OPA

Robert Schoning, Oregon State Fisheries Director, and Thor Tollefson, Director of the Washington State Department of Fisheries, conferred this week with top officials of the Department of the Interior in Washington to explore possibilities of cooperatively developing regulations that would recognize and provide for Indian off-reservation treaty fishing rights.

Governor Tom McCall of Oregon, at whose request the meeting was held, was unable to attend because of adverse flying weather.

The two state directors indicated a willingness on the part of their departments to issue regulations providing for an exclusive Indian commercial net fishery on the Columbia River above Bonneville Dam in recognition of treaty rights of certain tribes to fish off-reservation at their "usual and accustomed places."

The Department of the Interior has issued framework regulations covering off-reservation treaty fishing rights and is at present considering implementation of the framework plan by promulgation of specific regulations where necessary. Several tribes have also adopted regulations governing the fishing activities of their members.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall said he was encouraged by the fact that the states' proposal recognized the special treaty rights of the Indians. He told the state officials that the Department welcomes an opportunity to work closely with the states and the tribes on that basis and in choosing an approach which, it is hoped, will lead to amicable resolution of this long-standing controversy.

"The tribes, the states and the Federal Government all have responsibilities for and interest in conserving and governing the fishery resource, and a true spirit of cooperation will be required of all parties," Secretary Udall added. He stressed the necessity of involving the tribes in development of basic approaches for establishing fair, reasonable and necessary conservation regulations.

Director Tollefson noted that successful culmination of this cooperative approach to the problem on the Columbia River could lead to similar cooperation with respect to other streams in Washington where Indian tribes have treaty rights.

Interior Department officially participating in the discussions included Assistant Secretary Harry Ro Anderson, Solicitor Frank Barry, Deputy Assistant Secretary and Commissioner of Fish and Wildlife Clarence F. Pautzke, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett. Also taking part were Dale M. Baldwin, Area Director at Portland, Ore" for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; Donald R. Johnson, Regional Director at Seattle, Wash., for the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries; and George Dysart, Assistant Regional Solicitor for the Department at Portland, Ore.

In the summer of 1911 President Howard Taft was in the White House; the territory of Arizona was a frontier outpost, with a population of 205,000 scattered sparsely over its 113,575 lonely and arid square miles; and 34-year-old Sheriff Carl Hayden of Maricopa County, then a major in the National Guard, was at Camp Perry, Ohio, competing successfully in the national rifle matches.

A few Navajo Indians were pasturing their sheep on the scrub of Manson Mesa over there where Page now stands, and the Colorado River was much as Major John Powell had viewed it 42 years earlier, when he and his party first explored the dark deep gorges and unexpected rapids of the wild, mysterious river.

Noting in an Ohio newspaper that his territory was about to attain statehood, the crack marksman from Arizona went home to announce he would run for Congress. He did and with the same success he had experienced on the rifle range, in his Tempe flour mill, and throughout Maricopa County, where he had served as councilman, treasurer, and sheriff.

Today we see evidence of the wisdom displayed by the people of Arizona in sending Carl Hayden to Washington in 1912 to represent them and keeping him there ever since.

The former sheriff of Maricopa is the one person most responsible for transforming the raw frontier that was the Arizona of 1912 into the prosperous, progressive and popular state of 1968, the fastest growing of also states of the Union.

This great dam and lake and bridge are not unique in being monuments to the vision, ability and hard work of Senator Hayden and a long line of like-minded westerners in Congress. Throughout not only Arizona, but all the West there are literally hundreds of such monuments to Carl Hayden--dams, reservoirs, parks, highways, power lines, airports, crop lands on what once was desert, and thriving towns and cities.

Actually, as Senator Hayden completes his nearly 57 years' service in Congress, he could contemplate the great American West and see the good life it provides millions of men, women and children as a manifestation of his own handiwork. Not that he would so consider the results of his long-time efforts, of course. For Carl Hayden, a tough and able man, also is a humble and simple man.

When his colleagues in the Senate paid tribute to him recently, they stressed not only his many and varied accomplishments as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and as the senior and most powerful member of the Senate; they remembered his myriad kindnesses, his humility, and his tireless energy in advancing the welfare of all sections of the Nation.

Women's suffrage is an outstanding monument to this far-seeing American, who in 1919 sponsored the Constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote. The 1931 Hayden-Cartwright law marked the beginning of the Interstate Highway System. The Federal Home Administration, authorizing government-insured loans to farmers, and the G. I. Bill of Rights are other Hayden legislative milestones.

One could go on, literally for hours. As an inscription in St. Paul's Cathedral in London directs, on behalf of the renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren, "If you seek my monuments, look about you." Anywhere we look at the evidence of progress in this country we are likely to see evidence of the work of this son of Arizona, Carl Hayden.

President Johnson, paying tribute to his old friend, said: "His work was the arduous kind that is done in the committee rooms. It was long; it was painstaking; it was nighttime sessions. It was poring over testimony and figures of a thousand appropriation bills involving billions of dollars, trying to serve his main client: the people, the people of the United States -- serve them with integrity, with imagination, and always with great care.

"America is stronger for what you have done in these 56 years, and it is going to be poorer when you have left these halls," the President told Senator Hayden.

We Arizonans, along with most Westerners, are especially mindful of the force of Senator Hayden's efforts in promoting and bringing to fruition development of the Colorado River, lifeline a seven-state area of the arid West.

In 1920 he introduced a bill to apportion the waters of the "Big Red" between the upper and lower basin states, legislation which materialized into the Colorado River Compact of 1922. When the Boulder Canyon Project, including Hoover Dam, was proposed in 1927 Carl Hayden fought to include in the measure provisions that would protect the water rights of his state. As usual, he won.

He was a Co-sponsor of the first bill introduced in Congress to construct the Colorado River Storage Project, of which this Glen Canyon Dam, power plant and beautiful Lake Powell are key features. Before the Glen Canyon Dam was built the river ran through here, red with sediment, and the back-country was a no-man's land except for a handful of shepherds and those fortunate few visitors who were able to make their hazardous way through nearly impassable rugged terrain to Rainbow Bridge and other marvels of the side canyons.

Today, thanks to the dam, the Colorado flows clear, and boaters on jewel like Lake Powell may float up hidden canyons and feast their eyes on some of the most fantastic and gorgeous scenery in the world.

We are proud that Glen Canyon Dam was awarded the American Civil Society of Civil Engineers award for the outstanding civil engineering achievement of 1963. And while the Glen Canyon unit furnishes us superb scenery, glorious boating, and excellent fishing, it is also generating hydroelectric power that will pay for construction of the facilities and for other basin development to come.

The basis for this is a policy strongly supported and bolstered by Senator Hayden to permit commercial sale of surplus Reclamation hydropower to help pay the costs of Reclamation development. Through the years the Arizona solon sponsored several laws strengthening and expanding this policy.

