News by Year

Appointment of Clyde W. Pensoneau as superintendent of the Hopi Agency, Keams Canyon, Arizona, was announced today by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash. The assignment is a recall for Pensoneau, who served as superintendent at Hopi from 1954 to 1956. Increasing economic development and education activities on the Hopi Reservation "demand a superintendent with intimate knowledge of Hopi affairs," Nash said.

The new appointee will take over January 3, 1965, succeeding Herman O'Harra, "who is retiring after 33 years of Federal service.

The award of a $139,712 contract for the construction of utilities at Sherman Institute, Riverside, California, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Perry E. Skarra, a specialist in resources management for Indian trust land, has been appointed chief of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' branch of forestry, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash announced today.

Appointment of Paul L. Winsor as area director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Minneapolis, Minn., was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall. He succeeds James E. Hawkins, who recently transferred to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which the Interior Department administers for the United States under a United Nations trusteeship.

Barney Old Coyote, a Crow Indian and career civil servant, has been appointed coordinator of the youth conservation camps for the Job Corps and related antipoverty programs of the Department, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today.

The Miccosukees of Florida, kin to the Seminoles and Creeks, but consistently aloof from both tribal organizations, have emerged from the Everglades after more than a century and are now going into their own tribal business.

With a constitution and bylaws that were formulated and approved in January 1962, the Miccosukees are now, for the first time in the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, accepting Federal aid from the United States.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today described as "welcome news" the plan to establish a $500,000 plastics molding plant at Durant, Okla., which will provide jobs for upwards of 100 Indian men and women. The new installation is being built by a subsidiary of Strombecker Corp., a Chicago manufacturer.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is prepared to make a per capita judgment distribution of funds totaling approximately $548,000 to all persons who are members or can prove ancestry with those Paiute bands whose chiefs and headmen signed the Treaty of December la, 1868.

Those considering themselves eligible for enrollment should contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office in Portland, Oregon, regarding applications.

The Department of the Interior today announced that all Tillamook Indians who consider themselves eligible to participate in a judgment distribution totaling approximately $149,000 should contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office in Portland, Oregon, regarding applications.

The funds cover a 1962 judgment of the Indian Claims Commission in favor of the Nehalem and Tillamook Indian Bands. Money was appropriated by Congress in May 1963. Public Law 88-506 of August 30, 1964 provides for disposition of the funds.

More than $1 million in new construction is slated for the Indian school at Chilocco, Oklahoma, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash announced today.

William A. Mehojah, a Kaw Indian, has been appointed superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Turtle Mountain Agency in Belcourt, North Dakota, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash announced today. The agency serves the Fort Totten and Turtle Mountain Reservations.

Mehojah, a career employee with more than 24 years of service, has served since 1962 as administrative manager of the Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, North Dakota. At Belcourt he succeeds Leonard Lay, who has transferred to the Bureau's Aberdeen Area Office as housing development officer.

The appointment of Dr. Gordon Macgregor as Special Assistant was announced today by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. He has been assigned to the office of the Assistant Commissioner for Economic Development. He will coordinate programs for the social and economic growth of imp0¥erished Indian communities.

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.

A 10-man delegation, headed by the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, and including three other Indians and two Interior Department officers, has been named to represent the United States at the Fifth Quadrennial Conference of the Inter-American Indian Institute to be held in Quito, Ecuador October 19-25.

The new Economic Opportunity Act offers American Indians their greatest chance for self-help, Assistant Secretary of the Interior John A. Carver, Jr., last night told the 19-5tate Governors' Interstate Indian. Council.

Carver, whose six-Bureau supervision includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs, addressed the Council's seventeenth annual convention in Denver, Colorado. The member States have interest and responsibilities for Indian affairs.

I am grateful for the opportunity of discussing our mutual concern for a sound program for American citizens of Indian ancestry at this conference. The backdrop of our discussions is a national concern, and national action, on what John Kenneth Galbraith has called "insular poverty". Insular poverty, as distinguished from "case” poverty, is the poverty of an area or a region, of a community or of an Indian reservation. It has its roots in economic dislocations, changing technology, declining resources of water or soil, or geographic or cultural isolation.

