It is good to be back at the University of Toronto—this time as a guest rather than an employee. I still have many warm memories of the four years I spent here as a lecturer in anthropology from 1937 to 1941. So I am especially grateful for the opportunity of corning back to renew old acquaintances and establish new ones in this outstanding Canadian academic institution.
The subject of my remarks on this occasion is "Indian Administration in the United States." It is, as some of you know, a subject in which I have long had an active interest dating back even before my tour of duty at this University to the period of the early 1930’s when I did anthropological field work on the Klamath Indian Reservation shortly after receiving my bachelor degree. Over the years I have had an opportunity to observe the administration of Indian affairs in the United States from several different points of vantage - from the White House as an assistant to former President Harry S. Truman from a State capitol as lieutenant governor of my native Wisconsin, more recently as a member of a four-man task force appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to make a detailed study of the operations of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and for the past 15 or 16 months as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the administrative head of the Bureau. I probably don’t need to add that the picture looks somewhat different to me today, sitting in the Commissioner's chair, than it did some 30 years ago to a young anthropologist on the Klamath Reservation; in fact, it looks a lot different than it did just 18 months ago to a member of Secretary Udall's Task Force on Indian Affairs.
The challenge of working out an accommodation with an aboriginal people who were gradually overwhelmed by superior technological force and a sharply alien culture is one which Canada and the United States have both had to face throughout their histories. From the time of the earliest colonial settlements down to the American Revolution it was, of course, a mutually shared experience for all the peoples of North America under British rule; and, as we look back on it now, it seems that most of the enlightenment and humanitarianism emanated from London rather than from our colonial forebears. But, in all fairness, it was probably a great deal easier to cultivate an enlightened and humane attitude toward the North American Indian when separated from him by some 3,000 miles of ocean than it was precariously perched on a wild and hostile frontier.
In any event, starting in the final quarter of the 18th century, the common stream of experience in Indian affairs diverged along one line in Canada and another in the United States. There have been, of course, many striking similarities and parallels in the governmental administration of Indian affairs on both sides of the border: there have also been profound and significant differences, In my remarks here, however, I am going to leave the comparisons aside - since I feel sure that the members of this audience are unusually well informed on Indian administration in Canada - and focus my attention entirely on the southern side of the border.
Our story begins, as I have already suggested, in 1775 when the Continental Congress, as one of its first acts, set up three departments of Indian affairs-northern, middle and southern - and designated commissioners for each. This is where the title which I now have the honor of holding had its origin and it is indicative of the importance attached to the office in those day’s that two of the first commissioners named for the Middle Department of Indian Affairs were Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry. But these early commissioners were essentially diplomats
rather than administrators and the Bureau of Indian Affairs was not actually established until nearly half a century later in 1824.
The history of Indian affairs in the United States throughout the 19th century is, of course, a vast and enormously complex subject which I can touch on here only very lightly. It includes many of the darkest pages in the history of my country, many incidents that have been burdening the collective conscience of thoughtful American citizens for generations. But it was not totally black. Along with ruthless disregard for elementary human rights and the forceful uprooting’s of whole tribal populations, there were evidences of concern for Indian welfare from the very earliest days of our national history. Throughout most of the 19th century the various church denominations of the United States, both Catholic and Protestant, established missions in nearly all sections of the Indian country and labored earnestly to bring Indians at least the rudiments of formal education and protection against the ravages of disease. Starting aroux1d the 1870's and 18801s, after most of the tribal groups had been subdued by force of arms, the Federal Government became increasingly concerned with such matters and growing attention was given both in Congress and the Executive Branch to finding an appropriate place for the Indian in the spectrum of our national life.
The solution that was gradually evolved in the latter years of the 19th century was not altogether a happy one - although it may have been the best that would be accomplished under the exceedingly difficult circumstances that prevailed. The relationship that developed between the Federal Government and the Indian population was essentially that of guardian and ward - a deeply paternalistic relationship that constituted an affront to human dignity and planted the seed for much sour fruit that we are still trying to weed out of our garden. But at least the guardian-ward approach to administration of Indian affairs was an improvement over earlier policies of military conquest and compulsory mass migration and it probably was a halting step in the right direction.
