OPA

Chemawa School at Salem, Oregon is the oldest Indian school in the United States --soon to celebrate its centennial --but it is, in at least one way, like an adolescent.

Chemawa is going through a difficult time of transition.

The school was started at Forest Grove, Oregon in 1880 when not many people worried about education for Indians. (The nation's first Federal Indian school, Carlisle Institute in Pennsylvania, was started just one year earlier.) In 1885, the school was moved to Salem and in 1886 reached an enrollment of 200 youngsters from the tribes of the Northwest.

Today, Chemawa, once again, has an enrollment of about 200 Indian students from the tribes of the Northwest - down from peak years of more than 1,000.

The school isn't going down hill, however. This spring Northwest Indian leaders culminated a long effort when they came to Washington and convinced Congress, to the tune of $10 million in construction funds, that Chemawa was needed and was important to the Northwest Indians.

Chemawa will be building totally new facilities to replace the 50 to 70 year old school buildings that are now condemned and empty. Temporary modular units are being used in this transition period.

The new buildings will meet academic, residential and recreational needs for 600 Indian high school students who need the special programs available to them at an Indian boarding school.

Some of the old buildings may be preserved as historic sites. The Oregon Historical Society has intervened to this end and alumni, for sentimental reasons, don't want them torn down. Mrs. Jim McKay, wife of the Chemawa Indian Advisory Board Chairman, said of the old buildings, "Our spirits are in the walls."

The McKays attended Chemawa in its heyday in the late 1920s. By that time the school had progressed from the rudimentary training institute which most of the early Indian schools were in their beginning, to a fully accredited high school, with an enrollment of 1,100 in some 70 buildings.

According to a historical brochure put out by the school, the Chemawa athletic teams of this period "had gained renown throughout the whole of the Pacific Coast." The played "such teams as Stanford University, Multnomah College, University of Oregon and Oregon State Colleges."

Jim McKay, who is a Lummi and represents the Western Washington tribes on the Chemawa school board, feels strongly about the value of the school -- past and present.

"Many of the former students feel as I do," he said. "If it hadn't been for Chemawa and the other off-reservation schools, Indian people would have achieved much less than they have."

"Those that came to Chemawa in my day appreciated the opportunity to get in. The school was crowded. We had lots of spirit. Many went on to college and to other achievements. We were given incentives here to accomplish many things."

McKay thinks that Chemawa is as needed today as ever. "The public schools don't meet the needs of all our Indian students. Chemawa can provide special programs oriented toward reservation needs and implementation of the Indian Self-Determination Act. "

Chemawa has served thousands of the Northwest Indians from Washington, Oregon and Idaho --three and four generations of some families. These tribes have given their active support to the school and lobbied forcefully to get funding for the needed facilities.

In the 1950's and 60's Chemawa provided special programs for Navajo students when that reservation did not have facilities for all its students. It also has served thousands of Alaskan students from small villages with no education programs beyond the sixth grade.

Both of these groups now have local schools to meet their needs, so the new Chemawa is expected to enter its second century as a school for the Indian students of the Northwest --Washington, Oregon, Idaho and some from Montana.

At the Appropriations hearings this spring when the Northwest Indians testified on behalf of the school, the student body president said, "We students know Chemawa is run down and old, but it is the only place we have left to go to school to get an education."

Chemawa is old, and it has become run down, but it is going to be rebuilt, and somehow the spirits in the walls - the spirits of Chemawa alumni who made the rebuilding possible - will continue to be felt on the campus.

Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe has notified the Governor of Alaska that the State will be allowed an additional 90 days --until April 1 --to exercise an exclusive preference right to select lands described in Section 11 of the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act.

Generally, these Section 11 lands are the 9 townships surrounding Alaska Native Villages. Until October 1, 1976, these lands were held by the Federal Government exclusively for Alaska Natives to make selections.

On October 1, Public Land Order 5561 expired and pursuant to the Alaska Statehood Act the State was entitled to at least 90 days from that expiration date to exclusively exercise its selection entitlement.

Secretary Kleppe's action effectively extends that 90 day period to a total of 180 days. During the 180 days no other selection filed by Alaska Natives will be considered valid if the State selects the same land.

"We have extended the dates for Native selections on two occasions, he said, "and it is only fair to treat the State likewise. After the termination of this extension both the State and the Natives will be on an equal footing in terms of land selection. No further extensions are anticipated."

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has authorized a $44,000 contract with the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C., to examine the needs in English language teaching programs for American Indians.

In announcing the contract, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett said:

"There was a time, not so many years ago, when the Bureau's education programs were probably the most advanced, the most imaginative, and the most responsive to student needs of any in the Nation" But in recent years we have trailed behind the great nationwide effort to broaden the scope and depth of public education" The baby boom among Indian families left us short classrooms. This problem we have temporarily resolved. Now we must concentrate on bringing into these classrooms the quality of teaching and variety of curriculum that will guarantee every Indian baby and girl an equal competitive chance in the world beyond school."

Bennett added: “The study to be made by the Center for Applied Linguistics hopefully will set us quickly on the course to major advances in the teaching of English, basic to our Indian education program."

The contract calls for an examination and assessment of English language programs in selected Bureau elementary and secondary schools, particularly where children speak an Indian tongue in their homes. Administration of BIA boarding and day schools, performance of student and teachers, quality of instructional materials, and quality of teacher recruitment and training also will be measured. Adult education programs and public school programs also will be examined in relation to the Federal school operations.

Schools in the following localities will be the subjects of the study: the Navajo Reservation; Phoenix, Ariz.; Albuquerque, N, Mex.; and Aberdeen, S. Dak. A team of three linguistics specialists will be assigned to the task, and consulting specialists in such fields as testing and the psychology of language learning will be employed.

The study will commence this month. A report and recommendations are to be submitted to the Bureau of Indian Affairs within six months.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs today announced the reassignment of three career officials to posts in the Southwest.

Theodore B. White will move to the post of superintendent of the Bureau's San Carlos Agency (Apache) at San Carlos, Ariz. The appointment becomes effective January 1, 1967. For the past year he has been employed as a community living and housing guidance specialist in the Washington, D.C., Central Office of the BIA.

White is a Sioux Indian, born in Oneida, Wis. He has been with the Bureau since 1955, serving in various field positions with the employment assistance program at Shiprock, N. Mex., Cleveland, Ohio, and Chicago, Ill. field offices.

He holds a B. A. degree from David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tenn. and an M. A. degree in social welfare from Loyola University, Chicago, Ill. During World War II he served four years with the U.S. Air Force.

Melvin L. Schwartz has been assigned to the Bureau's Phoenix, Ariz., area office as assistant area director for community services, effective January 15. He transfers from the post of superintendent of the Uintah and Ouray Agency (Utes) at Ft. Duchesne, Utah.

A native of McClusky, N.Dak., Schwartz entered Government service with the Veterans' Administration in 1946, serving in progressively responsible positions with that agency until 1952. Joining BIA in 1952, he served first as administrative officer and later as assistant superintendent of the Western Washington Agency. Schwartz attended Sultan, Wash. schools. He served with the U.S. Army from November 1938 until December 1945, attaining the rank of captain.

Stanley D. Lyman will replace Schwartz as superintendent of the Uintah and Ouray Agency, effective January 15. He transfers from the Bureau's Ft. Peck Agency at Poplar, Mont., which serves Sioux and Assiniboines. A native of Montana, Lyman began his Government service with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in June 1941. In 1952, he joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was assigned as agency relocation officer at Pine Ridge, S. Dak. He later served in various posts with the Bureau's employment assistance program until 1962 when he became superintendent at Ft. Peck. Prior to his Government service, Lyman was a classroom teacher. He holds an M.A. degree from Colorado State College of Education at Greeley, Colo.

This year's Miss Indian America, Wahleah Lujan, 18, from Taos, N. Mex. will pay her first visit to Washington today through Tuesday, Jan. 31, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett announced today.

While here, the Ft. Lewis College (Colorado) sophomore will meet members of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee; will be welcomed to the District by Commissioner Walter Tobriner, Friday at 2:00 P.M. in the District offices; and feted at a reception given Saturday night by the American Indian Society at the home of its president, Mitchell Bush, Jr.

