OPA

Appointment of Kendall Cumming, land operations officer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Fort Defiance, Ariz., as superintendent of the Jicarilla Apache Agency, Dulce, N. Mex., effective August 19, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

He succeeds the late John B. Keliiaa, who died in Washington, D. C., last January.

Born at Nogales, Ariz., in 1925, Cumming attended the University of Arizona as an undergraduate and took a master's degree in range ecology there in 1950. That same year he went to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a range management assistant at Chinle, Ariz., on the Navajo Reservation.

In the years that followed he was assigned to positions of steadily increasing responsibility at other locations on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations. He has been stationed at Fort Defiance for the past five years.

Selection of Edward F. Edzards, a career employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as a new superintendent of the Pierre Agency, supervising the Bureau's operations on the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Reservations in South Dakota, effective August 19, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Edzards has been in charge of the Bureau's Cheyenne and Arapaho area field office (formerly designated as a sub-agency since 1955. For six years before that he worked for the Bureau as a farm management supervisor at Pawnee, Clinton and Concho, all in western Oklahoma.

He was born at Paris, Tex., in 1920 and is a graduate of East Texas State College at Commerce. During World War II he served for nearly four years with the Army.

As superintendent at Pierre, Edzards will succeed Owen D. Morken who was recently named assistant area director for the Bureau in its office at Aberdeen, S. Dak.

The Department of the Interior has announced its support of Federal legislation providing for an exchange of lands between the United States and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe of southwestern Colorado in connection with the construction of the Navajo Dam and Reservoir unit of the Colorado River Storage Project.

Some 707.5 acres of Southern Ute tribal land are needed for the reservoir project, the Department explained, and the tribe has expressed a desire to exchange this acreage for public land instead of selling it for cash.

The public lands proposed for exchange already have been selected. They consist of about 2,200 acres on the Archuleta Mesa immediately adjoining the eastern boundary of the reservation.

The proposed exchange, the Department said, would materially reduce trespass problems and include in the reservation a major art of a mesa that forms a natural and integral part of the eastern reservation grazing area. The primary access to the mesa is through the reservation, creating a continuous trespassing problem. Cattlemen, sightseers, hunters, and other unauthorized persons cross Southern Ute land to gain access to public lands on the mesa. Cattle belonging to authorized permittees, who use the public lands for summer pasture, frequently drift onto the reservation lands.

Reduction in these trespass problems is a major consideration in the tribe's desire to acquire the public land. In addition, the tribe can make excellent use of the area as summer range in its cattle grazing program, the Department added.

The bill supported by the Department provides for an exchange of land based on substantially equal values. Under the bill, individuals who have grazing permits, licenses or leases on the public lands which are cancelled because of the exchange would be compensated out of project funds. Owners of range improvements of a permanent nature on the exchanged lands would also be compensated out of project funds.

Following the exchange the tribe would own 2,932 acres out of a total of 4,672 acres on the mesa top~ The balance of the mesa land consists of two private holdings, Colorado school lands, acreage belonging to Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and 960 acres that would remain in public domain.

The bill authorizes the tribe to negotiate with the United States for purchasing the rest of the public acreage in order not to increase the Governments land-management problem.

President Kennedy today nominated Philleo Nash, former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and simultaneously, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall announced appointment of John O. Crow, Cherokee Indian and 28-year veteran of the Indian Bureau, as Deputy Commissioner.

For the past six months Nash has been a member of the Indian Affairs Task Force, named by Secretary Udall, and has been a special assistant to Assistant Secretary John A. Carver, Jr., and Crow has been Acting Commissioner of the Bureau.

Secretary Udall said Nash's "exceptionally fine work on the Task Force confirmed the high opinion we had of his qualifications.” He pointed out that W. W. Keeler, chairman of the Task Force, had recommended Nash's appointment.

Secretary Udall praised Crow for his "outstanding service as Acting Commissioner, where his long experience and keen insight into the problems we face have made a major contribution."

“We are extremely well pleased," the Secretary said, "that Mr. Crow’s counsel and leadership will continue to be available to us."

Nash, 51, has had a career in government service, private business and higher education.

In addition to serving as lieutenant governor of Wisconsin from 1959 to 1961, he was a special assistant and administrative assistant to President Truman, specializing in Department of the Interior matters, from 1946 to 1953. For four years prior to the White House assignment he was a special assistant to the Director of the Office of War Information, the late Elmer Davis.

As a student and lecturer in anthropology, Nash has had an active interest in Indian affairs throughout his adult life. For the past five months he has been a member of Secretary Udall's Task Force on Indian Affairs which completed its study and submitted its report on July 12.