Award of a $2,129,250 contract for the construction of elementary school facilities at Rough Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo Indian Reservation, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The scheduled construction, which will replace the obsolete existing temporary sheet metal building serving some 60 children, will provide an additional 260 Navajo children with needed school accommodations.

The Department of the Interior announced today that Kenneth K. Crites has been appointed superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Mt. Edgecumbe School at Mt. Edgecumbe, Alaska, effective August 30. He succeeds Robin Dean, who retired recently.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash today issued a statement summarizing the status of the Seminole Indian lands claims case which is pending before/the Indian Claims Commission. The text of the statement follows:

The Department of the Interior today announced award of a $2,131,000 contract to construct a dormitory facility which will enable 152 children from remote portions of Alaska to attend the State Regional High School built by the State of Alaska at Nome.

An agreement between the State of Alaska and Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs provided that the State would build the instructional facility and the Bureau would provide a dormitory. It is expected that later the state will add a second dormitory and expand the instructional space.

Timber cuts and sales reached an all-time high resulting in increased employment for several thousand Indians during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1964, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

The total volume cut under contract and paid permit was nearly 741 million board feet, an increase of 200 million board feet over the previous 12 months. Cash receipts rose $3 million during the same period, to a new high of $11.5 million.

Legislative authority for sustained yield management of Indian forest lands and more judicious procedures for sale of Indian timber are incorporated in proposed regulations announced today by the Department of the Interior. The changes would conform to Public Law 88-301, enacted April 30, 1964.

OLSON APPOINTED UNITED PUEBLOS AGENCY SUPERINTENDENT IN NEW MEXICO Appointment of Walter O. Olson as superintendent of the United Pueblos Agency, Albuquerque, N. M., was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall. He succeeds Guy C. Williams, a Federal career employee, who is retiring.

This building we are dedicating today is testimony to the enterprising spirit of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian Tribe, the business wisdom of the men who recognized a market for low-cost authentic reproductions of Chippewayan handicraft, and the concern of congress, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for economic improvement among the Indian people.

This is a proud and happy day for the Nez Perce Indians and for their many non-Indian neighbors and friends as well. This new community at Lapwai which we are dedicating today and the one dedicated at Kamiah yesterday could not have been built without the dual effort of the Tribe and the Federal Government. Tribal funds and Federal funds through the Accelerated Public Works program--have been pooled to erect two structures that symbolize the growing spirit of community action among the Nez Perce Tribe.

The Department of the Interior today announced the award of two road construction contracts in South Dakota by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to replace existing reservation roads to be inundated by Oahe Dam Reservoir on the Missouri River.

Totaling $477,387, the contracts are part of the Bureau's diversified rehabi1itation program designed to alleviate distress to area residents of the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Reservations of South Dakota as the reservoir project advances.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today released details on 14 Job Corps camps for more than 1,300 men which are to be activated in the early fall. The camps are in national parks, wildlife refuges, on reclamation projects and Indian reservations, and other public lands administered by Interior. Decision to open the camps was announced August 15 by President Johnson. Eight additional camps will be operated by the Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Much has happened in our country since the last annual conference of the National Congress of American Indians--much of tragedy and much of accomplishment.

I am sure I do not need to recall to you that shattering event of last November. The friendship of the late President Kennedy for the American Indians and his warm, personal interest in seeing that the full resources of the Federal Government were employed in their behalf is well known to you. Our loss is great.

Yet, we can count ourselves fortunate in that the loss of one great President has led to the gain of another.

One thousand prized eagle feathers - highly important to ceremonial costumes of several Southwest Indian tribes - are en route to Indian reservations through the courtesy of the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service to help alleviate a critical shortage of the adornments, the Department reported today.

The feathers were collected at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland and were sent to the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife Regional office in Albuquerque, N. Mex., for distribution among the tribes.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today called for a ten-year plan "to raise the standard of living on Indian reservations above the poverty line."

In a memorandum transmitted through the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to reservation superintendents and other top administrators of the Bureau, the Secretary restated the goals of manpower and resource development on reservations that have characterized the Department's administration during the past three years.

