OPA

Award of a $701,853 contract calling for the construction of more than 23 miles of highway to promote tourism and facilitate travel through the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

This project will complete construction of approximately 400 miles of primary reservation roads for Routes 1 and 3 authorized by a 1958 amendment to the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950.

Route 1, an east-west highway in the northern part of the Navajo Reservation, provides the increasing tourist and commercial traffic on the reservation with a broad, all-weather, paved road stretching 183 miles from U. S. Route 89 near Cameron, Arizona, to the Four Corners area where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet, and on to Shiprock, New Mexico.

Route 1 was officially dedicated in September 1962 by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, who stated at the time:

"I know what this new highway means to the Navajo people, not only in terms of a greater tourist industry for their new Tribal Parks Program but in such fundamental matters as better access to doctors and hospitals, better educational opportunities for their children, more rapid economic development and improved relationships and contacts with surrounding communities."

Route 3, the main east-west road in the southern part of the Navajo and Hopi Reservations, spans 164 miles of reservation lands from Tuba City, Arizona, to U. S. Route 666 north of Gallup, New Mexico.

The two highways have already been incorporated into the State Highway Systems of Arizona and New Mexico and will be operated and maintained at State expense.

The successful bidder was James Hamilton Construction Co., of Grants, N. Mex. Two additional bids reaching a high of $785,587 were received.

The Tyonek Indians of Alaska, with a population of about 200 persons, have accepted oil and gas lease bids totaling almost $11 million for some 8,500 acres of their reservation, the Department of the Interior announced today.

The council members of the tiny village of Tyonek will decide this week whether to accept bids for oil and gas leases on 20 tracts comprising the remainder of their reservation of some 26,000 acres, the Bureau of Indian Affairs lid. The Bureau acts as trustee for the Tyonek people.

All revenues from the competitive sale go to the Indian members of the reservation.

The Tyonek Reserve was established in 1915 for Indian use. The land is about 50 miles from Anchorage and is across Cook Inlet in an area of considerable oil exploration activity.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, following the village council's approval of the high offers, is notifying successful bidders to complete their leases, pay the balance of their bonus bids and meet other requirements of the sale.

The 31 tracts of Tyonek land were put up for lease sale on May 6 in Anchorage. High bids accepted on the 11 tracts totaled $10,964,734.

Seeking to encourage broader private financing of economic development on Indian reservations, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall has asked Congress for authority to establish an Indians' Loan Guaranty and Insurance Fund of $15 million under administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Department anticipates that this fund should result in providing $100 million or more of financing to Indians from non-governmental sources.

Such a fund would be used to guarantee or insure loans made by private lenders either to Indian organizations or to individuals of one-quarter or more Indian blood.

Guaranties would be used in financing the larger tribal enterprises or industries and would be limited to 80 percent of the loan. Insurance would probably be used for the bulk of the smaller loans qualifying under the program and would cover losses up to 15 percent of the total lending, Secretary Udall said.

The proposal is in full accord with recommendations in the “Report of the Committee on Federal Credit Programs" submitted to the late President Kennedy in February.1963. The Presidentially appointed committee included the Secretary of the Treasury, Director of the Budget Bureau, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

Pointing out that the Department also has asked Congress to permit a $35 million increase in the authorized amount of the Indian Bureau's revolving credit fund, Secretary Udall stressed that much broader private financing will also be needed to make fully effective the accelerated economic development program for Indians now being undertaken by the Bureau.

"Even if, the authorization is increased by the $35 million pending," he added, "the fund will still be inadequate to meet the needs of the Indians for financing. The economic development program is only now getting underway, but indications are that large sums on a credit basis will be required to put many economically feasible projects into operation."

Under the proposed bill, the guaranties or insurance would be provided only to applicants unable to obtain financing from customary sources on reasonable terms. The maximum loan to an Indian organization that could be guaranteed or insured would be $1 million. In the case of loans to individual Indians, the top limit would be $60,000. The maturity period of loans qualifying under the program would be limited to 30 years.

