Past News Items

Dale M. Baldwin, a career employee of 17 years' service, will head the Bureau of Indian Affairs area office in Portland, Oregon, the Department of the Interior has announced.

The transfer from his present post as Superintendent of the Nevada Indian Agency at Stewart, Nev., will be effective March 20, 1966.

In 1965 Baldwin was cited for outstanding performance during his five years of work with the 26 tribal groups throughout Nevada.

The Miccosukee Indians of Florida and the Red Lake Chippewas of Minnesota soon will have new agency heads, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash has announced.

Reginald C. Miller, the first superintendent of the four-year-old Miccosukee Indian Agency in Florida, leaves that post this month for a new assignment as superintendent of the Red Lake Chippewa Reservation.

Lawrence J. Kozlowski will succeed Miller at Miccosukee Agency headquarters in Homestead, Florida. Kozlowski formerly was assistant superintendent of the Great Lakes Indian Agency at Ashland, Wisconsin.

Thomas H. Tommany, a Creek Indian from Oklahoma, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Haskell Institute at Lawrence, Kansas.

Established in 1884 as a boarding high school, and the alma mater of numerous Indians prominent in public life today, Haskell moved into a new phase in its , history last year. The high school program was closed out, new curricula and facilities were created, and Haskell became the first Indian school offering vocational and technical training exclusively at the post-secondary level.

The popularity of the Eskimo Graphic Arts and Sculpture exhibit in the Department of the Interior's Art Galleries has brought about an extension of the hours and addition of more than a hundred additional new pieces of sculpture and eighty new prints, according to Mrs. Stewart L. Udall, president of the Center for Arts of Indian America, sponsoring the unusual display.

American Indian art--just now becoming widely recognized in the United States--has already found a solid niche abroad.

From the arts and crafts markets of the Southwest, the Plains, Oklahoma, and Alaska, a collection of these "cultural ambassadors" have been touring the world under the joint auspices of the Interior Department's Indian Arts And Crafts Board, the United States Information Agency, and the State Department.

Federal supervision has been terminated for four more rancherias in California in accord with recent legislation, the Department of the Interior announced today. The newly terminated Indian lands are North Fork and Picayune, in Madera County; Graton in Sonoma County; and Pinoleville in Mendocino County.

Under a Congressional Act of August 18, 1958, naming 41 rancherias, and a 1964 amendment to include the remaining 74 California rancherias or reservations, Indians are permitted to distribute lands and other rancheria assets among themselves.

From prosperity to poverty and back again--three times! That’s the story of North Carolina's Cherokee Indians, as told in a new booklet published this week by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“Indians of North Carolina," second in a series of regional brochures devoted to the life and times of American Indians, traces Cherokee history in the State from the 18th century to date. According to the booklet, progress of the tribe has been phenomenal in almost every field. For example:

NEW OKLAHOMA PLASTICS PIPE PLANT WILL TRAIN INDIANS

Drilling Specialties Company, a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum Company has announced plans to establish a plastic pipe factory in the Mid-American Industrial District, near Pryor, Oklahoma.

The Company, which expects the new plant to be operating by April, is negotiating an on-the-job training program with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to prepare Indian workers for jobs in the plastic industry. An initial group of 20 Cherokees will be employed, with the figure doubling when full-scale operations are reached.

The award of a $2,930,848 contract for the construction of an elementary boarding school at Dilkon, Arizona was announced today by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The new school complex will make possible the closing of three small trailer schools. Construction plans call for 26 classrooms; a multipurpose building; kitchen-dining building; bus garage; two 128-pupil dormitories; 10 one-bedroom staff apartments; 20 two-bedroom houses and 30 three-bedroom houses and an instructional materials center and administration offices.

A total of $65.8 million was awarded to Indian tribes in judgments handed down by the Indian Claims Commission during calendar year 1965, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported today. Appropriations to meet the judgments were made during the year in 17 of the 24 cases.

Judgment funds from land claims settlements are held in trust for the tribes by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Programs for use of the funds are developed by tribal governing bodies and approved by the Secretary of the Interior.