Down river about 70 miles is another outstanding monument to Carl Hayden's foresight, the Grand Canyon National Park, featuring probably the most famous natural wonder of the world. In 1919 Representative Hayden introduced and ushered through the House the bill to establish this park so as to preserve for the enjoyment of all people that impressive stretch of the Colorado.

One of the greatest monuments to Senator Haydn is still to be built, the Central Arizona Project. The crowning achievement of this Westerner's outstanding public service was the recent passage by the Congress of legislation authorizing the Colorado River Basin Project, which will so greatly advance the economic growth of Arizona and the west.

This legislation is the result of nearly two decades of unrelenting, and frequently discouraging, effort -- by Senator Hayden and many other Westerners in Congress; in the White House---President Johnson urged its enactment in his 1968 Budget message to Congress---; and in the Department of the Interior, where it has been a chief objective during my administration.

Senator Hayden sponsored and guided through the Senate bills to authorize the Central Arizona Project in 1950, 1951, and 1967, but not until this year did the bill make it to the floor of the House. All through these years the Senator and hundreds of others, in and out of government, worked arduously to perfect a bill that would meet the objections of the different states in the basin, the opposition of some who at times seemed to be pure obstructionists for the sake of obstructing, and others who, mostly, simply did not, or would not, comprehend the great need of the parched Southwest for water. But now a good bill has been hammered out and is about to become 1aw--President Johnson is expected to sign the legislation within a few days.

It is landmark legislation which constitutes an historic breakthrough in the water thinking of the West. It initiates a new brand of water resource development, bold and broad-gauged. And it marks the opening of an era of water cooperation in the West, replacing the bitter rivalries of the past. This embodies a regional concept, working toward the best possible solutions for the mounting water supply problems of the states of the Colorado basin and setting a pattern for solution of the problems of other regions.

The $1.3 billion Colorado River Basin project authorization is the largest; single-package Reclamation authorization bill ever approved. It not only implements the Supreme Court Decree of 1964 by making it possible for Arizona to utilize an average of 1.2 million acre-feet of water annually from the Colorado main stem; it also approves participating projects in other states of the basin and directs studies to solve chronic water problems of the West.

The $832 million Central Arizona project will pump water from Lake Havasu on the Colorado River and transport it by aqueduct some 300 miles to the burgeoning Phoenix-Tucson area, one of the fastest growing sections in the Nation. We are all aware of the fabulous expansion of this sun-drenched area during the past decade and of the prospects for even greater growth in the future. Reclamation has made the past progress possible, and this Reclamation project will help it to continue. A $100 million distribution system will convey the water from the aqueduct system to thirsty farmlands/and communities.

A dam on the Gila River in New Mexico, and five irrigation projects in Colorado and New Mexico are also authorized for construction by the new law. In addition the Dixie Project in Utah is reauthorized and another Utah project conditionally authorized. Other provisions of the legislation establish a basin fund to finance water development in the basin; provide for participation in a non-Federally built steam electric plant and transmission facilities to furnish low-cost pumping power; give California a priority to use 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually; make the delivery of the 1.5 million acre-feet of water for Mexico, as required by treaty, a national obligation; and provide for a reconnaissance study by the Secretary of the Interior, leading to a general plan to meet the water needs of the western United States.

Those of us who have labored long for this Central Arizona project are now permitting ourselves a look in the crystal ball at the changes it will foster in what most surely would have been our dark future without it. We see tremendous economic and social progress.

The Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Arizona estimates that the economy of the State would lose $1,364 million if the means to prevent the ultimate disappearance of that part of its agriculture now dependent on pumped water were not supplied by the Central Arizona Project. Prevention of such a loss far surpasses the cost of building the project.

But our crystal ball shows us much more than a measurable economic gain to be reaped from this great Reclamation development. It shows us lovely shaded city streets, with trees nourished by CAP water; cool, green public parks; gardens of colorful flowers; hundreds of men and women employed in project construction and operation, and also in project-related business and industry; happy people enjoying the carefree outdoor life in the sunny Southwest--people who could not migrate to the area without this water supply provided by the CAP.

It shows us, too, Department of the Interior officials and members of Congress working in harness during the early years of construction to assure that appropriations closely follow authorization. The example of Senator Hayden will stand us in good stead here, as new men pick up where he left off to keep the construction of the project facilities moving at a proper pace.

It is most fitting that we name the visitor center here at Glen Canyon in honor of Senator Hayden, for, if it were not for him, this complex--like many other water resource facilities through the West--might not exist.

It will not be the first place to bear the long-time solon's family name, however. He was born in 1877 on the Salt River near Phoenix at Hayden's Ferry, which was named for his father, Charles Trumbull Hayden, son of a soldier who fought in the American Revolution. Mr. Hayden founded a flour mill and merchandising business in Tempe. He also founded Arizona Territorial Normal school in Tempe, from which his son Carl was graduated in 1896 before entering Stanford University. And far to the north and nearly a continent's span west of Hayden's Ferry, there is a Hayden's Landing on the Connecticut River, named for Charles Trumbull Hayden's family long before he began the westward trek, which took him finally to Arizona.

All of Senator Hayden's friends--among whom I have been privileged to count myself ever since I can remember--hope that he will come to this center many times to enjoy the fine view of some of his work.

In closing, I submit it is most appropriate that implementation of Carl Hayden's Central Arizona project is starting today and will continue tomorrow. Although now his life span has stretched to nearly half that of this nation, he has always been a young man in his vision, a sage in his wisdom. We read in the Bible, "Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions."

Carl Hayden has done both all of his life, and he has translated both dreams, and visions into realities. The State and the Nation are looking forward to many more years of his counsel and guidance.

Two major construction projects on Indian reservations are milestones in Indian American progress -- one emphasizing economic potential and the other human potential -- Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett said.

He pointed to the recent ground-breaking ceremony for a $1.5 million Bottle Hollow Motel-complex on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah and completion of the $8.5 million Bureau of Indian Affairs residential school at Many Farms, Ariz., on the Navajo Reservation.

The Motel-Complex, a commercial recreation project, will be close to the junction of Highways 121 and 40 near the north end of the Bottle Hollow Reservoir, which will have a surface area of about 420 acres.

The reservoir is being built under direction of the Bureau of Reclamation as a payment to the Ute Tribe for fishing waters lost in Rock Creek as a result of the Central Utah project.

The new Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Many Farms will draw 'dents from a 50-mile radius and also will be the home of the first tribal institute of higher learning on an Indian reservation -- the Navajo Community College -- scheduled to begin its first classes in January.

While noting these recent examples of Indian progress, Bennett announced availability of BIA’s latest annual report, "Indian Affairs 1967: A Progress Report from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs." The booklet tells of the Bureau's program to "Teach English as a Second Language" (TESL) on the Navajo Reservation. "This year saw the establishment of TESL programs in every one of more than 60 Bureau schools in the Navajo community, the Nation's largest Indian land area," the progress report said.

The report points out that the Bureau's Employment Assistance program provides cost-free vocational training and job placement services, as well as financial aid for family relocation to Indians seeking better opportunities off the reservation. In fiscal 1967 approximately 5,500 Indians received adult vocational training and 2,175 were given on-the-job-training.

