Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk will deliver the keynote address at the 20th Annual Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Service being held Thursday, May 5, 2011, at the United States Indian Police Academy in Artesia, N.M. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services (BIA-OJS) holds the event to honor and commemorate tribal, state, local and federal law enforcement officers working on federal Indian lands and in tribal communities who have given their lives in the line of duty.

A final environmental impact statement on a proposal to mine Crow Indian and state-owned coal from nearly 2,000 acres in south-central Montana has been prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, and filed with the Council on Environmental Quality.

The statement discusses the environmental effects of a proposed expansion of Westmoreland Resources' existing Absaloka Coal Mine by 1,958 acres (792 hectares) in Crow Indian Ceded Lands in northern Big Horn County just north of the Crow Indian Reservation.

Washington, D.C. – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced the schedule for the month of January 2010 for the Interior Department’s series of tribal consultation meetings to develop a Department-wide tribal consultation policy.

The Assistant Secretary noted two changes in the January schedule: the January 5 meeting will be held in Ft. Snelling, Minn., instead of Minneapolis and the January 14 meeting will be held in Palm Springs, Calif., instead of Sacramento.

A plan for the distribution and use of more than $200,000 awarded to Seneca Indians by the Indian Claims Commission is being published in the Federal Register, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs Raymond V. Butler announced today.

The award is for certain land areas in New York State sold by the Indians between 1802 and 1826. The funds are to be divided between the Seneca Nation of Indians and the Tonawanda Band of Senecas on the basis of their respective tribal memberships as of January 29, 1977, the effective date of this plan.

Washington, D.C. – Interior Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk will be a speaker at the upcoming 66th Annual National Congress of American Indians Convention and Trade Show being held October 11-16, 2009, at the Palm Springs Convention Center in California. He will address the convention’s second general assembly on Monday, October 12, where he will discuss the Department’s law enforcement, education and economic development initiatives in Indian Country.

Alonzo T. Spang has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Wind River agency at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, Acting Commissioner Raymond V. Butler announced today.

Spang, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, has been the Resources Development Officer in the BIA's Billings, Montana area office. He replaces Clyde W. Hobbs who retired after 15 years as Superintendent of the Wind River Agency.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that he has named Donald “Del” Laverdure to the post of Deputy Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs effective July 29. Laverdure is an enrolled member of the Crow Tribe of Montana (Ties the Bundle Clan) with ancestry from the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana.

Members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina will soon be receiving per capita payments as their share of more than $1.8 million awarded to the Band by the Indian Claims Commission in 1972. Tribal officials are concerned, however, that the present address of a significant number of Tribal members is not known and that some individuals eligible for enrollment have not made application to be included in the membership.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Tomorrow morning at 8:50 a.m., Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will speak to the Tribal Nations Legislative Summit of the National Congress of American Indians at the Weston Hotel in the District of Columbia. Later in the day, he will be the keynote speaker for a Council of Energy Resource Tribes summit on Native energy development and its place in America's future. The afternoon event will be held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building at 4:30 p.m. on Capitol Hill, and will include representatives from 53 tribes and Canadian First Nations.

A new director of Bureau of Indian Affairs activities in Eastern Oklahoma was named today. Commissioner, Morris Thompson announced the appointment of Thomas J. Ellison as Muskogee Area Director. Ellison, an Oklahoma Choctaw has been the Acting Area Director since the retirement of Virgil Harrington.