During the present century we have been moving steadily away from the all-pervasive paternalism of the 1880's and 90’s toward a more wholesome respect for the human dignity of individual Indians as well as for the values of age-old tribal cultures. In 1924 our Congress enacted a law declaring that all Indians born in the United States are citizens of the United States without giving up their tribal affiliations. Ten years later Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, another milestone piece of legislation, which explicitly recognized the right of Indian tribes and bands to self-government and established basic principles to be followed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in dealing with tribal governments and helping to strengthen their operations.
These two statutes are both important planks in the platform on which we are now conducting our operations in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They have set the stage, so to speak, and provided much of the legal underpinning. But there is also a tribal Congressional plank which is equally significant. This is the marked tendency which Congress has shown over the past dozen years or so to appropriate liberally for activities aimed at the ultimate objective of bringing Indians up to a state of general parity with the rest of the population in terms of health, education, occupational skills and economic opportunity. Even a cursory review of Congressional appropriations for
Indian affairs since 1950 will clearly reveal both the scope and the depth of Congressional intention along these markedly progressive lines.
So much, by way of a very quick sketch indeed, for the historical background. Now let us consider some of the major dimensions of the job we have to do. According to the 1960 Census, we have in the United States today about 550,000 people who are identifiable as Indians plus an additional 25,000 or so Eskimos and Aleuts in the State of Alaska - who are also a concern of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But only about two-thirds of these people - roughly 380,000-come within the scope of the programs conducted by our Bureau. The balance of Indian population - around 170,000 - consists of people who live away from Indian country and are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from their non-Indian neighbors.
So it is the 380,000 who directly concern us and there can be no doubt that they constitute on8 of the most seriously disadvantaged groups we have in the United States. Largely because of this unfortunate historical background which I have tried to highlight for you, Indian reservations were for many years almost hermetically sealed off from the main tides of progress that flowed across our country and - with a few exceptions here and there - did not participate adequately in the advances that were taking place elsewhere in education, public health protections, and opportunities for economic growth. As a result, we have a great deal of catching up to do. One way of summing it up is to point out that adult Indians living on reservations today are, as a group, only about half as well educated as other citizens, have approximately two-thirds the life expectancy, and are receiving somewhere ·between one-third and one-fourth as much income.
Many of the newer programs which we are now operating in the Bureau are specifically designed to diminish - and eventually eliminate - these grievous disadvantages. Others are intended to fulfill historic responsibilities which our Bureau has long had under Congressional enactments and, to some extent, under treaties. And some, as we shall see, are serving a dual purpose.
Although the Bureau no longer exercises a comprehensive guardianship over the persons of individual Indians as it did 75 or 80 years ago, it still functions in a very meaningful way as the trustee for much of the Indians t property. Included in the scope of this trusteeship are about 50.5 million acres of land, located mainly on Indian reservations. Roughly two-thirds of this acreage is tribally owned and the balance consists of tracts that were allotted for the most part many years ago, to individual tribal members. As the administrators of the Federal Government's trust responsibility, we in the Bureau have on our hands one of the biggest and most complex real estate operations that has ever come to my attention. The mere job of record keeping is almost staggering and all I can say is thank the Lord for automatic data processing. But the job goes far beyond the keeping of records; it involves the actual supervision of all types of realty transactions such as sales, exchanges, rights-of-way and leases both for surface use and mineral development. It involves the collection of rents, fees, royal ties and other income as well as the distribution of these proceeds to protect the best long-range interests of the Indian owners—tribal or Individual in all of these transactions.
Furthermore, the job is not merely a negative one of protecting the Indians against unwise use or disposition of their assets; it also carries a positive or constructive responsibility to help the Indians in realizing the best possible income from their lands and other resources consistent with
some conservation principles. Thus we are engaged in far-reaching and highly technical programs of forest management, construction and operation of irrigation projects, range management soil and moisture conservation, and practical guidance in farming and home-ranking practices.
All of these functions are directly related to the basic trust responsibility they constitute one important phase of our total operation. A second phase, which also embraces several of our older programs, finds us providing Indians with several types of public services which have traditionally in the United States been furnished to non-Indian citizens by State and local units of government. Included in this category are education for the young, welfare aid1 law and order activities and the construction and maintenance of local roads. The Bureau’s involvement in these fields was an inevitable outgrowth of the fact that Indian trust lands have always been, with a few rare exceptions, exempt from local real estate taxes and outside the sphere of State criminal and civil jurisdiction. So the Bureau has been compelled over the years to develop its own school system, its own welfare organization, its own law enforcement staff, its own program of road construction and maintenance.
