Past News Items

Interior Secretary James Watt approved on April 4 a coal mining agreement between the Crow Indian Tribe of Montana and the Shell Oil Company.

Under the agreement Shell will begin mining an estimated 210 million tons of coal from a 2,560 acre tract in the Youngs Creek area of the Crow reservation.

Interior Assistant Secretary Ken Smith said today that a notice proclaiming the establishment of a reservation for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe of Washington is being published in the Federal Register.

According to the notice, the new reservation would be comprised of five tracts of trust land totaling 99 acres in Skagit County. Four of the five parcels are located approximately seven miles north of the present tribal offices in Burlington, Washington. The other parcel is located two miles northeast of the town, Sedro Wolley.

Kenneth L. Smith, a Wasco Indian from Oregon, became the nation's top Indian official May 15 when he was sworn in by Interior Secretary James Watt as the Department's Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. Smith is the third American Indian to hold that position, which was established in 1977.

At the swearing in ceremony Smith said that it was his intention and that of Secretary Watt to further self determination for Indian tribal groups.

Regulations establishing procedures for Indian tribes seeking to form tribal constitutions or charters, or make changes in existing ones, were published in the Federal Register January 7, Commissioner of Indian Affairs William E. Hallett said today.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons will leave Washington, D.C., September 5, for a trip to the major Indian areas of Oklahoma. He is acting under broad instructions from President Eisenhower.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay will present the Special Award in Human Relations of the American Public Relations Association to the community of Sheridan, Wyoming, at 7 p.m., Monday, March 2, 1953, at a banquet to be held in the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel. The APRA is holding its annual convention here, March 1-3.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced that James N. Lowe will transfer December 1 from the Washington staff of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Sacramento, Calif., area office where he will take over the duties formerly performed by Assistant Area Director Henry Harris, Jr., who resigned from the Bureau on November 9.

Three separate actions affecting the office of principal chief of the Choctaw, Seminole and Cherokee Indian Tribes of Oklahoma, were announced today by Acting Secretary of the Interior Ralph A. Tudor.

A run-off election will be held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs between September 20 and October 10 so that members of the Choctaw Tribe many express their preferences between Harry J. W. Belvin and Hampton w. Anderson, who received the highest number of votes in the balloting held last June. Mr. Belvin has been principal chief of the tribe for the past several years.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced the appointment of Richard Do Butts as superintendent of the Red Lake Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs, at Red Lake, Minn. Butts will be succeeded as superintendent at the Umatilla Agency, Pendleton, Oregon by Clarence W. Ringey realty assistant at Consolidated Chippewa Agency, Case Lake, Minn.

Butts succeeds Frell M. Owl who was recently transferred as Red Lake superintendent to the same position at the Northern Idaho Agency, Lapwai, Idaho.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced several major personnel shifts in the Bureau of Indian Affairs as part of the administrative reorganization of the Bureau recently recommended by a survey team and now actively under way.

Allan G. Harper, area director at Window Hock, Arizona, is being transferred to Washington as a member of the Commissioner's coordinating staff, where his broad background of experience in Indian Affairs and intimate knowledge of Navajo administration will be directly available to Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons.