Past News Items

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Acting Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Donald E. “Del” Laverdure today announced that, in addition to ongoing efforts by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to address reported child safety and protection deficiencies at the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, he is sending in a strike team of senior BIA officials from its Central Office to assess and evaluate efforts to improve the Tribe’s social services program. The decision to deploy senior officials to the region came at the urging of U.S. Senator Kent Conrad.

The American Indian set an all-time record this past year in accepting job opportunities off his reservation, Acting Secretary of the Interior Clarence A. Davis announced today. According to figures received by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, almost 3,500 Indians moved away from their reservation homes to areas that offered greater employment advantages.

The figures go on to show that most of the Indians who make the voluntary relocation move make a success of their new ventures.

Morris Thompson, 34, Athabascan Indian and native of the State of Alaska, was sworn in yesterday as Commissioner of Indian Affairs by Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton to become the 41st and youngest Commissioner of the 141-year-old B1U'eau of Indian Affairs

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Acting Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Donald E. “Del” Laverdure today announced that the U.S. Department of the Interior will conduct a series of listening sessions with federally-recognized tribes regarding American Indian sacred sites located on federal lands.

Removal of Federal restrictions which have operated for years to hold the lands of a limited number of admittedly competent Indians in compulsory trusteeship against the owners' wishes was announced today by Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs W. Barton Greenwood.

The effect of the move, which applies only to Indians actively seeking unrestricted title to their lands, is to equalize the status of all competent Indians in their dealings with the Bureau.

Thirty Choctaw Indian students from Choctaw Central High School, a Bureau of Inc1ian Affairs school at Philadelphia, Miss., sang songs of the Choctaw, Quapaw, Kiowa, Osage, Hopi, Acana Pueblo, and Navajo tribes in their Choctaw costumes in an auditorium of the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., on May 4.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Acting Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Donald “Del” Laverdure today issued a statement regarding the unfortunate loss of a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Fort Yuma Agency firefighter on Friday, June 8, 2012.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today cxmow.1ced the selection of three prominent Oregonians--Thomas B., Watters of Klamath Falls., William L. Phillips of Salem, and Eugene Favell of Lakeview - as management specialists for the Klamath Indian Tribe. They will supervise the program of property appraisal, subdivision and management under the tribal termination law enacted last August.

(Tulsa, Oklahoma) Senator Dewey F. Bartlett, R-Okla., today called for action by Congress on Indian legislation now pending.

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Donald “Del” Laverdure will deliver the keynote address at the 21st Annual Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Service being held Thursday, May 3, 2012, at the Bureau of Indian Affairs United States Indian Police Academy in Artesia, N.M. He will be accompanied by BIA Director Mike Black and BIA Office of Justice Services Deputy Bureau Director Darren Cruzan.