Past News Items

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Interior Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb will meet with tribal leaders on Wednesday, January 23, 2002 in Anchorage, Alaska, at the sixth in a series of consultation meetings on the Department’s plan to improve the management of Indian trust assets. The meeting will be held at the Hilton Anchorage Hotel (500 West 3rd Avenue) starting at 9:00 a.m. local time.

About 1,000 teachers, from Bureau of Indian Affairs schools and from public and private schools attended by Indian students, are scheduled for intensive training in new teaching methods this summer, the Department of the Interior announced today. The program is being conducted for the Bureau of Indian Affairs by the University of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Ariz., under a c $399,800 contract, financed with a part of a $9 million grant from the Department, of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Kevin Gover announced that Sharon Blackwell has been selected as the new Deputy Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. "Sharon Blackwell has the sharp legal mind, the management experience and the dedication to public service that is required for success in this tremendously demanding position," said Assistant Secretary Gover. "We are very fortunate to have her on board to help guide the agency in the difficult months and years ahead."

Indian vocational trainees and their families will begin arriving March 4 at the former Walker Air Force Base, Roswell, N.M., to begin a "family residential training" program that will teach them the skills and experience necessary to live comfortably in an urban setting.

PHOENIX - Following approval by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, the largest Indian water rights settlement in U.S. history is now fully in effect, concluding more than three decades of extraordinary effort by federal, state and tribal leaders to resolve critical water use issues facing tribal communities and the State of Arizona.

Our American society as a whole has assumed new dimensions within the past few years. The place of minority groups has been redefined -- or, rather the inherent rights of citizens, whatever racial minority groups they may represent have been reinforced. But civil rights remain only theoretical as long as economic exclusion continues. This is frequently the situation in localities where American Indians constitute a significant and socially conspicuous minority.

Schools funded by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs will receive a donation of $100,000 worth of computer hardware from Global Commercialization Foundation, a non-profit organization. The hardware will include routers, hubs, servers and other equipment needed to connect the schools to the Internet.

Receipts from sales of Indian timber totaled a record high of $15.9 million in Fiscal Year 1967, which ended last June 30, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

This was an increase of nearly $1.6 million over Fiscal Year 1966, which was itself a record year, with an increase of $2 million over Fiscal Year 1965.

The Bureau also reported that in the last five years, the volume of Indian timber cut increased by 258 million board feet and stumpage receipts increased by $7.6 million, as shown by Fiscal Year 1967 and 1962 totals.

Ada E. Deer, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, announced to day that the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma will resume their Law Enforcement activities.

A new era is beginning on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. For a long time Rosebud had exhibited most of the handicaps of an isolated reservation -- a land base inadequate to support its increasing population, an average family income of less than $1,500 annually, a 65 percent unemployment rate for its labor force and an estimated 90 percent of· its families living in substandard housing.