Past News Items

The Department of the Interior has recommended enactment of legislation (H.R. 8917) to provide for distribution of $1,750,000 in judgment funds to the 0maha Tribe of Nebraska.

The award, by the Indian Claims Commission, represents additional compensation for lands in what is now western Iowa and the northwestern Missouri to which the Omahas and other Tribes owned recognized title when the United States made treaties with them in 1825 and 1830.

INDIANS LEARN JOB SKILLS WITH BIA

A total of 11,000 Indian men and women have received special job-skill training, either in accredited institutions or on-the-job, since the Bureau of Indian Affairs adult vocational training program for Indians began in 1958. Currently, trainees are learning skills in more than 100 different occupational categories.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash today announced the award of a $1,319,409 contract for construction of the final 17-mile section of Route 12, one of the most scenic highways on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.

Completion of this stretch will provide an all-weather link between the communities of Round Rock and Lukachukai in northeastern Arizona with Navajo, New Mexico, the Reservation town where the tribal sawmill enterprise is located.

The award of a $397,375 contract for the construction of a 200-man Job Corps Conservation Center on the San Carlos Indian Reservation in Arizona was announced today by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It will be one of nine such centers to be operated on Indian reservations as part of the massive program of job training and education for unemployed youth being conducted under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

Award of two contracts totaling $264,444 for road improvement projects on Fort Totten Reservation in North Dakota and Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota was announced today by Commissioner Philleo Nash of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Department of the Interior today announced the award of a $499,557 contract for construction of an eight-mile section of Navajo Route 8 in the northeastern Arizona part of the Navajo Indian Reservation.

The new stretch of Navajo 8 will link the reservation towns of Ganado and Klagetoh in Apache County with an all-weather, paved highway. The towns are located a few miles south of Canyon de Chelly National Monument, near the Petrified Forest area, a popular tourist locale.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced a new Departmental order which will require bidders on all Interior building construction work throughout the Nation to list with their bids the names and addresses of their subcontractors. This new policy supersedes experimental procedures which had been in effect since December 1963, but which were limited to Interior construction projects in Arizona and New Mexico and 'parts of the Navajo Indian Reservation in Utah and Colorado.

The first leasing of California Indian-owned land for oil and gas development in about a decade was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

On January 18, bids were opened at the Sacramento area office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the oil 8nd gas leasing of two tracts of tribally owned land which comprise the entire acreage of the Colusa Indian Reservation in Colusa County. One tract is 214.5 acres, the other 54.53 acres.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced he has instructed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take every possible action to assure that needy Indians benefit from the expanded distribution of surplus food ordered January 21 by President Kennedy.

The Secretary pointed out that the program is aimed at helping all underprivileged Americans, and stressed that a number of Indian reservations are among the hardest-hit economic areas of the Nation.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today the appointment of W. W. Keeler, Bartlesville, Okla., as consultant on planning policy and reorganization of functions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Mr. Keeler, executive vice president of the Phillips Petroleum Company and principal chief of the Cherokee Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, has agreed to serve without compensation for a period of 90 days starting February 5.