Broader educational opportunities for Indian youngsters from the primary grades through the university level and more effective conservation of Indian soil and water resources are two of the prime benefits expected to result from increased Indian Bureau appropriations for the fiscal year which began July 1.
Important, though less sweeping, improvements are also in prospect in the fields of relocation, trust property management, forestry and law enforcement.
With an increase of $3,925,103 over the $32,692,827 available for education last year, the Bureau plans to step up the total enrollment of Indian children in both Federal and Bureau-aided public schools by more than 5,000 students. This will bring. Indian enrollment in all public schools and in Federal schools to an all-time high of roughly 100,000.
Most of the new enrollees Will be Navajo children entering school for the first time as a direct result of the Bureau's Navajo Emergency Education Program launched in the spring of 1954. Under the operation of this program the enrollment of Navajo youngsters in schools of all types was stepped up from a level of about 14,000 or roughly half the school-age population, in November 1953, to nearly 23,000 during the school year just ended.
With the increased education appropriations for the current fiscal year the Bureau will be in position this coming fall to round out the emergency program and open the schoolhouse doors for all Navajo children previously denied the opportunity because of lack of facilities. Continued effort will be necessary, however, to keep abreast of the tribe's school-age population which is growing at the rate of about 1,,500 a year.
Bureau assistance to Indian college and university students will be more than doubled under the new appropriation. With an increase in funds for this purpose from $22,935 to $50,000, the Bureau's scholarship program will broaden in scope from less than 200 students benefited last year to around 420 in 1955-56.
Funds for soil and moisture conservation, hiked by $990,000 to a record level of $3,661,672, will enable the Bureau to broaden and speed up the land and water saving work now under way at 45 Indian agencies and to initiate the program for the first time on the Flathead and Northern Cheyenne Reservations in Montana.
The Bureau's Voluntary relocation program, involving aid to Indian workers and their families in resettling away from the reservations and locating suitable jobs, will be almost doubled in coverage. Appropriations for this purpose, which have been around $579,600 for the past several years, have now been raised to $980,000. The number of Indians assisted by tile program is expected to increase from about 2,600 to roughly 5,000.
With an increase of $674,934 and a total appropriation of $1,987,639 for management of Indian trust property, the Bureau will be able to hire additional professional and clerical employees in this work and speed up the processing of oil and gas development leases and other realty transactions arising from requests of Indian landowners. Requests of this type have increased about 300 percent over the past four years and a tremendous backlog of cases, extending back as far as 1942, has developed both in Washington and the field offices. The Bureau now expects to eliminate this backlog and put its realty operations on a current basis in the reasonably near future.
An increase of $100,000 in forest and range management funds, from $2,085,000 to $2,185,000, will be used chiefly for carrying out sanitation salvage sales of over mature timber on Indian lands which are threatened with destruction by bark beetle and other pests.
Additional funds for law enforcement, amounting to $62,930 and bringing the appropriation for this item up to $400,000, will be used principally to expand the Bureau's policing operations on reservations in North and South Dakota. During the past year the Bureau had to take over enforcement work on the Devil’s Lake Reservation in North Dakota because of a decision by the State Supreme Court holding that a 1948 Federal Statute, conferring jurisdiction on the State, was ineffective.
The Indian Bureau's total appropriation for the new fiscal year is $71,832,498 or $5,508,116 more than the amount appropriated last year in the fields for which it still has a responsibility. Last year's appropriation, however, actually totaled $9l,112,460 since it included $24,198,578 for the Indian health program which was transferred July 1 to the United States Public Health Service, and $589,500 for Indian legal work which was taken over by the Office of the Solicitor of the Interior Department in July 1955.