The 16-page illustrated booklet is available for 15 cents from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. It enumerates other examples of progress both in concrete terms and in terms of attitudes, opinions, and expectations.

Since the report went to press, a $2 million summer winter tourism complex at Mount Ord on the Fort Apache Reservation; a tourist and recreation center on the Hopi reservation that will cost approximately $700,000; and a $70,500 multi-purpose comity building at the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the Havasupai Reservation have gone on the drawing board for Indian reservations in Arizona.

The Commissioner said that in addition to the building or enlarging of tourist facilities, other progress is being made on Indian land areas.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North and South Dakota is well along in developing 110 acres of its land for irrigated farming. Future plans call for expansion to 845 acres.

Water has started flowing into the new sewage disposal plant on the Gila River Indian Reservation near Chandler, Ariz. The $1.68 million plant is a three-way cooperative project. Federal funds were supplemented by approximately $674,000 from the city of Chandler, with the land being given by the Gila River Indian Community.

A $3.4 million Housing and Urban Development contract has been issued to the Rosebud (S.D) Housing Authority for 400 units of new mutual-help housing on the Rosebud Reservation.

­A test group of young teacher interns -- most of them Indians and all of them undergraduates -- is breaking new ground to find ways that will motivate Indian pupils to stay in school and learn more.

In the process, the.20 interns are developing ideas that may stimulate more young people like themselves to stay in college, complete their teacher training, and go out and teach more Indian children,

What they and their professional mentors learn as they go along may prove to be valuable to disadvantaged non-Indians facing similar problems.

The tools they use are as up-to-date as television's "instant replay" with videotape.

The unique experiment, now underway at the University of Southern Mississippi, is sponsored by the education division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, with the help of seed money contributed by a private, nonprofit corpor­ation called MIND (Management Institute for National Development),

Unlike most teaching experiments, it derives many of its basic premises from ideas put forth by Indian tribal leaders, as well as from professional educators. Cooperation and participation of the tribes, themselves, is considered a highly important part of the program by the Bureau.

The pilot program arose in response to two problems that have long plagued people who work in Indian education, and finds its counterpart among educators working with other disadvantaged groups.

Many Indian children feel uncomfortable and somehow lost in schools that rely on conventional teaching methods, The English language may be unfamiliar; the usual textbooks fail to help them relate the subject matter to things they readily compre­hend; the usual teaching methods do not evoke the same lively response they may arouse in average, middle-class American children. For these and other reasons, the dropout rate in Indian schools is high, and formal education is not always considered a valued goal for a reservation Indian.

Another problem sterns from the loss of prospective teachers from the ranks of young Indians who graduate from high school and even start junior college, then fall by the wayside, Lacking adequate guidance and counseling, sometimes short of money for tuition, afraid of failure, or otherwise unequipped by their schooling to cope with the pace of a modern college or university, they have been dropping out too frequently.

To combat these situations among the potential teachers and the taught, the Mississippi interns are being exposed to revolutionary teaching procedures and programs, while they, themselves, are given confidence-building, eyeball-to-eyeball counselling by three master teachers, and by university personnel who act as instructors in the field.

Almost from the beginning, the intern is cast into the classroom experience. He is taught that total involvement with the child is demanded of him, not just in the schoolroom but whenever possible, in the community where the youngster spends the rest of his time: What are the interests and wishes of his parents? The children he works and plays with? PTA organizations? The church, the Government agencies that serve the community?

When the intern works with classroom textbooks and finds that some of the material is hard to relate to reservation life, he is expected to create more graphic instances from the examples around him -- not Dick and Jane, from some never-never land, but Freddy and Johnny from Philadelphia, Miss.

While a teacher intern works with three children in a study situation, he is monitored by a TV camera. Then he reruns the tape with a master teacher present.

"Look, while you were talking to Fred, Johnny’s eyes were wandering. Why do you suppose that is?”

"I just can't get Johnny's attention."

"But you have. He's trying to get yours. That's his way of doing it. Now, what you've got to figure out is how to change this negative reaction of his, into positive participation. You've got to make him want to participate in the class ... want to learn."

Here is where the intern's community involvement experience comes in. After all, why should any child really want book-learning, especially if that child is a Choctaw Indian, son and grandson of Choctaw share-croppers who have lived on the fringe of the local economy for years?

Why should Johnny go to school? Why not out fishing with his father? Or at work making money in the fields?

The answers aren't slick and pat. There are thousands of Choctaws who have long considered share-cropping acceptable as a way of life, with fishing as their avocation.

One answer came this way: "You want to stay alive to fish, don't you?" asked the intern.

"Sure," said the pupil.

"What does that sign at the intersection say?"

"Stop."

"And if you couldn't read it, you'd get run over by a car, wouldn't you?" Lesson one: Know a child's background and you know more about motivating him.

Bureau of Indian Affairs educators believe that much of the success in launching the program has been due to the cooperation of the Indians, themselves.

When the program idea was conceived, education people went directly to tribal leaders, university educators, Bureau Area and Agency personnel, and the Indian sector of the Choctaw Community Action Program, for full discussions.

The Indians voted on every major phase of the project, and when it was ready to go they took pride in their part in it and have maintained their interest ever since.

Not the least innovative of the program's practices is the requirement that the interns need have only a minimum of two years' college education to qualify. Each is getting a $75 a week stipend while going to school--another "first."

Cost of the program for the first year's trial run will be about $230,000, exclusive of the stipend money, which is provided from a companion project developed by the University and the Bureau.

The interns get two academic years and three summers of total commitment to their pupils. Their own progress is guided by three professional teaching teams

who work with them at all times, offering private counseling; helping with teacher pupil relationships that carry over from the classroom, through recreation, social areas, the home; and analyzing teaching problems, coming up with answers, and applying those answers to constantly changing teaching situations.

Recently, interns and master teachers watched themselves on videotape as they came into a classroom and were individually introduced.

"But look what's happening," noted one of the teachers. The camera showed a divided room: master teachers on one side, Indian interns on another, the other concerns in still another area.

"What kind of communication can we expect from the children, when we divide up like that," said the teacher. "Mix it up!"

Indians .and non-Indians alike realized that they wouldn't have the crutch of fellowship to depend on when they eventually took over their own classes. Sub­sequent teaching teams were well integrated.

Dozens of hours of this type of teach-and-learn technique, the Bureau of Indian Affairs believes, will create a new breed of teacher. Where regular education courses take 3\ years, and drop the novice teacher into a classroom with only “sub­stitute teaching" experience, the Bureau's program should graduate interns who are not just, student teachers, but disciplined professionals, ready for anything the classroom has to offer.

An additional incentive for future teacher recruitment is the fact of immediate involvement of the prospective teacher. Young people today are notoriously impatient to become involved in the world around them; this new approach supplies that need.

