Past News Items

A Navajo Indian medicine man will demonstrate the sacred art of sandpainting for visitors to the Interior Department I s Art Gallery beginning October 12.

Fred Stevens, a Navajo medicine man from the Indian Reservation at Lupton, Arizona will create sand paintings used in Navajo religious-healing ceremonies. He will appear in connection with the Gilbert Maxwell Collection of Navajo Weaving now being displayed at the gallery.

Nearly 400 more Indian college students received scholarships from the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs this year than in 1964, Commissioner Philleo Nash reported today.

BIA awarded college scholarships to 1,718 students--an increase of 30 percent over last year's figure, he said. Grants amounted to $1,225,000, or an average of $700 per student.

The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs today announced the appointment of James D. Hale to the post of Superintendent of the Choctaw Agency, at Philadelphia, Mississippi.

He succeeds Lonnie Hardin, who has transferred to the Bureau's Muskogee Area Office in Oklahoma as education director.

The new Superintendent has been Land Operations Officer at the Seminole Agency, Hollywood, Florida since March 1962. Prior to that he was a soil conservationist at the Seminole Agency and at the Muskogee Area Office. He joined BIA in 1952.

A $378,000 contract award, announced today by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, will provide a permanent supply of drinking water from the Oahe Reservoir for a BIA school at

New school facilities in 17 Indian communities of eight States are being opened this fall by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, according to Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

They include 11 new schools and three additions to existing schools--enough to accommodate nearly 6,000 students, mostly in the elementary grades. Three dormitories, built to house more than 1,300 Indian youths who live too far away for commuting, also were completed in time for the fall season.

Commissioner Philleo Nash summarized the past year's accomplishments of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in a publication released today entitled "Indian Affairs 1964".

Emphasis is upon education and economic development," Nash said in announcing the new publication. "We are striving toward greater Indian participation in their own affairs--activity rather than passivity--with the end goal of maximum self-sufficiency for the Indian population.

The Department of the Interior has recommended to Congress that legislation be enacted to distribute $2,500,000 in judgment funds to the Klamath Indians of Oregon.

The amount was settled upon by attorneys for the United States and for the Indians and represents redress for insufficient payment for lands ceded to the United States under Treaty in 1864. The case was adjudicated by the Indian Claims Commission last year and funds were appropriated by Congress in June 1964. The additional legislation is now needed to authorize final disposition.

Award of a $491,000 contract for the construction of a dormitory and related facilities at the Wahpeton Indian School, Wahpeton, North Dakota, was announced today by the Department of the Interior. The successful bidder was Meide and Son, Inc., of Wahpeton. Eight higher bids ranging to $588,400 were received.

Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos who are qualified under the 1906 Alaska Native Allotment Act will find it easier and quicker to obtain land allotments up to 160 acres under liberalized regulations announced today by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

He said the new regulations--which recognize that the Natives' mode of life, the Alaska climate and the character of the land are all different from conditions on the homestead States of the West--are in effect a return to the interpretation of the statute regarding use and occupancy of the land in effect prior to 1930.

The Department of the Interior today announced four proposed amendments to the Code of Federal Regulations governing trading with Indians.