Past News Items

For an invention that dramatically reduces accident risks and at the same time results in sizeable cost reductions, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall has awarded the highest incentive payment in the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to an engineering technician on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.

Frank H. Roderick, a Bureau of Indian Affairs employee, received a check for $1,350 in recognition of the usefulness of his design for a new type irrigation canal check.

Resumption of livestock impoundment by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Hopi partitioned lands in northern Arizona should not deter leaders of the Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes from continuing to work toward a negotiated settlement of their differences, Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs John W. Fritz said today.

The Bureau resumed impoundment activities June 12.

"The chairmen of both tribes contacted me and were concerned that the Bureau activities would hamper their on-going attempts to reach agreement," Fritz said.

The U. S. Department of the Interior today announced the appointment of Doyce L. Waldrip to the post of Superintendent of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon. He will replace Allan W. Galbraith who transfers to the Portland Area Office to become Assistant Area Director for economic development.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is publishing in the Federal Register July 15, 1982, regulations governing treaty Indian fishing · for sockeye and pink salmon in Fraser River waters coming under the Convention between the United States and Canada.

The regulations are designed to be consistent with the United States' obligations to Canada under the Fraser River Convention and with the obligation to the treaty tribes to provide the opportunity to catch one-half of the United States' share of the fish.

The first Job Corps Conservation Center in the Southwest--and the second in the entire country-·-will be dedicated at Winslow, Arizona, March 12 by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

On the periphery of Navajo lands in Arizona, Winslow Center formerly was an Air Force Radar Base. The property is now administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Another camp organized in cooperation with the Department of the Interior was dedicated at Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland, two weeks ago. It is administered by the Interior Department's National Park Service.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has issued a finding of no significant environmental impact from a proposed project to drill for oil or gas on land adjacent to the Coushatta Indian Reservation, in Louisiana.

The proposal calls for the drilling of a well on private land that is close enough to the Indian's trust land, that it would become part of the producing unit if oil or gas are located.

Awards totaling about $36 million were granted 13 American Indian groups by judgments of the Indian Claims Commission during 1968, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported today.

Congress has appropriated funds for $30.6 million of the total granted. The appropriated funds earn interest for the tribes involved while the funds are on deposit to their credit.

The Bureau of Indi an Affairs has officially closed its Office of Technical Assistance and Training (OTAT) at Brigham City, Utah 1 Interior Assistant Secretary Ken Smith announced today.

Smith said the document abolishing OTAT, a unit in the BIA’s central office structure, was signed March 16 and that approximately 72 employees would receive general reduction in force (RIF) notices at an employee meeting to be held today.

Award of a $980,000 contract to construct a dormitory with sleeping rooms for 64 students, a kitchen-multi-use building adequate for 128 students, and adjunct facilities, , including utilities and paving at Eufaula, Okla., was announced today by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior.

When completed, the project will provide living facilities for elementary and secondary school-age Indian children attending public schools in the City of Eufaula.

Forty-three Indian tribal leaders and officials of the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will meet October 15-17 in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss the reorganization of the BIA.