982 transfer of 16 of the 37 village day schools now operated by the BIA and the remaining 21 at the end of 1982-83 school year.

The Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, will be the first Indian Tribe to develop low-rent public housing since the local- federal program began nearly 25 years ago, Public Housing Commissioner Marie C. McGuire announced today.

Interest expressed by this tribe in the early weeks of the Kennedy Administration will shortly lead to the signing of a preliminary loan contract with PHA and the Local Housing Authority established by the Indians.

Edward H. Hall, who is affiliated with the Arikara and Hidatsa Tribes, has been appointed superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Crow agency in Montana. For the past several months, Hall has been working as a special assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs