OPA

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced he has appointed H. Rex Lee, veteran career specialist on American Indians and dependent peoples, as Governor of American Samoa.

Secretary Udall also announced that Air Force Maj. Eric J. Scanlan, whose family has lived in American Samoa for three generations, is returning to his home islands to be Government Secretary. The post is similar to that of a lieutenant governor.

Since 1950 Mr. Lee has been associate commissioner and deputy commissioner of the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs. From 1946 to 1950 he was assistant director of the Department's Office of Territories. During that period he played a key role in arranging the transfer of American Samoa from Navy jurisdiction to civilian administration under the Office of Territories.

The territory has a population of slightly more than 20,000. It is an underdeveloped area, and the Polynesian inhabitants face social, political and economic problems.

Secretary Udall said Mr. Lee was drafted for the Governorship because of his unique experience and long familiarity in helping to solve just such problems among dependent groups.

One of Mr. Lee's major assignments will be the preparation for the South Pacific Commission conference in American Samoa in July 1962. It will be the first time the conference, scheduled every three years, will be staged at a site under United States jurisdiction. The commission membership includes the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Australia and New Zealand. It advises and assists the participating governments in promoting the economic and social welfare and advancement of the South Pacific peoples. International interest in the South Pacific is growing, and world attention will be focused on United States policies and programs in American Samoa.

Mr. Lee was born April 8, 1910, in Rigby, Idaho. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hyrum Lee, still live in Rigby. He attended the public schools of Jefferson County, Idaho, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in agricultural economics from the University of Idaho in 1936.

From June 1936, to July 1937, he worked as an economist with the Department of Agriculture's Resettlement Administration in Moscow, Idaho. Then he joined the University of Idaho Extension service and served a year as assistant county agent in Pocatello.

From November 1938 to June 1946, he held important posts with the War Relocation Authority, relocating Japanese Americans during World War II. His service include heading the Division of Relocation and Evacuee Property.

In 1946 he transferred to the Interior Department as assistant chief of the Office of Territories. In 1949 he was a consultant on loan to the United Nations, and spent three months traveling in the Near East, conferring with Arab and Israeli leaders to assist Arab refugees displaced by the Israeli-Arab war.

Mr. Lee married Miss Lillian Carlson of Pocatello, Idaho, in Seattle, Washington, in 1937. They have three daughters and two sons: Sherry, 21; Dixie, 19; Linda, 18; Duane, 14, and Carlson, 11. The Lees live at Fairfax, Va. Their new home will be the Governor's quarters in Pago Pago.

Major Scanlan, a career military officer, was reared in American Samoa. He is the great grandson of a Boston Irishman who emigrated to the islands and married a Polynesian. Major Scanlan's blood quantum is about 40 percent Samoan.

He was born May 31, 1919 in New Zealand. The family returned to Samoa before his second birthday. He attended elementary school in the Territory, and began his high school education. In 1937 he moved to New York City to live with relatives and complete his education.

Maj. Scanlan entered active duty September 12, 1940, with the combat engineers of New York's Twenty-Seventh Division. The Division was shipped to Hawaii shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In October 1942, he returned to the States to Officer Candidate School at the Engineer Center at Fort Belvoir, Va., and received his second lieutenant's commission three months later.

He returned to the Pacific Theater in November 1943, with an aviation engineer battalion. As executive officer of a combat construction company, he served in the New Guinea and Philippines operations. After V-J Day he was rotated back to New York. In May 1946, he transferred to Geiger Field, Spokane, Washington, where he spent five years in military police and counter-intelligence assignments.

In December 1951, Scanlan was transferred to Castle Air Force Base near Fresno, Calif., as assistant provost marshal of the base. A year later he was sent to Nouasseur Air Depot, near Casablanca, French Morrocco, as assistant provost marshal.

He captained a prize-winning rifle and pistol team and personally posted the highest scores in North African competition for both rifle and pistol competition.