The bill also includes several other provisions covering administration of both the guaranty and insurance features.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today that five prominent figures in the art world--Commissioners of the Department's Arts and Crafts Board--will be among the guests at the invitational opening of an Indian art exhibit, Monday, May 11. The exhibit features the re-activating of the Department’s art gallery after nearly two decades.

The Board's Commissioners, all serving without pay, are Dr. Frederick J. Dockstader, chairman of the Board; Vincent Price; Rene D'Harnoncourt; Lloyd New Kiva; and Erich Kohlberg.

Vincent Price, well-known actor, is a recognized art authority. He holds membership on the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, the Board of Archives on American Art, the Whitney Museum Friends of American Art, and the White House Committee on Painting. He is president of the Art Council of the University of California and has lectured on primitive and modern art, and on the Letters of Van Gogh.

Rene D'Harnoncourt has been associated with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board since 1936, as general manager from 1937 to 1944, and as chairman of the Board for 17 years. A native of Vienna, Austria, he is Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and vice president of the Museum of Primitive Art.

Lloyd New Kiva, a Cherokee Indian, is Director of Arts at the Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico, a school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior. He is a prominent designer of textiles.

The Department of the Interior today approved four road construction contracts Which are expected to improve economic and educational opportunities for Indians on four reservations in South Dakota.

Totaling $708,346, the contracts will make possible better school bus service, better marketing of farm and ranch products, and better access for tourists, and new jobs for Indian workmen during the coming year, Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs said.

The road projects are scheduled for the Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Crow Creek and Sisseton Reservations. The contracts parallel similar resource development efforts on Indian lands as one phase of the Bureau's efforts to stimulate employment and to create desirable conditions for industrial and business development on reservations.

Funds for road building on reservations derive from Bureau of Indian Affairs road program money. Contracts are awarded on a bid basis.

Under a contract for $128,306.36, the Van Buskirk Construction Company of Sioux City, Iowa, will grade and drain 6.6 miles of the Little White River Road on the Rosebud Reservation in Todd County, South Dakota. This road will permit tourist travel into the Little White River Valley recreational area, make school bus service available to 30 Indian families, and give them a better transportation link between farm and market. Five bids ranging to $179,403.76 were received for this project.

E. Stoltenberg and Son of St. Paul, Nebraska, was the successful bidder on the Pine Ridge Reservation contract for $189,204.44. Work under this contract covers grading and draining of the Slim Buttes and Red Shirt Table roads to U. S. Highway 18. Connecting links in the reservation road system, these roads will provide access to Red Shirt Village and school bus service to the newly constructed Oglala No.5 Day School operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Seven bids ranging to $239,210.52 were received for the project.

Grading and gravel surfacing work will be done on 9.4 miles of the Big Bend Farm Station road under the Crow Creek contract for $180,6/+1.19. This road provides access to a recreational area on the north shore of the Big Bend Dam Reservoir, as well as farm-to-market and mail route service in the Hughes County section of the Crow Creek Reservation. Brezina Construction Company, Inc." of Rapid City, South Dakota, was the successful bidder. A total of 12 bids ranging to $212,498.32 were received.

The Sisseton Reservation contract for $210,194.48 covers grading, bituminous surfacing, and construction of a bridge on 7.5 miles of a heavily traveled farm to-market, school bus and mail route road that extends east from U, S. Highway 81 toward Browns Valley. The contract was awarded to the John Dieseth Company of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, who submitted the lowest of six bids ranging to $266,060.94,

Award of a $5,855,200 contract for the construction of school facilities in Many Farms, Apache County, Arizona, on the Navajo Indian Reservation, was announced today by the :Department of the Interior. The facilities will serve to relieve the overcrowded conditions prevailing at Pinon and Low Mountain schools and will provide needed school accommodations for many Navajo children in the area who are not presently in school.

The new facilities to be constructed include a five-building academic complex comprising 34 classrooms, a multipurpose room, a 1,000-pupil instructional materials center, six l68-pupil dormitories, a 1,200-pupil kitchen dining hall, employees' quarters, garages, and a maintenance building. The project also provides for the paving of walks, streets, and drives, and complete utility systems.

The successful bidder was Bateson Cheves Construction Co., Mesa, Arizona. Three higher bids ranging from $6,070,593 to $6,233,000 were received.

