OPA

In moving to take over the management of Alaska Native Industries Cooperative Association, Seattle, Wash., during recent weeks, the Department of the Interior has acted to protect the financial interests of the United States and the operating interests of stores of the native villages of Alaska, Secretary Douglas McKay said today.

The Department's action, which was approved by a substantial majority of the 33 native village corporations making up the membership of ANICA, is intended purely as a temporary measure. After the Department has gained possession of ANICA, it will operate the Association only for a short period until audits of the former management can be completed and a new management, satisfactory both to the members and the Government, is selected.

Efforts to take over the management of ANICA, a purchasing organization owned by the 33 native village stores in partnership and financed in part by Federal loans to these stores, were initiated several weeks ago after prolonged negotiations with the former manager whose contract with the Association expired December 31, 1952.

Throughout 1953 the former management was continued on a month-to-month basis until it became clear that no new contract could be consummated with the former manager which would adequately protect the financial interests of the United States and that continuation of the uncertain status of ANICA management would be seriously detrimental to the operations of the member corporations. When the former manager refused, after notification, to surrender the assets and premises of ANICA, the matter was referred to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.

ANICA was organized in 1947 to purchase commodities for stores operated by some of the more remote Eskimo and Indian villages of Alaska and to market products such as furs for them. Prior to that time purchases for the village stores were handled by the Federal Government. Organization of ANICA was part of the Government's program to improve the economic conditions of the Alaska natives and to give them increased authority and responsibility for the management of their own affairs.

The Federal Government has a direct financial interest in the operations of ANICA since it made loans to the native villages which were used in part to finance the Association. As security for these loans, the Government took an assignment of the interests of the respective members in ANICA. In acting to take over the ANICA management, the Department is exercising its prerogatives under the terms of these assignments. The native villages are currently indebted to the United States for about $500,000.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced organizational changes in the New Mexico offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs based on recommendations by the survey team which recently completed a study of the Bureau as well as information and advice received from the Indians, individuals and organizations of the communities affected.

Two New Mexico communities, Albuquerque and Gallup, are primarily concerned. The changes were planned to avoid disrupting the economy of these communities while achieving the broad purpose of improved field organization and economies in accordance with the survey team recommendations. While the changes will result in economies and less employees to accomplish the same work, the number of employees to be moved from Washington will result in each city continuing with the same number as are now stationed there.

In Albuquerque, the Bureau will establish a national headquarters for its buildings and utilities working serving the entire United States and Alaska. This will be in addition to the United Pueblos Agency which will remain in Albuquerque and continue to serve the 19 Indian Pueblos of New Mexico.

In Gallup the area office now operating in Window Rock and Gallup will be continued, and in addition to serving the Navajo Reservation and the Intermountain School, as at present, will serve the Indian agencies in New Mexico and Colorado. The Navajo Agency which is now operating in Window Rock and Gallup will continue in Window Rock with several subagencies established for the Navajo Reservation.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced several major personnel shifts in the Bureau of Indian Affairs as part of the administrative reorganization of the Bureau recently recommended by a survey team and now actively under way.

Allan G. Harper, area director at Window Hock, Arizona, is being transferred to Washington as a member of the Commissioner's coordinating staff, where his broad background of experience in Indian Affairs and intimate knowledge of Navajo administration will be directly available to Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons.

W. Wade Head, now area director at Anadarko, Oklahoma, will be the Bureau's area director at Gallup, Now Mexico, where he will supervise the Navajo Reservation and Indian agencies in New Mexico and Colorado.

G. Warren Spaulding, who has been director of the Program Division in the Washington Office of the Bureau since 1951, will become superintendent of the Navajo Agency at Window Rock, Arizona.

John M. Cooper, who has been area director at Aberdeen, S. Dak., for the past two and a half' years, will succeed Head at Anadarko.

Replacing Mr. Cooper at Aberdeen will be William O. Roberts, now area director at Muskogee, Oklahoma.

At Muskogee, Clinton Talley, now assistant area director, will serve as acting area director pending further decision on Bureau reorganization.

Don C. Foster, area director at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and E. Morgan Pryse, area director at Portland, Oregon, will exchange positions.

Mr. Harper, a native of Paterson, N.J., and a graduate of Harvard University, joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1935 as a field representative. From 1937 to 1939 he served as director of a technical cooperation program involving the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture at Denver. After four years as Bureau senior field representatives, he transferred to the Office of Inter-American Affairs with assignments in agricultural work in Costa Rica and Washington. He also served two years as chief of the program planning and review section of the Foreign Economics Administration. In 1946 he returned to the Bureau as assistant district director at Billings, Montana and in 1949 was transferred to the Navajo Agency as general superintendent and later that year was designated area director.

