Past News Items

Reappointment of Harry J. W. Belvin, Durant, Oklahoma, as principal chief of the Oklahoma Choctaw Indian Nation for a four year term was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

Belvin, who was first appointed to the position in 1948, was renamed on the basis of balloting by the tribal members from September through October 10. In the tribal election he received 5,254 votes and his opponent, Hampton Anderson of Atoka, 2,602.

Tribal members also expressed a preference for the four-year term by a margin of roughly two to one.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today the appointment of David N. Burch as Superintendent at the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Intermountain School in Brigham City, Utah. Since 1970, Burch has been Deputy Assistant Area Director for Education in the Phoenix Area Office.

Intermountain was once the Bureau's largest school as an off-reservation boarding high school for Navajo Indian students. It is now an inter-tribal school, and the administration was transferred from the Navajo Area to the Phoenix Area last summer.

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013, the Department of the Interior will hold the third and last in a series of consultation sessions on its Initial Implementation Plan outlining how Interior will carry out the land consolidation component of the historic Cobell Settlement. The meeting will take place in Seattle, Wash. The first and second consultation meetings were held Jan. 31 in Prior Lake, Minn., and Feb. 6 in Rapid City, S.D.

Action by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to clear up a 49-year-old injustice against a full blood Idaho Indian was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

The Indian is James J. Miles, a 70-year-old member of the Nez Perce Tribe and

Deacon of the Presbyterian Church, The Bureau's action, taken by Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons on July 29, was approval of an application filed by Miles about a year ago for a patent-in-fee or unrestricted title to a 114-acre tract near Orofino,

Carl M. Dupuis, an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has been appointed Chief of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Division of Facilities Engineering, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

He is the first Indian to hold this position in the Bureau.

''We are very pleased about this appointment," Commissioner Thompson said. "Carl is highly qualified and will do an excellent job in a field where there are now too few Indians. The Indian community needs to have more of its students move into engineering work."

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today lauded the final approval of the Cobell settlement and outlined steps that Interior will take to help implement the historic $3.4 billion settlement. The settlement resolves a long-running class action lawsuit regarding the U.S. government's trust management and historical accounting of individual American Indian trust accounts. It became final on November 24, 2012, following action by the Supreme Court and expiration of the appeal period.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced the award of four contracts for the construction of school facilities on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. The total amount of the awards is $1,647,791.

This is the first step in the development of the Navajo Emergency Educational Program.

The awards are as follows:

After consulting with representatives of the Indian community, Richard S. Bodman, Assistant Secretary--Management and Budget, today announced several steps to improve the operations of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U. S. Department of the Interior.

Immediate measures being taken are:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2012—Officials from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) have signed two memorandums of understanding (MOU) designed to foster improved access to USDA and BIA programs by tribes and tribal members. The memorandums apply to programs administered by the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Rural Development at USDA, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior (DOI).

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced organizational changes in the New Mexico offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs based on recommendations by the survey team which recently completed a study of the Bureau as well as information and advice received from the Indians, individuals and organizations of the communities affected.