Past News Items

WASHINGTON – Earlier this month, Tara Mac Lean Sweeney, a prominent Alaskan leader and acclaimed businesswoman with the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, was sworn in as the Department’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. Sweeney was nominated by President Donald J. Trump in October 2017. Sweeney, a member of the Native Village of Barrow and the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, is the first Alaska Native and only the second woman in history to hold the position.

NEW SUPERINTENDENT AT MESCALERO APACHE RESERVATION--Paul H. Clements, assistant superintendent at the Pima Agency in Arizona since 1964, has been named superintendent of the Mescalero Apache Agency in New Mexico. He fills a post vacated by the transfer last May of Kenneth L. Payton to head the United Pueblos Agency. The new assignment became effective June 26. Clements, a native of Port Townsend, Wash., has since 1948 held various BIA administrative posts -- at the Yakima Agency in Washington; the Umatilla Agency in Oregon; and the Flathead Agency in Montana.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs William E. Hallett today announced the appointment of new superintendents for the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Umatilla and Pima Agencies.

William D. Sandoval, a San Juan Pueblo/Navajo Indian, is the superintendent at Umatilla in Pendleton, Oregon. Edmund L. Thompson, an enrolled member of the Pima Tribe, has been selected as the superintendent at Pima in Sacaton, Arizona.

Alaska Daily News: "The White House announced the pick Monday. The reaction on Tuesday bordered on ecstatic"

The Center for Arts of Indian America, a non-profit corporation devoted to the advancement of Indian art, will present a showing of "Contemporary Indian Painting, Sculpture and Crafts" from the collection of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from Wednesday, July,17 through Sept. 6.

The showing will be free to the public in the seventh floor Art Gallery of the Department of Interior building, 18th and C Streets, Monday through Friday, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The BIA's Office of Indian Education Programs has appointed new chiefs for four of its six Central Office Divisions, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs Sidney Mills announced today.

Dr. Noah Allen has been named Chief of Elementary and Secondary Education; Leroy Falling, Chief of Post-Secondary Education; Carmen Taylor, Chief of Student Support Services; and Dr. Charles Cordova Chief of Exceptional Education. Student

Support Services and Exceptional Education are new divisions created in compliance with Title XI of PL 95-561, the Education Amendments of 1978.

WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Michael S. Black announced today that the Department of the Interior has scheduled a series of tribal consultation sessions beginning February 23, 2017, on updating the Licensed Indian Trader regulations at 25 C.F.R. Part 140. The Department is taking this action in an effort to modernize implementation of the Indian Trader statutes consistent with federal policies of tribal self-determination and self-governance.

An old Indian saying goes, "Give us good roads and we'll take care of our other problems."

While more than roads are needed to meet the many problems of the Indian people, a vigorous road-building program is doing much to improve the living conditions on the Navajo Reservation, largest and most heavily populated in the country, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Before 1950, the vast interior of the Navajo Reservation, which is roughly equivalent to the size of West Virginia, was virtually devoid of roads.

John W. Fritz, senior corporate counsel for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, has been named Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Interior Secretary James G. Watt announced today.

WASHINGTON – Furthering President Obama’s Generation Indigenous (“Gen-I”) and Tiwahe initiatives that support American Indian and Alaska Native families and strengthen tribal communities, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Lawrence S.