Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb will address the pressing need for economic and employment growth throughout Indian Country at the National Summit on Emerging Tribal Economies, which will be held September 16-19, 2002 in Phoenix, Ariz., at the Phoenix Civic Plaza. Norton and McCaleb are scheduled to speak on September 17.

Further exploration of coal resources in the lands of the Navajo Indian Reservation that may lead to a development expenditure of more than $1,000,000 and employment of as many as 200 Indians is now definitely in prospect, the Department of the Interior announced today.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin and Special Trustee for American Indians Ross O. Swimmer today announced the issuance of a new Departmental Manual (DM) that makes effective the reorganization of the Office of the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs (OAS/IA), the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) within the Department of the Interior.

Award of an $874,700 construction contract that will provide 150 additional classroom seats for Indian students in the White Shield School at Emmet, North Dakota, on the Fort Berthold Reservation was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The Joint Tribal Leaders/DOI Task Force on Trust Reform will hold its next meeting on June 13-15, 2002 in Bismarck, N.D. The Task Force was established in February of 2002 to review and propose plans for improving the Department’s management of individual Indian and tribal trust assets.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced approval of new regulations today that will help several Pueblo Indian tribes in central New Mexico consolidate their land holdings and improve their livestock operations.

The new rules carry out exchange provisions of a law passed last September which transferred 69,700 acres of the national land reserve to eight Pueblo Indian tribes in New Mexico.

(Washington, DC)--The U.S. Department of the Interiors Office of Indian Affairs headed by Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb will be hosting a National Indian Energy Summit “Indian Energy Resources, Helping to Fuel America’s Needs” at the Adams Mark Hotel in Denver, Colorado on December 6 and 7, 2001.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall and Alaska's Governor William A. Egan today Jointly announced plans for a three-man task force to visit native villages in Alaska and study Indian Bureau operations there during June.

(CHICHILTAH, N.M.) – With the click of a mouse by Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb, the Chichiltah/Jones Ranch Community School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs facility located in Chichiltah, N.M., today officially opened its portal to the Internet. His action also successfully completed the BIA’s four-year effort to bring all of its schools online.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has agreed to make loans that may be needed for reactivation of a tribally operated steer enterprise on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana, the Department of the Interior announced today.