The Department of the Interior today approved four road construction contracts Which are expected to improve economic and educational opportunities for Indians on four reservations in South Dakota.

Totaling $708,346, the contracts will make possible better school bus service, better marketing of farm and ranch products, and better access for tourists, and new jobs for Indian workmen during the coming year, Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs said.

This conference is auspicious for more reasons than one. It has brought together the key field personnel of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and officials of several other Federal agencies that are involved in President Johnson's War on Poverty.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash today told a group of 200 Bureau personnel and high-ranking officials of other Federal agencies that the Administration's projected war on poverty "may…stimulate us to review, appraise, and revise our own ideas" relative to Indian social and economic aid.

He addressed a conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of all superintendents of Indian reservations, the second since 1938 and a sequel to one held in Denver, Colo., shortly after Nash became Commissioner in 1961.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall has scheduled a conference of top field administrators of Indian reservations for June 16-18 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It will be the second such conference since 1938 and a sequel to one called by the Secretary in 1961.

In making the announcement today, Secretary Udall said:

Miss Indian America, Williamette Belle Youpee, spent four days in Washington this week, climaxing a cross-country personal appearance to Highlighting her stopover were meetings with government officials and a tour of the student exhibit of Indian and Eskimo art currently on display in the Department of the Interior's art gallery.

A Sisseton-Yankton Sioux from Poplar, Montana, she is the eldest of 12 children of William Youpee, chairman of the Ft. Peck Assiniboine-Sioux Tribal Council.

Award of a $701,853 contract calling for the construction of more than 23 miles of highway to promote tourism and facilitate travel through the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

This project will complete construction of approximately 400 miles of primary reservation roads for Routes 1 and 3 authorized by a 1958 amendment to the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950.

The Department of the Interior announced today that Charles S. Spencer, superintendent of the Fort Hall Agency in Idaho, has been named to head the Yakima Agency headquartered at Toppenish, Washington.

Spencer will assume his new duties on July 1. He replaces Melvin L. Robertson, who retired from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in March.

Spencer's successor at Fort Hall Agency is John L. Pappan, tribal operations officer at the Nevada Agency, Carson City, Nevada. The effective date of Pappan's transfer has not yet been determined.

The Tyonek Indians of Alaska, with a population of about 200 persons, have accepted oil and gas lease bids totaling almost $11 million for some 8,500 acres of their reservation, the Department of the Interior announced today.

The council members of the tiny village of Tyonek will decide this week whether to accept bids for oil and gas leases on 20 tracts comprising the remainder of their reservation of some 26,000 acres, the Bureau of Indian Affairs lid. The Bureau acts as trustee for the Tyonek people.

Seeking to encourage broader private financing of economic development on Indian reservations, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall has asked Congress for authority to establish an Indians' Loan Guaranty and Insurance Fund of $15 million under administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Department anticipates that this fund should result in providing $100 million or more of financing to Indians from non-governmental sources.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today that five prominent figures in the art world--Commissioners of the Department's Arts and Crafts Board--will be among the guests at the invitational opening of an Indian art exhibit, Monday, May 11. The exhibit features the re-activating of the Department’s art gallery after nearly two decades.

The Board's Commissioners, all serving without pay, are Dr. Frederick J. Dockstader, chairman of the Board; Vincent Price; Rene D'Harnoncourt; Lloyd New Kiva; and Erich Kohlberg.

By 1970, more than 500,000 visitors may be traveling to a new national recreation area in Montana and Wyoming and enjoying the same scenic mountains, canyons, and rivers where an unknown Indian tribe lived in prehistoric times.

The Department of the Interior has announced it favors enactment of Federal legislation which would authorize establishment of the 63,000-acre Big Horn Canyon National Recreation Area surrounding Yellowtail Reservoir in southern Montana and northern Wyoming.

The Department of the Interior today announced award of a $5,402,994 contract to build a two-mile tunnel near Aztec, N. Mex., first major work on the $135 million Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, which the Bureau of Reclamation is building for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Fenix &Scisson, Inc., of Tulsa, Okla., lowest of 16 bidders, was awarded the contract.

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.

