Past News Items

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs announces the Indian Energy Opportunity Roundtable: Tribes, Companies and Government Explore Oil and Gas Possibilities. The half-day event, which will be held in Denver, CO on October 18, 2005, is cosponsored by the Department’s Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development and the Domestic Petroleum Council. The Roundtable is being held to gather all interested stakeholders to discuss the development of the vast energy resources owned by American Indian tribes.

WASHINGTON – Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason announced that the Department of the Interior declined to acknowledge the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation as an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law. This Reconsidered Final Determination concluded that the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation did not meet two of the seven mandatory requirements for Federal acknowledgment under 25 CFR Part 83, and therefore, the Department declines to acknowledge a government-to-government relationship between the United States and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation.

WASHINGTON – Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason today announced that the Department of the Interior declined to acknowledge that the groups known as the Eastern Pequot Indians of Connecticut (EP) and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot Indians of Connecticut (PEP) are Indian tribes within the meaning of Federal law.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James E. Cason will appear October 7 at the National Indian Education Association’s (NIEA) 36th Annual Convention in Denver, Colo., where he will speak on Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Indian education programs and policy. The NIEA convention is the largest annual convocation of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian educators in the United States.

Washington, D.C. – Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today issued decisions on four tribal gaming applications in California and New Mexico, determining that two of the proposed gaming sites meet the legal and regulatory requirements and two do not.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today congratulated four Bureau of Indian Affairs employees who have received one of the U.S. Attorney General’s highest awards for their work investigating the death of an American Indian teenager on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming last year.

The BIA Office of Justice Services employees, together with 11 U.S. Department of Justice employees and a Seminole tribal police officer, were honored at a departmental ceremony held October 19, 2011, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Michael S. Black today announced that he has named Sharon A. Pinto as regional director of the BIA’s Navajo Regional Office in Gallup, N.M. Pinto, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, had been serving as the regional deputy director since October 28, 2007, and as the acting regional director since May 4, 2011.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk issued the following statement today on the passing of Elouise Cobell:

“Indian Country, as well as the entire nation, has lost a champion of human rights. Elouise Cobell battled to make our country acknowledge historical wrongdoing, and she spoke truth to power so that justice could prevail.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that the Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED) has awarded approximately $2.0 million in economic development technical assistance grants to 30 federally recognized tribes. The funding was provided by the IEED’s Native American Business Development Institute (NABDI) grant program to foster economic activity and create jobs within tribal communities.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today administered the oath of office to James C. Redman at his inauguration as Haskell Indian Nations University’s (HINU) sixth president. The ceremony took place today on the Haskell campus in Lawrence, Kan., where Echo Hawk and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) Director Keith Moore were joined by local dignitaries, tribal leaders, students, staff, faculty and fellow regional academic community members.