Past News Items

WASHINGTON - The new Interior officials confirmed by the Senate last week will be sworn-in by Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton at a ceremony tomorrow, July 17, at 1:15 p.m. The ceremony will take place outside on the Department’s rooftop terrace.

Action restores former lands to the Tribe with projected jobs and revenue benefitting it as well as local and regional economies.

An unusually large volume of legislation that will bring far-reaching benefits to American Indians was enacted by the recently adjourned 87th Congress, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall said today.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs will celebrate its 175th Anniversary tomorrow, Friday, September 8, 2000, at 10:00 a.m. (EDT) at the U.S. Department of the Interior headquarters, 1849 ‘C’ Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., in the Sydney R. Yates Auditorium with the theme “Reconciling the Past, Trusting the Future: A Renewed Commitment to Indian Tribes for the 21st Century.” The program will include a discussion on the BIA’s past, present, and future.

On July 23, 2019, lightning sparked the Moss Ranch Fire on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) trust lands. Striking midway up a remote slope in a steep, rocky, portion of the Flathead River corridor, the wildfire grew faster in the cured grass and sagebrush than wildland firefighters could suppress it. Adding to this were safety complications firefighters experienced—bees were swarming, stinging the faces and necks of multiple firefighters which required emergency medical care for two of the firefighters that had allergic reactions.

A proposal for a National Recreation Area adjoining Yellowtail Reservoir in Big Horn and Carbon Counties, Montana, and Big Horn County, Wyoming, is detailed in a report released today by the Department of the Interior.

A 7l-mile long reservoir will be formed by the construction of the Yellowtail Dam now being built near the mouth of Big Horn Canyon, about 42 miles southwest of Hardin, Montana, by the Bureau of Reclamation as a part of the Missouri River ( Project. The dam is expected to be completed by 1966.

One tribe’s 22-year journey through the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) process for federal recognition ended this afternoon when Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin Gover signed the final determination in favor of federal acknowledgement for the Chinook Indian Tribe/Chinook Nation of Washington State in a ceremony at the Department of the Interior’s main building in Washington, D.C.

Each year within the Department of the Interior, the Office of Wildland Fire (OWF) manages nearly $1 billion in funding and coordinates its distribution to the four bureaus (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service), which conduct wildland fire management services that protect, restore, and manage our nation’s treasured landscapes. Of the nearly 70,000 employees of the Department, approximately 5,000 of them are wildland firefighters. Facing a changing and complex landscape that will have even greater demands in the future, our workforce must be as aggressive and dynamic as the landscape they will be managing over the next 100 years.

Award of a $777,777 Bureau of Reclamation contract for the clearing of approximately 15,600 acres of land along the border of New Mexico and Colorado, to be inundated by the waters of Navajo Reservoir, was announced by the Department of the Interior today.

The contract went to Universal Grading Company, Incorporated, of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

WASHINGTON, DC - At a press conference at the National Press Club today, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced budget increases for Indian Country initiatives and joined Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson and other Administration officials and Indian leaders in announcing a new Native American-focused training course. Called "Working Effectively with Tribal Governments," the online course is now available to federal employees.