Promotion of Martin N. B. Holm to the position of Area Director at Aberdeen, South Dakota, in charge of Indian Bureau operations in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska was announced today by the Department of the Interior.
Mr. Holm has been serving as Assistant Area Director in charge of community services at the Bureau's area office in Portland, Oregon since 1954. He will take over his new duties at Aberdeen around May 21, succeeding Benjamin Reifel who resigned March 11.
Prior to 1954 Mr. Holm's service with the Bureau had been wholly in the field of education. He first carne with the Bureau in 1940 as an elementary school teacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. From 1946 to 1951 he served in positions of steadily increasing responsibility on the Pima Reservation in Arizona, on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in New Mexico, and in the area office at Juneau, Alaska.
In 1951 he was named superintendent of the 600-pupil Indian boarding school at Chemawa, Oregon, and one year later was promoted to be area director of schools at the Portland office. He served in this latter post for two years before his appointment as assistant area director.
Born at Denver, Colorado, in 1910, Mr. Holm holds both a bachelor’s and a master's degree from the Colorado State College of Education. He served over two years with the Army during World War II and had eight years of public school teaching experience in Colorado before joining the Bureau.
