Past News Items

Billie D. Ott has been appointed Assistant Director for Management Services in the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office of Administration,
Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Ott, a member of the Choctaw Tribe of Oklahoma, has been Assistant Director for Support Services in the Administration office. In his new position he replaces Sidney Mills who is now Executive Assistant to the Commissioner.

Aided by record lumber prices, Indians in the United States earned $32.7 million -- twice the amount of two years ago -- from the sale of reservation timber in fiscal year 1969, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced.

The $32.7 million represents an increase of $11 million over the previous fiscal year. However, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Louis R. Bruce said that the same level of income cannot be expected to continue in the face of recent declines in the market value of timber.

The White House Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release October 24, 2011

Interior Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard has appointed Joe G. Weller as Bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent on the Hoopa Reservation in northern California. Weller,an enrolled member of the Caddo Tribe has been a program analyst on the Indian Self-Determination Staff in Washington, D.C

Weller, 39, worked in BIA field office is in Texas, Idaho and Washington as an employment assistance specialist and officer. He has been in the Bureau's central office as a program analyst since 1975

Percy E. Melis, chief of the Indian Bureau's Branch of Forestry for the past three years, will become area director for the Bureau at Billings, Montana, on June 15, Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons announced today.

George S. Kephart, assistant chief of the Forestry Branch, will succeed Melis as chief.

Washington, D.C.— On Thursday, September 29, 2011, the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) Solicitor Hilary Tompkins, Deputy Associate Secretary Meghan Conklin, and Deputy Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs for Policy and Economic Development Jodi Gillette, will attend the fifth regional government-to-government tribal consultation regarding the Trust Land Consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement.

BACKGROUND ON COBELL SETTLEMENT:

The Department of the Interior, seeking to restore a once-outstanding salmon and steelhead fishery on the Lower Klamath and Trinity Rivers in California, announced today it would closely regulate Indian commercial and subsistence fishing this summer while undertaking “significant” studies aimed at improving the fish resources.

Both rivers flow through the Hoopa Indian Reservation, where regulation and enforcement of commercial and subsistence fishing has been admittedly ineffective.

In an effort to learn more about the problem of alcoholism among Indians, and how to deal with it more effectively, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons today announced the appointment of a special three-man commission which will begin in the near future a three-month study on the Navajo Reservation (of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah) and other Indian reservations of New Mexico and Colorado.

Albuquerque, N.M. — The first of five in a series of listening sessions will begin Monday, August 13, 2012. The Obama Administration recognizes that the protection of sacred sites on federal lands is integral to traditional religious practices, tribal identities and emblematic of sovereign tribal nations. These sacred site listening sessions are intended to assist in developing policies that result in effective, comprehensive and long-lasting federal protection of, and tribal access to, the places that are so important to the fabric and culture of tribal nations.

Franklin L. Annette, a Chippewa Indian, has been appointed Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Technical Assistance Center in Denver, Interior Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard announced today.

Annette in his new position will be responsible for the administration of programs designed to help Indian tribes and individuals to develop capabilities to construct, maintain, operate and manage tribal facilities and businesses.