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.