John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, has been named to receive the Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor the Department of the Interior can bestow. The award will be presented by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash, acting as the personal emissary of Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, in a ceremony at Mr. Collier's home in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, on May 4, his 80th birthday.

A Federal appellate court decision is expected to bring additional bids in a competitive sale of oil and gas leases on May 6 in Alaska for 31 tracts of Indian land comprising the 26,000-acre Tyonek Reserve (Moquawkie Reservation) near; Cook Inlet, the Department of the Interior announced today.

All royalties and bonuses from the sale of rights will go to the Tyonek Indians.

The sale was scheduled for May 6 two months ago, but a court appeal then pending had caused some prospective bidders to be reluctant about competing.

To stimulate greater economic growth and development on Indian reservations, the Department of the Interior has asked Congress to increase by $35 million the authorized amount of the revolving loan program of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Under a bill proposed by the Department, the authorization for the program would be boosted from $27 million to $62 million and the Bureau would be permitted to make grants of not more than 20 percent of the borrowed amount in connection with the loans under certain circumstances.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today authorized release by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation of its report recommending that federally controlled recreation lands at Allegheny Reservoir (Kinzua Dam) in western Pennsylvania be administered by the Forest Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Secretary Udall has sent copies of the report to Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for review and comment.

The Department of the Interior has submitted to Congress proposed legislation providing for disposition of three judgment funds, now totaling approximately $4.5 million, recovered from the Government by the Miami Indians of Oklahoma and Indiana.

Award of a $5,855,200 contract for the construction of school facilities in Many Farms, Apache County, Arizona, on the Navajo Indian Reservation, was announced today by the :Department of the Interior. The facilities will serve to relieve the overcrowded conditions prevailing at Pinon and Low Mountain schools and will provide needed school accommodations for many Navajo children in the area who are not presently in school.

The appointment of women to two major (Grade 15) positions in the Bureau of Indian Affairs was announced today by the Secretary of the Interior.

Miss Wilma Louise Victor, a Choctaw Indian of Idabel, Okla, , was named superintendent of the Intermountain Indian School, an off-reservation boarding school operated by the Bureau at Brigham City, Utah.

The Department of the Interior reports that the volume of timber cut from Indian lands in lq63 was the highest on record. Not included in the report was the volume cut on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin and the Klamath Reservation in Oregon, where Federal supervision ended in 1961.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, announced today that John O. Crow, Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau, has been named as one of 10 Federal employees to receive the Career Service Award presented by the National Civil Service League.

The Department of the Interior has voiced its support of Federal legislation providing for relocation and reestablishment of the Papago Indian village of Si1 Murk, in southern Arizona, which will be displaced by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' construction of Painted Rock Dam and Reservoir.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced approval of $1,000,000 in community and urban development projects on 36 Indian reservations and communities in 12 States under the Accelerated Public Works Program.

The projects will provide nearly 1,700 man-months of needed employment for the Indian areas, which are administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They will, in addition, bring long-range benefits to the Indians by promoting the advancement of social and civic standards in their ·communities.

Award of a $4,563,129 contract for the construction of school facilities that will provide for 768 additional students at Shonto, Arizona, was announced today by the Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

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I am delighted to be with you again at your annual meeting and to help you celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. In the martyrdom of Lincoln,

Jenkin Lloyd Jones saw the interruption of an unfulfilled task. In memory of the Great Emancipator, he determined to create an institution that would be truly equalitarian, both as to people and as to ideas.

Transfer of Howard F. Johnson from the position of superintendent, Blackfeet Agency, Browning, Mont., to the comparable position at Osage Agency, Pawhuska, Okla., effective February 15, was announced today by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Johnson, superintendent of the Blackfeet Agency for the past five and a half years, succeeds Thomas H. Dodge, who recently retired. A successor for Johnson at Blackfeet Agency has not yet been selected.

The Department of the Interior has announced its support of proposed Federal legislation providing for distribution of a judgment fund of over $6 million recovered by the Pawnee Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.

The amount actually awarded the Tribe by the Indian Claims Commission and appropriated by Congress in May 1963, was $7,316,096.55. However, payment of attorneys' fees and expenses and other costs of litigation reduced the sum available for distribution to $6,439,088,88, including accrued interest.