OPA

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced he has instructed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take every possible action to assure that needy Indians benefit from the expanded distribution of surplus food ordered January 21 by President Kennedy.

The Secretary pointed out that the program is aimed at helping all underprivileged Americans, and stressed that a number of Indian reservations are among the hardest-hit economic areas of the Nation.

Secretary Udall said the Indian Bureau is working with the United States Department of Agriculture as well as with State and local agencies responsible for distributing surplus foods. He said all field offices of the Bureau have been instructed to cooperate in this effort.

Because of the remote locations of many reservations, and their lack of year round employment, American Indians are among the groups least protected against economic suffering, Secretary Udall said.

He pledged that new efforts, in addition to those now under way, will be made to insure that Indians benefit from those national programs designed to benefit underprivileged citizens.

The first leasing of California Indian-owned land for oil and gas development in about a decade was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

On January 18, bids were opened at the Sacramento area office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the oil 8nd gas leasing of two tracts of tribally owned land which comprise the entire acreage of the Colusa Indian Reservation in Colusa County. One tract is 214.5 acres, the other 54.53 acres.

The high bid on the larger tract was a bonus of $2,944.56 or $13.75 per acre offered by G. E. Kadane and Sons. On the smaller tract the high bidder was Gulf Oil Corporation of California with a bonus offering of $1,988.36 or $36.46 per acre. Both of these bids have been accepted.

Offering of the lands for oil and gas leasing was approved by the Colusa Indian Community Council in a resolution adopted December 5, 1960.

In keeping with the usual practice on oil and gas leasing of Indian lands, the tribal organization will receive, in addition to the bonus money, annual rentals of $1.25 per acre on the leased land and royalties of 12.5 percent on production.

The only previous leasing of California Indian lands for oil and gas development took place about 10 years ago and involved acreage on the Agua Caliente Reservation at Palm Springs.

The Justice Department has concluded after an F.B.I. investigation that allegations of brutality against students at the Chilocco, Okla., Indian School by some staff members were without foundation, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Harrison Loesch said today.

A program review team of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which operates the school, had reported brutal treatment of some students. Assistant Secretary Loesch in April asked the F.B.I. to investigate the situation. At the same time he directed that Dr. Leon Wall, superintendent of the school, and Principal Clarence Winston be placed on temporary duty in the area office.

Mr. Loesch said today that Dr. Wall has returned to his job as superintendent. Mr. Winston earlier went back to his position as principal.

The Assistant Secretary said the F.B.I. investigation found no foundation for the allegations of brutality or for any other invasion of civil rights of any students.

High bonus bids totaling nearly one and a third million dollars for oil and gas leases on Indian-owned lands of the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana were announced today by the Department of the Interior.

At an opening of bids on January 17 at Poplar, Mont., offers were received for leases on 149 tracts covering approximately 32,500 acres. For 97 tracts comprising 24,046 acres owned by individual tribal members the high bonus bids totaled $943,771. For 52 tracts of tribally owned land with a combined area of 8,458 acres, the high bonus offerings added up to $375,310.

Over all the average of the high bids received was $40.58 per acre.

The bids have not yet been accepted by the owners or their trustee, the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Award of a $34,193 contract for improvement to the water supply system at Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Indian Reservation was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract provides for approximately 2,000 feet of water main, and for the construction of a water treatment plant with a capacity of 750,000 gallons per day. This work is the second phase of a project to provide adequate water supply at Shiprock for a recently completed Indian hospital, a 1,000-pupil Indian boarding school and a sub-agency headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The successful bidder was Western States Construction Company, Inc. of Loveland, Colorado. Two higher bids, ranging from $37,485.00 to $44,130.00 were received.

The Department of the Interior announced today approval of a final membership roll of 631 persons who will be entitled to share in division of the assets of the Catawba Indian Tribe of South Carolina that have been held in Federal trusteeship.

The roll was prepared by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the advice and assistance of the Catawba Tribe under the terms of a 1959 law which provides for division of the tribal assets in Federal trust among the qualified members. A majority of the adult tribal members voted to accept the provisions of the law in balloting announced last June.

In accordance with previously announced procedures the final roll as now approved was put on display for a period of 30 days at several points ne8r Rock Hill, S. C., frequented by Catawba Indians to allow for protests against the inclusion or omission of names. No such protests were received.

