Barney Old Coyote, a Crow Indian and career civil servant, has been appointed coordinator of the youth conservation camps for the Job Corps and related antipoverty programs of the Department, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced today.
In announcing his personal choice of Old Coyote, Secretary Udall said, "He has grassroots knowledge of the conservation programs of this Department. He has played an intimate and leading role in helping people to help themselves. He is especially well qualified to give leadership to this Department's efforts to blend natural resources conservation needs with human needs so as to provide the disadvantaged young people of this Nation an opportunity to become fully qualified builders of the Great Society."
Born January 10, 1923, on the Crow Reservation in Montana, Old Coyote has held varied assignments with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs since 1949 in Montana and the Dakotas. His most recent assignment was as assistant superintendent of the Rocky Boy's Reservation at Box Elder, Montana.
Udall noted that one of the chief duties of the Department in the Administration's war on poverty will be to help raise the living standards of the nearly 400,000 Indians on reservations. He said Old Coyote had demonstrated unusual talent in community relations work with Indians during his long Government service.
Old Coyote attended elementary and high schools in Hardin, Montana; Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas; and Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II as an aerial engineer-gunner, flying 50 missions in the European and Mediterranean Theaters.
He entered civilian Government service with the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Crow Agency as a clerk, later being assigned engineering duties in the Bureau's soil and moisture conservation program there. Transferred into real estate activity for the Bureau, he served as a realty officer at Fort Yates, North Dakota, and at Aberdeen and Rosebud, South Dakota.
Old Coyote was selected for the Bureau's management intern training program in 1958, and served as an administrative assistant at Aberdeen until his transfer to the Rosebud agency. He received a Bureau incentive award in 1957 for designing and instituting a new leasing procedure on Indian-owned trust lands.
Married to a Winnebago Indian from Nebraska, he is the father of six children. He is a member of the American Legion, veterans of Foreign Wars, Lions Club and Knights of Columbus; has been active in Boy Scout work; and has been much in demand as a public speaker, acting as master of ceremonies at many Indian celebrations, commencements and similar events. In his younger days he played baseball with the old amateur Midland Empire League in Montana, and participated in basketball, golf and boxing in high school.
