Top elected officers of 29 Indian tribes from Oklahoma, Kansas and Mississippi have been invited to meet with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons at Dallas, Texas, in a series of sessions beginning December 3 and ending December 13, the Department of the Interior announced today.
The twofold purpose of the meetings is to give the tribal representatives an Opportunity for discussing local problems with Commissioner Emmons and to afford the Commissioner an opportunity to explain more fully the present aims and policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The first series of meetings will be held from December 3 through 5, inclusive, and will include representatives of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, the Pawnee, and the Ponca Tribes of Oklahoma and the Potawatomi and Kickapoo Tribes of Kansas.
Further meetings are scheduled for December 7 through 9, inclusive, and will involve representatives of the following tribes, all from Oklahoma: Wichita (including Delaware), Caddo, Fort Sill Apache, Otoe and Missouri, Tonkawa, Absentee Shawnee, Citizen Band of Potawatomi, Iowa, Kickapoo, and Sac and Fox.
The third meeting series will take place December 11 through 13, inclusive, and will be attended by representatives from the Eastern Shawnee, Quapaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Osage, Kaw, and Seneca Cayuga Tribes of Oklahoma; the Iowa and Sac and Fox Tribes of Kansas; and the Choctaw Tribe of Mississippi.
All the meetings will be held in the Statler Hilton Hotel and time will be provided both for general sessions and for each of the tribal delegations to confer individually with the Commissioner.
To preserve an informal "round table" atmosphere and avoid a “convention” type of meeting, attendance is limited to three delegates from each tribal group. In the great majority of cases, invitations have been extended to the chairman, the vice chairman, and the secretary of the tribal council.
The Dallas meetings are the ninth and last in a series of sessions which Commissioner Emmons has been holding with tribal representatives throughout the country since last July. The eight earlier conferences were as follows: (1) at Omaha, Nebr., July 19 through 25, with tribes of North and South Dakota and Nebraska; (2) at Denver, Colo., July 28 through August 2, with tribes of Colorado and New Mexico (including Navajo); (3) at El Paso, Tex., August 20 through 25; with tribes of Arizona (except Navajo); (4) at Salt Lake City, Utah, September 6 through 11, with tribes of Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana; (5) at Seattle, Wash., September 13 and 14, with tribes of western Washington; (6) at Portland, Oreg., September 17 and 18, with Oregon tribes; (7) at Boise, Idaho, September 20 through 22, with Idaho tribes; and (8) at Des Moines, Iowa, October 15 through 20, with tribes of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Commenting on these earlier meetings, Commissioner Emmons said that they have been “tremendously helpful in bringing about a better understanding of what the Bureau is aiming to do and how we are going about it.“
“At all of these meetings,” he added, “we have emphasized our threefold objective of better health, adequate education, and economic and social development. After participating in these discussions, the tribal representatives in the great majority of cases have adopted resolutions, entirely on their own initiative, expressing approval of these objectives and support for the program.”
At the Dallas meeting the Bureau will be represented not only by Commissioner Emmons but also by key members from the Washington staff and the area office staffs at Anadarko and Muskogee, Okla.
Commissioner Emmons will hold a press conference in his suite at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Dallas at 3 p.m., Sunday, December 2. All interested parties will be welcome.
