Past News Items

Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today that Paul B. Murphy, food specialist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is being assigned to emergency duty with the American Red Cross in Austria as director of a program for feeding Hungarian refugees.

The Indian Bureau food expert is scheduled to fly to Salzburg, Austria, on his new assignment Monday, December 3.

PAGE, AZ–Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today triggered the first “high-flow experimental release” at Glen Canyon Dam since 2008, as part of a new experimental long-term protocol announced in May by the Secretary to better distribute sediment to conserve downstream resources, while meeting water and power needs and allowing continued scientific experimentation, data collection, and monitoring to more fully address the important resources in the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam.

Assistant Secretary -- Indian Affairs Forrest J. Gerard announced today the detail of James Canan, Billings Area Director to the Bureau's Management Improvement Program, where he will manage the field operation portion of the program. Gerard said he selected Canan for this assignment because of his many years of experience as an area director, his knowledge of the BIA's field operations at both the area and agency level.

In order to clarify the position of the Department of the Interior with reference to the so-called ''Wyandotte Indian Cemetery" in Kansas City, Kansas, Secretary Fred A. Seaton today issued the following statement:

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—On Monday, October 22, 2012, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will deliver keynote remarks at the National Congress of American Indians’ 69th Annual Convention & Marketplace in Sacramento. Salazar is expected to discuss the Obama Administration’s progress in opening a new chapter in our nation-to-nation relationship with American Indian and Alaska Natives tribal governments.

The tribal plan for the distribution of almost $5,000,000 awarded to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California by the Indian Claims Commission were published in the Federal Register November 19, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The award represents payment for 1,500,000 acres of land in California and Nevada taken from the Washoe Tribe more than years ago.

"Graphic Arts of the Alaskan Eskimo," a new profusely illustrated 88-page publication, is now being offered for sale by the Government, the Department of the Interior announced today.

Illustrated with nearly 100 reproductions of graphic works of art by Alaskan Eskimos, the publication depicts such unusual items as engravings on ivory and watercolor drawings on skin and paper, as well as woodcuts, etchings, lithographs,and engravings.

An accompanying interpretive text is by anthropologist Dorothy Jean Ray.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In keeping with its mission to establish responsive, accountable, transparent, and customer-friendly management of Indian trust funds and assets, the Secretarial Commission on Indian Trust Administration and Reform reached out to Indian Country at its fifth public meeting of the year in Bismarck, N.D. All five Commission members – Chair Fawn Sharp, Tex G. “Red Tipped Arrow” Hall, Stacy Leeds, Dr. Peterson Zah, and Robert Anderson – participated in the September 13-14, 2012, conference.

Senator Milton Young of North Dakota and Robert Richmond, a Brunswick Corporation executive, will be honored for "outstanding contributions to economic development on American Indian reservations," Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Forrest Gerard announced today.

Bureau of Indian Affairs' Economic Development Award plaques will be presented to the honorees October 19 in a ceremony on the Fort Totten Reservation in North Dakota.

The Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior today announced the signing of an agreement on extension work with American Indians. The agreement, which goes into effect July 1, gives the Agriculture Department responsibility for rendering technical advice and guidance in extension work formerly carried on by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs.