OPA

Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall has sent a letter of congratulations to the Papago Candy Stripers, a group of 18 Arizona Indian girls who recently won first place honors from Parents' Magazine for youth group achievement in teenage public service.

On November 24 the Indian Hospital at Sells, Arizona, was the setting for a ceremony at which the Papago Candy Stripers were presented with the first place plaque and a cash prize of $500 for their outstanding volunteer work in the hospital.

The Secretary's letter, addressed to Miss Leona Thomas, President of the youth group at the time of the award nomination, read:

"Dear Miss Thomas:

"As president of the Papago Candy Stripers for the 1961-62 season, please convey to your fellow members and associates my warmest congratulations on taking the first prize in the Parents' Magazine Youth Group Achievement Awards for teen-age public service in 1961-1962.

"This, in itself, is an outstanding achievement well deserving commendation. In addition, as the first teen-agers to do volunteer work in any Indian hospital, you young ladies have set an example for other young Indian girls who may want to make a special contribution of services to their communities.

"All of us who have the privilege of working with the Papago people are tremendously proud of the Papago Candy Stripers and their record of helpful service to the patients and the staff of the hospital at Sells.”

The Papago Candy Stripers originated after several ninth-grade students of the Sells Consolidated School read a teen-age novel entitled "Candy Striper," by Lee Wyndham (Julian Messner, Inc., 1958).

Special permission had to be obtained from the United States Public Health Service to lower the customary minimum age requirement of 16 years for visitors or volunteers in PHS Indian hospitals. This done, the group formed in November 1961, and began actual work inside the Sells Indian Hospital, on the Papago Indian Reservation in Arizona, in January 1962. Membership has ranged in number from 10 to 22 girls, in the 13 to 17 year age groups, and a larger membership is possible when girls in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades in off-reservation schools return home.

Candy Stripers, both boys and girls, are approximately 150,000 strong at present, and active in an estimated one-third of the Nation's hospitals; but the Papago Candy Stripers are the first such group of teen-age hospital volunteers to be found in any Indian hospital in the United States. Since they began working in the Sells hospital, these girls have contributed more than 1500 hours of afterschool time and Saturdays toward helping their own people, patients in the hospital.

Although the traditional uniform of the Candy Stripers (from which the organization takes its name) is pink or red and white stripes, the Papago girls chose turquoise stripes for their pinafores because tU1~quoise is a "traditional" Indian stone and color.

Financial and technical advice and help have been given to the Papago Candy Stripers by a variety of groups and individuals, including Mrs. Lee Wyndham, Morristown, N. J., the writer whose book inspired the girls to undertake their volunteer service to the Sells Indian Hospital.

In addition to the plaque and cash award from Parents' Magazine, the Papago girls recently achieved further national recognition through an article about their organization which appeared in the October issue of "Today's Health," a publication of the American Medical Association.

Promotion of Robert E. Robinson to the post of superintendent of the Fort Apache Indian Agency, Whiteriver, Ariz., effective November 25, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Robinson has been land operations officer at the Fort Apache Agency since 1955. He succeeds Albert M. Hawley who is transferring to the staff of the Indian Bureau's area office at Phoenix as, projects development officer.

A native of Fort Towson, Okla., Robinson joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a soil conservationist at Idabel. Okla., in 1949. In October 1950 he left this position to enter military service in the Korean conflict and returned to duty in 1953 as soil conservationist at the Choctaw Agency, Philadelphia, Miss. Two years later he transferred to Fort Apache as land operations officer. Before coming with the Bureau, he was a fieldman with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration at Hugo, Okla., a laboratory technician at Stillwater, Okla., and Dallas, Tex., and a high school instructor at Idabel, Okla.

He is a graduate of Oklahoma A &M College in 1948 and had four years of service with the Navy in World War II.

The Department of the Interior today announced the adoption of regulations governing distribution of a judgment fund awarded to the Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma by the Indian Claims Commission.

Under legislation recently passed by Congress the persons eligible to share in the funds are those whose names appear on the final Cherokee roll of March 4, 1907, and their heirs or legatees as determined under the laws of succession and testacy of the State of residence of the decedent on the date of his death. No names will be added to the roll.

All claims to share in the fund are to be filed with the Area Director, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Federal Bldg., Muskogee, Oklahoma, and must be received on or before October 9, 1965---three years from the date of the Act.

The amount originally awarded to the Cherokees by the Indian Claims Commission was $14,789,476.15. This, however, has already been reduced to $11,878,444,37 by setting aside funds to cover the payment of attorney’s fees and offsets to compensate the United States for program expenses. It will be brought down further by setting aside sufficient funds for payments to cover the attorneys' expenses and meet the costs of making the distribution.

Under the statute the Bureau of Indian Affairs will not distribute proportional shares of deceased heirs or legatees unless the shares are worth at least $10 or more nor pay an inherited share unless it amounts to $5 or more.

The regulations will be published in full shortly in the Federal Register.

Award of a contract totaling $3,195,062 for expansion of school facilities to accommodate 510 additional Indian students on the Navajo Reservation at Greasewood, Arizona, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract calls for construction of a 23-classroom school building, four dormitories with a capacity of 160 students each, a 660-pupil kitchen and dining hall, a fire station, employees' quarters and other related facilities. The classroom phase of the work will involve replacement of 150 existing seats at the Greasewood School and the addition of 510 new ones.

The successful bidder was Lembke Construction Co., Albuquerque, N. Mex. Twelve higher bids were also received.

Award of an $874,700 construction contract that will provide 150 additional classroom seats for Indian students in the White Shield School at Emmet, North Dakota, on the Fort Berthold Reservation was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract calls for construction of about 22,000 square feet of new classroom space and the remodeling of the existing school building. Additional work to be done under the contract includes the construction of a 7-stall bus garage and 12 employees' quarters, the remodeling of the kitchen-dining room, paving of streets, and other site improvements.
When completed, the project will provide educational opportunity for 190 Indian children from the beginning grades through high school.

The successful bidder was Brezina Construction Co., Inc., of Minot, N.D. Seven higher bids, ranging from $896,920 to $987,000, were received.

Planned development of visitor attractions in Indian areas of the U.S. is proving to be one of the more effective economic rehabilitation programs designed to provide tribal members with self-sufficiency, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall said yesterday (September 16) in the official opening of a new highway link on the Navajo Trail.

As part of the ceremonies, Secretary Udall dedicated a unique marker where the corners of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet.

Completion of the 160-mile link on Navajo Route One, the first all-weather paved road to cross the northern portion of the huge Navajo Reservation, provides an important east-west connecting link between Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. In addition, it provides new vistas, much of it through colorful Indian lands, for visitors en route to Bryce and Zion National Parks in Utah and a number of national monuments and other Southwest attractions.

In his dedication address, Secretary Udall said he was confident that the highway project, which he as a member of the House of Representatives joined with Senator Clinton Anderson as co-sponsor, would ultimately carry visitors to "our next new great national park--the Canyonlands in Utah. “

"This spot, where the four great States of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, has been one of our last frontiers,” he said.

"The Navajo Indians, whose lands occupy three corners of this unique point, and the Mountain Utes, who own the fourth, have remained largely isolated because of the lack of passable roads. Too, this lack of roads has been one of the barriers between these four States.

“Now, with completion of this vital link, commerce and friendship should thrive to the benefit of all--the Navajos and the Utes, as well as their non- Indian brothers in these growing mountain States. This highway will open up a whole new field of opportunity for both of these Tribes, and they should take steps at once to preserve the recreational and other resource values. I urge the tribes now, before it is too late, to develop a program for the orderly development of facilities along the routes and the kinds of zoning that will preserve the beauty of mountains and canyons which lie everywhere at hand."

The Secretary informed the tribes that the Department would, in cooperation with the tribal councils, begin immediately such a study for development of a plan for tribal consideration.

Lands surrounding the Four Corners site are owned by the Navajo Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, both of which participated in the dedication ceremonies.

"America is on the move in more ways than economic -growth," Secretary Udall said. "Our National Parks--a good barometer of prosperity-...have just ended record seasons of attendance, and this trend will continue to accelerate."

In the many economic rehabilitation programs now being administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and in the 56 Reservation Development Area projects being activated under the Area Redevelopment Act, tourism is emerging as a vital factor on the road to self-sufficiency for Indians everywhere," Secretary Udall said.

Self-supporting projects to provide income-producing outdoor recreation facilities are now being planned in Indian areas in Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, 'Wyoming, Wisconsin, Colorado, Alaska, and elsewhere, the Interior Secretary said. The tribal-owned Fort Apache Reservation's White Mountain Enterprise in Arizona is currently expanding recreational development from strictly seasonal to year-round use, including construction of a year-round lodge and development of ski slopes.

Secretary Udall said the newly formed Bureau of Outdoor Recreation in the Interior Department was providing valuable trained counsel to Indian groups interested in developing a tourism industry.

"We look forward to a generation of All-American travelers discovering the unparalleled scenic beauties and colorful history of America's first settlers," Secretary Udall said.

Acting upon the recommendation of a special task force which visited Alaskan native villages this past summer, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall today announced that the Tsimpshian Indians of the island community of Metlakatla will be permitted to continue using their fish traps during the 1963 fishing season.

Since 1915, by Secretarial regulation, the Metlakatlans have been allowed to fish with traps. Early in 1962, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that an Alaskan law prohibiting traps does not apply to the Annette Island Reservation within which Metlakatla is situated.

In making his announcement, Secretary Udall pointed out that the members of the task force felt it was desirable to hold off changing the 1915 regulations to bring them into harmony with State law until suitable alternatives to the use of traps have been developed, so that Metlakatla can maintain the level of fish production upon which its salmon cannery depends. The cannery is the principal industry in the community, providing employment for Indians during the summer and income with which to finance public works programs which supply jobs for local residents during the remainder of the year.

Secretary Udall remarked that members of his staff will investigate alternatives to trap production of fish, and that he will make a further announcement when their comments are received.

Metlakatla was established in 1887 by an Anglican missionary, Father William Duncan, who led a group of his Indian followers from "Old Metlakatla" in British Columbia to the Annette Islands just south of Ketchikan7 Alaska. In 1891, Congress set the area aside for the Tsimpshians. Since that time, the Indians have developed a progressive community, whose economy is built around the fishing industry and the salmon cannery. In addition to their traps, the Metlakatlans nave a fleet of fishing boats.

The task force on Alaska native affairs included William W. Keeler of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Phillips Petroleum Company; Hugh J. Wade, Secretary of State of Alaska; and James E. Officer, Associate Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Keeler, who headed a similar task force making a broader study of Indian problems early in 1961, was also chairman of the Alaska group.

The complete report of the Alaska task force is in the final stages of preparation and will likely be submitted to Secretary Udall and Governor Egan early in 1963.

Trust restrictions on allotted Indian lands, scheduled to expire in calendar year 1959, have been extended for an additional five years, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today.

The order reverses a custom, started in 1951, of limiting such extensions to a maximum of only one year. In 1951, the then Acting Secretary was considering terminating trust status on individual Indian lands on a year-by-year basis. Each trust case would be subject to review every year.

Secretary Seaton said the new order reemphasizes the Department’s recently reiterated policy of taking all precautions against ending Federal supervision over Indians before they are competent to end their status as Federal wards.

Last September 18 Secretary Seaton announced his position: “No Indian Tribe or group should end its relationship with the Federal Government unless such tribe or group has clearly demonstrated, first, that it understands the plan under which such a program would go forward and, second, that the tribe or group affected concurs in and supports the plan proposed. “He said it was "unthinkable to me as your Secretary of the Interior, that consideration would be given to forcing upon an Indian Tribe a so-called termination plan which did not have the understanding and acceptance of a clear majority of the members affected.”

“The General Allotment Act of February 8, 1887, authorized allotments of land for individuals both on reservations and on the public domain.

Homesteads for Indians off-reservations were also authorized by an Act of February 28, 1891.

The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act extended trust restrictions over lands of 1ndianswho accepted the Act’s provisions. Tribes and groups which were not so covered-so-called "unorganized" Indians--have had their trust protection extended for varying periods, until the 1951 decision established the one-year rule.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs recently recommended the longer extensions. The Bureau said it did not add up the thousands of acres covered by the new order, but that the acreage was considereb1e.

Grave moral issues would be raised by last-minute attempts now to disturb Navajo Indian title to small "islands” of former public lands in Utah within the tribal reservation boundaries, the Department of the Interior warned today.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Roger Ernst presented the Department’s views in letters to Senator Frank E. Moss, and Representative David S. King, both of Utah.

In the closing days of the last Congress, legislation was enacted making the tracts part of the reservation. In November, primarily on the basis of this new law, the Department rejected numerous offers for oil and gas leases on these isolated tracts.

The disputed lands are in San Juan County, Utah. They are near the McCracken Mesa Area which will be added to the reservation in exchange for lands the tribe is surrendering to permit construction of Glen Canyon Dam, key feature of the billion dollar Upper Colorado River Storage Project.

