Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman will appear on the afternoon of Monday, November 12, 2007, at the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) 64th Annual Convention, where he will address delegates at the Second General Assembly and attend NCAI’s session for tribal leaders on the Indian Affairs Modernization Initiative scheduled for that evening. The event will take place in Denver, Colo., at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center.

Thirty Choctaw Indian students from Choctaw Central High School, a Bureau of Inc1ian Affairs school at Philadelphia, Miss., sang songs of the Choctaw, Quapaw, Kiowa, Osage, Hopi, Acana Pueblo, and Navajo tribes in their Choctaw costumes in an auditorium of the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., on May 4.

A plan for the distribution and use, of more than $9 million awarded by the Indian Claims Commission to the Lake Superior and Mississippi Bands of Chippewa Indians fs being published in the Federal Register, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today. The award is additional compensation for land in Wisconsin and Minnesota ceded by the Indians in 1837 and 1847.

PHOENIX - Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne opened the first-ever National Native American Economic Policy Summit with a video-taped message to over 500 tribal leaders, federal officials and leaders of Native organizations encouraging Summit participants to “work together collaboratively to formulate policy recommendations that will improve the quality of life in America’s diverse and growing indigenous communities.”

Distribution of Indian Claims Commission judgments totaling over

$5.5 million awarded to the Miami Indians of Oklahoma and Indiana, will be made beginning about July 19, Marvin L. Franklin, Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, announced today.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, in its fiscal year 1980 budget request, has asked Congress for Federal funding of $948,120,000 -- approximately $86.5 million less than the 1979 funding.

Most of the decrease, reflecting the President's anti-inflation concern will be in the new construction of buildings, utilities and roads. For the operation of Indian programs, the Bureau has asked for $792,020,000 -- about $3.3 million less than the 1979 funding.

WASHINGTON – Carl J. Artman was sworn into office today as the Interior Department’s tenth Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. Artman is an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin whose nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 5, 2007.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that the Minnesota Sioux Indian Tribes presented a Peace Pipe to the United States in a recent White House Ceremony.

Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller accepted the pipe June 25 from Glynn A. Crooks, tribal councilman of the Shakopee-Mdewakanton Sioux Tribe. Crooks called the pipe a symbol of "trust, unity, friendship and peace."

The Confederated Indian Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon were warmly commended today by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior for the "progressive step" they have taken in entering into a $100,000 contract with Oregon State College for a study of the human and natural resources on the reservation.

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Carl J. Artman and South Dakota Senator John Thune yesterday unveiled their joint proposal for a South Dakota Indian and Tribal Business Incubator Project to help accelerate economic development throughout the state’s nine federal Indian reservations. The project will target the Cheyenne River Sioux, Crow Creek Sioux, Flandreau Santee Sioux, Lower Brule Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Standing Rock Sioux and Yankton Sioux tribes.