Past News Items

The Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) announces the availability of its publication, Mineral Revenues: The 1985 Report on Receipts from Federal and Indian Leases.

The booklet reports on the 1985 activities of the MMS Royalty Management Program, including collection of $6.5 billion in bonuses, rents and royalties from Indian and federal {offshore and onshore) minerals 1eases.

The report also offers tables and statistics relating to the generation, distribution, and history of revenues obtained under th1s program.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today that Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk will be leaving the Department of the Interior after nearly 3 years of leadership. Echo Hawk, an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, will resign his position effective April 27, 2012 to assume a leadership position in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) announced today that it will relocate the office of assistant director of education to the Navajo Area Office in Gallup, N.K. Dr. Kenneth Ross, who oversees BIA education operations in the Southwest, will move from his Washington headquarters to Gallup November 4 The director of the BIA's nearly $300 million education program, Dr. Henrietta Whiteman, said the move is Reared toward bringing management closer to the people it serves.

President Ronald Reagan has signed a bill authorizing the federal government to pay the Tohono O'Odham Indians (formerly Papago) in Arizona $30 million in order for the tribe to replace nearly 10,000 acres of reservation land that has been flooded repeatedly since 1979. The Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Act allows the U.S. Interior Department to begin paying the tribe in $10 million allotments over three years beginning in 1988. It is one of the Reagan Administration's largest land settlements with an Indian tribe.

Interior Assistant Secretary Ross Swimmer has signed a contract that will allow the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to manage and operate an electric power system on the Flathead Indian reservation in northwestern Montana The three year contract is effective immediately, though a short personnel phase-in period is necessary. Under the Indian Self-Determination Act, Indian tribes and groups are given the authority to contract the management of federal government services that affect Indian people.

Interior's Assistant Secretary Ross Swimmer today announced the appointments of C. L. Henson as Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Colorado River Agency in Parker, Arizona; and George E. Keller as Superintendent of the Truxton Canon Agency in Valentine, Arizona.

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Ross Swimmer today signed the Fort Peck Tribal Water Code, a model agreement for the administration of Indian water rights and the first code to be approved since 1975.

The code resulted from a 1985 compact between the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation and the State of Montana. The Fort Peck tribes own a portion of the Missouri River in northeastern Montana.

The Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh has been awarded a contract for financial trust services to strengthen interna1 management and administration of more than $1.7 billion of Indian trust funds.

A tri-party agreement will be executed by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), trustee of the Indian monies; the Treasury Department's Financial Management Service (FKS); and Mellon Bank.

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Ross Swimmer today awarded contracts to three firms that will act as model business development centers to create jobs for Indian tribes and individuals.

The three corporations, selected from 21 applicants, are the United Indian Development Association (UIDA) of El Monte, California; The Rensselaerville Institute of Rensselaerville, New York, and the Fairbanks Native Association (FNA) of Fairbanks, Alaska

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA} and the Indian Health Service (IHS) have signed an agreement to join forces to combat drug abuse and other serious health problems among the nation's 1.4 million Native Americans Interior Assistant Secretary Ross Swimmer, who heads the BIA, joined IHS Director Everett Rhoades in Washington to sign the memorandum of agreement and discuss the ongoing relationship between their offices. IHS is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.