In December, then Senator-elect Moss and Congressman-elect King had complained that removal of the lands from public status was unfair to certain oil and gas lease applicants.

Assistant Secretary Ernst wrote them today that the reasons for excluding the islands from the reservation back in 1884, 1905, and 1933 "have long since lost all validity.”

It was the existence of those old land claims, now dead, that prevented the public lands from being included in the reservation decades ago, he emphasized.

For many years the tribe has had free and unrestricted use of the surface of the technically public lands, which are not set apart from the reservation lands that surround them.

Assistant Secretary Ernst wrote that only friction and animosity could result from suddenly treating them now as public lands, using only the barest technicality as an excuse. The Department's stand is that it is only right and fair that the Indians’ rights should be fully protected.

The Department understands the legislation as enacted included a package agreement between the tribe and State of Utah, Assistant Secretary Ernst wrote. This agreement added the public lands to the reservation as well as giving Utah special lieu selection rights for State school lands--not usually granted to other States. The Department regards the Tribal-State agreement as equitable, and therefore did not object to its enactment by the Congress, Mr. Ernst said.

Clear title is now vested in the tribe. Since Congress has so decided, wrote Assistant Secretary Ernst, "any further legislation modifying the present status of the lands would be a taking of property from the tribe for which compensation would be required.”

The legislation cleared the way for construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, he stressed. He contrasted this quickly settled acquisition of Indian lands with the long-drawn-out proceedings in obtaining Crow Indian tribal lands in Montana for the Yellowtail Project. For 14 years, dispute over payments for Crow land delayed that program.

The Department said the applicants whose oil and gas offers were rejected at no time had any guarantee the lands would be open to leasing. Since the tracts had public land status purely because of questionable technicalities, it is extremely doubtful leases would have been granted by the Department even if Congress had not added the lands to the reservation. A copy of the letter is attached.

Dear Mr. King:

I am glad to respond to your letter of December 9 relative to the provisions of Section 1(d) of Public Law 85-868 (the so-called Navajo Exchange Act) having to do with confirmation, subject to valid existing rights, of the Tribal title to all public lands within the boundaries of the Navajo Reservation.

As your letter notes, the effect of this provision is to preclude further consideration of the oil and gas lease applications which were dealt with in the decision of the Director of the Bureau of Land Management dated November 7, approved November 17, in Superior Oil Co. et al., Utah 016385. This was the holding in that decision.

It should be emphasized that while P. L. 85-868 is commonly referred to as the Navajo Exchange Act, the legislation is not limited to a simple exchange of 53,000 acres of public lands, exclusive of minerals, for 53,000 acres of Indian land exclusive of minerals. The legislation represents a package arrangement touching upon many originally diverse views and interests to meet a unique problem. The legislation is designed to lessen the friction between the Indians and the non-Indians in the area, to acquire for the Federal Government the lands that are needed for the Glen Canyon project without a large expenditure of Federal funds for their purchase, to avoid what in the case of other Federal reservoir projects have been years of delay occasioned by the effect of such projects upon Indian lands, and to deal fairly with the Indians, with the State, and with the local citizens of the area. A legislative undertaking of this sort necessarily presents a delicate matter requiring the balancing and adjusting of numerous interests and equities.

Turning specifically to the provisions of Section 1(d) confirming Tribal title to public lands within the boundaries of the reservation, this provision was one of two involving the State of Utah as well as the Navajo Tribe that were recommended by the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs when it reported the bill.

The other amendment in that category comprises Section 3 of the legislation as enacted. Section 3 authorizes the State of Utah to exchange State-owned school sections located within the area to be transferred to the Navajo Tribe for lands located outside that area. Neither provision was included in the draft legislation as originally prepared in and proposed by this Department. The state of Utah sought the provisions of Section 3. To this provision the Tribe was at first opposed and negotiations then ensued between the state and the Tribe. In these negotiations, we understand, the Tribe proposed what is now that part of Section 1(d) with which your letter deals. It is our further understanding that both of these provisions were then agreed to between representatives of the State and of the Tribe as a package compromise of the issues in disagreement between them and that neither party would have agreed to the amendment desired by the other without inclusion of both amendments.

