Past News Items

WASHINGTON - Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will bring his message about the benefits of positive thinking and making healthy life choices to an assembly of students, parents, faculty and staff at Sequoyah High School, a contract school for grades 9-12 operated by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It is the ninth school in a series of visits Anderson plans to make to BIA field offices and education facilities during his administration.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will speak on April 20, 2004 at the Baca/Dlo’ay azhi Community School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs operated day school located in Prewitt, N.M., on the Navajo Nation reservation, at a ceremony celebrating the school’s designation as both the first Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEEDTM) building in the state and the first BIA school to be a “green” certified building. The certification was issued by the U.S.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson and Office of Indian Education Programs Director Edward F. Parisian are traveling this week to North and South Dakota as part of their continuing tour of Bureau of Indian Affairs funded schools. Starting today, Anderson and Parisian will be attending an honor roll banquet at the Turtle Mountain High School in Belcourt, N.D., where the assistant secretary will stress the importance of encouraging and inspiring all BIA students to grow through learning.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson today announced he has issued a Notice of Proposed Finding to decline to acknowledge that the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, Inc. (BLB), from Brutus, Mich., a petitioner under the federal acknowledgment process, exists as an Indian tribe within the meaning of federal law. The proposed finding is based on a determination that the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, Inc.

WASHINGTON – Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson today announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been awarded $32.4 million in three grants from the U.S. Department of Education to improve student reading, school performance and teacher quality in BIA-funded schools under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Interior Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb and Deputy Assistant Secretary Wayne Smith will meet with tribal leaders on Thursday, January 10, 2002 in Rapid City, S.D., at the fourth in a series of consultation meetings on the Department’s plan to improve the management of Indian trust assets. The meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn Rushmore Plaza (505 N. 5th St.) starting at 9:00 a.m. (MST).

(Washington, D.C.) – Bilateral talks between agencies from the United States and Canada that administer programs to help their Indigenous populations yielded a commitment to continue sharing information and working on common issues of concern. A one-day meeting took place on May 2, 2002, in Ottawa, Canada with delegations headed by the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb and Marc Lafreniere, Deputy Minister of the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC).

WASHINGTON -- The Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Law Enforcement Services (OLES) will hold its 11th Annual Memorial Service May 9, 2002, to commemorate the sacrifice made by tribal law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty while serving on Indian lands. The Memorial Service will start at 10:30 A.M. on the BIA Indian Police Academy grounds in Artesia, New Mexico.

(Washington, D.C.) – The Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb is in Ottawa, Canada today for bilateral talks with representatives from the Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). The bilateral talks were created to provide an opportunity for the United States and Canada to exchange information on how each administer their responsibilities to their indigenous populations.

WASHINGTON - Interior Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb today announced his selection of Jeanette Hanna, currently Director of Planning, Budget and Management Support for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), as his choice to be the new director of the Bureau's Eastern Oklahoma Regional Office located in Muscogee, Okla. The appointment is effectively immediately.