Finally, Bureau educators believe that their innovations can be applied in teaching clinics, anywhere. College dropouts, for example, are not limited to Indian students; and the community participation approach to the "whole child" can as well be applied to a black ghetto or a New Mexico barrio.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett will be in New York Friday, March 8, for an Indian Industrial Forum.

They will be among the guests of honor at a luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel sponsored by 14 industrial firms which have plants operating on or near Indian lands and by two banks interested in industrial development in Indian areas.

William W. Keeler, president of the Phillips Petroleum Company and Principal Chief of the Cherokee nation of Indians, will be master of ceremonies.

Other guests of honor will include 20 Indian tribal leaders and Miss Indian America XIV, who is Miss Sarah Ann Johnson, a Navajo.

Following the luncheon, a news conference will be held at the Waldorf Astoria, at 2:30 p.m. by Secretary Udall, Commissioner Bennett and Mr. Keeler, the Indian leaders and Miss Indian America.

Prior to the luncheon, at 10 a.m., Commissioner Bennett, Miss Indian America and the Indian leaders will be guests at a coffee at Girl Scouts of America headquarters at 830 Third Avenue.

One purpose of the sessions centering on the luncheon, according to Keeler, is to acknowledge the help that the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have given industries which have located plants on or near Indian lands. Another purpose is to tell their success story to firms which have shown an interest in making the same move.

Keeler invited 16 nationally known organizations to act as co-hosts for the occasion. These are: Phillips Petroleum; Amphenol Corp.; Bulova Watch Co.; Western Superior Corp. (BVD); Eisen Brothers, Inc.; Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.; General Dynamics Corp.; Navajo Forest Products Industries; Peabody Coal Co.; Rayonier, Inc.; Sequoyah Carpet Mills, Inc.; Burnell Nytronics, Inc.; Harry Winston, Inc.; Vassar Corp.; Marine Midland Trust Co. of Western New York; and Crocker-Citizens National Bank of Los Angeles.

Tribal leaders and the Branch of Industrial Development of the Bureau of Indian Affairs have helped to establish more than 100 manufacturing plants in Indian country.

Eventually these plants are expected to employ nearly 10,500 persons, more than half of whom will be Indians. Based on the annually computed minimum rate of pay, these plants will yield a payroll-income of more than $34 million annually, with earnings for Indian workers expected to reach about $19 million yearly. The 4,000 Indian workers employed at the end of 1967 stand to earn $13 million in wages during 1968.

During the past four years, 94 manufacturing plants were established in Indian areas, and the Indian wage earners were paid about $28 million.

Other industrial operations, based on the development of Indian resources such as fish, forests and minerals, bring the total number of industrial firms operating on or near Indian lands to over 450.

Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel announced today the creation of a pilot training program for Indian policemen. Training will take place at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Roswell Employment Training Center, operated by the Thiokol Chemical Corp., at Roswell, N.M.

"This program will improve the basic skills of policemen serving Indian areas and thereby increase protection given Indian citizens. It also will help improve efficiency in the wide range of public service activities traditionally performed by police officers," Hickel said.

The first class of 40 will begin the nine-week training program March 2, he said. Trainees will be men with at least six months experience as tribal or Bureau of Indian Affairs policemen who have potential for development as career officers. Thiokol, which has corporate offices in Bristol, Pa., will conduct the program under a $40,000 Bureau of Indian Affairs contract.

"Indian communities deserve and need basic protection under our laws," Hickel said, "and well trained policemen are essential to that job. Further, the policeman is the most visible symbol of government at the local level. How well he performs his job determines in many respects how much trust and confidence a citizen has in his government.

Hickel noted that Thiokol has gained valuable experience in Indian adult education in the operation of the Employment Train­ing Center at Roswell and "this combination of private and Government initiative is an efficient and effective way to meet these pressing needs."

At present there are 550 members of the Indian Police Ser­vice, which consists of Bureau and tribal enforcement officers serving 280,000 Indian people on 83 reservations. On some reservations law enforcement is a state responsibility.

"The scattered populations and rugged terrain on many reservations make it imperative that we have the best trained men using the most modern equipment and techniques, if we are to get the job done properly," Hickel said.

Additional classes may be scheduled after a review of the results of the first session, he said. The new program is the first of its kind to be tried on a nationwide basis by BIA.

Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B. Morton today launched his Earth Week activities with an address to Indian educators attending a workshop on environmental education sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Park Service.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Louis R. Bruce and National Park Service Director George B. Hartzog also spoke at the opening session this morning in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Auditorium. Teachers of Indians from 14 states are participating in the Earth Week workshop which will continue Tuesday through Friday at Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland.

The Secretary praised the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Park Service for encouraging environmental education and congratulated the "first environmentalists" -- the American Indians -- for their leadership in the effort.

"It is appropriate and gratifying that Indians are among the first to relate ecological concerns to their education objectives," he stated. "Their history, religion, and philosophy all reflect a oneness with nature. In this sense one might call Indians the 'first environmentalists'."

The teachers, he added, are "pioneers on a new frontier of learning."

About 53,000 descendants of the "first environmentalists" are currently involved in environment-related studies in their classrooms and outdoor study areas.

The environmental approach to teaching being developed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs relies upon study materials developed in cooperation with the Park Service NEED (National Environmental Education Development) program and the companion NESA (National Environmental Study Areas) program. The Catoctin Mountain Park provides such a study area, a setting for classes out-of-doors.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs schools are among the first in the country to make use of the park study areas with the conclusion of the school year, a series of environmental awards for noteworthy projects in Indian schools and communities will be presented in cooperation with Indian tribal school board officials.

Secretary Morton's remarks were focused on the cultural tradition of American Indians who, he said, "viewed all living things as possessing the right to life." He called on teachers of Indian children to help their pupils assume the role of "action people in our national effort to improve the environment." He also said:

"I can think of no approach to modern education that will have more lasting meaning for school children than one which relates an examination of their environment to other spheres of human knowledge.”

The Secretary was introduced by Miss Wilma Victor, a Choctaw Indian and former BIA educator, whom the Secretary recently appointed as his Special Assistant for Indian Affairs.

Education administrators and environmental socialists from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Park Service are also participating in Earth Week workshop.

A total of 159 entries was submitted from 11 Bureau of Indian Affairs schools in the first travel poster contest sponsored by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs and ARROW Inc., an Indian interest organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Although all of the winners were from the Bureau's Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, N.M., David Young, BIA Art Director, was highly pleased with the general level of the entries.

First prize of $150 will go to Delbridge Honanie, Hopi; second prize, $100, to Adrian Pushetonequa, Sac and Fox; and third, $50, Ben Martinez, Navajo.

Three honorable mention awards of wrist watches were also made.

First honorable mention, Delbridge Honanie, also winner of the first prize; second, Joe Powskey, Hualapai-Hopi; and third, Ben Martinez.

Judges for the contest were: Earl Palmatier, Supervisor of Art, Prince Georges County Schools, Md.; Emil Hrebenach, Supervisor of Art, Montgomery County Schools, Rockville, Md.; Jack Hammond, Assistant to the Executive Secretary, National Art Education Association, and Washington, D.C.

