OPA

Kent Frizzell, Acting Secretary of the Interior, today ordered acceleration of the Central Utah Project and Department action on specific related requests submitted August 13 in a resolution by the Ute Indian Tribe

Frizzell directed:

--award by the Bureau of Reclamation of a $26.9 million contract for construction of Vat Tunnel--the largest contract awarded to date for the Bonneville Unit of the Central Utah Project;

--expeditious investigation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Reclamation of the Leland Bench Area as an agricultural development for Indian benefit;

--completion by the Bureau of Reclamation of the planning report for the Ute Indian Unit of the Central Utah Project by December 31, 1978.

The Acting Secretary also forwarded to President Ford the certification of physical, economic and financial feasibility on the Uintah Unit, Central Utah Project, as required by the Colorado River Basin Project Act (P. L. 90-537).

Frizzell said that in addition to the Ute Indian Unit, the Leland Bench and the Uintah Unit actions, all of which are requested in the Tribal resolution, he has directed the Department's Deputy Under Secretary, William Lyons, to report to him within 10 days with recommendations as to how the Department should respond to 10 remaining points raised in the resolution.

The Vat Tunnel is an integral part of the 37-mile Strawberry Aqueduct feature of the Central Utah Project which will develop most of Utah's share of Colorado River water for municipal and industrial purposes along the heavily populated Wasatch Front area of the state, plus providing water for irrigation, recreation, hydro-electric power, and fish and wildlife habitat.

The Vat contract calls for construction of a 7.3-mile circular tunnel to be excavated by machine boring and lined with concrete. The finished borehole will be eight feet, three inches, in diameter.

Contract award will not be made until August 28. Under an agreement among the United States of America, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, and others, no construction under the contract will commence prior to November 15, because of pending litigation.

The Vat Tunnel contract will be awarded to J. F. Shea Co., Inc., of Walnut Creek, Calif., which submitted the low bid of $26,992,662 of four offered at Duchesne, Utah, July 17. Second low bid was $28,825,000, submitted in a joint venture by S&M Constructors, Inc., and Greenfield Construction Co., Inc., of Solon, Ohio; and third was a bid of $30,493,474 by Peter Kiewit Sons' Co. of Omaha.

The Strawberry Aqueduct collection and storage system will allow, by exchange, the transfer of water to the Salt Lake City area for domestic and industrial uses. It also will provide supplemental irrigation water for farms in Utah and Juab Counties and ultimately, in other counties of the central portion of the State.

"I have asked Gilbert G. Stamm, Commissioner of Reclamation, and Morris Thompson, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to place the highest priority on the Leland Bench area," Frizzell said. "This could be a major step forward in bringing benefits of the Central Utah Project to the Ute Indian Tribe, and for that reason, these studies will be expedited."

Final regulations governing the preparation of a roster of those persons eligible to share on a $1.2 million judgment fund awarded by the Indian Claims Commission to the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon are being published on the Federal Register Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The award, to be distributed on a per capita basis represents additional compensation for the accession of and under an 1855 treaty.

According to the proposed regulations, only enrolled members of the Warm Springs Tribes who were living on February 8 1975 are eligible for enrollment.

Any member, however, who shared in the judgment fund awarded to the Malheur Paiute Indians is excluded from eligibility. So, also are any members who have received payments under the provisions of the Alaska Native Settlement Act or any other award of the Indian Claims Commission.

The administration of the Intermountain Indian School at Brigham City, Utah, has been transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Phoenix Area Office, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The school, a residential high school, was formerly under the jurisdiction of the Navajo Area Office.

The administrative transfer reflects a change in the nature of the school, Commissioner Thompson said.

Intermountain was founded in the early 1950's to meet the need of over-age Navajo Indian students involved in a post-World-War-II educational boom on that reservation. It became, over the years, the largest high school in the BIA educational system, serving only Navajo students.

As additional school facilities were developed on the Navajo Reservation, the Navajo's need for this off-reservation school decreased.

In 1973 enrollment at the school was opened on a trial basis to members of other tribes. The school, which is in the geographical jurisdiction of the Phoenix Area Office, is being continued as an intertribal school.

The Navajo Area Office serves only the Navajo Tribe, the largest tribe in the Nation whose reservation embraces some 25,000 square miles in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that Rebecca H. Dotson, a Navajo woman, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' agency at Chinle, Arizona.

