Past News Items

New high levels of conservation accomplishment designed to meet the unprecedented and still increasing demands being placed on America’s basic natural resources by the Nation’s rapid growth were outlined today in the Department of the Interior’s annual report entitled “New Horizons in Natural Resource Conservation.”

Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Eddie F. Brown today announced a national line officers meeting of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to discuss the future role of the Bureau in working with Indian tribal governments. The meeting of BIA line officers, the first since 1988, will be held July 23-25 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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.

Interior's Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Eddie F. Brown said today the President's fiscal year 1991 budget request of $1.7 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will reverse a decade-long trend of reducing resources available to carry out the Bureau's responsibilities to the Indian people of this country.

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.

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.

SALT RIVER INDIANS LEASE SCOTTSDALE AREA TRACT

A group of Salt River Reservation Indians anticipates an annual income of $400 per acre from a 156-acre tract recently leased to the Arizona Stable Development Company. The lease runs for 25 years, with an additional 25-year option. The tract, composed of eight allotments and leased as a unit, lies immediately south of the Indian Bend Golf Course near Scottsdale, Arizona.

Assistant Secretary Ross Swimmer said today he will initiate on June 2 a program to bring Bureau of Indian Affairs agency superintendents to Washington, D.C. for a three-week intensive orientation on the Bureau's headquarters operations

A priority will be given to selecting new and less experienced superintendents for enrollment in the program.

Award of two contracts totaling $264,444 for road improvement projects on Fort Totten Reservation in North Dakota and Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota was announced today by Commissioner Philleo Nash of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Department of the Interior today released a revised list of Alaska Native tribes that are eligible to receive services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and which have the immunities and privileges available to other federally recognized Indian tribes in the contiguous 48 States. The list will be published in the Federal Register next week.