HEARTH Act Passed (politics)

HEARTH ACT Signed into Law

President Obama signed the Helping Expedite and Advance Responsible Tribal Homeownership (HEARTH) Act into law on July 30, 2012. The HEARTH Act passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate with bipartisan support and will authorize tribes to lease certain tribal lands without having to get prior approval for each project from the Secretary of the Interior. 

The HEARTH Act amends the Indian Long-Term Leasing Act of 1955 which required those wishing to build homes and business on tribal lands to submit surface site leasing applications to the Department of the Interior (DOI).  Leasing applications ultimately required approval from the Secretary of the Interior.  This process often delayed important housing, business and economic development projects in Native communities, given that it is not uncommon for the DOI to take more than a year to approve a tribal surface site lease.  

The passage of the HEARTH Act will significantly reduce the wait time for approval and ease the homebuying process for tribal families.  Tribes that choose to participate will initially submit regulations to the Secretary of the Interior.  After secretarial approval, tribes will use those regulations to process applications for trust land leases, rather than waiting for them to go through the DOI.  

For more information on the HEARTH Act visit the National American Indian Housing Council at http://naihc.net.

Native Olympians (profile)

LONDON – With just a few days away to the 2012 London Olympic, thousands of athletes from across the world will begin competition in their respective sports in hopes of winning a medal and become a part of Olympic history. A few of those athletes that will be competing will not only be representing their country but they will also be representing their tribal affiliation as well.  

Google Gets On Board (language)

New Google site aims to save endangered languages

By Kazi Stastna, CBC News Posted: Jun 22, 2012 2:27 PM ET 

Google has launched a new website this week aimed at helping preserve the more than 3,000 languages of the world that are at risk of extinction.

The goal of the Endangered Languages Project is to compile the most up-to-date and comprehensive information about endangered languages and share the latest research about those languages and efforts to preserve them.

About half of the world's estimated 7,000 languages are at risk of disappearing in the next 100 years, Google said in a blog post earlier this week announcing the launch of the project.

"We have so many languages which are in danger of dying, and though there has been work done by linguists to document these languages, there are nowhere near enough linguists to do that," said Anthony Aristar, professor of linguistics and co-director of the Institute for Language Information and Technology at Eastern Michigan University, which helped create the site.

"It's not just a matter of documenting the languages, it's also a matter of revitalizing them if we possibly can."

Access full article at:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/06/22/tech-google-endangered-languages.html