The property to be divided among the tribal members has been estimated to have a value of about $190,000. It consists of 3,263.8 acres of land under trusteeship in York County, S. C., near Rock Hill; $6,000 cash proceeds from the sale of a tribal herd of 85 beef cattle; and nearly $5,000 of cash on deposit with the United States Treasury.

Once the division of assets is completed, the Catawba tribal members will no longer be eligible, under terms of the 1959 law, for special Federal services because of their status as Indians. Under Federal law they will be in exactly the same status as other citizens of the United States.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today the appointment by President Kennedy of John O. Crow, a Cherokee Indian and 28-year veteran employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as Acting Commissioner of the Bureau and a member of a newly constituted expert group, charged with recommending plans for reorganizing the Bureau, and development of improved policies and programs.

A native of Salem, Mo. and currently a resident of Alexandria, Va., Crow is the first person of American Indian descent to have the responsibility as Commissioner of Indian Affairs since 1871 when Ely S. Parker, a Civil War general and New York State Indian, left office in the Grant Administration.

Crow has been chief of the branch of realty in the Washington office of the Indian Bureau since July 1960. He first joined the Bureau as a clerical worker at the Fort Totten Agency in North Dakota in 1933. Two years later he moved to the Truxton Canyon Agency, Valentine, Ariz. In the years that followed he tock on increasing responsibilities at Truxton Canyon and was appointed superintendent of the agency in 1942.

After four years in this post he served as superintendent of three other Indian agencies over the following 11 years. From 1946 to 1951 he was at Mescalero Agency, Mescalero, N. Mex.; from 1951 to 1955 at the Fort Apache Agency, Whiteriver, Ariz.; and from 1955 to 1957 at the Uintah-Ouray Agency, Fort Duchesne, Utah. In June 1957 he was named assistant to E. J. Utz, the Bureau's Assistant Commissioner for Resources, and remained in that post until his appointment as chief of the realty branch last July.

He was an outstanding football player as a student at the Haskell Indian Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, and later played professional football with the Boston Redskins.

The group which will recommend plans for reorganizing the bureau will be headed by W. W. Keeler, 53, of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, an oil company executive and longtime principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Mr. Keeler is a member of the Commission on Rights, Liberties and Responsibilities of the American Indian, created by the Fund for the Republic. He was born in Dalhart, Texas, in 1908. After he attended Kansas University, he started work in 1929 with the Phillips Company as a chemist, and rose through successive responsibilities to become Executive Vice-President in 1956. He is an officer of numerous subsidiaries of Phillips Company and of several petroleum trade associations. He is a regional adviser to the Institute of International Education and is a Trustee of the Dwight Presbyterian Mission. Married in 1933, he has three sons.

Other members of the group will be:

Philleo Nash, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin. Born Wisconsin Rapids, 1909. Graduated from University of Wisconsin (A.B., 1932) and University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1937). Lecturer on Anthropology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1937-41; Special Assistant, Office of War Information, 1942-46; Special Assistant, the White House and Administrative Assistant to the President, 1946-53. President, Biron Cranberry Company, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Married Edith Rosenfels in 1935; two daughters. Member, Board of Directors, Association on American Indian Affairs, 1942 to present. Secretary, Yale-Toronto International Conference on Indian Welfare, 1939.

James E. Officer, Tucson, Arizona. Born Boulder, Colorado, July 28, 1924. Attended Universities of Kansas and Arizona. (A.B. Anthropology, Arizona, 1950; Ph.D. candidate, Anthropology, Arizona, 1961) Newscaster and writer, radio stations in Kansas City, Phoenix, and Tucson, 1942-50; U. S. Department of State, Washington, D. C., and Santiago, Chile, U. S. Information Officer, 1950-53; University of Arizona, Instructor in Sociology and Anthropology, 1954-60. Concurrently (1955-56), Assistant Director, Bureau of Ethnic Research, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. U. S. Army, 1945, 1946 (Sergeant-Major, Classification and Assignment, U. S. Ordnance Depot, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland).

Author of numerous publications in professional journals and Indians in School, II University of Arizona Press, 1956. Member, Phi Beta Kappa, 'Sigma Xi (Honorary Science Society), American Anthropological Association, American Sociological Society, and Tucson Arizona Press Club. Married Roberta Mitzel, Kansas City, February 22, 1946; one son, one daughter.

