Past News Items

NEW OKLAHOMA PLASTICS PIPE PLANT WILL TRAIN INDIANS

Drilling Specialties Company, a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum Company has announced plans to establish a plastic pipe factory in the Mid-American Industrial District, near Pryor, Oklahoma.

The Company, which expects the new plant to be operating by April, is negotiating an on-the-job training program with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to prepare Indian workers for jobs in the plastic industry. An initial group of 20 Cherokees will be employed, with the figure doubling when full-scale operations are reached.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced the winning college and high school teams that designed and built the most efficient portable wind turbine systems as part of the 2010 Indian Education Renewable Energy Challenge with the Argonne National Laboratory. The awards were presented today at the Interior Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Regulations to establish two Courts of Indian Offenses, one to serve the Eastern Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina and the other for western Oklahoma Indian tribes served by the Anadarko Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, are being published in the Federal Register, Interior Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard announced today.

Art objects by the famed San Ildefonso Pueblo, N. M., potter, Maria Martinez, her son, Popovi Da, and her grandson, Tony Da, have been assembled for showing in the Department of the Interior's Art Galleries in Washington, D. C., May 16-June 30, Mrs. Stewart L. Udall, president of the Center for Arts of Indian America, announced today. The artists will be present in the Galleries at various times during the first week.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM (January 12, 2010) – U.S. Department of the Interior officials today welcomed college football All-American and Rhodes Scholar Myron Rolle to Isleta Elementary School at the Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico, American Indian Reservation to kick off the new Our Way to Health™ Program.

Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus said today that Burnett Construction Company of Durango, Colo., has been awarded a $4.5 million contract by the Bureau of Reclamation for construction of 40 miles of collector drains on the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project near Farmington, N.M.

The contract is for work on the 10,000-acre Block No.2 of the 110,000- acre project.

From Alaska to Florida, resource managers for the Department of the Interior are watchfully scanning snow and rainfall figures as the first signs of spring appear- - -hoping that last year's disastrous fire record will not recur in 1967.

Over most of the 550 million acres managed by Interior agencies, 1966 was called the worst fire year since 1957, year of the great Alaska fires. Paradoxically, 1965 had been one of the lightest years on record for fire damage. And the prime factor, as usual appeared to be the weather.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Deputy Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs for Policy and Economic Development Jodi Gillette and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Director Michael Black met with tribal leaders in Rapid City, S.D., today in the final regional government-to-government tribal consultation meeting on the Trust Land Consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement. The consultations are part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to re-invigorating nation-to-nation relationships with tribes.

Indian educators will be meeting February 28 to March 2 in Denver, Colo., to review draft regulations required for implementation of Indian sections of the Education Amendments Act of 1978. Title XI of the Act, dealing with Indian education, has a June 27 deadline for publication of some final regulations.

Rick Lavis, Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, said that the steering committee, responsible for implementing Title XI, will also be reporting on the status of task force projects and schedule of future actions.

Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe has notified the Governor of Alaska that the State will be allowed an additional 90 days --until April 1 --to exercise an exclusive preference right to select lands described in Section 11 of the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act.

Generally, these Section 11 lands are the 9 townships surrounding Alaska Native Villages. Until October 1, 1976, these lands were held by the Federal Government exclusively for Alaska Natives to make selections.