Laura Bergt, a noted Eskimo leader, has been appointed as one of the five Commissioners of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe announced today.
Mrs. Bergt currently serves as one of the distinguished members of President Ford's American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council, the Native American Council of Regents of the Institute of American Indian Arts, and on various Alaska state commissions and boards concerned with Native American education and cultural development, such as the University of Alaska Village Arts and Crafts Upgrade Committee and the Alaska state Rural Affairs Commission. She is a former member of the National Council on Indian Opportunity, and served with the Alaska State Native Land Claims Task Force. Mrs. Bergt resides in Fairbanks, Alaska.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Board's priority concerns are the protection of Native American artists and craftsmen and the expansion of their cultural opportunities. The Board provides professional advisory services and operates three museums located in Browning, Montana, Rapid City, South Dakota, and Anadarko, Oklahoma, which function as centers for exhibition, study and the sale of authentic contemporary Native American arts and crafts.
Other Commissioners on the Indian Arts and Crafts Board are Lloyd H. New, Chairman, and Director of the Institute of American Indian Arts of Santa Fe, New Mexico; Royal B. Hassrick, author and anthropologist specializing in Plains Indian culture and Western Americana, of Franktown, Colorado; William H. Crowe, Cherokee designer-craftsman of Cherokee, North Carolina; and Gerald J. Gray, Blackfeet educator and Superintendent of School District Number 87 in Box Elder, Montana.
