This is a proud and happy day for the Nez Perce Indians and for their many non-Indian neighbors and friends as well. This new community at Lapwai which we are dedicating today and the one dedicated at Kamiah yesterday could not have been built without the dual effort of the Tribe and the Federal Government. Tribal funds and Federal funds through the Accelerated Public Works program--have been pooled to erect two structures that symbolize the growing spirit of community action among the Nez Perce Tribe.
We are gathered here today for a dedication ceremony. But the real dedication of these two buildings will be by the men, women, young people, and children who will use them in the years ahead. We know the new centers will be used for many purposes--for athletic games and exhibitions, for banquets and dances, for tribal meetings and lectures, for concerts and exhibits--and for other similar occasions signaling the community spirit of the people.
Community centers, such as this beautiful building at Lapwai, and its companion building at Kamiah, also on this Reservation, are monuments to a war on poverty. They help combat poverty of spirit because they bring people together to exchange ideas and share experiences.
The building of community centers is an important part of the total Bureau effort to combat Indian poverty and help the Indian people attain in full the experience of participating citizenship. There are 64 such structures built" enlarged, or renovated on reservations in the last two years with Bureau aid. Another 18 have been built or are being built with loans or grants under APW. Some are multipurpose buildings with gymnasium, auditorium, and kitchen. Others are more modest. But all of them reflect the felt needs of the people for a place to come together.
Some important discussions have been held in community centers--discussions that have led to changes in education programs, to creation of new business and industry, to improvements in management of natural resources. Community centers can be, and have been, strategy planning sites for the war on Indian poverty.
As you know, we in the present administration in Washington, first under President Kennedy and now under President Johnson, have been striving the last three years to raise the economic level of life on the Indian reservations. This has involved us in many programs to develop for income or for jobs the natural resources of the reservations--their fields, their forests, their mineral deposits, and even their beauty and scenery for the attraction of tourists.
But we nearly always find that we cannot get very far in this direction without encountering the problem of first developing the human resources of the reservations--their men, women, and children. That is why more than half the generous appropriations which Congress has been giving us the past few years is devoted to education.
Money, even though schools, cannot, however, accomplish everything. We need on the Indian reservations, among the Indian people, themselves, I believe, a still greater concern by adults for both the opportunities and responsibilities of young people. We need to find new ways to reduce the number of dropouts from school and to lessen juvenile delinquency. We need to encourage young people to do the best they are capable of, and to discourage them from the idleness that too often breeds violence and lawlessness. It is to this important end that the two new community centers may make their most vital contribution.
Of all the Indian people, the Nez Perce have the finest precedent for giving first thought to the welfare of their children. You may remember that when Chief Joseph and his valiant band were finally hunted down and surrounded by General Miles' troops, the chiefs held a council to decide whether they should surrender. Several of the chiefs wanted to fight on. But Joseph pointed to the starving women and children in the shelter pits and to the babies that were crying around them.
"For myself I do not care," he said. "It is for them I am going to surrender."
In the spirit of Chief Joseph, these buildings might well be dedicated to community concern for the growth in body and mind of the present generation of Nez Perce children.
