Past News Items

An offering of oil and gas leases on Indian lands of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah has brought high bonus bids totaling nearly $650,000 to the Indian landowners, the Department of the Interior reported today.

I have just returned from nearly a week in Alaska, and it has been a real eye-opener. Every time I go to Alaska I develop some new perspectives. This week I returned with an especially strong feeling of the urgent challenges which must be met in the near future.

Today, Alaska is America's last frontier. Its history, its distances and climate and natural resources, and the many human factors involved, all combine to make it a unique land indeed.

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Director W. Patrick Ragsdale today announced that BIA Special Agent Leonard Merriam, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Michigan, is now a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy (FBINA). Merriam, who works in the Bureau’s Office of Law Enforcement Services (OLES) in Washington, D.C., joins a select group of BIA law enforcement officers who are also graduates of the Academy. The graduation ceremony took place on September 16 at the FBINA campus in Quantico, Va.

Forty-nine additional conservation projects under the Accelerated Public Works Program which will involve a total investment of $4,970,000 among 18 States were announced today by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

The projects will generate nearly 500 man-years of work in localities certified by the Area Redevelopment Administration as having a high rate of unemployment.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson today announced the appointment of Karen R. Ducheneaux, enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, South Dakota, to be his Special Assistant. She will prepare Bureau position papers and help present the Bureau’s policies, goals, and objectives to the public.

WASHINGTON – Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James Cason today announced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP) has published in the Federal Register a final rule implementing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), President Bush’s signature education legislation, in the BIA-funded schools.

The Department of the Interior today announced adoption of new regulations establishing uniformity in Indian tribal voting matters concerning tribal constitutions, by-laws and constitutional amendments. The regulations apply only to the 76 tribes which were reconstructed pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act of June 18, 1934, and do not affect the 72 tribes in Oklahoma and Alaska which voted to exclude themselves from application.

Sidney L. Mills, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has been named Executive Assistant to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson, it was announced today.

Mills, who has been Assistant Director for Management Services in the BIA's Office of Administration, succeeds Ronald L. Esguerra who was recently appointed Director of the BIA's Albuquerque Area.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs David W. Anderson will be in Albuquerque, N.M., on Wednesday, October 27, to lead a delegation in a groundbreaking ceremony for the new National Indian Programs Training Center. The delegation of the nation’s top Indian Affairs officials will also be joined by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, who will be honored in ceremonies dedicating Bureau of Indian Affairs offices on the Albuquerque site as the Pete V. Domenici Indian Affairs Building.

The Department of the Interior has brought together the most comprehensive collection of twentieth century American Indian paintings, sculpture and handicrafts ever assembled to premier the reopening of the Department's gallery and museum May 11.

The exhibit will include paintings from the priceless collection of the late William and Leslie Van Ness Denman, patrons of Indian art for several decades; Tell-known contemporary American Indian artists; and a selection of student art contributed by schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.