While this Department did not participate in the discussions between the State and the Tribe, we concurred in the amendments that were made to the bill; we so advised both the Senate and the House Committees; and, all things considered we regard the package arrangement as fair and equitable. The provision with respect to the lands within the reservation was a~ above indicated a part of the compromise which we understood the State representatives and the Tribe agreed to when working out the solution to the school land problem raised by the State, and it was intended to resolve an ambiguous situation with respect to lands within the Indian Reservation.

While it may well be that absent the provisions of Section 1(d) concerning which you write, the State of Utah, under the Mineral Leasing Act, would receive returns in the form of a 37 1/2 percent share of any oil and gas lease revenues accruing, it is equally true that the asserted claims were the subject of vigorous contest and it is by no means clear that such claims would, in the final analysis, have been sustained.

Moreover, the elimination of obstacles potentially standing in the way of early construction of Glen Canyon Darn, the key to the development of the Colorado River Storage Project with all of the potential that such development means to the State of Utah and to the other States of the Upper Colorado River Basin, is a not inconsiderable factor to be taken into account when appraising the total effects of Public Law 85-868. In this connection, one has only to consider the fate that befell the Yellowtail project in the State of Montana to appreciate what Public Law 85-868 has meant in the terms of giving a green light to continued construction of the Glen Canyon Unit. Yellowtail was authorized by the Congress in 1944. The damsite and a third of the reservoir are located on the Crow Indian Reservation. Only in the last session of Congress was the 14-year delay occasioned by a dispute over the compensation payable to the Crow Indians for the Tribal lands involved resolved to the point where that issue no longer is a bar to initiation of construction.

Finally, any proposal now to disturb the status of the lands within the exterior boundaries of the reservation as confirmed by Section l(d) raises what in our view are serious moral issues. The reasons for the exclusion of the acreages involved at the time of the Executive Orders of 1884 and 1905 and of the enactment of the Act of March 1, 1933, have long since lost all validity. This is recognized by the language included in Section 1(d) which refers to those rights as having been "since relinquished, extinguished, or otherwise terminated." Moreover, the Tribe has for many years had the actual utilization of the surface of these lands undistinguishable from lands within the exterior boundaries of the reservation which were without question Tribal lands. In these circumstances, to retain these lands, upon the barest of technicalities, as continuing enclaves of public lands within the reservation, when they would not have been excluded from the reservation in the first place except for the existence of claims long since sterile, could serve no purpose other than to act as a continuing source of friction and animosity between Indian and non-Indian. These considerations are entirely aside from the fact that Section 1(d) in any event now having vested clear title in the Tribe, any further legislative action modifying the present status of the lands would be a taking of property from the Tribe for which compensation would be required.

Sincerely yours,

(Sgd) Roger Ernst

Under a reappraisal ordered by Congress, lands belonging to the Klamath Indian Tribe of Oregon have now been appraised as having a realization value of $90, 791,123, the Department of the Interior announced today.

The new appraisal total figures out to about $44,000 for each of the 1,659 withdrawing tribal members, and also includes realization values of land that will be administered for the non-withdrawing members.

In a congressional enactment of last August, which required the reappraisal, the “realization value" of the tribal property was defined as "the fair market value of the forest and marshlands as if they had been offered for sale on a competitive market without limitation on use during the interval between the adjournment of the 85th Congress" and the final date for termination of Federal trusteeship of the Klamath properties, which is August 13, 1961.

The $90,791,123 figure was arrived at by adding to the realization values of the forest and marshlands the appraised values of grazing and farm units and other miscellaneous parcels.

In February 1958, the properties of the tribe, including cash assets, were appraised at $119,758 ,029. Since then, however, cash distributions have been made which amount to more than $1,000 for each tribal member.

Under terms of the law the review was made by three appraisal firms. They are Hammon, Jensen and Wallen, Oakland, California; Bigley and Feiss, Eugene, Oregon, and Marshall and Stevens, Los Angeles, California. The new figure is an average of their computations.

Since the original appraisal and the recomputation, timber market prices for ponderosa pine dropped about 15 percent. That contributed to the decrease in appraised value. Moreover, all three firms participating in the reappraisal had lower final totals than the original estimate by Western Timber Services, Arcata, California.

Another factor in the appraisal decrease was the fact that cash distributions had cut into the tribe’s cash assets since the original appraisal.

The appraisal covered 694,000 acres of forest land, 128,000 acres of open range, 23,421 acres of marsh, 1,245 acres of farmland and 14,524 acres of other miscellaneous types.