Past News Items

Donald E. Loudner, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs agency at Horton, Kansas.

Loudner has been Superintendent of the Yankton Agency at Wagner South Dakota. He was for six years a member of the South Dakota Indian Commission and for about 20 years served as a liaison with Indian tribes in the state for Mitchell, South Dakota. He also functioned as a consultant for the public school system there.

Forrest J. Gerard, the recently confirmed Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, today challenged national Indian leaders to join in the preparing a national policy statement on Indian affairs.

Gerard made the challenge in an address at the 34th annual convention of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in Dallas, Texas.

Proposed regulations to implement the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, insofar as it pertains to coal mining on Indian lands, were published in the Federal Register September 15 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The proposed regulations are intended to bring surface coal mining activity on the Indian lands into compliance with the environmental safeguard and reclamation requirements imposed by the Act.

Secretary of the Interior Cecil D, Andrus announced today that he has asked the Department of Justice to file protective notices of appeal from a federal District Court decision involving reservations of easements on Alaskan lands conveyed to Natives.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has appointed. Jack C. Naylor, a Choctaw Indian, Superintendent of its Miami Agency, Miami, Oklahoma.

Naylor, 42, has been on the faculty of the Haskell Indian Junior College at Lawrence, Kansas, since 1964. He has been a department head, dean of instruction for vocational and technical subjects and coordinator of institutional evaluation. He has been Acting Superintendent of the Horton, Kansas Agency this summer.

The Department of the Interior is publishing in the Federal Register a notice that 120,681.25 acres of lands formerly under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management will be held in trust by the United States for the Navajo Indians, for use in connection with an irrigation project.

Solicitor Leo M. Krulitz announced today that the Interior Department is recommending to the Department of Justice that legal action be started on behalf of the Catawba Indian Tribe to recover its 140,000 acre reservation in South Carolina.

The proposed suit would be similar to actions now pending on behalf of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians land claims in Maine and the land claims of three tribes in New York State.

Work is progressing on plans for the all-Indian halftime program during the Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys National Football League Game in Washington November 27, according to Dr. Louis W. Ballard, Director of Music Programs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Dr. Ballard said he has received applications from more than 600 Indian high school musicians to participate in the halftime show. He said a series of competitions will be held in various parts of the country to select the 150 young musicians who will make up the marching band.

The LaPointe Indian Cemetery, burial place of the Chippewa Chief Great Buffalo, has been listed in The National Register of Historic Places, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

The cemetery is located on Madeline Island, in Lake Superior off the coast of Wisconsin. The property is held in trust by the United States for the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.

The Secretary of the Interior has disapproved a lease entered into in 1970 between the Tesuque Pueblo and the Sangre de Cristo Development Company.

Under the terms of the 99-year lease Sangre de Cristo planned to develop approximately 5,400 acres of tribal lands north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, for commercial, residential and recreational purposes.