Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that he has named Donald “Del” Laverdure to the post of Deputy Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs effective July 29. Laverdure is an enrolled member of the Crow Tribe of Montana (Ties the Bundle Clan) with ancestry from the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has agreed to make loans that may be needed for reactivation of a tribally operated steer enterprise on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana, the Department of the Interior announced today.

Members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina will soon be receiving per capita payments as their share of more than $1.8 million awarded to the Band by the Indian Claims Commission in 1972. Tribal officials are concerned, however, that the present address of a significant number of Tribal members is not known and that some individuals eligible for enrollment have not made application to be included in the membership.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Tomorrow morning at 8:50 a.m., Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will speak to the Tribal Nations Legislative Summit of the National Congress of American Indians at the Weston Hotel in the District of Columbia. Later in the day, he will be the keynote speaker for a Council of Energy Resource Tribes summit on Native energy development and its place in America's future. The afternoon event will be held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building at 4:30 p.m. on Capitol Hill, and will include representatives from 53 tribes and Canadian First Nations.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today approved a plan proposed by the Crow Indian Tribe of Montana for using a judgment fund of over $9 million awarded to the Tribe by the Indian Claims Commission.

Under the Tribe's plan, the money will be used for a variety of economic development programs.

One million dollars will be set aside for land purchases involving mainly those tracts that are needed to round out farm and range units.

A new director of Bureau of Indian Affairs activities in Eastern Oklahoma was named today. Commissioner, Morris Thompson announced the appointment of Thomas J. Ellison as Muskogee Area Director. Ellison, an Oklahoma Choctaw has been the Acting Area Director since the retirement of Virgil Harrington.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman will discuss the Interior Department Indian Affairs Modernization Initiative on September 18, 2007, on Native America Calling. He will be joined by Majel Russell, who is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs. NAC is the national public radio and online public affairs and news program of the Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, a Native­ operated media center in Anchorage, Alaska.

Transfer of Will J. Pitner, area director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Anadarko, Okla., for the past nine years, to the national office of the Bureau at Washington, D. C., and appointment of Leslie P. Towle, superintendent of the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota, to succeed him, were announced today by the Department of the Interior.

On August 18, Pitner will become chief of the branch of land operations, Succeeding Evan L. Flory, who recently retired. Towle's transfer will be effective August 26. His successor at Pine Ridge has not yet been named.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that proposed regulations for the implementation of the Indian Financing Act are being published in the Federal Register September 3, 1974.

Thompson said that full funding of $80 million is being sought for the Act, which was approved by President Nixon April 12, 1974.

The Indian Financing Act of 1974 itself:

WASHINGTON - Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman will speak on Thursday, May 3,2007, at the 16th Annual Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial Service. The event will take place at the United States Indian Police Academy in Artesia, N.M. The Bureau of lndian Affairs holds the service each year to honor tribal, state and federal law enforcement personnel killed in the line of duty while working on Federal Indian lands or in tribal communities.