Let me quickly add, however, that the picture today on Indian reservations is by no means one of pure Federal activity in these various fields, Over the past 25 years or so, largely as a result of Federal subsidies made possible by the Johnson O'Malley Act of 1936, many of the States have taken over a substantial share of the responsibilities for educating Indian children on reservations and several of them are now educating all Indian children without financial help from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. To a lesser extent similar progress has been made in welfare, law enforcement end road operations.
Despite this recent trend, however, the Bureau still remains highly active in all four of these fields and actually, the scope of our operations today is bigger than ever on most fronts because of the steady increase in reservation populations.
Education is by far the biggest single function of our Bureau both in terms of manpower and in terms of dollars. If you include construction of schools and directly related facilities in addition to the operation and maintenance of existing schools, then education today accounts for just about three out of every five dollars that we spend in the Bureau. During the fiscal year that ended last June we operated a total of 263 schools ranging in size from single classrooms in trailers or Quonset huts at remote locations on the Navajo Reservation to the Intermountain School at Brigham, Utah, which has an enrollment of over 2,100 students. About 75 of these schools are boarding institutions and in them we have the responsibility not merely for providing instruction but also for feeding the students three meals a day and for maintaining and staffing dormitories. All in all, it adds up to quite a sizable operation and it requires a very substantial number of personnel.
In the welfare field the task of the Bureau is greatly diminished by the fact that Indian people qualifying for certain types of categorical public assistance-old age assistance, aid to the blind, aid to dependent children, and aid to the permanently and totally disabled - receive this assistance from State and country welfare agencies on the same basis as other citizens. So the Bureau's
welfare job our primarily one of furnishing aid to needy Indians who do not fall into one of our major categories plus a great deal of family counselling and child welfare help.
In approaching the subject of law enforcement on Indian reservations in the United States, I feel almost as if I were opening up Pandora's Box. It is a subject of tremendous complexity and full exploration of its many ramifications could undoubtedly keep us occupied for the next several hours. To spare you this ordeal, let me just say that most Indian reservations, but not all, are still outside the sphere of State criminal and civil jurisdiction, and are subject to Federal jurisdiction for the major types of felonies and to some form of tribal ,jurisdiction for the lesser crimes and misdemeanors. The Bureau maintains law and order personnel on most reservations and they work quite closely with the tribes in providing police protection.
The Road program of the Bureau differs from the other functions I have just been mentioning since it has been administered for many years in the same division of our organization as the various resource activities I spoke of earlier. Yet I bring it in here because road construction and maintenance is - like education, welfare and law-enforcement - essentially a local governmental function in the United States apart from the ma.jar Federal highway system and, of course, the Indian reservations, The Bureau's system now includes about 16,000 miles of road altogether and it is being improved at an encouraging rate and expanded somewhat thanks to substantially increased appropriations in recent years. Especially on the 25,000-square-mile Navajo Reservation in our Southwest, we are now bringing all-weather roads into remote localities that have been virtually isolated for generations. I realize of course, that some of my fellow anthropologists may view this development with mixed emotions. But certainly there can be no argument about the desirability of putting in bus routes so that children can attend school regularly for the first time in their lives or of giving isolated settlements quick and easy access to hospitals and other medical services.
And this brings up another phase of Federal activity in the field of Indian affairs which I want to mention briefly even though it is no longer a function of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Up until 1955 the Bureau administered a rather far-reaching health program for Indians which included both curative and preventive medical activities. It involved the operation of about 60 hospitals and a large number of health centers and clinics as well as a wide range of activities to promote better environmental sanitation in Indian communities. Since 1955 this program has been administered by the United States Public Health Service and its scope has been substantially enlarged as a result of increased appropriations. Today all qualified observers agree that health conditions across the Indian country generally are markedly better than they were seven years ago and are steadily improving. We in the Bureau of Indian Affairs have a working relationship with our Public Health Service colleagues which is on the whole excellent and we maintain a continuing active interest in effective health protection for Indians.
That pretty well covers what we might call the “old line" functions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs with one major exception which I will mention later in another context. Before moving on to describe some of the more recently initiated programs of the Bureau, let me first set the stage by telling you about the task force study which provided the basis for our policies and program emphases under the present Administration.
There were four of us appointed to the Task Force on Indian Affairs by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall and all of us had extensive backgrounds of experience in Indian affairs. Yet we spent about five months - from February until July of 1961 - going over the whole Indian Bureau operation from top to bottom. We travelled about 15,000 miles altogether and we consulted with spokesmen for just about every tribal group either in cities near the Indian country or at exploratory sessions in Washington.
