In a resolution commending the Eisenhower Administration's program to provide school facilities for reservation children, the Navajo Tribal Council declared that for the "first time in American history since the Treaty of 1868 the Congress of the United States has taken effective action to provide adequate schools for Navajos."
The Navajo emergency education program, which is designed to put every Navajo child of school age in school within two years, has had the personal support of President Eisenhower and Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.
Funds for the program, administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, were included in the regular appropriations and in supplemental acts approved by the President on August 26, 1954.
Since the beginning of the program, 8,276 additional Navajo children have been placed in school this year. When the program was drawn up last winter only 14,000 Navajo children out of a total school age population of 28,000 were able to attend school. The Bureau's goal for this year was to provide facilities for 7,000, and it is planned to accommodate the remainder by the fall of 1955.
As of December 16, there were 21,730 children enrolled in public, Federal and Mission schools on and off the reservation. Completion of a new reservation school at Kayenta, Arizona, in January will permit enrollment of 500 more children. New facilities at Crystal, Greasewood and Steamboat, Arizona boarding schools in Arizona, will take care of 500 more children and another school at Pinon when completed will take in 300 children.
The Council's resolution expressed appreciation for the cooperation of State and local school authorities in the border town dormitory program which placed 1,027 children in public schools. Continuance and enlargement of this program was requested by the Council.
"The Navajo people confirm and approve," the resolution states "the plans of Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons for providing schools for the Navajo children and deplore criticism by those who are not familiar with the facts, in respect to plans developed by the Commissioner and his staff by and with the collaboration, advice and approval of the Navajos."
The resolution points out that the Council has been fully advised as to the locations of schools and boarding houses on and off the reservation, and "appreciates fully that a great advantage is enjoyed by Navajo children, with the generous cooperation of state and local school authorities, by attending schools in such communities as Richfield, Utah; Aztec, Gallup, N. Mex.; Holbrook, Snowflake and Winslow, Arizona, where education in State schools gives Navajo children the advantage of learning English and with the same opportunities which non-Indian children enjoy."
"The use of other school facilities in States away from the reservation accommodating 5,570 children is necessary at least for the time being until school facilities closer to the reservation are available has been approved by the Council as the only available alternative to no Schools at all for some of our children," the resolution continues.