ARROW and BIA officials plan to reprint some of the posters for sale to the public, with the proceeds to go toward scholarships for Indian students.

The winners were brought to Washington March 7 and are scheduled to reach New York March 13 for visits to prominent museums, and art schools.

Much has happened in our country since the last annual conference of the National Congress of American Indians--much of tragedy and much of accomplishment.

I am sure I do not need to recall to you that shattering event of last November. The friendship of the late President Kennedy for the American Indians and his warm, personal interest in seeing that the full resources of the Federal Government were employed in their behalf is well known to you. Our loss is great.

Yet, we can count ourselves fortunate in that the loss of one great President has led to the gain of another.

President Lyndon Johnson, moving forward with dedication to assume the commitments of his predecessor, has given them dimensions of his own. He has pledged himself to a war against injustice and a war against poverty and he has made it plain that he considers the American Indians to be in the forefront of such a war.

In a recent address to the graduating class of the University of Michigan, the President elaborated upon what he felt could be done to conquer poverty. He told that group of young Americans that, through the conquest of poverty, the people of this country will be free to explore the routes leading to the Great Society.

"The Great Society, “President Johnson said, "rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice--to which we are totally committed in our time.

"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community, It is a place where man can renew contact with nature, It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to understanding"

More than many other people in this country, the Indian people, I believe, have an understanding of what President Johnson meant when he referred to the Great Society. I believe, along with Oliver LaFarge, that the deeply embedded desire of most Indians is to prove themselves whole men in our world without ceasing to be Indians. But poverty--chronic, soul shattering poverty--blocks fulfillment of that desire.

The American people, all of us, will make a most important choice about our future and the future of our country in November.

From the viewpoint of the American Indian and his welfare, the choice seems clear-cut.

Many and serious problems confront this country's first inhabitants, but the platform just dictated for one of the major political parties by its candidate completely ignores the Indians and their problems.

In Barry Goldwater the Republican Party has a candidate for the highest office in the land who is acclaimed for his camera studies of picturesque Indians, but who in the past 12 years has opposed nearly every major effort to improve the big picture of poverty and neglect on Indian reservations.

A program for Indian people cannot be grown in a sterile atmosphere guided by a man who stands on a platform of callous silence and who writes:

"Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy.”

What can one say about "leaders" who are "for" Indians in the abstract but who work and vote against tangible programs which would enable their children to obtain decent educations, live in modern housing, and have greater employment opportunities.

The whole history of American progress is woven on the loom of community action. It is beyond my comprehension to understand the concepts of those who believe that every child is born with a hidden bootstrap that will command his destiny if only he has the gumption to pull it.

The whole sorry history of "land allotments" and tribal termination has emerged from such shallow thinking and if we do nothing else this year-...let us void the mistakes of the past.

The causes of Indian poverty have historic depth and some of these causes stem from the fluctuating nature of Federal-Indian relations.

For this reason, as our Government prepares itself for a frontal attack on Indian poverty, it is worth our time to consider for a moment the long, winding trail which it has already trod in its relations with Indian tribes.

Following the Revolutionary War, we dealt with Indians in much the same way as had our British forbears. At this time, our emphasis was primarily on controlling trade with the various tribes. Both England and France retained a great interest in the North American continent and the Indians were potentially useful allies in the event of future conflicts with these foreign powers. The ' role of the earliest Indian Commissioners was principally a diplomatic one. We might call them "commercial attaches" with portfolios from the War Department.

Later, as the government of the United States affirmed itself, relations with the Indians shifted. Diplomacy gave way to conquest, expulsion and resettlement, emphases which were to persist until after the Civil War.

The Allotment Act of 1887 has been the root of much of the poverty suffered by Indians today, although its architects had no such intention. Tribal holdings were individualized, and a 25 year period was allowed for "acculturation". The framers of the legislation had visions of Indian families moving easily and gracefully into the white man's way of life, tilling their allotted lands, raising chickens, and a few cows, owning a team of horses, and working from dawn to dusk with Sundays off to go to church. Few people understood that many Indians could not adapt to the shackles of such life when they had been accustomed to roaming the lands. As a result, two-thirds of the allotted lands--the best of the lands-- slipped out of Indian ownership. Public disillusionment led to renunciation of the Allotment Act--but not for nearly fifty years.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ushered in a new era in Indian Affairs, although I feel it was an era still much misunderstood. Frequently I hear references to the period of the 1930's as one in which Indians were encouraged to return to tribalism and to isolate themselves further from the mainstream of American life. With these conclusions, I could not disagree more.

The official record clearly demonstrates that the Indian Reorganization Act, as interpreted by the administration of Commissioner John Collier, was an instrument which, like the Allotment Act of 1887, was designed to achieve acculturation. However, the approach was from an entirely different philosophical base. Whereas the Allotment Act had called for the individualization of Indian lands, the Indian Reorganization Act encouraged the consolidation and enlargement of the tribal land base. Whereas the Allotment Act called for destruction of Indian communities, the Indian Reorganization Act urged their creation or preservation and their strengthening. Whereas the Allotment Act provided for destruction of Indian culture, the Indian Reorganization Act supported the continuation of those elements of the Indian way of life which could enrich the cultural heritage of the Nation and provide stability and security for Indian tribes and individuals during the period of assimilation.

Thus, the emphasis in Indian Affairs growing out of the Indian Reorganization Act was on the development of the individual within his own community. This emphasis is not unlike that of the Area Redevelopment program commenced in 1962 and the Economic Opportunity Act which President Johnson has proposed to Congress this year.

It is unfortunate that World War II and its aftermath interrupted and perverted the great social experiment begun in Indian affairs during the 1930's, for we shall never know how much farther down the road toward the elimination of Indian poverty we might be today had that experiment enjoyed three decades of continuous support, rather than the single decade allotted to it.

For much of the period since the end of the Second World War, the Federal Government's approach to Indian affairs has been dictated more by frustration and impatience than by understanding of the issues and realistic attempts to resolve them.

Indian affairs assumed the characteristics of that period of the 1950's which Archibald MacLeish once described as "a time out, a between time, a limbo, a Gaza Strip of history to be lived by unliving."

It was my awareness of conditions, as the result of my service on the Indian Affairs Sub-committee of the United States House of Representatives, which led me in 1961 to appoint a special task force to study the problems of Indian administration and to make recommendations for the benefit of both the Indians and the Nation.

The deliberations of that Task Force involved many thousands of people, Indians as well as non-Indians. Bill Keeler, as its Chairman, brought to the assignment an intimate knowledge of Indian needs and an ability to translate Indian desires into recommendations that form the framework of present policies. The Task Force included other people well known to you, also--Commissioner Philleo Nash, Associate Commissioner James Officer, and Deputy Commissioner John Crow, who served as a special adviser. Working with the Task Force on many occasions was Assistant Secretary John A. Carver. The continued presence of these men in the Department of the Interior has assured consistent efforts to carry out the goals laid down by the Task Force.