Eventually we wrote a report of some 77 pages which was given broad approval by Secretary Udall. It contains a large number of detailed recommendations which need not trouble us here but there are two aspects of it that I do want to mention.
The first is the statement of basic aims or objectives for the Bureau which will give you some idea of how we are oriented, where we are trying to go. The goals which we formulated on the basis of our consultations with Indians are threefold. To a person experienced in Indian affairs none of the three goals will seem startingly original. Yet the articulation of the three together in just this form seems to have struck the right chord because I have not yet heard one word of criticism or disagreement since they were first made public. The three basic aims are (1) maximum Indian economic self-sufficiency, (2) full participation of Indians in .American life, and (3) equal citizenship privileges and responsibilities for Indians.
Now, the second aspect of the Task Force Report I want to emphasize has to do with the central avenue of approach which we propose to follow in moving toward these three objectives. In the course of our five-month study we came to the conclusion that the Bureau was spending far too much of its time and energies on the custodial phases of its work - the keeping of land records and the like and not nearly enough on the more dynamic aspects which lead to development of Indian resources and development of Indian people. So we have made development the keynote for our present administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and this brings us quite logically to a consideration of the newer and more forward-looking programs.
The first one I want to mention is what we call Employment Assistance. It had its genesis in the late 19401s on the Navajo Reservation and has gradually developed over the years into a nationwide operation of ·major importance, In essence, it involves two principal phases: relocation for direct employment and occupational training.
Relocation for direct employment is the older part of the program and just about what the name implies. It is, of course, a wholly voluntary operation a service that is made available to Indians who have decided on their own initiative" to leave the reservations and re-establish themselves in urban communities where jobs are more abundant. The Bureau operation is designed to help them in, just about every conceivable way in making this transition. At the departure end, on the reservation, we have staffs of trained persom1el who counsel with the Indians contemplating a move and give them firm, realistic advice on the kinds of difficulties they may expect to encounter; in many cases, these interviews have resulted in a decision not to relocate. But where the decision is affirmative, the Bureau provides transportation and subsistence not only· for the job seeker but for all his immediate family dependents. On the receiving end we maintain offices in eight Middle Western and far western cities staffed with personnel who socialize in job placement, the location of suitable housing, and all the many
other phases of adjustment to the urban environment that are inevitably involved. The transition is, of course, an almost traumatic on for many Indian people and involves a wide variety of services and assistance sometimes over a period of many months.
In 1956 Congress enacted a statute, designated as PubJ.ie Law 959, which enabled us to broaden the scope of our employment assistance work along lines which have already proved highly beneficial. This law authorized us to provide Indians, principally between the ages of 18 and J5, with three kinds of occupational training. One is vocational training in regularly established schools which equips the trainee with a skill which he or she can use in a wide variety of job situations. The second is on-the - job training which involves orientation of the trainee to the requirements of a particular job in a particular plant. And the third is training for apprentices.
The program came along at just about the right time since one of our major difficulties under the earlier operation was that we were relocating a large number of wholly unskilled workers who presented an increasingly challenging problem of -placement. Today we are placing the unskilled workers in schools both in the states where the reservations are located and in the cities where we maintain an urban offices. We are providing on-the-job training for others in plants situated on or near the reservations. And we have recently started to move actively on an apprentice training program.
Through this operation we are turning out skilled machinists, welders, barbers, beauticians, and people trained in just about every other occupation you can think of that does not require the achievement of a college or university degree, The program has been tremendously popular with the Indians and one of our major problems has been to keep abreast of the constantly growing number of applicants. Fortunately the program has also won widespread Congressional approval and just last year Congress increased the authorization for annual appropriations to finance this program from $J. 5 million to $7.5 million. During the present fiscal year we have nearly $5.5 million available for training activities and this enables us to keep about 1,400 Indians, as a general average, in training status. The average cost per trainee is about $250 a month.
Admittedly, this is a rather expensive operation since it includes not just the costs of tuition but also the living expenses for the trainee plus family dependents, if any, during the course of instruction. But there is no doubt in my mind that the benefits amply justify the expense Acquisition of a salable skill makes an almost night-and - day difference in the economic prospects of the individual Indian. It greatly enhances his chances of being hired, boosts his earning capacity, provides him with additional job security, and broadens his chances for steady advancement.