Mr. Head is a native of El Dorado, Ark., and entered the Indian Service in 1937. He had several years of experience as superintendent of schools, in Oklahoma and the Philippine Islands, and ono year as assistant general manager of a lumber company in the Philippines. His first job with the Indian Bureau was as reservation principal on the Papago Reservation at Sells, Ariz. After four years in this assignment he was designated as superintendent of the Papago Agency and served for one year, transferring to the War Relocation Authority in 1942. Following two years of service with WRA, he returned to the Indian Bureau in 1944 as superintendent of the Colville Agency, Nespelem, Washington, where he remained for three years. Transferring to Oklahoma in 1947, he served for one year as district director at Oklahoma City, and was appointed in 1948 to his present position as area director at Anadarko. He is a graduate of Northeastern State College at Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Mr. Spaulding has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 30 years. He first joined the Bureau as a trade teacher at an Indian school in Flandreau, South Dakota, in 1924, and has steadily advanced to positions of increasing importance. Prior to his appointment as director of the Program Division in 1951, he served for two years as area director at Aberdeen and before that for five years as superintendent of the Cheyenne River Agency in South Dakota. His previous career with the Bureau was mainly in the field of Indian education. He was born in 1895 at Heron Lake, Minnesota, and was educated at South Dakota State College at Brookings, South Dakota, and Colorado State Teachers College, Greeley, Colorado.

Mr. Cooper also has a long background with the Indian Service. He came with the Bureau in 1935 as director of the Southwest Range and Sheep Breeding laboratory in Fort Wingate, New Mexico, and subsequently served as director of Resources and as assistant superintendent at the Navajo Agency in Window Rock, Arizona. In 1946 he became superintendent of the Wind River Agency in Wyoming and in 1950 was appointed director in charge of Bureau participation in Missouri River Basin Investigations. He has been area director at Aberdeen since 1951.

Before joining the Indian Bureau, Mr. Cooper worked with the United States Department of Agriculture for 14 years in the field of sheep breeding and allied research. He was born in 1899 at Canyon, Texas, and is a graduate in animal husbandry from the University of California at Berkeley.

Mr. Roberts was born in Schuyler County, Missouri, in 1890, and has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs continuously since 1917. During his first 10 years with the Bureau he served as a teacher at Pima, Arizona, a land lease clerk at Ponca, Oklahoma, financial clerk at Pawnee Agency, Oklahoma, chief clerk at Omaha, Nebraska and Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota and superintendent of the Indian school at Leupp, Arizona. In 1927 he rose to the rank of agency superintendent and served in that capacity at Cheyenne River Agency, Rosebud Agency, and Pine Ridge Agency, all in South Dakota. In 1946 he moved to Muskogee as superintendent of the Five Civilized Tribes Agency and was designated as area director in 1949.

Mr. Foster is a native of Kingfisher, Oklahoma, where he owned and operated a livestock ranch from 1922 to 1927. In 1928 he moved to Portales, New Mexico, where he was a high school superintendent and instructor of vocational agriculture for five years. After two years with the New Mexico State Extension Division, he joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1935 as head community worker at Warm Springs Agency, Oregon. In 1937 he became extension agent at the Carson Indian Agency, Stewart, Nevada, and in 1940 was named as superintendent at that agency. After four years in this position he became general superintendent f or the Indian Bureau at Juneau, Alaska, and was subsequently named area director. In 1950 he was transferred to his present position as area director at Minneapolis. He attended the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanics College and graduated from New Mexico State College in 1928.

Mr. Pryse, a native of Kentucky had military service in both World Wars and was promoted to the rank of Colonel during his most recent service. He first came with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1920 as a forest examiner and remained in that line of work until 1932. For the following eight years he was director of highways for the Bureau and organized the program of road construction and maintenance. After six years of military service, he rejoined the Bureau in 1946 as general superintendent at Portland, Oregon, and. was subsequently designated area director. He is a graduate of Oregon State College, has a M.A. degree from American University, and a law degree from National University.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay has instructed three Department of the Interior officials to meet in Portland, March 10, to ascertain the facts in a complaint raised by Indians of the Warm Springs Reservation they are not getting fair prices for the timber sold from their lands.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn Emmons, J. R. Armstrong, Assistant to the Solicitor of the Department, and William G. Guernsey, administrator of the Bureau of Land Management in Portland, will conduct the meeting with representatives of the Warm Springs Tribal Council and the officials of the lumber companies buying timber on the reservation.

Representations have been made to Secretary McKay that under the terms of the sales contract the Indians have with the lumber companies the prices are to be adjusted in keeping with economic conditions in the lumber industry. The Indians were represented as believing their timber justified a higher price.