Those goals were: maximum economic self-sufficiency; full participation in American life; and equal citizenship privileges and responsibilities for all Indian people. Those goals recognize that Indian citizenship can never be fully realized, regardless of statutory rules, unless the Indian people are in a social and economic position to important--to wish to participate--to merge the wisdom and special qualities of their cultural heritage with that offered them by the rest of American society.

The past three and one-half years have been a test of how effective we have been in moving toward those goals. Some people say that the Indian Bureau is the advance guard in the war on poverty, I would say that the preliminary scouting has been done, and the areas of attack pinpointed: They are education and economic development, the bread and butter of any society in these times.

We are focusing on primary targets: Housing, vocational education, development and use of resources, credit to stimulate business and industry, and technical aid to tribes to generate foresighted planning in the use of settlement funds and other monies coming their way.

But when we talk about the 400 public housing units that have now been constructed, and the 3,000 planned, we need only to look around almost any reservation to see the need for 60,000 new homes for families who have lived too long in squalid shacks.

When we talk of the 3,500 adults enrolled in vocational training programs, we are talking in terms of less than one percent of the reservation Indian population--and I am certain that more than one percent could benefit from the chance to learn a skill that will put cash in the family sugar bowl.

When we point to the great gains in high school graduations among Indian chi1dren--and they great--we must still remember that only about 6,000 young people from the reservations entered college or technical training last year.

When we talk of promoting industry in order to promote job opportunities, we can point with pride to the record of 40 plants in operation on or near reservations, employing 1,500 workers, and to several other plants under construction promising additional jobs, But on the other hand are the fifty percent or more of able-bodied men and women who cannot find jobs for lack of training or local opportunity.

Funds invested in economic development--Bureau funds, tribal funds, and, greatest of all, private funds--are a sign of forward thinking and planning, We can point with pride to pyramiding credit for economic development: nearly $20 million in Federal funds, over $25 million in tribal funds--and $100 million in private funds are now invested in ,enterprises that are creating jobs. This total of $150 million may seem like a great deal of money--but it actually adds up to barely enough for a modest venture here and there, We are only scratching the surface of potential for development of enterprises on the reservations making use of the human and natural resources available.

There is no need to recite further statistics to an audience such as this. Suffice to say that it is going to take time and it is going to take money--and, above all, it is going to take will and effort on the part of the Indian people themselves--in order to plug up the seepage of our greatest resource, our human resource, into the spiritual swampland of chronic poverty.

Time, money, and will--the ingredients of victory over poverty.

Time is running out in the sense that the rate of change in the world around us is continually accelerating. Man's knowledge is doubling every ten years, they say, Meanwhile jobs for the unskilled are declining to a point where they are probably now less than five percent of the entire job market. We have to step up our own pace tremendously in order to make up for lost time.

Money--we have more money than ever before to spend in the battle against poverty. Until 1960, there had been less than three billion dollars spent by the Bureau during the entire preceding 160 years. But Congress has, in the past few years, been generous. Since 1960, more than $700 million has been authorized, and we have been able to break land, so to speak. But with the backlog of a century to eliminate, we cannot expect miracles of accomplishment all at once. Therefore, we are looking to the Economic Opportunity legislation to lend new dimensions to our present efforts.

If Congress enacts the Economic Opportunity legislation this summer--and we are confident it will--then there will be more funds available to the Indian people, not only through the Bureau of Indian Affairs but through the extension of many other services of many other Federal agencies.

And it is around the Economic Opportunity Act that I wish to consider the element of personal will and interest in self-improvement.

The proposed Economic Opportunity bill, paralleling the primary directions of the Indian Bureau, focuses on education as the basis for economic development. It recognizes that poverty has many causes, and that there is no instant cure. But it is premised on confidence that the American people, together, will make an unyielding long-term commitment to root out the many causes of poverty and will approach the task with willingness to try new ideas and new programs.

The bill directs attention to the needs of many young people for special education and training opportunities. It approaches the school dropout problem not from the static argument of "stay in school" but from the enticing prospect of a chance to live in a new environment, to learn a Skill, to earn while learning. The legislation would establish residential centers for vocational training and work experience--the youth camps of which you have already heard much. (I might add here that some of these camps will be designed for girls, although most of them will, in all likelihood, be for boys.)

The Department of the Interior has already developed plans to help establish these camps on public lands, Where youngsters can learn the ways of woodland existence and contribute to the improvement of forest and park areas, fish and wildlife refuges} and grasslands now eroding for want of vegetation, check dams and brush control.

With the concurrence of tribal authorities, some of the camps may be located on reservations. They can be of tremendous value to the tribes, not only as places where Indian youth may find inspiration to broaden their educational horizons, but where work on soil and forest conservation projects will help improve the natural resources.

The camps are, of course, only one aspect of the Economic Opportunity bill. It would broaden employment and training opportunities for adults who have been on jobless rolls for long periods, and would provide grants to finance agricultural enterprises and loans for family businesses.

Other provisions call for urban and rural community action programs to help mobilize entire communities for concerned attacks on poverty.

Here, again, are direct implications for Indians. One of the causes of Indian poverty has been a lack of cohesiveness in years past among tribes as organizational units. Community action programs mean action by the people of the community--action in whatever directions they feel would help improve their social and economic condition.

Community action calls for cooperation of Federal, State and local agencies and tribal authorities. We are already working with such agencies as the Public Housing Administration, the Area Redevelopment Administration, and the Public Health Service, and State and local health, education and welfare agencies. The interties would become stronger, we expect, under the Economic Opportunity program.

President Johnson has said that the Indian people are in the forefront in this war on poverty. What does this mean? I think it means that, despite the fact that the Indian people are among the poorest in the Nation, they are among the most likely to derive important benefits from the war on poverty.

The strength of the Indian culture--the closeness of family life, the oneness with nature, the generosity of spirit, the talent for learning--all of these are large assets to a people who are striving to move away from poverty.

I am reminded of a paragraph from the final chapter of John Collier's memoirs:

"These tribal Indians were keepers of something more than only their specific traditions and institutions of language, of ritual, of discipline, of art, of toil. They were among the keepers of that one value which men must live by even to the end, and foreswearing which, they worse than perish. That value was the conception of public good as the one and controlling consideration, and of public good as being no solely material thing, but the affirmation of the Spirit by man."

The Indian people, then, must surely understand that the price of sustaining the best of the Indian way of life need not be physical poverty. Quite the contrary, poverty inhibits the full flowering of the spirit in man. Because the Indian people have a heritage of convictions that has sustained them through a century of torment, they are now in a position to render leadership in, as well as become beneficiaries of, a national war on poverty.

I leave you with this thought, and with confidence that you will become active participants, for your own sake and for the sake of the country, in the war on poverty that should become mankind's greatest monument to peace.

Much has happened in our country since the last annual conference of the National Congress of American Indians--much of tragedy and much of accomplishment.

