Past News Items

Our Bible history tells us that Noah and his ark were on the stormy seas for 40 days and 40 nights before the waters receded.

I can tell you -- I think I know what life on that ark must have been. This is my 40th day as skipper of another ark, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We did not have the time to scrape the barnacles off her hull before we were hit by Hurricane Teddy, battered a bit by Hurricane Wendell, and sprayed again with a lot of salt by the militants, at the NCAI Conference in Albuquerque.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Tara Katuk Sweeney announced today the opening of the fourth of seven offices established under the Operation Lady Justice Task Force to investigate cold cases involving missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Half a millennium ago, when European explorers amazed their compatriots with stories of a New World, what they actually described was a land that had long been home to America's native peoples. In the Northeast part of this country and along the Northwest coast, generations of tribes fished and hunted; others farmed the rich soils of the Southeast and Great Plains, while nomadic tribes roamed and foraged across the Great Basin. In the arid Southwest, native peoples irrigated the desert, cultivating what land they could.

The Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior today announced the signing of an agreement on extension work with American Indians. The agreement, which goes into effect July 1, gives the Agriculture Department responsibility for rendering technical advice and guidance in extension work formerly carried on by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In September, President Trump announced the successful repatriation of ancestral remains and funerary items from Tribes associated with the Mesa Verde region from Finland. Following that effort, the White House has asked the U.S. Departments of the Interior and State to work together to assist other Native American tribes in the repatriation of any additional cultural items abroad.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman today announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has published in the Federal Register a notice providing guidance and direction to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment (OFA) to address recurring administrative and technical problems related to the processing of petitions under the Federal Acknowledgment Process (FAP). The notice does not amend the acknowledgment regulations at 25 CFR Part 83, Procedures for Establishing that an American Indian Group Exists as an Indian Tribe.

The Indian Bureau's adult education program, now getting under way in five tribal areas from Florida to Idaho, will be extended "to meet the broader needs of Indians as funds permit and as the interests of the Indians indicate," Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons indicated today.

WASHINGTON – Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today issued a Final Determination in which he declined to acknowledge that a group known as the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Inc. (BLB), located near Brutus, Mich., is an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law. The evidence reviewed for this Final Determination showed that the petitioner failed to meet three out of seven mandatory criteria – 83.7(b), (c) and (e) – under 25 CFR Part 83, the regulations that govern the Federal Acknowledgment Process.

The Potawatomi Area Field Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has been operating from both Mayetta and Horton, Kansas locations, will be consolidated in the near future into a single office at Horton, the Department of Interior announced today.

Up to now only the land operations personnel and the Bureau's field representative were stationed at Mayetta. Tho latter, however, served three days a week at Horton.

WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior’s Office of Indian Gaming Management (OIGM) will hold a series of tribal consultation meetings on the development of proposed regulations to establish standards for implementing Section 20 of IGRA, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (25 USC 2701-2721). The meetings will take place in Uncasville, Conn., Albuquerque, N.M., Sacramento, Calif., and Minneapolis, Minn., starting on March 30, 2006.