Wahleah, whose name means Hope and Faith in the Tewa language of her pueblo, is also scheduled to meet with Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, and be guest of honor for the Harkness Ballet premiere performance, Tuesday night at Lisner Auditorium. The ballet features an Indian-inspired dance, "Koshare", the story of the Hopi creation myth.

When not attending school (on a Bureau of Indian Affairs scholarship) in Durango, Colo., Miss Indian America XIII lives with her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Pete Bernal, in a five-story pueblo in the Taos central village, established in the year 1300. Grandfather Bernal makes most of her Indian dresses and tans deer hide into buckskins from which he makes her boots.

The pretty Indian girl is descended from two Governors of the Pueblo, Yellow Arrow and Santiago Martinez. She was selected for her role last July 31 during the 1966 All American Indian Days Celebration held annually in Sheridan, Wyo., winning over forty-nine other contestants representing 35 tribes.

Wahleah is a recognized and accomplished artist, too, having received the Top Student Art Award at the Institute of American Indian Arts at Santa Fe in 1965, and has had her paintings hung in the galleries of Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa, the Fine Arts Museum in Chicago; Cornwall Heights Museum, Philadelphia; and in the Boston Fine Arts Museum. She plans to finish a major in sociology and return to the reservation and help her tribe in a meaningful application of her education.

Federal supervision over the 600-acre Quartz Valley Indian Rancheria in California has ended, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

Located in Siskiyou County, the rancheria is owned in common by 49 American Indians descendants of Karok, Shasta and Upper Klamath Indian groups. Termination of Federal responsibility is in accordance with the California Rancheria Act of 1958 as amended in 1964.

The Quartz Valley area is the 32nd Indian land parcel in California to be relieved of Federal trusteeship.

All restrictions and tax exemptions applicable to trust or restricted Indian lands or interests in such lands are no longer applicable to the Quartz Valley Rancheria. Services of the Bureau of Indian Affairs are no longer available to the Rancheria owners.

The termination action was preceded by a 1960 plan for disposition of assets which had been accepted by a majority of the owners) all of whom are adults. The following terminal actions took place subsequently:

A water development program called for in the plan was completed before termination. A legal entity known as the Quartz Valley Community Water Association was established to accept title to the water system as community property and a quit claim deed from the United States was issued. The road construction called for in the plan was completed and turned over to Siskiyou County by deed. A survey was completed and recorded, from which deeds were prepared for parceling the land among the Indian owners. Funds held in trust in the U.S. Treasury for the Quartz Valley Indians were disbursed to the distributees.

Notification of termination is being published in the Federal Register as required by law.

Two newly-appointed members of the Department of the Interior's Indian Arts and Crafts Board--Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., and Dr. Mitchell A. Wilder-- attended their first Board meeting Friday, January 27, with Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall. The five-member Board promotes the development of Indian arts and crafts by providing professional advisory and technical assistance in production, promotion and marketing.

The five members (commissioners) are appointed by the Secretary of the Interior and serve four-year terms without salary or fee.

Josephy, of Greenwich, Conn., is widely known as an author, editor, and historian of American Indians. A member of the board of editors of American Heritage Magazine, he is in charge of the publication of American Heritage and Horizon books. He was editor of the "American Heritage Book of Indians" and the "American Heritage History of the Great West," and is author of "The Patriot Chiefs," biographies of nine great American Indian leaders; "The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest;" and other works.

Dr. Wilder is Director of the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Fort Worth, Tex., where he lives. His background includes service as Director of the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles; as Vice President, Director of Presentation, and Director of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection, Williamsburg, Va.; and as Director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

The two new members replace Rene d'Harnoncourt of New York City and Erich Kohlberg of Denver, who had served on the Board since 1944 and 1956, respectively. Other commissioners are Dr. Frederick J. Dockstader, chairman; Vincent Price; and Lloyd New.

Ernest Childers, an Oklahoma Indian who holds the Congressional Medal of Honor for Valor in World War II, has joined the Department of the Interior's Job Corps staff as a regional coordinator, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today.

