Past News Items

The Department of the Interior announced today that it plans to distribute more than $14 million to the Absentee Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma and the Cherokee Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma on July 14, 1977.

The Department announced June 16 that it planned to make the distribution September 15, 1977, but that it would modify its plans for distribution of the funds in accord with any forthcoming court order. Last week the Oklahoma Delawares were given a writ of mandamus requiring the Department to make payment "forthwith."

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary–Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today issued a final determination not to acknowledge the petitioner known as the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians (Petitioner #84B) as an Indian tribe. This petitioner, located in Santa Ana, Calif., has 455 members.

Walwyn S. Watkins, superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Wrangell, Alaska, has been named the new superintendent of the Bureau’s Fort Belknap Agency at Harlem, Montana, effective May 28, the Department of the Interior announced today.

He succeeds Howard S. Dushane, who transferred last February as superintendent of the Cheyenne River Agency at Eagle Butte, S. Dak.

Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe and officers of the Alaska Native Regional Corporation, Konaig, Inc., today signed an agreement which will facilitate the conveyance of more than one million acres of land to the Corporation and its associated village corporations under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The agreement provides the mechanism for processing land selections in the Konaig region and effecting conveyance of the land despite litigation pending in court.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Attorney General Eric Holder today announced a settlement of the long-running and highly contentious Cobell class action lawsuit regarding the U.S. government's trust management and accounting of over three hundred thousand individual American Indian trust accounts. Also speaking at the press conference today were Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes and Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli.

Twelve studies to determine the feasibility of economic development which could create greater job opportunities on Indian reservations and in the native villages of Alaska are being undertaken by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with technical assistance funds provided by the Area Redevelopment Administration of the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior announced today.

Contracts totaling $402,493 have been awarded to the lowest qualified bidders for carrying out the studies in 11 States.

Proposed new regulations governing mining and mineral development contracts on Indian lands were published in the Federal Register April 5, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs Raymond v. Butler announced today.

Butler said that "new regulations, when completed and made effective, will have a major impact on the Indian community by furthering Indian self-determination, providing for new types of mineral development contracts and reflecting national and tribal environmental concerns. "

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk joined Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley and other Indian Affairs and Navajo tribal officials September 16 in a ceremonial groundbreaking event for Phase II of a major school replacement and improvement project at the historic Rough Rock Community School on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced proposed rules today that would help several Pueblo Indian tribes in central New Mexico block up their land holdings and improve their livestock operations.

The new rules would carry out exchange provisions of a law passed last September. That law transferred 69,700 acres of the national land reserve to eight Pueblo Indian tribes in New Mexico.

President Jimmy Carter showed a special interest in Indian affairs when he visited the Department of the Interior Friday, February 18.

The President, scheduled to speak to Interior employees in the Department's auditorium, came early, went directly to the fourth floor wing housing the Commissioner of Indian Affairs' offices, shook hands and exchanged greetings with BIA staffers in the hall and then visited with Acting Commissioner Raymond V. Butler for a few minutes.