I am sure I do not need to recall to you that shattering event of last November. The friendship of the late President Kennedy for the American Indians and his warm, personal interest in seeing that the full resources of the Federal Government were employed in their behalf is well known to you. Our loss is great.

Yet, we can count ourselves fortunate in that the loss of one great President has led to the gain of another.

President Lyndon Johnson, moving forward with dedication to assume the commitments of his predecessor, has given them dimensions of his own. He has pledged himself to a war against injustice and a war against poverty and he has made it plain that he considers the American Indians to be in the forefront of such a war.

In a recent address to the graduating class of the University of Michigan, the President elaborated upon what he felt could be done to conquer poverty. He told that group of young Americans that, through the conquest of poverty, the people of this country will be free to explore the routes leading to the Great Society.

"The Great Society, “President Johnson said, "rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice--to which we are totally committed in our time.

"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community, It is a place where man can renew contact with nature, It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to understanding"

More than many other people in this country, the Indian people, I believe, have an understanding of what President Johnson meant when he referred to the Great Society. I believe, along with Oliver LaFarge, that the deeply embedded desire of most Indians is to prove themselves whole men in our world without ceasing to be Indians. But poverty--chronic, soul shattering poverty--blocks fulfillment of that desire.

The American people, all of us, will make a most important choice about our future and the future of our country in November.

From the viewpoint of the American Indian and his welfare, the choice seems clear-cut.

Many and serious problems confront this country's first inhabitants, but the platform just dictated for one of the major political parties by its candidate completely ignores the Indians and their problems.

In Barry Goldwater the Republican Party has a candidate for the highest office in the land who is acclaimed for his camera studies of picturesque Indians, but who in the past 12 years has opposed nearly every major effort to improve the big picture of poverty and neglect on Indian reservations.

A program for Indian people cannot be grown in a sterile atmosphere guided by a man who stands on a platform of callous silence and who writes:

"Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy.”

What can one say about "leaders" who are "for" Indians in the abstract but who work and vote against tangible programs which would enable their children to obtain decent educations, live in modern housing, and have greater employment opportunities.

The whole history of American progress is woven on the loom of community action. It is beyond my comprehension to understand the concepts of those who believe that every child is born with a hidden bootstrap that will command his destiny if only he has the gumption to pull it.

The whole sorry history of "land allotments" and tribal termination has emerged from such shallow thinking and if we do nothing else this year-...let us void the mistakes of the past.

The causes of Indian poverty have historic depth and some of these causes stem from the fluctuating nature of Federal-Indian relations.

For this reason, as our Government prepares itself for a frontal attack on Indian poverty, it is worth our time to consider for a moment the long, winding trail which it has already trod in its relations with Indian tribes.

Following the Revolutionary War, we dealt with Indians in much the same way as had our British forbears. At this time, our emphasis was primarily on controlling trade with the various tribes. Both England and France retained a great interest in the North American continent and the Indians were potentially useful allies in the event of future conflicts with these foreign powers. The ' role of the earliest Indian Commissioners was principally a diplomatic one. We might call them "commercial attaches" with portfolios from the War Department.

Later, as the government of the United States affirmed itself, relations with the Indians shifted. Diplomacy gave way to conquest, expulsion and resettlement, emphases which were to persist until after the Civil War.

The Allotment Act of 1887 has been the root of much of the poverty suffered by Indians today, although its architects had no such intention. Tribal holdings were individualized, and a 25 year period was allowed for "acculturation". The framers of the legislation had visions of Indian families moving easily and gracefully into the white man's way of life, tilling their allotted lands, raising chickens, and a few cows, owning a team of horses, and working from dawn to dusk with Sundays off to go to church. Few people understood that many Indians could not adapt to the shackles of such life when they had been accustomed to roaming the lands. As a result, two-thirds of the allotted lands--the best of the lands-- slipped out of Indian ownership. Public disillusionment led to renunciation of the Allotment Act--but not for nearly fifty years.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ushered in a new era in Indian Affairs, although I feel it was an era still much misunderstood. Frequently I hear references to the period of the 1930's as one in which Indians were encouraged to return to tribalism and to isolate themselves further from the mainstream of American life. With these conclusions, I could not disagree more.

The official record clearly demonstrates that the Indian Reorganization Act, as interpreted by the administration of Commissioner John Collier, was an instrument which, like the Allotment Act of 1887, was designed to achieve acculturation. However, the approach was from an entirely different philosophical base. Whereas the Allotment Act had called for the individualization of Indian lands, the Indian Reorganization Act encouraged the consolidation and enlargement of the tribal land base. Whereas the Allotment Act called for destruction of Indian communities, the Indian Reorganization Act urged their creation or preservation and their strengthening. Whereas the Allotment Act provided for destruction of Indian culture, the Indian Reorganization Act supported the continuation of those elements of the Indian way of life which could enrich the cultural heritage of the Nation and provide stability and security for Indian tribes and individuals during the period of assimilation.

Thus, the emphasis in Indian Affairs growing out of the Indian Reorganization Act was on the development of the individual within his own community. This emphasis is not unlike that of the Area Redevelopment program commenced in 1962 and the Economic Opportunity Act which President Johnson has proposed to Congress this year.

It is unfortunate that World War II and its aftermath interrupted and perverted the great social experiment begun in Indian affairs during the 1930's, for we shall never know how much farther down the road toward the elimination of Indian poverty we might be today had that experiment enjoyed three decades of continuous support, rather than the single decade allotted to it.

For much of the period since the end of the Second World War, the Federal Government's approach to Indian affairs has been dictated more by frustration and impatience than by understanding of the issues and realistic attempts to resolve them.

Indian affairs assumed the characteristics of that period of the 1950's which Archibald MacLeish once described as "a time out, a between time, a limbo, a Gaza Strip of history to be lived by unliving."

It was my awareness of conditions, as the result of my service on the Indian Affairs Sub-committee of the United States House of Representatives, which led me in 1961 to appoint a special task force to study the problems of Indian administration and to make recommendations for the benefit of both the Indians and the Nation.

The deliberations of that Task Force involved many thousands of people, Indians as well as non-Indians. Bill Keeler, as its Chairman, brought to the assignment an intimate knowledge of Indian needs and an ability to translate Indian desires into recommendations that form the framework of present policies. The Task Force included other people well known to you, also--Commissioner Philleo Nash, Associate Commissioner James Officer, and Deputy Commissioner John Crow, who served as a special adviser. Working with the Task Force on many occasions was Assistant Secretary John A. Carver. The continued presence of these men in the Department of the Interior has assured consistent efforts to carry out the goals laid down by the Task Force.

Those goals were: maximum economic self-sufficiency; full participation in American life; and equal citizenship privileges and responsibilities for all Indian people. Those goals recognize that Indian citizenship can never be fully realized, regardless of statutory rules, unless the Indian people are in a social and economic position to important--to wish to participate--to merge the wisdom and special qualities of their cultural heritage with that offered them by the rest of American society.