Secretary McKay said the way to learn the facts in the case is to hold a hearing in Oregon and get the views and evidence of both sides of the question. The three officials will report to Secretary McKay, who has promised an early decision.

Louis C. Peters, former manager of the Alaska Native Industries Cooperative Association, against whom removal action was initiated by the Department of Justice, has offered to settle his dispute with the Government for $2,500, Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay disclosed today.

Under the terms of the settlement, Peters would surrender his office and deliver all properties of ANICA and its premises to an authorized representative of the Department of the Interior. Peters would also relinquish all claims against either the United States or ANICA.

The proposed agreement would not release Peters from any claims which the United States or ANICA may lodge against him under his bond in the future.

The action by the Department of Justice against Peters in the Federal District Court in Seattle was begun at- the request of the Department of the Interior when Peters refused after prolonged negotiations to surrender the assets and premises of the Association. His former contract with ANICA expired December 31, 1952.

Secretary McKay said he has recommended that Peters’ offer be accepted. He noted that an early end to the dispute will enable the Association to resume its normal business activities in the near future.

"The amount of the proposed settlement is far less than was originally demanded,” the Secretary said. “It is less than the cost of a long, drawn-out litigation. Settlement on this basis would prevent the continued disruption of ANICA’s affairs."

Acceptance of the terms of the agreement by the Secretary culminates efforts initiated early in January by the Department of the Interior to take over the management of ANICA temporarily, with the approval of a majority of its board of directors.

The action was necessary to protect loans totaling approximately $500,000 made by the United States to native villages in Alaska, and the interests of the native village corporations making up the membership in ANICA, The former manager, whose services the Department terminated, refused to surrender the premises and assets of ANICA to an authorized Department representative. Consequently, the matter was referred to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.

The agreement provides that Peters "... shall cease and desist from making any statements to the effect that the United States has liquidated or is in the process of liquidating ANICA, it being the intention of the United States to continue its financial and other assistance in the maintenance and strengthening of ANICA as an independently owned Alaskan native cooperative association."

As soon as audits of the former management can be completed, and a new management can be completed, and a new management satisfactory to the member villages and to the Government are selected and installed in the office, the operations of ANICA will be returned to its board of directors. The Secretary added that he hoped ways could be found to make the operations of ANICA of more service to the native people than they have been in the past.

The Secretary also announced that subject to the approval by the board of directors he is authorizing payments of salaries to former employees of ANICA through February 15. Such employees have not been paid since the half-month period ending January 15. Termination notices were sent to them to be effective January 21 but were not received until February 5.

Under the authorization two weeks severance pay also will be made to those entitled to such payments in accordance with past custom and practices of ANICA and will settle any claims employees may have against ANICA for sick and annual leave.

ANICA is a purchasing organization owned by 33 native village stores of Alaska in partnership and financed in part by Federal loans. It was organized in 1947 to purchase commodities for stores operated by some of the more remote Eskimo and Indian villages of Alaska and to market products such as furs for them. Prior to that time purchases for the village stores were handled by the Federal Government. Organization of ANICA was part of the Government's program to improve the economic conditions of the Alaska natives and to give them increased authority and responsibility for the management of their own affairs.

Reduced Federal participation in Indian affairs was established as the goal of national policy and progress toward this objective was achieved along many lines during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1953, according to annual report of Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay released today.

Consultations looking toward eventual termination of Federal responsibilities were held during the year with tribal groups in western Oregon and California, the Klamaths of Oregon, the Alabama-Coushattas of Texas, the Chitamachas of Louisiana, and the Prairie Island Band of Minnesota. Programming of a more preliminary nature was carried forward with the Osages of Oklahoma, the Menominees of Wisconsin, the Colvilles and Spokanes of Washington, and the Flatheads of Montana.

Three Bureau hospitals were closed and another transferred to a local organization bringing the total number of Bureau hospitals on June 30 down to 59. Local public school authorities took over responsibilities for operating 16 of the Bureau’s day schools and for the academic work at three of the boarding schools. Total enrollment in the transferred schools was approximately 1,100. Seventy-five miles of reservation roads wore transferred to county highway departments for maintenance and another 400 miles were undergoing improvements aimed at facilitating similar transfer in the near future. Indian borrowing from non-Bureau sources amounted to an estimated $22,000,000 in comparison with only $2,463,835 of additional loans made by the Bureau.

Bureau responsibilities for management of Indian trust lands were reduced somewhat as a result of mounting Indian requests for fee patents or for disposition of their lands through advertised sales. More that 2,500 tracts of Indian allotted land were removed in these and other ways from trust or restricted status. Income to the Indians from mineral leases, principally oil and gas, on their lands increased from $18,600,000 in fiscal 1952 to more than $23,000,000 in 1953.