He was promoted to provost marshal of Orly Air Base, Paris, France, in June 1955, and served there until August 1958. He won a commendation medal for smashing a black market ring in Paris.

During his tours in Africa and France he studied under the University of Maryland's overseas college program, and in 1958 completed his course at the university' s campus in College Park, Md. He was graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in military science. During all five years of enrollment, he was on the University Dean's honor list annually. General Lauris Norstad, Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, presented him with an outstanding scholarship certificate.

After graduation he was transferred to his present assignment as assistant provost marshal of McGuire Air Force Base near Trenton, New Jersey. He was promoted to major in December 1960.

He married Miss Marian Elizabeth Currey of St. John, New Brunswick, in 1946. They have a son, David, aged 12, and a 9-month-old daughter, Reinnette.

Scanlan, an avid outdoorsman, sails, swims, golfs, hunts and fishes

The Department of the Interior today announced the revocation of a provision in Federal regulations which for many years has limited the appearance of professional attorneys before courts of Indian offenses on Indian reservations.

Courts of Indian offenses are organized and staffed by Indian tribal groups under regulations promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior. Fifteen such courts are now in operation.

The provision being revoked is found in Section 11.9 of Title 25 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It states that professional attorneys shall not appear in any proceedings before the courts of Indian offenses unless rules of court have been adopted by the court and approved by the tribal council and Indian Bureau superintendent governing the admission and practice of such attorneys before the court. Defendants, 11owever, were given the right to be represented by tribal members. The regulation was originally designed to meet the special needs of Indian courts whose judges are not formally trained in law, and who are concerned to a considerable degree with tribal customs which do not follow non-Indian laws.

The Department's revocation also applies to Section 11.9CA in Title 25 of the CFR which completely prohibited the appearance of professional attorneys before the court of Indian offenses on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho.

In addition to the courts of Indian offenses, 50 tribal groups have tribal courts established under their own enactments. These courts are not subject to the same constitutional limitations as courts established by Departmental regulations and are not affected by the revocation action. Many of them have regulations similar to the revoked provisions.

The revocation order is being published in the Federal Register.

Secretary of Agriculture Orville L, Freeman and Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced adoption of 8 study and recommendations made by the two Departments to bring timber sale practices by the two agencies into closer uniformity.

The two Secretaries noted that 13 specific recommendations are being adopted. The changes apply to timber management in Western Oregon by the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior. Several of the recommendations are of wider geographic application. Four of these also apply to certain practices by Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs on Indian Timberlands in the Pacific Northwest.

Both Secretaries noted that the steps being taken to reconcile and standardize timber sale and management practices within the two Departments were in keeping with President Kennedy's Special Message to the Congress on Natural Resources in which he stressed the necessity for bringing together IIwide1y scattered resource policies of the Federal Government." Adoption of the study and recommendations follows a special study by the two Departments.

Among the study recommendations being adopted are orders to the agencies involved to standardize management plan inventory procedures, reconcile differences in determining allowable timber cut, and detailed field studies looking to possible uniform adoption of the International one-quarter inch rule and/or cubic foot measurement as substitute for the Scribner Decimal C rule. The latter recommendation deals with the way in which the board-foot volume of timber is measured for management inventories of standing timber and for timber sales.

Other recommendations include possible adoption of a joint nursery program, and action to meet land jurisdictional problems in the complicated checkerboard ownership areas of Western Oregon.

Secretary of Agriculture Freeman noted that the six Western Oregon embrace approximately 6.3 million acres. 1.8 billion board feet of timber are harvested each year management. national forests in From these lands some under sustained yield.

Secretary of the Interior Udall noted that his Department's Bureau of Land Management manages about 2.5 million acres of Federal lands in 18 Western Oregon counties. From these lands BLM harvests more than 1 billion board feet of timber each year under sustained yield program.

The Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs is responsible for some 2.1 million acres of commercially valuable Indian-owned forest lands in the Pacific Northwest. Timber sales from these lands amounted to 370 million board feet in fiscal year 1960.

