Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin will visit New Mexico on Tuesday, February 4, 2003, to inspect two Bureau of Indian Affairs-operated schools – Wingate High School in Ft. Wingate, N.M., and Baca Community School in Prewitt, N.M. – that are on the Bureau’s list of schools slated for replacement within the next few years.

Designation of new Indian Bureau superintendents at the Fort Belknap Agency, Harlem, Mont., and the Uintah and Ouray Agency, Fort Duchesne, Utah, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Darrell Fleming, who has been superintendent at Fort Belknap for nearly five years, will take over the Utah post April 13 replacing John O. Crow who transferred to the Bureau’s Washington office as a program officer March 24. At Fort Belknap Mr. Fleming will be succeeded April 5, by Howard Dushane who has been program officer in the area office at Portland, Oreg., since 1955.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb today announced he has issued a Notice of Proposed Finding whereby he proposes to decline to acknowledge that the Nipmuc Nation headquartered in Sutton, Mass., (petition #69A) exists as an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law.

Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton and Acting Secretary of Agriculture D. Morse today announced the signing of an agreement with the Department of Agriculture for the free distribution of feed grains to Navajo Indians in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, for the maintenance of subsistence livestock.

The program is being initiated, Secretary Seaton said, because of the acute economic distress produced among Navajo tribal members as a result of drought conditions in previous years.

(WASHINGTON) – Interior Secretary Gale Norton, accompanied by Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb, will be the keynote speaker at the National Indian School Board Association’s 2001 Summer Institute conference on Tuesday, July 24, at 8:30 a.m. (PST) at the Doubletree Jantzen Beach Hotel in Portland, Ore.

Award of a $68,257.15 contract for the construction or a road and bridge on the Bad River Indian Reservation, Ashland County, Wisconsin, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt has named Michael J. Anderson, as Acting Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs until the end of the Clinton Administration. Mr. Anderson has been serving in the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs. He succeeds Kevin Gover, who resigned on January 3, 2001.

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior announced today the first set of four awards which will hereafter be made annually "in recognition of long and outstanding services in the preservation, encouragement and development of the arts and crafts of the American Indians."

The 1958 awards, consisting of certificates of appreciation, are being presented today in Gallup, New Mexico. Recipients, and the categories for which they won, include:

Ada E. Deer announced today that a settlement has been reached in a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma (the Nation) by the federal government. "This settlement will bring to a conclusion almost five (5) decades of dispute over the issue of pollution, caused by oil and gas drilling, of groundwater used by the Nation," Ms. Deer said.

Award of a $40,905.34 road construction project to improve transportation facilities in Beltrami County, Minnesota, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The 2.84-mile project is part of an over-all plan by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to improve the 22-mile link between Minnesota Trunk Highway No. 1 and the Village of Ponemah. The road is constantly used by the school bus and by local Red Lake commercial fishermen, and is the only outlet for the residents of the Village.