Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced the addition of Wizipan Garriott, Tracie Stevens and Paul Tsosie to his immediate staff and senior policy team. They will support the Assistant Secretary as he moves forward in carrying out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s Indian education and law enforcement initiatives, distributing Recovery Act funds to Indian Country, and overseeing Indian Affairs bureaus, offices and programs.

The Department of the Interior today proposed new regulations so Indian tribes having organized forest enterprises may be able to sell lumber and other forest products without supervision by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Bureau guidance over sales, the Department explained, is needed for small scale operations where the tribal enterprise organization has limited experience in conducting such sales. It also serves a purpose where there is no formal agreement between the tribal forest enterprise and the tribal or individual Indian owners of the forest land.

The tribal plan for the use and distribution of judgment funds awarded to the Seneca Nation of Indians by the Indian Claims Commission has been published Ii in the Federal Register, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

A total of almost $5.5 million was awarded jointly to the Seneca Nation and the Tonawanda Band of Senecas to provide, fair compensation for land sold in the period between 1797 and 1842. Each tribe will receive a proportionate share based on tribal membership. Both are New York tribes.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of the Interior issued the following statement today regarding the February 24, 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar, in which the Court said that land could not be taken into trust for the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island under Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 because the Tribe was not under the jurisdiction of the United States in 1934.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced the ending of the legal relationship which the Government has had for nearly 20 years with the Catawba Indian Tribe of South Carolina and with its individual members as Indians.

The Secretary’s action was taken in compliance with the provisions of a 1959 act of Congress (73 Stat. 592) which were accepted by a majority of the adult tribal members.

Richard C. Whitesell, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, has been appointed Assistant Area Director, Community Services, in the BIA's Phoenix Area Office, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Whitesell has been Superintendent of the Flandreau Indian School at Flandreau, South Dakota.

A former marine, Whitesell was Education Program Administrator at Riverside Indian School in Oklahoma before going to Flandreau. He began
his career as an educator in the Brockton, Montana schools in 1961.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman today announced that the Interior Department will hold a series of dialogue meetings with tribes on its Indian Affairs Modernization Initiative during the month of September.

Mr. Toastmaster, ladies and gentlemen:

It gives me great pleasure to come back to Oregon as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. This is the State where I began professional interest in the American Indian almost 30 years ago. I was a graduate student in anthropology at that time and did field work on the Klamath Reservation in the summer of 1934 and through the fall, winter and spring of 1935 and 1936. The learning process is still going on--seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced the award of two contracts totaling about $5 million for the grading and draining of a total of nearly 40 miles of road on the Navajo Indian Reservation in both Arizona and New Mexico. The Navajo Reservation, approximately the size of the State of West Virginia, is in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

WASHINGTON - Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) has selected 13 tribal energy and mineral development projects to receive $1.5 million in grants to provide their tribes with economic development opportunities in support of tribal self-determination and self-governance.