Other efforts toward uniform practices would include action to resolve legal differences now existing in the transfer of contracts, and maintenance of close liaison on set-aside timber sales for small businesses. In addition, existing interagency committees in Washington, D. C. and in Portland, Oregon are to be strengthened and given specific responsibilities for further recommendations on uniform timber management practices.

The complete text of the 13 summary recommendations is attached.

Summary of Recommendations

1. The agencies will continue adherence to the established management objective of producing saw timber as the main product of timber harvest cutting.

2. The agencies are to obtain standardization of management plan inventory procedures.

3. The agencies are to reconcile significant procedural differences in determining allowable cut.

4. The Interagency Timber Appraisal Committee is to be continued as a means of progressing towards elimination of timber appraisal differences.

5. The agencies will consider the need for acting in unison when making any changes in bidding methods.

6. The General Counsel for the Department of Agriculture and the Solicitor for the Department of the Interior will confer with respect to the resolution of the legal differences now existing in the transfer of contracts.

7. Both agencies will maintain close liaison with respect to the set-aside sale program of the Small Business Administration and carefully considered common policies will be followed.

8. The agencies will explore the need for a joint nursery program.

9. The Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs will institute jointly a program aimed at providing for the uniform measurement of timber for management inventory and for sales.

10. The two Departments will collaborate on development of a uniform timber trespass bill and regulations.

11. Both agencies are to consider and recommend action to meet certain land jurisdictional problems.

12. The existing interagency committees in Washington, D. C., and in Portland, Oregon, are to be strengthened and given specific responsibilities for recommending uniformity of timber management practices.

13. The offices of both agencies in Portland, Oregon, will establish the same arrangement for exchanging manual and handbook material and all amendments thereto as is presently in effect between both agencies in Washington, D. C

The Department of the Interior today announced the selection of three new superintendents for Indian agencies in Minnesota, Montana and Washington.

At the Minnesota Agency in Bemidji, Herman P. Mittelholz, superintendent of the Turtle Mountain Agency in North Dakota since 1957, will succeed W. Wendell Palmer who retired May 13. No successor has been designated for Turtle Mountain.

At the Flathead Agency, Dixon, Montana, Presley T. La Breche replaces Charles S. Spencer who transferred to the Fort Hall Agency in Idaho last month. La Breche is a career employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and has been serving 8S industrial development specialist at Phoenix, Ariz., since 1958.

The new superintendent at the Yakima Agency, Toppenish, Washington, will be Melvin L. Robertson succeeding Floyd H. Phillips who retired May 12. Robertson has been superintendent for the past six years at the Menominee Agency, Keshena, Wis., where Federal trust supervision was terminated on April 30 under terms of a 1954 law.

Mittelholz has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs since 1941 when he was appointed teacher at the Fort Berthold Agency Community School, Elbowwoods, N. Dak. Subsequently he served in a variety of positions ranging from the principalship of the Jicarilla Apache Agency School in New Mexico to realty work with the Great Lakes Agency, Ashland, Wis. Prior to his 1957 appointment at Turtle Mountain, he served for over a year as realty officer at the Minnesota Agency. He was born in 1909 at Munich, N. Dak., and is a graduate of the Bemidji State Teachers College, Bemidji, Minn.

Robertson was born at Kalispell, Mont., in 1900 and has had 33 years of continuous service with the Bureau. From 1928 to 1948 he served in various capacities from timber scaler to forest ranger at the Colville Agency in Washington and the Klamath Agency in Oregon. In 1948 he was named assistant to the superintendent of the California Agency at Sacramento and later was made district agent at the Hoopa Agency in northern California. His first superintendency appointment was in 1950 at the Northern Idaho Agency, Lapwai, Idaho. Four years later he transferred to the Western Washington Agency, Everett, Wash., and served there a little over a year before transferring to the Menominee post in July 1955.