William Zimmerman, Jr., lives in Arlington, Virginia, and is the Washington Representative of Trustees for Conservation. Now retired, he is a longtime Interior Department career officer, who came into the Government in 1933 with Harold Ickes. In June of 1933 he became Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and he continued in that post until June of 1950, when he transferred to the Bureau of Land Management, first as Assistant and then as Associate Director. He continued in the Department until his retirement in 1954.

At that time he became Field Director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, where he remained until 1957, when he entered into a consulting relationship with a number of conservation groups. At the present time he is a Trustee of the Robert Marshall Wilderness Fund, a member of the Citizens Committee on National ReS01ITCeS; a member of the Council and a Vice-President of the Wilderness Society, and a Consultant to the National Congress of American Indians. Mr. Zimmerman was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1890, graduated from Harvard in 1910 (A.B.), and resides in Arlington with his wife, the former Eleanor Williams, and two children.

The text of Secretary Udall's letter to Mr. Keeler about the work of the group is attached.

February 8, 1961

Dear Mr. Keeler:

I am writing to invite you to be the head of a group in the Department of the Interior which will look into the organization and programs of the entire Department, insofar as they bear on the Department's mission and responsibilities with respect to Indian Affairs.

Others who will be associated with you in this project will be Mr. John O. Crow, whom I am designating Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Mr. Philleo Nash, formerly Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, Mr. James Officer of the University of Arizona, and Mr. William Zimmerman, Jr., formerly Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

For the next ninety days, the assignment of your group will be to advise me from day to day as to how we can be more effective in the discharge of our present statutory duties. I have particularly in mind President Kennedy's objective, stated in a letter to Mr. Clarence Wesley, President of the National Congress of American Indians: "During the recent campaign I have expressed my concern over the conditions of poverty and disease which afflict so many American Indians and have made clear that I am intent on doing something about the matter. I want to repeat, therefore, that I am pledged to a program for the development of the human and natural resources of the Indian reservations. Such a program will indeed be an integral part of the total program of my Administration."

It is understood that you are coming into the. Department as a consultant without compensation. I wish to express my personal appreciation to you and to your company for your willingness to make this important contribution to a better life for American Indians and thus to a stronger America.

Sincerely yours,

The Department of the Interior today announced award of a $963,560 contract for construction of 8.1-miles of roadway on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona from Marsh Pass, approximately 58 miles northeast of Tuba City, running northeasterly towards Kayenta.

This section of road is part of Navajo Route 1, which was authorized by the Anderson-Udall legislation of 1959.

Completion of this addition to the Indian Bureau's extensive road construction program on the Reservation will provide a total of approximately 78 miles of paved highway from U. S. 89 north of Flagstaff, extending northeast through Tuba City toward Kayenta.

Construction of Navajo Route 1 has aroused wide interest because of the rapid development of the Four Corners oil field to the northeast and the fact that the northern part of the Reservation and State of Arizona previously had no improved highway. When complete, this route will be a short-cut from southwestern Colorado to the Grand Canyon, the West Coast and the entire northern part of the Navajo Reservation.

H. E. Lowdermilk Company of Englewood, Colorado, was the successful bidder. Six other bids were submitted, ranging to a high of $1,179,945.05.

I have looked forward to this day -- to the chance to meet with you, to share in your 25th Anniversary celebration, to congratulate you - and especially your charter members, some of whom are here today -- for your vision and leadership.

An impressive as your past growth has been, even more impressive are the prospects for your contributions to the Indian future. As never before, the nation is aware of Indian problems and the need for clear, decisive Indian leadership.

As a representative of government, I am especially interested in Indian leadership because I am convinced that the Indian people and their Federal government must work closely than ever before.

The President's statement, delivered to the last NCAI Convention in Omaha, still stands. This Administration opposes termination. This Administration favors the continuation of the trust relationship and the protection of Indian lands and Indian resources.

Let us now and forever put to rest all fears and begin positive action together. For every Indian problem there is also an Indian opportunity. Building upon that special relationship between Indian tribes and the Federal government, we will solve the problems and open the opportunities.

There is no question that this special relationship will and must continue. It is its quality that should concern us most.

