Past News Items

Interior Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard announced today that an agreement has been reached with the All Indian Pueblo Council to transfer the senior high programs (10th, 11th and 12th grades) of the Albuquerque Indian School (AIS) to the campus of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe.

WASHINGTON – Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Jerold L. “Jerry” Gidner today announced that he has named Michael S. Black as Regional Director of the BIA’s Great Plains Regional Office in Aberdeen, S.D. His appointment became effective on July 20. The Great Plains Regional Office oversees 12 BIA agencies serving the 16 federally recognized tribes located in the states of Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act has three basic components: Land, money, and an interrelated corporate structure Land, money, and an interrelated corporate structure of Native villages and regions.

Since Alaska Natives -- Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts --are a land-oriented people, the cession of 40 million acres of land to them under the Act is of great importance. One-twelfth of Alaska will be in their hands starting in early 1974.

The Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton today announced the award of a $3,178,412 contract for construction of new boarding school facilities for more than 600 additional Indian children in the elementary grades at Leupp, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation.

The new plant will have a capacity of 672 pupils. It will replace a 67-pupil school now operated by the Bureau at Leupp. Upon completion of the new facilities, the present school will be abandoned.

WASHINGTON – Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Economic Development – Indian Affairs George T. Skibine today announced a new effort to recruit and train American Indian and Alaska Native post-secondary students to become Indian Country’s next generation of tribal energy and natural resource management professionals. The Energy Resource Development Tribal Internship Program has been developed through a partnership between the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED), the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) and the U.S.

The Indian Education for Health Committee of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare will meet July 19 and 20 between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. in the Indian Health Area conference room, 388 Old Post Office and Court House Building, Oklahoma City, Okla., Marvin L. Franklin, Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs announced today.

"The meeting is to continue to develop ways and means of coordinating and improving education and health programs for Indians throughout the United States, Franklin indicated.

Indian forest land owners would for the first time have a right of appeal from Indian Bureau decisions on their timber sale contracts under a proposed revision of Federal Regulations announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The proposal include many changes. They would permit any legally interested party to appeal on sale contracts to the Secretary of the Interior. The existing regulations do not specify such an appeal procedure.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs said the revisions also include these five other major changes:

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman today announced he has named E. Sequoyah Simermeyer as Counsel to the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs. Simermeyer, an enrolled member of the Coharie Intra­Tribal Council, Inc., of North Carolina who also shares ancestry with the Navajo Nation of Arizona, previously served as a Government Affairs Group Associate with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), an association of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes in Washington, D.C. His appointment became effective on August 20, 2007.

Louis D. Bayhylle, an enrolled member of the Pawnee Tribe, has been appointed Chief Personnel Officer of th Bureau of Indian Affairs. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Bayhylle has been Chief of Personnel Services at the Veterans Administration Hopsital in New York City since 1963. He has been in personnel work with the Veterans Administration for more than 30 years.

A native of Muskogee, Oklahoma, Bayhylle is a graduate of the Central High School there. He has completed numerous training programs in management and personnel.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is publishing in the Federal Register a list of 278 Indian tribal entities which are recognized and receiving services from the BIA.

The list includes all Indian tribes, bands, villages, groups and pueblos --except those in the State of Alaska --acknowledged by the Secretary of the Interior to have a political relationship with the United States.