La Breche, who is of Blackfeet Indian descent, first came with the Bureau in 1937 as an unskilled laborer at the Chemawa School in Oregon. Over the years he rose to positions of increasing responsibility in finance and credit work serving at a number of Indian Bureau offices throughout the country. For one year prior to his industrial development assignment at Phoenix in 1958 he was in the central office of the Bureau at Washington, D. C., as a program officer. Born in 1915 at Glacier Park, Mont., he served for four years with the Air Force during World War II and emerged with the rank of captain.

The Department of the Interior today announced the selection of Clyde W. Hobbs, superintendent of the Crow Indian Agency in Montana for the past four years, to head the Wind River Agency, Fort Washakie, Wyoming, effective June 4.

He succeeds Arthur N. Arnston who has been superintendent at Wind River since 1954 and is being assigned to complete the wind-up of Indian Bureau responsibilities on the Catawba Reservation in South Carolina as provided by a 1959 law.

A native of Schaberg, Arkansas in 1917, Hobbs grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and graduated from Oklahoma A &M College with a degree in agronomy in 1942. After four years of military service in World War II, which brought him to the rank of captain, he joined the Indian Bureau as a soil conservationist at Anadarko, Okla., in 1946 and was transferred later that same year to Eufaula, Okla. In 1948 he moved to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and six years later was promoted to soil conservationist in the Billings area office. He was named superintendent of the Crow Agency in early 1957.

A new superintendent at Crow has not yet been named.

Award of four contracts totaling $269,949.50 for surfacing work on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservation roads in South Dakota was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Three of the contracts are for construction of crushed-gravel base course with bituminous surface treatment on Pine Ridge Reservation arterial roads extending from Sharps easterly 15.4 miles to Kyle, from Kyle northeasterly 18.4 miles via Potato Creek to the Interior-Allen Road, and 9.5 miles of road from Wanblee easterly to State Highway 73. The fourth contract is for construction of a· bituminous seal coat on 7.2 miles of paved road running northeasterly from Rosebud to U. S. Highway 18 on the Rosebud Reservation. The contracts provide for improvement of reservation roads which serve for inter-community travel, school bus and mail routes, and as farm-to-market outlet roads.

Summit Construction Company of Rapid City, South Dakota was the successful bidder on the Sharps-Kyle and Wanblee East road projects with bids in the amounts of $93,835 and $68,190 respectively. Six bids were received on each of these projects ranging to a high of $130,372.50 on the Sharps-Kyle Road and $87,275 on the Wanblee East Road.

J. H. Beckman Construction Company of Sioux Falls, South Dakota submitted the low bid on the Kyle-Potato Creek project in the amount of $100,158.50. Six bids ranging to $133,252 were received on this project. J. H. Beckman Construction Company was also the low bidder on the Rosebud to U. S. Highway 18 project on which four bids were received ranging from $7,766 to $16,299.70.

HHFA-OA-No. 61-240

(00 2-4433)

Housing Administrator Robert C. Weaver today announced approval of a loan of $166,600 to build a housing-for-the-elderly project in the middle of the 2,000,000-acre Pine Ridge Indian reservation in southwest South Dakota.

The project was initiated by leaders of the Oglala-Sioux Tribe of Indians most of whose 12,000 members live on the reservation.

The sponsoring organization, the Pine Ridge Settlement House, is composed of both Indians and white men and is both non-denominational and non-racial. Housing in the group will be open to persons 62 years of age and over and will not be limited to members of the sponsoring group. However, it is expected that most of them will be members of the Tribe since they constitute the greater part of the population in, the area to be served by the home.

The project will be called the Felix S. Cohen Memorial Home in tribute to the former Associate Solicitor of the Interior Department, who later served until his death as attorney for the Oglala-Sioux Tribe.

The home will consist of a one-story rectangular building which will contain 23 living units to accommodate 38 persons, a central dining room, and lounge and recreation rooms. It will be located across the highway from the Pine Ridge Indian Hospital, which is operated by the U.S. Public Health service.