Born at Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., in 1909, Nash graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1932 and received a Ph. D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago five years later. From 1937 to 1941 he was a lecturer on anthropology at the University of Toronto.

In the private business field he has been president of the Biron Cranberry Company at Wisconsin Rapids since 1946 and is currently president of the Wisconsin Cranberry Growers Association.

He is a member of Sigma Xi (the honorary science society), the American Anthropological Association, the Society of Applied Anthropology, and the Cosmos Club of Washington.

He married the former Edith Rosenfels in 1935 and they have two daughters.

A native of Salem, Mo., Crow grew up in Commerce, Okla., and is currently a resident of Alexandria, Va. He first joined the Bureau as a clerical worker at the Fort Totten Agency in North Dakota in 1933. Two years later he moved to the Truxton Canyon Agency, Valentine, Ariz. In the years that followed he took on increasing responsibilities at Truxton Canyon and was appointed superintendent of the agency in 1942.

After four years in this post he served as superintendent of three other Indian agencies over the following 11 years. From 1946 to 1951 he was at Mescalero Agency, Mescalero, N. Mex.; from 1951 to 1955 at the Fort Apache Agency, Whiteriver, Ariz.; and from 1955 to 1957 at the Uintah-Ouray Agency, Fort Duchesne, Utah. In June 1957 he was named assistant to E. J. Utz, the Bureau's Assistant Commissioner for Resources, and remained in that post until his appointment as chief of the Bureau's realty branch in July 1960. He was named Acting Commissioner last February and was the first man of Indian descent to have that responsibility in 90 years.

He was an outstanding football player as a student at the Haskell Indian Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, and later played professional football with the Boston Redskins.

A substantial reduction in interest rates charged on loans from the revolving fund of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in line with recommendations of the Task Force on Indian Affairs for economic development on Indian reservations, was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall.

The most important reduction is from 4t to 2 percent on loans to tribes for land acquisition. This ties in with the Task Force finding that a serious deterrent to more adequate use of Indian resources is the divided ownership or “heirship" status of numerous tracts that were allotted years ago to individual Indians.

Tribes which had received land purchase loans at the old rate of 4t percent found it difficult to work out programs for acquiring these “heirship” tracts on terms that would permit repayment of the loans within a reasonable period. The new rate of 2 percent will permit land purchase and consolidation programs to be undertaken which were not possible at the old rate, Secretary Udall said.

Another important change is in the rate of loans to tribes to finance business enterprises. A uniform rate of 4 1/2 percent has been charged in the past. The new regulation will permit a rate as low as 2 percent and as high as 5 depending upon the income-producing ability of the enterprise, and the benefits it will bring to Indians. The new rate should prove helpful in the development of new business enterprises which use reservation resources and provide employment for tribal members, the Secretary declared.

Indian young people receiving loans for educational purposes also will get some relief under the new revolving credit regulations. Up to the present time, interest has been charged on such loans from the time they were made. This has worked a hardship on many borrowers because interest accrued during the educational period. Upon graduation they were faced with large debts, much of which represented interest accruals. The new regulation provides that interest accrual will not begin until one year after completion of the course for which the loan was made.

The rate of loans to individual Indians for agricultural operating expenses is also being reduced from 6 to 5 percent, and the new regulations provide greater flexibility in the rate charged cooperative associations. In the past, cooperative associations have been charged 5 percent a year. The amended regulations will permit rates ranging from 2 to 5 percent according to the nature of the cooperatives business.

The Department pointed out that since the currently authorized amount of $10 million for the revolving fund is inadequate to meet the demands of Indians for loans, the effectiveness of the new regulations in stimulating greater economic development on reservations will depend largely on enactment of pending legislation to increase the size of the fund.

The new loan rates become effective on publication in the Federal Register.

Prospects for full development of the mineral resources of the Papago Indian Reservation in southern Arizona are now better than ever, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall reported today.

On August 2, Secretary Udall said, bonus bids totaling $13,444 were received by the Papago Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for two-year prospecting permits with options to lease on three tracts comprising 47,120 acres of tribally owned land. Trans-Arizona Resources submitted a bid of $11,204 on one tract of 18,560 acres. Metals Engineering Company bid $1,120 on each of the other two tracts comprising 9,920 and 18,640 acres.

If these bids are accepted by the Papago Tribal Council, it would bring the entire reservation of nearly three million acres under active mineral prospecting permit for the first time. A three-year permit with option to lease covering the main body of the reservation, apart from the three tracts just offered, was granted on July 13 to Hunting Geophysical Services, Inc.

