Past News Items

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has tightened up its procedure to protect Indian landowners against unwise or unwitting disposition of actual or potentially valuable mineral assets when they sell their lands, Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons announced today.

Acting Secretary of the Interior Hatfield Chilson today expressed the Department’s opposition to the so-called “Four States" Indian bills.

He said the three identical bills, S.574, H. R. 3362 and H. R. 3634, would make the Federal Government financially responsible for a multitude of services which rightfully should be provided by the States.

Moreover, it would extend special Federal responsibility to include a great number of additional persons, some of them not even necessarily Indians, he said.

Additional progress toward the goal of full educational and economic opportunities for American Indians was accomplished by the Bureau of Indian Affairs along many different lines in the fiscal year 1957, the Department of the Interior reported today.

The Department of the Interior today announced plans for liberalizing the Federal regulations covering the bonds required in connection with leases and permits for developing minerals other than oil and gas on Indian lands.

The purpose of the proposed change is to allow bonds of less than $1, 000 in cases where the Department believes that such bonding will adequately protect the interests of the Indian landowners. Bonds in the amount of $1, 000 are the lowest permitted under the present regulations.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Roger Ernst today announced the adoption of regulations governing the preparation of a roll for distribution of the Oklahoma Quapaw Indian Judgment Fund.

The roll is being prepared under the provisions of a recently enacted congressional law in order to identify the persons entitled to share in a judgment awarded to the Tribe in 1954 by the Indian Claims Commission. The amount of judgment money now on deposit in the U. S. Treasury to the credit of the Tribe is nearly $1,000,000.

The Department of the Interior has submitted to Congress a proposal for legislation that would adjust Indian and non-Indian land use on some 266,000 acres near the Navajo Reservation in northwestern New Mexico, Assistant Secretary Roger Ernst announced today.

The Department of the Interior today invited lease proposals on two tracts of undeveloped Indian land in Nevada with a total shore frontage of nearly 14 miles on Pyramid Lake, an inland body of deep-blue fresh water in a desert-mountain setting.

The lands are on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation about 33 miles north of Reno and offer excellent possibilities for business recreational or residential development.

Because of fire safety hazards involved in student dormitories, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is taking action immediately to close its 500-pupil school at Fort Defiance, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, the Department of the Interior announced today.

Arrangements will be made so that all of the presently enrolled students can finish the current term either by transferring to other reservation schools immediately, or by taking summer school instruction. Plans are also being made to place all of them in other school facilities for the new term which starts next fall.

Appointment of Kenneth L. Payton as superintendent of the Mescalero Indian Agency, Mescalero, N. Mex., effective November 12 was reported today by the Department of the Interior.

He succeeds Hobart Johnson who transferred from Mescalero in September to be superintendent of the Indian Bureau's Intermountain School at Brigham, Utah.

Justifiable pride in the many historic accomplishments of Oklahoma Cherokee Indians must not be permitted to divert attention from the problems of present-day Cherokees struggling to make a livelihood on unproductive lands, Philleo Nash, Commissioner-designate of the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior said today.