A monthly charge of about $75 per person will be made, including room, board, utilities, laundry, and social and recreational activities.

The sponsoring organization consists of a seven-man board, as follows: Father John Bryde of the Holy Rosary Mission, Chairman; Johnson Holy Rock; president of the Oglala-Sioux Tribe, Vice-Chairman; Alfreda Janis, Tribe member, secretary; Alvin Hemingway, filling station owner, Treasurer; and Board members: Moses Two Bulls, former Chief Judge of the Oglala-Sioux Tribe; Lawrence Redwing;, restaurant owner; and Ira L. Wood, farmer.

Secretary of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall announced his support today of legislation that would make it possible to revive and strengthen the program of Federal loans to Indian tribes to help finance job-creating enterprises and greater development of human and natural resources on Indian reservations.

The Secretary's position was set forth in a favorable report on S. 1540, a bill that would remove the present $10 million legal limit on appropriations for the revolving loan fund of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"Removal of the limitation," Secretary Udall said, “would be most desirable. It would permit the Department to present and the Congress to consider appropriation requests for the revolving loan fund not in terms of an arbitrary dollar limit but on the basis of the actual justifiable needs that the Indians have for financing which they cannot obtain from other sources. We believe there are many opportunities for greater economic development and resources development on Indian reservations that are being held in abeyance today for lack of adequate financing.”

The repayment record of Indians on loans from the revolving fund, Secretary Udall added, has been excellent. As of last June 30, a total of $34,478,860 had been loaned from the fund. Of the $25,619,973 due through that date, over 96 percent had been paid, only 2.25 percent was delinquent, about three-quarters of one percent had been cancelled and approximately half of one percent had been extended.

The revolving loan fund, authorized in 1934, is used chiefly for lending to Indian tribal groups unable to obtain the financing they need from customary sources principally because of the trust status of their land and the lack of adequate bankable security. Loans are made to the tribal groups for financing tribal enterprises and cooperative enterprises, to encourage industry and for relending to individual members.

Many types of tribal enterprises have been financed from the revolving fund over the years since 1934. They include farming and livestock enterprises, recreational developments such as motels, land acquisition and management enterprises, arts and crafts developments, salmon canneries and fishing enterprises, and Eskimo trading posts in Alaska.

In addition to the loans received from the revolving fund, Indian tribes also use funds of their own for financing enterprises and relending to individual members. On June 30, 1960, the tribes were using nearly $24 million of their own funds for these purposes in comparison with $10,572,318 in loans receivable on that date from the revolving credit fund.

During the same fiscal year Indian tribes and individual Indians received over $75 million of financing from customary sources such as banks and production credit associations.

Appointment of Leonard O. Lay, relocation specialist of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Minneapolis, Minn., as superintendent of the Bureau's Turtle Mountain Agency at Belcourt, North Dakota, effective July 9, was announced today by the Department of the Interior. He succeeds Herman P. Mittelholtz who was recently named superintendent of the Minnesota Indian Agency, Bemidji, Minn.

Born at Greentop, Mo., in 1911, Lay joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1952 as relocation officer at the Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, North Dakota. Three years later he moved to the comparable position at Turtle Mountain and in 1956 was promoted to his present post at the Bureau's Minneapolis area office. Before coming with the Bureau, he held a number of positions in South Dakota both in private business and with the State government which involved extensive contacts with Indian people.

Award of a $59,405.54 contract for the clearing and leveling of 240 acres of land and the construction of the main lateral and waste way to serve these lands on the Hogback Project of the Navajo Reservation near Shiprock, New Mexico, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

This construction work will bring under irrigation two new farm units. When completed, the project works will serve an ultimate area of 11,500 acres of land benefiting 500 Navajo Indian families.

The firm of Goodman and Sons of Farmington, New Mexico, was the successful bidder for the contract. Four higher bids, ranging from $60,794.20 to $97,977.50, were received.