Ms. Dotson is the second Indian woman to hold an agency superintendent's position. She had been the education program administrator at the agency, one of five on the Navajo Reservation.

Ms. Dotson, 45, is a graduate of the Northern Arizona University and has a Master's degree from Arizona State University. Much of her career has been spent as a classroom teacher.

She became a teacher supervisor in 1970 and assistant principal in 1972 at the Bureau's Many Farms School in Chinle.

A member of Dine Bi Olta and the Navajo Division of Education of the Navajo Tribe, she has also been active in the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women and various educational organizations.

Proposed regulations to implement the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (P.L. 93-638) are being published September 4 in the Federal Register, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

There will be 30 days after publication for comments from interested parties.

"Because this legislation is so important to Indian people," Commissioner Thompson said, "there has been very extensive consultation with the Indian community in the development of these regulations. Final regulations will be published November 4, so we are hoping that Indian leaders will utilize this opportunity to comment to make the regulations the best possible."

The Act was signed by President Ford January 4, 1975. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, together with the Indian Health Service, held more than 30 consultation sessions (April through June) with Indian groups throughout the country to discuss the Act and a draft of regulations. Recommendations made in these meetings were incorporated into draft regulations mailed to all tribal leaders and heads of Indian organizations in August. The published regulations and a paper describing the Bureau's philosophy and procedures for development of the regulations will be mailed to these same leaders.

The first part of the Act gives Indian tribes increased opportunities to govern their own affairs. It directs the Secretary of the Interior (and his delegate the Commissioner of Indian Affairs) to contract with the tribes or tribal organizations for the operation of reservation programs, upon re­quest from the tribe.

This part also provides for grants to strengthen tribal governmental capabilities, waivers of Federal contracting requirements and the use of Federal employees in tribal programs under certain conditions.

The second part of the Act deals with assistance to non-Federal schools serving Indian students. It authorizes funding for construction of needed school facilities for public and tribally-operated schools and amends the Johnson-O'Malley Act of 1934. It stresses the role of the tribal governing bodies and local Indian communities in the education of Indian children.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that the Douglas Construction Company of Topeka, Kansas, has been awarded a $3.5 million contract to build new facilities at the Haskell Indian Junior College, Lawrence, Kansas.

The contract calls for the construction of a new learning resource center and a kitchen-dining building.

The learning resource center, with approximately 34,800 square feet of floor area, will house a library and provide facilities for media production and distribution, photography processing, TV studio, offices and classrooms.

The kitchen-dining building will have approximately 26,700 square feet of area. In addition to the dining room, it will contain the kitchen, bakery, storage and related facilities.

This construction is part of an ongoing program to provide needed facilities for the recently established junior college program at Haskell and to replace old or deteriorated buildings.

Haskell, established in 1884, is one of the oldest Government supported schools in the United States. It began as an industrial training school and has evolved through the years. It became an accredited high school in 1927, a post-secondary vocational technical school in 1966 and a junior college in 1970.

Many of today's Indian leaders are former Haskell students.

Proposed regulations for removing persons erroneously included on the roll of Native Alaskans eligible for benefits under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act are being published in the Federal Register, Acting Secretary of the Interior Kent Frizzell announced today.

A roll of eligible Alaska Natives was conditionally approved December 17 1973, subject to correction based upon appeals or other legal determinations of individual eligibility. The proposed regulations establish procedures for the disenrollment, with due process of persons not entitled to the benefits. Under the Act, persons on the roll will share ownership, through stock holding in their regional and village corporations, of 40 million acres of land and cash distributions, over a period of years, of $962.5 million. According to the proposed procedures, when the enrollment coordinator concludes, after investigation, that an individual was improperly enrolled he shall initiate a contest proceeding by filing a complaint with the Office of Hearings and Appeals. An Administrative Law Judge will then be assigned to the case. Copies of the complaint and other pertinent documents must be served upon all parties and hearings are to be held in a location as con­venient as possible for the contestee, the person whose eligibility is being questioned.

Comments on the proposed regulations should be sent, within 30 days of publication, to the Office of the Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D. C. 20240.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that the Oglala Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has been given approximately 1,600 acres of excess Government land within the reservation boundaries. Notice of the transfer, under the Federal Property and Administration Services Act as amended earlier this year, is being published in the Federal Register.