Greatest progress toward complete termination of Bureau responsibilities for Indian affairs was achieved in California where all Indian children are now attending the public schools and full welfare services are provided to eligible Indians by State and local agencies. During the year the Bureau's California staff completed inventory of Federal buildings used in the administration of California Indian affairs, closed out 550 individual Indian money accounts, sold 102 public domain Indian allotments and 27 reservation allotments for a total return of approximately $1,000,000 to the Indian owners, reached agreement with county highway departments for the eventual transfer of 190 miles of road, and transferred to local agencies additional responsibilities for Indian health work.

Under the long-range Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Program, authorized by Congress in 1950, educational facilities for Navajo children were expanded in fiscal 195.3 through the completion of three school construction projects and the establishment or five new trailer schools. Combined enrollment of Navajo children in public schools, Indian Bureau schools, and mission schools reached an all-time high of 14,106, an increase of almost 1,000 over the previous fiscal year. Road construction work advanced materially with the completion of 53.5 miles of grade construction, 37 miles of base or gravel surfacing, 15.6 miles of bituminous surfacing, and 433 linear feet of bridges. Work was finished on 48 deep-pit charcos for the conservation of soil and water on Navajo rangelands and nine additional wells were drilled with long-range program funds. In the field of tribal business enterprises the chief accomplishment of the year was the completion of a basic agreement between the Navajo Tribe and the Bureau under which the Tribe assumes the major share of operating responsibilities. Two tribal motels and a number of smaller business enterprises were established in 1953.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay announced the appointment of Guy C. Williams as Superintendent of the United Pueblos Indian Agency, Albuquerque, N. Mex., effective April 1.

The appointment results from the recently announced reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Mr. Williams since 1950 has been assistant director of the Albuquerque Area Office which is being discontinued. He will head the agency headquarters at Albuquerque which serves the 19 Indian Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley.

Mr. Williams entered the Indian Service in 1927 as a teacher at Tesuque, N. Mex. He later was chief clerk at agencies in Nevada and Idaho until 1936, and for four years was a special agent in the Division of Investigations of Interior at Albuquerque and Billings, Mont.

In 1940 he returned to the Indian Bureau as an accountant at Albuquerque and Minneapolis, From 1945 to 1949 he served at national headquarters of the Bureau first as chief of the budget and operations division and later as acting chief administrative officer. In July 1949 he became chief of the Branch of Management Planning and remained in that post until he transferred to the Albuquerque Area Office in late 1950.

Born in Lebanon, Indiana, in 1895, Mr. Williams was educated in the public schools of that co1mnunity and later attended Central Normal College and Anthony Wayne Institute. He is a veteran of World War I and had several years of experience in farming, public school teaching and cost accounting before joining the Government service.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced that the Hopi Indian Agency, located on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, will report administratively to the Phoenix Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This change has been vigorously sought by Senator Barry Goldwater for some time because of his feeling that the interests and orientation of the Hopi Indians are toward Arizona. Hopi trading activity since the days of the early settlers has centered in communities south of their reservation, and they find employment, attend schools and hospitals in these communities. The effective date of the transfer of administrative jurisdiction will be worked out with the Area Directors concerned.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay today announced that the Crow Creek Indian Agency, now located at Fort Thompson, S. Dak., will be moved to Chamberlain, S. Dak., in the near future. While the exact date of the move has not yet been determined, it will have to be made before summer when water backed up by the Fort Randall Dam will create serious problems at the present agency site.

The decision to locate the agency, serving both the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Reservations, at Chamberlain was recommended by the Bureau of Indian Affairs after careful consideration of several alternative sites.

Clyde W. Pensoneau, a member of the Indian Bureau staff at the Colorado River Agency, Parker, Arizona, will become superintendent of the Hopi Agency, Keams Canyon, Arizona, on May 23, Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay announced today.

Mr. Pensoneau, who has been agricultural extension agent at Colorado River since 1952, has 13 years of experience with the Bureau in extension and credit work. He joined the Service in 1941 as a farm aide at the Uintah and Ouray Agency in Utah. A year later he was promoted to farm agent. In 1944 he was transferred to the Carson Agency, Nevada as principal agricultural aide and after a year was named farm management supervisor at the Pyramid Lake Subagency, Nevada. In 1948 he was given supervision of extension and credit work at Fort Berthold Agency, North Dakota and remained in that position until he transferred to Colorado River.

Born in Jones, Oklahoma, in 1914, Mr. Pensoneau graduated from the Oklahoma A & M College in 1941 with a degree in animal husbandry. At Hopi Agency he will succeed Dew Carnal, who is transferring to the position of school principal at Turtle Mountain Agency in North Dakota.