The options to lease granted with the prospecting permits are subject to valid existing rights on the reservation lands. The prospecting permits cover all minerals other than oil and gas.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced plans for converting the 480-pupil Federal Indian boarding school at Santa Fe, New Mexico, into an Institute of American Indian Arts by the fall of 1962.

Planned to accommodate eventually as many as 500 students, the new Institute will provide a full high school course and two post-high school years. It will enroll youths of one-fourth or more Indian blood from all parts of the country who show special aptitudes in a wide variety of creative arts.

In addition to such fine arts as painting and sculpture, the curriculum will include many Indians arts and crafts such as woodworking, silversmithing, leather craft, beadwork, ivory-carving and basketry.

The Institute will be headed by Dr. George A. Boyce, former superintendent of the Intermountain Indian School at Brigham, Utah, who was recently assigned to Santa Fe and will be reporting there in the near future as superintendent of the new school. His duties this coming year will involve directing the necessary remodeling and rehabilitation of the present plant, program development, equipment and staffing for opening the Institute in the fall of 1962.

Throughout the school year of 1961-62 the Santa Fe School will continue providing regular academic instruction in the first nine grades. Meanwhile plans will be developed in the Bureau Area Office at Gallup for placing the present pupils in schools which are being expanded near their homes. Most of the present pupils--Navajos and Apaches primarily--are in elementary and junior high school grades.

The new Institute of American Indian Arts will be a nation-wide Indian school enrolling students from all tribes--from Alaskan Eskimo to Florida Seminole, from Arizona Papagos to Dakota Sioux. The school will offer broad as well as specialized instruction in the creative arts and will develop vocational opportunities in applied arts and related work as new opportunities for Indians. Because of world-wide interest in American Indians, Secretary Udall said, this national Institute of American Indian Arts will give many more Indians opportunities to get international recognition through the arts."

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior will collaborate with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in making a promotional effort to open all outlets for Indian artists to make a significant contribution to modern American culture.

Specific emphasis will be given to recruiting a first-class resident and visiting faculty trained to serve special needs of Indian youth.

Secretary Udall stated that a special school committed to these goals is long overdue. Establishment of the Institute at this time will put into operation one of the key recommendations of the Task Force on Indian Affairs which reported recently to the Secretary.

The final act ending federal supervision over Klamath Indian tribal property has been completed in Washington, D. C. with signing of the Klamath Termination Proclamation by the Acting Secretary of the Interior, James K. Carr.

Robert D. Holtz, director of the Portland area, Bureau of Indian Affairs, said today that Under Secretary Carr signed the proclamation on behalf of Secretary Stewart Udall who was away from the capital.

The proclamation is effective Sunday, August 13.

It provides that hereafter individual members of the Klamath tribe shall not be entitled to any of the services performed by the United States for Indians because of their status as Indians. It also stipulates that statutes of the United States which affect Indians because of their status as Indians shall no longer apply to tribal members, except for participation in certain claims yet to be adjudicated. In addition, the tribal members shall hereafter be subject to state laws.

Financial aspects of the termination were completed with more than $75,000,000 distributed to the withdrawing members to pay them for their share of the Klamath tribe's assets. The payments averaged about $45,300 each.

The Klamath termination act brings to an end 96 years of federal control and supervision of the tribe, which has its headquarters in southern Oregon.

The Department of the Interior favors proposed legislation to provide that judgment funds on claims against the United States awarded to any of the constituent Indian tribes on the Colville Reservation in Washington shall be deposited in the United States Treasury to the credit of the confederated tribal group on the reservation, Assistant Secretary John A. Carver, Jr., announced today.

Under terms of the bills supported by the Department, S. 2123 and H.R. 8236, the judgment funds on deposit, after payment of attorney fees and expenses, could be advanced or expended for any purpose authorized by the tribal governing body and approved by the Secretary of the Interior.

There are, Assistant Secretary Carver explained, Indians of nearly a dozen different tribal origins residing on the Colville Reservation and several of these tribes have already been awarded judgments or have claims pending against the United States. Because the constituent groups are so intermingled, the procedure embodied in S. 2123 is the only practical way to handle the problem.

It also represents the fulfillment of an agreement reached between the Department and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in connection with similar legislation enacted several months ago covering a judgment award to the Nez Perce Indians, some of whom have become members of the Colville Confederated Tribes.

About a million dollars, representing the net amount recovered by some of the Colville constituent groups in Indian Claims Commission Docket 181, would be immediately affected by enactment of the legislation.