In addition to the training made possible by our funds in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indians are also benefiting nowadays from training grants made by the Area Redevelopment Administration of the Department of Commerce and this promises to be a resource of continuing importance in the future. Furthermore, a third resource for training of Indians is now shaping up in the United States Department of Labor under provisions of the Manpower Development Training Act enacted by Congress earlier this year. So the outlook for moving substantial numbers of Indians out of the unskilled category and giving them new status as skilled workers is today much more promising than it was as recently as 1960.
Another one of the Bureau’s recent programs that has special relevance in this context .is our work in the field of industrial development. This program was started about six or seven years ago and is designed to help tribal organizations in attracting new manufacturing plants - usually of the light industry type-to the areas on and around the reservations as a means of making additional jobs available for Indian workers. This is not easy to accomplish since the local competition for industrial plants in our country is exceptionally keen - as it is also in Canada, I suspect - and many of the reservations are unfortunately, located in sections of the Nation which have never been especially attractive to American private industry. Nevertheless it seems clear to me that we should by all means continue this activity since any progress we make is better than nothing at all, one of the big problems we have faced for many years on a large number of the reservations is the fact that steady, year-round jobs are simply not available. And so the Indian families have had to depend to a large extent on seasonal work on nearby farms and ranches supplemented by relief checks during the off-season.
Establishment of new plants with more or less dependable payrolls provides an opportunity to break away from this age-old pattern and move in the direction of greater economic and social stability.
The tools that we have available for fostering greater industrial development in the Indian country are essentially threefold. In the first place, something is gained, believe, simply "by having a staff of industrial development specialists - even though it is a small one - who are constantly in touch with industrial managers, picking up information about plans for establishing new plants, spreading the word about available sites in the Indian country and the advantages that can be offered; we now have such personnel stationed in Los .Angeles and Chicago as well as in our national headquarters at Washington, D. C., Secondly, we are in position to help industrial companies meet some of the "start-up" costs involved in establishing new plants close to Indian population centers by reimbursing them for on-the job training provided to Indian workers; this is made possible by authority of the adult vocational training act. And finally we can provide some loans to tribal organizations for use in building or equipping plants as an additional inducement to the manufacturing companies.
Today we have a total of 26 plants operating in predominantly Indian localities, including eight that have been established in the calendar year 1962. Altogether these plants are providing jobs for some 1,300 Indian workers and the prospects are that they will eventually hire about twice this number. This, of course, is not a staggeringly impressive total out of the 380,000 Indian men, women and children who come within the purview of Indian Bureau responsibilities. But on several reservations the industrial payrolls have already helped perceptibly to brighten the local economic and social atmosphere And I am optimistic that further important alleviations of chronic Indian poverty can be made through this avenue of approach.
In addition, we are giving greatly increased attention to the encouragement of tribally sponsored and tribally financed business enterprises that will create more jobs for tribal members. Earlier I mentioned that I was deferring discussion of one of the Bureau's "old line" programs and it seems logically appropriate to go into it here. This is the revolving credit program which was originally authorized by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. .A total appropriation of $10 million was made possible by the 1934 enactment and this was increased by subsequent statutes
of more limited geographic scope to $17 million. Over the years the Bureau has used these funds to good advantage to finance many Indian enterprises, both tribal and individual, which have produced significant and durable economic benefits. The record of repayment has been excellent and the loan collections have been used to make additional lending’s in accordance with the revolving principle.
Meanwhile Indian tribes, with help and guidance from the Bureau's credit specialists, have been receiving an increasing amount of financing from banks and other sources that serve the non-Indian citizen. In fact, the total amount of financing obtained by Indians and Indian tribes from such sources has for years far exceeded that made available by the Bureau. In recent years, however, it has become increasingly apparent that if we are to make a truly significant break-through against Indian poverty - and the whole gamut of human ills that accompany it - there will be a need for financing of Indian agricultural and business enterprises, on repayment terms that only the Bureau can provide, far beyond the" dimensions that were contemplated when the revolving loan fund was first set up in the middle 1930’s.
In partial recognition of this, Congress in 1961 increased the authorization from $17 million to $27 million and appropriated an additional $4 million for the fiscal year that ended last June 30. For the current fiscal period another $4 million was provided. With these funds we have been able to make a number of important loans that will finance tribal developments of outstanding potentiality. The backlog of tribal requests and applications for loans that we have not been able to act upon, however is both voluminous and impressive. So we are making plans and hoping for a really sizable increase in our loan fund authorization; I personally believe it is crucially important to our whole effort.
