Past News Items

After several hearings about the need for more police on Tribal lands and the severe need for school construction and repair funds in Indian Country, the Senate Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations cut the President Clinton's request to fund the needs of the American Indian people for law enforcement and school construction by more than $140 million.

The Department of the Interior today announced a change in the schedule of meetings to be held in March and April by the five-man task force on Indian affairs at key western points.

The locale of the March 24 and 25 meetings has been shifted from Prescott, Ariz., to Phoenix. Otherwise the schedule remain3 as announced in the Department's press release of March 10.

Ada E. Deer, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs announced that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (the Service) within the Department of the Interior, carried out Federal search and arrest warrants in the four corners area (New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah) today. This federal action is a culmination of a two-year undercover investigation which has been conducted by the Service, into the killing and selling of eagles and other protected migratory birds.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash will make his first official visit to Indian Bureau installations and native villages in the State of Alaska January 20 through 29, the Department of the Interior announced today.

Mr. Nash will dedicate new school buildings constructed by the Bureau at Kotzebue on January 21 and at Barrow on January 23, attend the inauguration of Governor William Egan in Juneau on January 26, and visit the Bureau's Mount Edgecumbe boarding school near Sitka on January 28.

Calling it "a tremendous step forward in addressing the needs of technologically needy students on remote Indian reservations," Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt announced today that Microsoft Corporation has contributed over $350,000 in software, computers and cash to Four Directions, a project of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) that will electronically link Indian schools using the Internet and provide new technology opportunities to Native American students in eight states.

An offering of oil and gas leases on Indian lands of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah has brought high bonus bids totaling nearly $650,000 to the Indian landowners, the Department of the Interior reported today.

In July 1993, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (the Tribes) submitted an application for treatment-as-state status under the Clean Water Act with respect to all surface waters within the Flathead Indian reservation. The State of Montana opposed the EPA granting the Tribes treatment as state status by arguing that the Tribes did not possess inherent civil regulatory authority over land owned by nonmembers.

Owen D. Morken, career employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, will take over as new Director for the Bureau at Juneau, Alaska, January 2, 1966, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today.

Morken has been assistant area director for economic development at Aberdeen, South Dakota, since the spring of 1962. At Juneau he succeeds Robert L. Bennett, who is now the Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D. C.

I am sad to announce that Mr. Thomas Richard Tippeconnic passed away on April 7, 1997 at the University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona. He was an Assistant Area Director for the Navajo Area Office, before retiring from the Bureau of Indian Affairs after 35 years of service. He spent most of his adult life working on the Navajo reservation.

He was born on February 10, 1937 in Phoenix, Arizona and was a member of the Comanche Tribe of Oklahoma. Mr. Tippeconnic earned a bachelors degree in Range Management from Oklahoma State University.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced a new Departmental order which will require bidders on all Interior building construction work throughout the Nation to list with their bids the names and addresses of their subcontractors. This new policy supersedes experimental procedures which had been in effect since December 1963, but which were limited to Interior construction projects in Arizona and New Mexico and 'parts of the Navajo Indian Reservation in Utah and Colorado.