Past News Items

Secretary of the Interior Don Hodel has signed into existence a Royalty Management Advisory Committee, a key element of the Department's action plan to improve the processing of mineral royalties collected on federal and Indian lands.

Stanley M. Speaks, a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, has been named Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Agency at Anadarko, Oklahoma. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced that the appointment was effective June 22.

Speaks has been Acting Superintendent of the Intermountain Indian School at Brigham City, Utah, this past year. He has worked in Indian education programs with the Bureau of Indian Affairs since 1959. He was the Supervisory Guidance Counselor at Intermountain for five years.

Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Tara Katuk Sweeney Address at the Alaska Federation of Natives Virtual 2020 Annual Convention: “Good Government, Alaskans Decide”

Buck Martin, Director of the White House Conference on Indian Education, reported ·today (November 21, 1991) ~hat the Oneida Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, the Choctaw Indian Tribe of Mississippi, the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), and the National Indian Impacted School~ Association (NIISA) have given in excess of $20,000 to support the conference.

The Havasupai Indian Tribe can now move out of the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act signed by President Ford early this month gave the tribe 185,000 acres of land on the rim of the canyon and adjacent to the park. It is land that the Havasupais had occupied for about 1,000 years, until it was taken away from them about a century ago.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan today announced his intention to appoint Jana McKeag, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, to the newly created National Indian Gaming Commission.

The greening of 9,320 acres of arid land in northwest New Mexico will be a part of the Navajo Indian Tribe's celebration of the American Bicentennial Year. Federal funds totaling $2 million have been made immediately available to assist with on-farm development costs to make possible a March 1976 beginning of operations for the Navajo Irrigation Project. The project will ultimately include more than 110,000 acres.

On behalf of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Bureau of Indian Education, I extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the late-Senator John McCain’s family. We appreciate their selfless willingness to share his short time on this earth with us to make our Nation better. We will miss his voice, but his spirit will live with us forever.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan and Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter today directed federal officials to suppress all natural fires in national parks and wilderness areas until individual fire management plans for the areas are determined to be in compliance with new federal recommendations.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson has appointed Phyllis Cross, a Mandan-Hidatsa, and Intergovernmental Relations Officer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her appointment was effective March 30.

Ms. Cross has been Special Assistant to the Regional Director for Indian Affairs, Region VIII, in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She had previously served as Special Assistant to the Regional Director for the Regional Council.