Past News Items

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Eddie Brown today ordered the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to revise procedures and to focus attention on increased monitoring and inspections to curtail abuses and mismanagement in federal programs to improve housing for American Indians.

Nearly 400 more Indian college students received scholarships from the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs this year than in 1964, Commissioner Philleo Nash reported today.

BIA awarded college scholarships to 1,718 students--an increase of 30 percent over last year's figure, he said. Grants amounted to $1,225,000, or an average of $700 per student.

Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Ada E. Deer expresses concern about the well-being of the Indian people who are directly affected by the inclement weather in the northern part of the country.

"Eight federally recognized Indian tribes and approximately 56,000 Indian people have been adversely affected by the recent disastrous weather in South Dakota," Ms. Deer said.

RECOLD CORPORATION TO OPEN OKLAHOMA PLANT

There will be a new source of employment for Cherokee Indians in the Pryor, Oklahoma, area when Recold Corporation opens a branch plant, scheduled for immediate construction there. The new plant will hire 25 workers initially, increasing to 75 employees within a year and one-half. Company officials plan to negotiate an on-the-job training contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to prepare Indian workers for employment in the plant.

David J. Matheson, an enrolled member of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe of Plummer, Idaho, and its former chairman, has been named Director of the Office of Construction Management in the Department of the Interior.

More than $1 million in new construction is slated for the Indian school at Chilocco, Oklahoma, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash announced today.

Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan today announced that he has directed Interior officials to develop "better and stronger" policies to govern the protection and treatment of sacred objects and human remains on Federal lands.

Lujan told Interior bureau heads that the new policies should be based on four areas of special emphasis:

By 1970, more than 500,000 visitors may be traveling to a new national recreation area in Montana and Wyoming and enjoying the same scenic mountains, canyons, and rivers where an unknown Indian tribe lived in prehistoric times.

The Department of the Interior has announced it favors enactment of Federal legislation which would authorize establishment of the 63,000-acre Big Horn Canyon National Recreation Area surrounding Yellowtail Reservoir in southern Montana and northern Wyoming.

A nearly $40,000 Bureau of Indian Affairs grant to the Lummi Indian Business Council in Bellingham, Washington, has translated into a $2.5 million a year fishermen's corporation that provides jobs for tribal members and revenues for tribal coffers.

The tribally-chartered corporation, formed in July, markets the catches of 12 Indian fishing operations to buyers in Japan, France, Belgium and the United States. The results are impressive:

One thousand prized eagle feathers - highly important to ceremonial costumes of several Southwest Indian tribes - are en route to Indian reservations through the courtesy of the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service to help alleviate a critical shortage of the adornments, the Department reported today.

The feathers were collected at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland and were sent to the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife Regional office in Albuquerque, N. Mex., for distribution among the tribes.