"Colonel Childers is a member of a very select society--those who have won the Nation's highest military decoration and have lived to tell about it." Secretary Udall said. "Having come up from an underdog start in life, and having worked with all kinds of people the world over, under all kinds of conditions, he is superbly qualified for his new position, which relates conservation to people."

He will be one of three regional coordinator-administrators who will represent the Department in Job Corps contacts with the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Forest Service and other Federal agencies at the field level. Childers' zone runs generally from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast, within which there soon will be 14 corps conservation centers operated by Interior's National Park Service, and Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Sport Fisheries and Wildlife.

Childers, who will work out of Washington, D. C., retired from the Army as Lieutenant colonel in 1965. His last five years in military service were spent supervising Fifth Army ROTC reserves and components from Fort Riley, Kansas, and Alaska, with responsibility for budget analysis and logistics in very large quantities.

A Creek Indian, born in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Childers attended Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools at Chilocco, Oklahoma, through the high school level. He entered military service as a National Guard private in 1937, rising through the· ranks until he received a battlefield commission in Sicily in 1943.

Shortly after the Salerno landings, at Oliveto, Italy, on September 22, 1943, Second Lieutenant Childers -despite painful wounds - wiped out two German machine-gun nests virtually single handed, topping off the day's work by capturing an armed enemy mortar observer at the point of what later proved to be an empty carbine.

For this "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above arid beyond the call of duty," Childers became one of only two Indians who received the Medal of Honor in World War II. His other decorations include the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Commendation Medal, Italian Cross of Valor, and the first Oklahoma Distinguished Service Medal ever awarded.

Since that time he has served in capacities ranging from operations and training officer to labor relations officer, with experience in ordnance, procurement, intelligence, fiscal and budget work, and other specialties. His record contains many letters of commendation for outstanding accomplishment. Childers, 49, is married and has two children.

The award of a $143,750 contract for construction of a power substation and installation of equipment at the Colorado River Indian Agency, Parker, Ariz., was announced today by the Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

The contract calls for construction of a 20,000 kilowatt substation and installation of equipment. The substation will receive electronic power from a Bureau of Reclamation 161,000-volt transmission line and reduce the power to 34,500 and 69,000 volts for transmission through the Colorado River Indian Irrigation Project power system.

The system provides electricity for project pumps and water control structures and for customers on the rapidly developing Colorado River Indian Reservation and nearby area. A steadily increasing load has been placed on the system in recent months and additional power requirements are foreseen as need continues for additional pumping to irrigate reservation lands.

The present substation facilities at the Bureau of Reclamation's Parker Dam Power Plant have a capacity available to the Colorado River Irrigation Project of 6,000 kilowatts. The system's power requirements will exceed this capacity by the summer of 1967 when the new substation will be completed. The increased capacity will provide for future irrigation growth, especially for pumping to irrigate Indian lands for which water rights were decreed in recent Supreme Court Case.

Successful bidder was Kinetic Engineering and Construction, Inc., and B&A Electric Co., a joint venture, of Sacramento, Calif. Three higher bids were received ranging to $177,926.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has awarded a $98,750 contract to Twinco-Enki Corp. of San Fernando, Calif., to review and evaluate projects undertaken by the Bureau under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

The Act, which was amended in 1966 to provide funds for Indian education, requires a broad-based evaluation of projects carried out under its provisions. Twinco-Enki will direct the evaluation from its Muskogee, Okla., branch office, which is centrally located for a number of BIA education projects currently operating.

Some typical current projects include:

• A program for teaching English as a second language involving 18,450 youngsters on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
• Enrichment of the educational program and related services for 1,170 Indian children by the Bureau's Choctaw Agency in Oklahoma.
• An elementary guidance program for 1,380 day and boarding school children by the United Pueblos Agency in New Mexico.

Approximately 65 projects will be monitored and an additional six projects will be selected for study and analysis in depth. Twinco-Enki also will supply assistance in implementing the six projects in the control study.

An essential part of the work to be done under the contract will be a centralized testing program to determine the effectiveness of the projects in meeting the Bureau's education goals.

The contract calls for completion of the evaluation and analysis by June 30, 1967 and submission of a final report to the Bureau of Indian Affairs within 45 days after that date.