Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Secretary Ken Salazar has laid out his vision that restoration of tribal lands is key to Interior’s strategy of empowering tribes and that there must be an improved land-into-trust process for non-gaming applications, Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk said today.

Richard Romero, a member of the Taos Pueblo Tribe, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Winnebago, Nebraska Agency. Commissioner Morris Thompson announced today that the appointment would be effective May 4.

Romero has been the Tribal Operations Officer for the Northern Pueblos Agency in New Mexico since 1971.

Indian students at the Bureau of Indian Affairs new Gray Hill High School will have the opportunity to become environmentalists, homemakers, and carpenters, all under the same roof. The school is now under construction on the Navajo Indian Reservation just outside of Tuba City, Ariz.

The $7.7 million federal installation is expected to be ready for youngsters from the 9th through the 12th grade by September 1972. Completion of an adjoining public school building is expected to follow. Construction on it will start during the 1971-72 school year.

Albuquerque, NM – Today Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget at the Department of the Interior Rhea Suh delivered welcoming remarks at the Federal Employment Workshop: Accessing Employment with the Department of the Interior at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Federal Employment Workshop is part of Secretary Ken Salazar’s Youth in the Great Outdoors Initiative aimed at employing, educating, and engaging youth in America’s great outdoors.

A long-range plan to give Indian schools and communities better library services is being developed by the Department of the Interior through its Office of Library and Information Services and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office of Indian Education Programs.

Interior's professional librarians, together with BIA educators, are working on the project. They are being assisted by five resource persons with special experience and knowledge.

As part of the Indian Bureau’s program to step up school enrollment on the Navajo Reservation of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 21 passenger buses are being purchased from the International Harvester Company, the Department of the Interior announced today.

International Harvester was the low bidder with a price of $83,644.66. The only other bidder, Chrysler Motors Corporation, submitted an offer of $92,883.10.

The buses will be used to transport children from their homes to day schools and trailer schools on the reservation.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that he has named Bartholomew “Bart” Stevens as Acting Director of the Bureau of Indian Education while the process for finding a permanent director continues. The temporary appointment became effective February 2. The vacancy announcement for the post opened last November and closed on February 1.

A new Assistant Area Director for Administration in the BIA's Portland Area has been appointed by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson. He is William V. Battese, who has been serving as Acting Deputy Area Director in the Anadarko, Oklahoma Area. The Portland Area includes three states: Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

"Bill is an Indian himself --a member of the Potawatomi Tribe and he has more than 25 years experience working in Indian programs. He will be a valuable addition to the Portland staff," said Commissioner Thompson.

President Nixon’s historic special message to Congress on Indians is a brass-tacks, straight forward statement of what the Nation and its Indian people need in working together toward a better future for all.

It is a time we listen to what the Indians have been telling us.

Like all Americans, they want social justice, education, health care and a chance to choose their own kind of life.

But their problems are special—and so is our responsibility to them.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services (OJS) will hold its fourth training session to improve the trial advocacy skills of tribal court prosecutors, defenders and judges on October 23-25, 2012, in Chinle, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation Reservation. This training will focus on cases dealing with domestic violence.