Past News Items

A special collection of Navajo Indian rugs and blankets will be shown publicly for the first time in the Eastern United States at the Department of Interior Art Gallery, beginning September 22.

Navajo rugs and blankets have been prime collectors' items for more than a century, being first praised for fine quality by the Spanish Conquistadores who ruled the New Mexico and Arizona region in 1706. American interest in Navajo textiles increased sharply in the 1860's as a result of greater contact with the Navajos.

Thousands of American Indian high school boys and girls will keep the jobs they had this summer. But they won't be drop-outs. They will be “step-ups” into a special program combining work opportunities with part-time schooling leading to high school diplomas.

They are part of the Neighborhood Youth Corps--students who, were it not for the employment they are provided under the Economic Opportunity Act, may have joined the ranks of early school quitters because of the financial needs of their families. About 22,000 Indian youngsters were enrolled this past summer.

Award of three contracts totaling over $707,500 for road improvement projects on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota and the Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge Reservations in South Dakota was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

With the opening last month of a large-scale electronics assembly plant on the Navajo Reservation, a trend toward Indian employment in precision industries has been solidly established, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs reported.

The Navajo-based enterprise--Semiconductor Division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation of New York--extends the company's worldwide operations to another economically underdeveloped area and offers promise of a further breakthrough in the Indians' efforts to bring new vitality to isolated regions.

RECOLD CORPORATION TO OPEN OKLAHOMA PLANT

There will be a new source of employment for Cherokee Indians in the Pryor, Oklahoma, area when Recold Corporation opens a branch plant, scheduled for immediate construction there. The new plant will hire 25 workers initially, increasing to 75 employees within a year and one-half. Company officials plan to negotiate an on-the-job training contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to prepare Indian workers for employment in the plant.

The Department of the Interior has recommended enactment of Federal legislation to provide for disposition of a $29.1 million award to the Mission Indians, the Pitt River Indians, and certain other eligible Indians of California to be identified later should a bill be passed by Congress.

The judgment was made by the Indian Claims Commission and represents additional compensation for lands in California to which the Indians involved held aboriginal title and which were taken by the United States March 3, 1853.

Regulations governing the preparation of rolls for the payment to Creek Indians of two Indian Claims Commission judgments, totaling
more than $4 million, have been approved and published in the Federal Register, Robert L. Bennett, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, has announced.

The Department of the Interior said today a petition from the combined tribal councils of the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute Indian Tribes that the Bureau of Indian Affairs split up the Consolidated Ute Agency at Ignacio, Colo., into the Ute Mountain Agency, Towaoc, Colo., and the Southern Ute Agency, Ignacio, Colo., has been approved.

No additional funds or employees will be needed to accomplish the changes. The division into two separate agencies will give both of the Ute tribes better service, Bureau of Indian Affairs officials said. The change was made effective December 29.

The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced steps are being taken to implement a ,new law which
provides for payment to the Southern Paiute Indians for lands taken from them in 1860. Regulations are being amended to permit
preparation of a tribal roll.

An Act of October 17, 1968, authorized the distribution of funds derived from a judgment by the Indian Claims Commission,
and directed the Department to prepare a roll to serve as a basis for paying the money.

The Department of the Interior has issued an administrative order restoring to the San Carlos Apache Tribe full ownership of, approximately 200,000 acres of land known as the "mineral strip," ceded to the Government in 1896.

The land, lying along the southern border of the tribe's Arizona reservation, was ceded by the tribe with the understanding that the Government would supervise mineral recovery on the lands and return all mineral revenues to the tribe.