The Department of the Interior has submitted to Congress proposed legislation providing for disposition of three judgment funds, now totaling approximately $4.5 million, recovered from the Government by the Miami Indians of Oklahoma and Indiana.

Largest of the original judgments--$4,647,467--now stands at $4,182,720 following payment of attorneys' fees and other expenses. It was awarded by the Indian Claims Commission, and appropriated by Congress, to descendants of the Miami Tribe or Nation as it existed in 1818, Today the former Nation consists of two separate and distinct groups: The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Miami Indians of Indiana. The judgment was based on a claim by the Indians that they were inadequately compensated for lands ceded to the United States in Ohio and Indiana nearly 150 years ago.

In two additional judgments, the Commission awarded $349,193 (now $308,572) to the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and $64,738 (now $56,356) to the. Miami Indians of Indiana as settlement for lands in Kansas ceded to the Government in 1854.

The Judgment funds are deposited in the United States Treasury, at 4 percent interest, to the credit of the Miami Tribes.

Legislation proposed by the Department provides that the governing body of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, subject to approval by the Secretary of the Interior, shall decide precisely how it will program the Tribe's remaining judgment of approximately $308,000.

Since the Miami Tribe of Indiana, on the other hand, is not an organized body, the Department proposes a per capita distribution of approximately $56,000 among Indian beneficiaries.

Finally, the Department's proposal would authorize a per capita distribution of the $4.6 million judgment, after payment of all expenses, to those meeting rigid eligibility requirements.

Should the Department's proposal become law, adoption of specific regulations governing the preparation of membership rolls would be announced and would be published in the Federal Register at an appropriate time.

The appointment of women to two major (Grade 15) positions in the Bureau of Indian Affairs was announced today by the Secretary of the Interior.

Miss Wilma Louise Victor, a Choctaw Indian of Idabel, Okla, , was named superintendent of the Intermountain Indian School, an off-reservation boarding school operated by the Bureau at Brigham City, Utah.

Mrs. Virginia S. Hart of Arlington, Va., a native of Worcester, Mass., was named information officer for the Bureau in Washington, D. C. Miss Victor's service with the Bureau of Indian Affairs dates to 1941, when she started as an apprentice teacher at the Shiprock Boarding School in New Mexico. She enlisted in the Army in 1943 and served as a first lieutenant until 1946. She taught at Idabel High School two years and returned to the Bureau in 1949 as principal at Intermountain School, then being established.

In 1961, Miss Victor became principal of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Institute of American Indian Art at Santa Fe, N. Mex., where she organized and directed the academic program.

Intermountain Indian School, to which Miss Victor is returning, has an enrollment of approximately 2,100 in the 12-to-18 age group. Its faculty numbers about 300.

Miss Victor, born November 5, 1919, has a Bachelor of Science degree from Wisconsin State College and a master's degree in school administration from the University of Oklahoma.

Mrs., Hart, the new information officer for the Bureau, attended Worcester State Teachers College and received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Clark University at Worcester, Mass., in 1945. She holds a Master of Arts degree from the American University in Washington, D. C., where she also has been a guest lecturer in the Department of Communications.

Before her appointment to the Bureau she was an information officer with the U. S. Office of Education, Division of Vocational Education and Manpower Training. Previous government service has included information or editorial positions with the Department of State and the Voice of America. She joined the Office of Education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1961.

Mrs. Hart was born July 9, 1922.

To stimulate greater economic growth and development on Indian reservations, the Department of the Interior has asked Congress to increase by $35 million the authorized amount of the revolving loan program of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Under a bill proposed by the Department, the authorization for the program would be boosted from $27 million to $62 million and the Bureau would be permitted to make grants of not more than 20 percent of the borrowed amount in connection with the loans under certain circumstances.