Title to the land will be held by the Secretary of the Interior in trust for the tribe.

The 17 tracts making up the total had been purchased at various times for use by Bureau of Indian Affairs' schools on the reservation. The land provided both pasture and garden areas needed for agricultural courses taught in the schools until the mid-1950.

The property, which was declared excess to the needs of the Bureau, will be administered in the same way as other tribal land held in trust for the benefit and use of the tribe.

New regulations governing retail business and credit transactions at trading posts on the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni Reservations have been published in the Federal Register, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The purpose of the new regulations is to protect Indian consumers against excessive interest rates, high prices and other abuses.

The regulations establish licensing requirements for doing business on the reservations, impose a 24 percent limit on interest for pawn loans and retail credit, forbid the use of trade scrip or similar substitutes for money, restrict contributions from traders to Navajo Tribal political candidates and provide for monitoring and control of prices charged, especially for basic commodities.

The three reservations are located in close proximity in the Southwest. The Navajo, the largest of all reservations, includes a large area in Arizona and portions of New Mexico and Utah. The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by Navajo land in Arizona and the Zuni Reservation is at the southeast corner of the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.

Acting Secretary of the Interior Kent Frizzell today announced establishment of a thirteenth region for the benefit of Alaska Natives who are not permanent residents of Alaska and who elected to be enrolled in such a region under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Frizzell said the action, which is effective as of October 1, 1975, would result in the transfer of about 4,500 non-resident Alaska Natives from the twelve regional corporations to the thirteenth corporation.

The action was taken pursuant to an order entered on December 30, 1974, by U.S. District Judge Oliver Gasch in a suit filed by the Alaska Native Association of Oregon and the Alaska 'Federation of Natives International, challenging the decision made by the Department of the Interior on November 8, 1973, not to establish a thirteenth region.

Under Frizzell's order those Alaska Natives who are transferred to the thirteenth corporation will receive a pro-rata share of the approximately $1 billion cash settlement provided for in the Act. They will not share in the land selection of 40 million acres of Federally owned land in Alaska awarded the Natives under the Act.

The Alaska Native Claims Act assigned the management of funds and land to 12 regional corporations. The Act proffered a choice for those Alaska Natives who had left the State and resided elsewhere. They could either enroll with one of the twelve regional corporations or they could vote for the establishment of a thirteenth region, with its own corporation. The Act provided that if a majority of the non-resident Natives age 18 or older voted in favor of a thirteenth corporation, it would be established.

The Department's initial tabulation of the vote in the referendum on this question did not show a majority in favor of establishment of a thirteenth region. Judge Gasch ruled, however, that the required majority had actually voted in favor of the region and ordered its establishment for those non-resident Alaska Natives who had earlier elected to be so enrolled.

In an order entered October 6, Judge Gasch directed that not later than October 15, the Secretary of the Interior invite each bona fide organization presently known by the Secretary to represent non-resident Alaska natives to submit not later than November 1 the names of not more than five consenting nominees for election as incorporators and members of the interim board of directors of the thirteenth region.

Acting Secretary Frizzell sent telegrams October 7 asking 17 non-resident Alaska Native associations to provide by October 14 information relating to their eligibility to make nominations.

Under Judge Gasch's October 6 order, the Department will prepare a list of nominees which will be sent to each adult thirteenth region enrollee with instructions to vote for not more than five nominees and to return the ballot by December 1. The results will be tabulated by December 10 and the five nominees receiving the highest number of votes shall be recognized as incorporators for the purpose of preparing and submitting the proposed articles of incorporation and bylaws for the thirteenth region. Those named will also constitute the initial board of directors of the corporation to serve until the first meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected and qualify. They will not be eligible to succeed themselves.

The proposed articles of incorporation and bylaws are to be approved by January 1, 1976; the first meeting of the shareholders and election of the board of directors of the corporation is to be held by February 1, 1976; and by February 15, 1976, the corporation is to be paid its share of the monies in the Alaska Native Fund. At the time the regional corporation makes its first distribution of monies to its shareholders, all adult non-resident Native enrollees, whether or not presently enrolled in the thirteenth region, will be given a final opportunity to elect their preference for enrollment in that region or in another region in Alaska.