Department of Interior

The federal government will move forward with leasing some public land for oil and gas drilling in Wyoming, New Mexico and Kansas as part of a mandate from congressional action.

The Department of Interior’s Derogatory Geographic Names Taskforce has voted to remove a slur from 650 geographic locations around the United States. Sq*** is a word that is a slur for an Indigenous woman.

Over the next year, History Colorado, a nonprofit and an agency under the state’s department of higher education, will investigate the experiences, abuse and deaths of students at the former Fort Lewis Indian School near Durango.

Delegates from Mexico, Canada and the U.S. came together in Washington, D.C., to discuss the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The Public Media Journalists Association selected the bureau's investigation of deaths at tribal jails as the best nationally edited news coverage for 2021.

The goal of the Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee is to get input from tribal leaders on Department of the Interior issues impacting Indigenous communities before policy is made.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is launching an Indian Youth Service Corps with new guidelines. The corps was established in 2019 as part of an amendment to the Public Lands Corps Act. Now, Haaland has published actual guidelines. One of its goals is fostering natural resource and land stewardship skills for young tribal members aged 16 to 30, or 35 if you’re a veteran.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a regulation change under the Endangered Species Act that would allow some species to be introduced outside their historical ranges. With more flexibility some endangered and threatened species could be moved to other suitable habitats.

The Interior Department announced the distribution of $279 million to outdoor recreation and conservation projects across the U.S., with tens of millions of dollars going to states in the Mountain West.

A federal contract to investigate deaths at tribal jails went to a man who had oversight of those facilities during 6 of the deaths. Now, watchdog group Project on Government Oversight is calling on the Interior’s Office of Inspector General to investigate that contract and whether it violated rules regarding former federal employees.