In drafting its proposal, the Department took into consideration the "Report of the Committee on Federal Credit Programs," which was submitted to the late President Kennedy February 11, 1963. The Presidentially appointed committee included the Secretary of the Treasury, Director of the Budget Bureau, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

Present loan funds of the Bureau of Indian Affairs are inadequate to meet the needs for financing Indian economic enterprises, Assistant Secretary John A. Carver, Jr., pointed out. Although Indians received an estimated $77 million of financing from sources serving other citizens in 1961, the total of unfulfilled commitments and pending applications for Bureau loans is nearly $30 million greater than the available cash balance.

"It has become practically impossible to rehabilitate Indians entirely on a credit basis," Mr. Carver said. "If an Indian borrows money in an amount sufficient to finance an economic unit, plus funds for operating and family living expenses until the enterprise comes into production, the borrower's debt load pyramids of a point where repayment within a reasonable period of time is almost impossible. The borrower may demonstrate industry and operate his credit... financed enterprise successfully, and still be unable to work himself into a solvent position.

"In order to reduce his debt burden he may go to work for wages in order to meet family living expenses. Such wage work usually is available only during periods when the borrower's own enterprise needs close attention. Wage work thus can jeopardize successful operation of the borrower's credit-financed enterprise. The borrower is caught in an impasse. He can either carry a burdensome debt load, with questionable repayment capacity, or endanger the successful operation of his enterprise by lack of attention thereto with an equally adverse effect upon repayment capacity."

The grant feature of the proposed legislation is intended to help borrowers, including both Indian organizations and individual Indians, during initial loan periods and times of emergency. In many cases, Assistant Secretary Carver observed, a grant may make the difference between success and failure of an Indian enterprise financed from the fund. Grants would not be made in connection with all loans, however, but only in cases of clearly justifiable need.

The bill proposed by the Department would also consolidate the existing three separate loan funds of the Bureau of Indian Affairs into one.

The Department of the Interior has brought together the most comprehensive collection of twentieth century American Indian paintings, sculpture and handicrafts ever assembled to premier the reopening of the Department's gallery and museum May 11.

The exhibit will include paintings from the priceless collection of the late William and Leslie Van Ness Denman, patrons of Indian art for several decades; Tell-known contemporary American Indian artists; and a selection of student art contributed by schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Departmental gallery, a feature of the Interior Department's main building at 18th and C Streets, NW., had for the past several years been used as storage and office space until Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall requested that it be reactivated as a museum for the American people.

The Secretary and Mrs. Udall have extended invitations to more than 500 prominent men and women throughout the country to attend the opening reception, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Monday, May 11.

A briefing for the press will take place between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. of the same evening.

The Indian art exhibit will be open to the public weekdays between May 12 and October 2.

FACT SHEET DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR GALLERY EXHIBIT "SCHOOLS OF AMERICAN AND ESKIMO INDIAN ART"

STUDENT ART COLLECTION

Within the 284 schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian students from Florida to Alaska have contributed paintings, wood sculptures, and ceramics and craft items. Most notable in this grouping is the collection of wall hangings, paintings, pottery and carvings created by Indian students now attending the Institute of American Indian Art, a technical school at Santa Fe, New Mexico. These items were designed to decorate the Miccosukee tribal center in southwest Florida, a project currently under construction. Several of the student contributors have already attained prominence in national exhibits. Award-winners to be represented in the student show include Larry Bird (Laguna), Hank Gobin (Snohomish), and Harry Walters (Navajo), ceramic artists; Arden Hosetmsavit (Apache), Benedict Snowball (Eskimo) and Douglas Crowder (Choctaw), sculptors; Larry Bird (Laguna) and Harry Walters (Navajo), painters; and Elaine Rice (Seneca) and Eliza Vigil (Tesuque), weavers.

THE DENMAN COLLECTION

William Denman, cowboy, lawyer, judge and art lover, and his wife, Leslie Van Ness, acquired during their lifetimes a significant collection of paintings by American Indians, most of whom attained their prominence during the first half of the twentieth century. Fifty-nine paintings from the Denman collection will be on exhibit, most of them by Indians of the Southwest and representative of the early exponents of modern Indian art, largely religious in theme and stylized in motif. Artists in the Denman group include Fred Kabotie, Ma-pe-Wi, Awa Tsireh, Monroe Tsa-toke, Harrison Begay, Pableta Velarde, and Allen Houser