Past News Items

The Department of the Interior announced today award of a $430,258 construction contract for a major expansion and remodeling of the Indian Bureau's boarding school plant at Seba Dalkai, Arizona.

The Anchor Construction Company of Roswell, New Mexico was awarded the contract. Six contractors from Arizona and New Mexico submitted higher bids ranging from $457,750 to $498,553.

WASHINGTON –The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) today released the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a proposed 350-megawatt solar energy project on tribal trust land of the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians in Clark County, Nevada.

The publication in the Federal Register tomorrow of a notice of availability begins the 30-day public comment period. Access to the Final EIS document can be viewed at:

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that proposed regulations for the implementation of the Indian Financing Act are being published in the Federal Register September 3, 1974.

Thompson said that full funding of $80 million is being sought for the Act, which was approved by President Nixon April 12, 1974.

The Indian Financing Act of 1974 itself:

Record highs for conveyances of Federal land in Alaska to both the State of Alaska and Alaska Native corporations were set in the year ended September 30, the Department of the Interior announced today. A total of 1.5 million acres passed to the State under the terms of the Statehood Act and 4.8 million acres were conveyed to Native ownership under the provisions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

"The acreage conveyed both to the State and Natives was the result of a strong policy to emphasize conveyances, and a tremendous effort on the part of the reorganize

WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today issued a final determination not to acknowledge the petitioner known as the Choctaw Nation of Florida (Petitioner #288) as an Indian tribe.

The petitioner, from Marianna, Fla., and which has about 77 members, claims to be a group of Choctaw Indians who migrated from North Carolina to Georgia and then to Florida following the Indian removals of the 1830s.

Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B. Morton today announced approval of the largest Land and Water Conservation Fund project to date on Indian Indians. The $550,000 L&WCF grant is for development of the Blackfeet lands. St. Mary's Lake Recreation Complex in Montana.

Burton Rider, a Gros Ventre-Cree Indian, has been named Assistant Area Director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Billings, Montana office, Acting Deputy Commissioner Sidney L. Mills said today.

Rider, 49, has been Superintendent of the Fort Peck Agency at Poplar, Montana. His appointment in the area office will be effective October 21 He succeeds Maurice W. (Bill) Babby who has accepted a position in the Office of the Commissioner in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of the Interior proposes to acknowledge the Shinnecock Indian Nation of Southampton, New York as a federally recognized Indian tribe, Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs George T. Skibine announced today. The Department will issue a notice of this proposed finding in the Federal Register.

America's attention has been focused on the irresponsible violence at Wounded Knee. The future of Indian self-determination can only be set back when unrepresentative groups disregard the law.

Instead of leading to solutions and the conditions for a new era of Indian self-determination, violence leads only to more violence, and more suffering.

Human injustice cannot be eliminated without the conditions for equity --and full moral responsibility cannot be met without full legal authority.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons today made a public statement on the current status of a claim against the United States filed with the Indian Claims commission in 1948 by the Creek Indian Tribe.

The claim involves compensation for about nine million acres in Georgia and Alabama, ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814.