The past three and one-half years have been a test of how effective we have been in moving toward those goals. Some people say that the Indian Bureau is the advance guard in the war on poverty, I would say that the preliminary scouting has been done, and the areas of attack pinpointed: They are education and economic development, the bread and butter of any society in these times.

We are focusing on primary targets: Housing, vocational education, development and use of resources, credit to stimulate business and industry, and technical aid to tribes to generate foresighted planning in the use of settlement funds and other monies coming their way.

But when we talk about the 400 public housing units that have now been constructed, and the 3,000 planned, we need only to look around almost any reservation to see the need for 60,000 new homes for families who have lived too long in squalid shacks.

When we talk of the 3,500 adults enrolled in vocational training programs, we are talking in terms of less than one percent of the reservation Indian population--and I am certain that more than one percent could benefit from the chance to learn a skill that will put cash in the family sugar bowl.

When we point to the great gains in high school graduations among Indian chi1dren--and they great--we must still remember that only about 6,000 young people from the reservations entered college or technical training last year.

When we talk of promoting industry in order to promote job opportunities, we can point with pride to the record of 40 plants in operation on or near reservations, employing 1,500 workers, and to several other plants under construction promising additional jobs, But on the other hand are the fifty percent or more of able-bodied men and women who cannot find jobs for lack of training or local opportunity.

Funds invested in economic development--Bureau funds, tribal funds, and, greatest of all, private funds--are a sign of forward thinking and planning, We can point with pride to pyramiding credit for economic development: nearly $20 million in Federal funds, over $25 million in tribal funds--and $100 million in private funds are now invested in ,enterprises that are creating jobs. This total of $150 million may seem like a great deal of money--but it actually adds up to barely enough for a modest venture here and there, We are only scratching the surface of potential for development of enterprises on the reservations making use of the human and natural resources available.

There is no need to recite further statistics to an audience such as this. Suffice to say that it is going to take time and it is going to take money--and, above all, it is going to take will and effort on the part of the Indian people themselves--in order to plug up the seepage of our greatest resource, our human resource, into the spiritual swampland of chronic poverty.

Time, money, and will--the ingredients of victory over poverty.

Time is running out in the sense that the rate of change in the world around us is continually accelerating. Man's knowledge is doubling every ten years, they say, Meanwhile jobs for the unskilled are declining to a point where they are probably now less than five percent of the entire job market. We have to step up our own pace tremendously in order to make up for lost time.

Money--we have more money than ever before to spend in the battle against poverty. Until 1960, there had been less than three billion dollars spent by the Bureau during the entire preceding 160 years. But Congress has, in the past few years, been generous. Since 1960, more than $700 million has been authorized, and we have been able to break land, so to speak. But with the backlog of a century to eliminate, we cannot expect miracles of accomplishment all at once. Therefore, we are looking to the Economic Opportunity legislation to lend new dimensions to our present efforts.

If Congress enacts the Economic Opportunity legislation this summer--and we are confident it will--then there will be more funds available to the Indian people, not only through the Bureau of Indian Affairs but through the extension of many other services of many other Federal agencies.

And it is around the Economic Opportunity Act that I wish to consider the element of personal will and interest in self-improvement.

The proposed Economic Opportunity bill, paralleling the primary directions of the Indian Bureau, focuses on education as the basis for economic development. It recognizes that poverty has many causes, and that there is no instant cure. But it is premised on confidence that the American people, together, will make an unyielding long-term commitment to root out the many causes of poverty and will approach the task with willingness to try new ideas and new programs.

The bill directs attention to the needs of many young people for special education and training opportunities. It approaches the school dropout problem not from the static argument of "stay in school" but from the enticing prospect of a chance to live in a new environment, to learn a Skill, to earn while learning. The legislation would establish residential centers for vocational training and work experience--the youth camps of which you have already heard much. (I might add here that some of these camps will be designed for girls, although most of them will, in all likelihood, be for boys.)

The Department of the Interior has already developed plans to help establish these camps on public lands, Where youngsters can learn the ways of woodland existence and contribute to the improvement of forest and park areas, fish and wildlife refuges} and grasslands now eroding for want of vegetation, check dams and brush control.

With the concurrence of tribal authorities, some of the camps may be located on reservations. They can be of tremendous value to the tribes, not only as places where Indian youth may find inspiration to broaden their educational horizons, but where work on soil and forest conservation projects will help improve the natural resources.

The camps are, of course, only one aspect of the Economic Opportunity bill. It would broaden employment and training opportunities for adults who have been on jobless rolls for long periods, and would provide grants to finance agricultural enterprises and loans for family businesses.

Other provisions call for urban and rural community action programs to help mobilize entire communities for concerned attacks on poverty.

Here, again, are direct implications for Indians. One of the causes of Indian poverty has been a lack of cohesiveness in years past among tribes as organizational units. Community action programs mean action by the people of the community--action in whatever directions they feel would help improve their social and economic condition.

Community action calls for cooperation of Federal, State and local agencies and tribal authorities. We are already working with such agencies as the Public Housing Administration, the Area Redevelopment Administration, and the Public Health Service, and State and local health, education and welfare agencies. The interties would become stronger, we expect, under the Economic Opportunity program.

President Johnson has said that the Indian people are in the forefront in this war on poverty. What does this mean? I think it means that, despite the fact that the Indian people are among the poorest in the Nation, they are among the most likely to derive important benefits from the war on poverty.

The strength of the Indian culture--the closeness of family life, the oneness with nature, the generosity of spirit, the talent for learning--all of these are large assets to a people who are striving to move away from poverty.

I am reminded of a paragraph from the final chapter of John Collier's memoirs:

"These tribal Indians were keepers of something more than only their specific traditions and institutions of language, of ritual, of discipline, of art, of toil. They were among the keepers of that one value which men must live by even to the end, and foreswearing which, they worse than perish. That value was the conception of public good as the one and controlling consideration, and of public good as being no solely material thing, but the affirmation of the Spirit by man."

The Indian people, then, must surely understand that the price of sustaining the best of the Indian way of life need not be physical poverty. Quite the contrary, poverty inhibits the full flowering of the spirit in man. Because the Indian people have a heritage of convictions that has sustained them through a century of torment, they are now in a position to render leadership in, as well as become beneficiaries of, a national war on poverty.

I leave you with this thought, and with confidence that you will become active participants, for your own sake and for the sake of the country, in the war on poverty that should become mankind's greatest monument to peace.

Award of a $1,998,581 contract for the construction of school facilities to provide for 360 additional pupils at Aneth, Utah, on the Navajo Indian Reservation was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract calls for the construction of two 192-pupil dormitories, a 14-classroom instruction building, a kitchen and dining hall, a storage and maintenance building, employees living quarters and garages.

These facilities, when complete, will replace the existing school plant, built 25 years ago, and will expand the capacity of the school from 60 pupils to 420. The existing school facilities will be demolished when the new facilities are completed.

The successful bidder was B&E Constructors, Inc., of Albuquerque, N. Mex. Nine higher bids were received, ranging from $2,064,367 to $2,739,500.