Yet the availability of credit funds is only part of the story of expanding tribal economic development. Another important part is the resources of managerial skill available within the tribal group. In some tribal areas, of course, the potentialities for economic development are wholly obvious and need only the infusion of finance capital to set the machinery in motion, More often, however, these potentialities are obscure or marginal or speculative and have to be carefully examined by people with special skills in this type of analysis before you can be fully sure of your ground. In the first half of this year a total of 19 surveys and studies were initiated by our Government to explore the feasibility of specific economic development enterprises on Indian reservations and in Alaskan communities. These studies are being made under contract by private organizations well experienced in this sort of work through the use of funds supplied by the Area Redevelopment Administration of the Department of Commerce. As I indicated earlier, the ARA has also been helpful in connection with the training of Indian workers and will undoubtedly be making still further assistance available to Indian tribes in the form of loans and grants for broad economic development programs. In enacting the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961 Congress explicitly mentioned Indian reservations as areas potentially eligible for assistance under its provisions and this feature of the law has already brought forth important benefits. I feel certain it will yield many more in the period ahead.
There is one final activity of the Bureau which I want to mention before I close. This is the work that we have very recently undertaken in the field of Indian housing. Because the United States Government has a wide array of housing programs designed to meet a great variety of citizen
needs, we have not felt that it would be wise or justifiable for the Bureau to become directly engaged in such activity on Indian reservations. We have, however, recruited a small staff of specialists who devote full time to the housing needs of Indians - which, incidentally, are tremendous - and to serving as our liaison with the existing housing agencies of the Federal Government.
Over the past 18 months there have been encouraging break-through on two fronts. For nearly 30 years now our Government has had a program to insure housing loans made by private lending institutions meeting certain requirements and this has been an important element in the growth of our whole housing industry, Because of complications arising out of the trust status of Indian land, people living on reservations have for years not been able to participate in the benefits of this program and have thus been denied a resource available to other citizens. Within the past year, however, these difficulties have been resolved and Indians today can participate equally with others.
Similar difficulties also stood in the way of Indian participation in the program of low-rent public housing which is designed to provide decent, safe and sanitary dwellings in place of quarters in Urban or rural slums for people of low income. Here, too, the complications have been worked out and the first low-rent housing project on an Indian reservation - at Pine Ridge, South Dakota - was formally dedicated in ceremonies which I attended less than two months ago. Other projects of this type are definitely in prospect on several additional reservations.
While these developments are encouraging, I doubt that either or both of these programs will meet more than a fractional part of the enormous needs for better housing on Indian reservations. Because Indian family incomes are characteristically so deplorably low, only a tiny segment of the population on most reservations today can qualify for Government-insured private housing loans. And in many places there are only a comparatively small number of Indians who can even afford to pay the low rent in public housing projects. The point is of course, that most reservation Indians are not accustomed to paying any rent at all so that even the carefully adjusted schedules of the public houses can and do seem like a gigantic burden.
In the light of all this, we are now exploring the possibilities of self-help housing along lines that have already proved successful in Puerto Rico and other areas. The method of approach here would be for the Bureau to provide the Indians with some building materials and technical guidance and for them to supply the labor, working as teams in most cases for the construction of new and better homes. On their own initiative, the Indians of the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona have made a small but encouraging start along this line and we look forward hopefully to launching a substantial number of such enterprises in other tribal areas.
In these remarks I hope I have been able to give you some insight into the nature of the problems that we face. In the administration of Indian affairs in the United States, the kinds of goals and objectives we are striving to accomplish, and how we are going about the job. As you can see, we are using many, many different avenues of approach. We are also trying to keep ourselves flexible, receptive to the influx of new ideas and - above all - keenly aware of the precious human values that are so deeply involved in all our operations, the path ahead will undoubtedly have its thickets and its pitfalls, its disappointments and its setbacks. Yet I remain resolutely optimistic.
Although I could not prove it like a mathematical theorem, I feel deeply that the Indians of the United States are further along toward those three goals I mentioned earlier than they were just two or three years ago. And I believe also that the pace of advance can and will be additionally accelerated as some of our recently initiated programs come to full fruition. All my contacts with Indian people over the years convince me that they will not be satisfied with anything less. Nor should they be.