Not one of us who has responsibility can be complacent about Indian Affairs. And no one is sincerely interested will allow the plight of the Indian people to be used for publicity, politics or personal advantage.

I see no merit in trying to place blame for the present situation. Too much energy has been diverted already to excuses for conditions of life that any sensitive person can see are inadequate.

You do not want our apologies and you do not need our explanations. You want and need action. And it is time for action.

There is a desperate shortage of job opportunity. Indian unemployment runs up to ten times the national average in this year of record employment,

• Housing shortages still plague more than half the families living in Indian communities
• Schools for Indian children are underfinanced and deficient
• Hardship invades almost every phase of individual and
  community life.

I do not have to go into details with you. You know the facts better than I. It is time to move forward. We must have improvement and sense of direction.

This Administration understands that there is no single solution to Indian problems. There is no such thing as "the Indian problem." A rich diversity of culture, language and background characterizes Indian communities across America. No single set of programs will fit everywhere.

This Administration does not even expect complete uniformity and agreement among Indians as to their own goals or needs or desired programs. We must be flexible. For too long the Indian has been forced to fit a particular program. From now on the programs will be tailored to fit the particular Indian requirements. We will work with the Indian people on a community-by-community and tribe-by-tribe basis to develop programs best suited to local needs and priorities.

Indian tribes possess a unique and direct relationship with the Federal government which is derived from several sources. First, it is a legal relationship. Through treaty and law, Indian communities are entitled to certain services from the Federal government.

As a result of the treaties, the Indian people surrendered their land to the Federal government under certain conditions of trust and good faith. The government undertook a sacred trust to finance basic programs such as health and education. In attempting to respond to their obligation, Congress has enacted much legislation affecting Indians. Some of it has been successful but too much has failed to carry out its objective.

It is important to remember that Federal support of Indian services is, to a great extent, legally due to the Indian community. These are not services offered at the pleasure of the government but solemn obligations to a people who accepted a good faith settlement in reliance on governmental integrity.

Moreover, there is a formal basis for the special relationship between the Indians and their government. Congress, by establishing the Indian Claims Commission, acknowledged the integrity of Tribes as legal entities. This created the way for government to acknowledge debts and obligations to the Indian people.

Thus, the special efforts to offset costs of certain services in Indian communities are the rights of the communities and the legal and moral obligations of the Federal government. But there remains a crucial distinction that has been generally ignored for the past 150 years.

Government may have the absolute duty to provide services, but that does not necessarily imply that government must perform and administer those same services.

The Department of the Interior today invited the submission of proposals for leasing and development of three separate parcels of undeveloped Indian land comprising nearly 13,000 acres with a frontage of about 10 miles along the Colorado River in the States of Arizona, California and Nevada.

The tracts being offered are within the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation about 10 miles north of Needles, Calif., and 66 miles west of Kingman, Ariz. The lands have excellent possibilities for recreational, commercial, business and residential development not only because of the frontage on the river but also because of the proximity of major population centers in the three States.

The lease or leases to be granted will be for 25 years with an option for 25-year renewal. Interested parties are invited to write the Superintendent, Colorado River Indian Agency, Parker, Arizona. He will provide full details and "a copy of the lease form to be used.

Each proposal must be accompanied by the following:

1. A preliminary planned schedule for general development of the areas, including annual development expenditures for at least the first five. (5) years of the term of the lease.
2. A proposal for the payment of a fixed annual ground rental for each specified area. Only ground rental commensurate with a fair return on the present capital value of the land will be considered.
3. A proposal for the payment of a percentage of the gross receipts as defined in the lease form, from all operations on or involving the leased area, including but not limited to hotels, motels, apartment buildings, trailer or mobile homes, marinas, stores and other retail establishments, and all entertainment, food and service enterprises.
4. A proposal for the payment of a percentage of the rental that may be received for residences or lots for residences, apart from those in No. 3 above.

Bids will be received at the Colorado River Indian Agency until 10 a.m., May 25, 1961. Each bid must be accompanied by a cashier's check or certified check made payable to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the amount of the bidder's proposed ground rental for the first year.

Offering of the Fort Mojave Indian lands for long-term leasing was made possible by the Act of August 9, 1955 (69 stat. 539) which authorized leasing of Indian lands for terms up to 25 years with a possibility of a 25-year renewal. Under previous law such leases were generally limited to a 5-year term.