OPA

Award of a $298,469.48 contract for construction of additional irrigation works on the Hogback Unit of the Navajo Indian reservation near Shiprock, New Mexico, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Two major items are included in the contract: (1) 5,932 linear feet of main canal with a capacity of 130 cubic feet per second, and (2) 3,600 linear feet of 60 inch diameter steel pipe across Malpais Arroyo.

The construction work on the main canal will provide for irrigation of an additional 5,745 acres. This amount, added to the present irrigated acreage, will bring the project up to its planned total of 15,000 acres. The present contract, however, provides for no additional land development.

When completed, the Hogback Unit will give approximately 500 Navajo families an opportunity to make a living from irrigation farming.

The successful bidder was Daniels Construction Company of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fourteen higher bids were received.

Promotion of H. Rex Lee, Associate Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to the position of Deputy Commissioner was announced today by Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons, Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Mr. Lee replaces W. Barton Greenwood, who has been Deputy Commissioner since the position was established in 1956, and who is retiring November 1.

A graduate of the University of Idaho in 1936, Mr. Lee entered the Federal service the following year as an agricultural economist with the United states Department of Agriculture. In 1942, he joined the staff of the War Relocation Authority and served with that agency throughout the wartime period as chief of relocation and chief of evacuee property. After liquidation of the WRA in 1946, he was appointed assistant director of the Office of Territories in the Department of the Interior. He served in that post until 1950 when he was named Associate Commissioner of the Indian Bureau.

Mr. and Mrs. Lee and their five children, Sherry, 19, Dixie, 17, Linda, 16, Duane, 12, and Carlson, 9, reside at Route 1, Fairfax, Va.

Mr. Greenwood is retiring after 40 years of Federal service and has spent 33 of those years with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He first joined the Bureau at the age of 23 in the fall of 1920 as a clerk in the fiscal division. In the years that followed he advanced steadily and in 1938 was appointed business manager and budget officer, Meanwhile he attended night courses at George Washington University and National University in Washington, D. Co, and received a law degree from National in 1933. He was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in the same year.

In 1942 he was promoted to chief administrative officer and one year later left the Bureau of Indian Affairs for five and one-half years of service with the Budget Bureau as budget examiner. He returned to the Indian Bureau in 1949 as Executive Officer and in 1954 was named Assistant Commissioner for Administration. In 1958 he received the Department's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award.

He was born in McKeesport, Pa., in 1896, attended Cornell University for two and one-half years, and is a veteran of World War I. He and Mrs. Greenwood live at 529 Massachusetts Avenue, NW., Washington, D.C.

The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and the Department of the Interior are now in agreement on a plan developed by the Tribe for future control of its property and service functions after Federal trusteeship is terminated next year, Acting Secretary of the Interior Elmer F. Bennett announced today.

The plan was developed by the Tribe under terms of the Menominee Termination Act of 1954 and was submitted to the Secretary of the Interior on July 28. It includes six major parts.

One of these consists of two recently enacted Wisconsin State laws which set up the Menominee Reservation as a new county of the State and make special provision for managing and taxing tribal forest lands. The other parts include articles of incorporation and bylaws of Menominee Enterprises, Inc., a common stock and voting trust, a bond indenture, and a Menominee assistance trust.

While the plan was approved in principle by the Department last July 31, the Department at that time availed itself of an offer made by the Tribe to take an additional 90 days for further study of its detailed provisions. The Department's responsibility under the Termination Act has been to insure that the plan is equitable and is in conformity with law.

The Tribe agreed that changes, qualifications or refinements might be made in the plan during the 90-day period provided they were not inconsistent with the basic principles of the plan and provided tribal representatives were afforded consultation on these modifications.

“The Menominee Tribe's plan,” Acting Secretary Bennett noted in a letter to tribal chairman James G. Frechette, “has been studied intensively by many people in the Department of the Interior and the State of Wisconsin over the past three months. Then on October 26 through 29, representatives of the Tribe, its attorneys, officials of the State of Wisconsin and the Department of the Interior met for many hours in negotiations over a great many refinements in the plan. At the end, there was unanimous agreement on the basic concepts of the changes adopted, and concession by all parties that the modifications had not substantially altered the intent of the plan that had been approved in principle by the Acting Secretary on July 31.”

Several additional days will be required, Mr. Bennett said, to complete the redrafting job and incorporate the changes on which agreement was reached. Thereafter the Department will act to certify adoption of the plan as of July 31, 1959.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Roger Ernst today announced proposed changes in the Federal regulations on the granting of rights-of-way across Indian lands.

The major effect of the proposed amendments would be to increase the permissible term on rights-of-way for oil or natural gas pipelines from 20 to 50 years.

The 20-year limitation, Mr. Ernst explained, was originally adopted many years ago and has become obsolete. Modern trunk pipelines, he added, are engineered to last much longer.

The proposed amendments would also eliminate the requirement for filing with the Bureau of Land Management certain records pertaining to rights-of-way across Indian lands and would reduce the number of maps that must be submitted by an applicant.

Interested parties may submit their comments on the proposed amendments to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington 25, D. C., within 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.

The Department of the Interior announced today the appointment of Harold W. Schunk as Superintendent of the Rosebud Indian Agency, Rosebud, South Dakota, effective November 27. He succeeds Graham E. Holmes, whose transfer to the Gallup Area Office in New Mexico, as Assistant Area Director for resources, was effective today.

Mr. Schunk has been with the Bureau since 1933 when he was appointed camp manager on emergency conservation work at Rosebud, S. Dak. His duties with the Bureau have included a principalship at the Cherry Creek, S. Dakota day school; agricultural instructor and education specialist at the Cheyenne River boarding school; and in March, 1953, he became administrative officer at the Sisseton Agency, Sisseton, So. Dakota. In November, 1954, he was promoted to the position of Superintendent and assigned to the Turtle Mountain Agency at Belcourt, N. Dak. Since June 30, 1957, he has been Superintendent of the Standing Rock Agency, at Fort Yates, North Dakota.

He was born July 25, 1907 at Philip, S. Dak., and is a graduate of Southern State Teachers College, Springfield, S. Dak., where he received his B.S. degree in 1931.

Born at Whitefield, Oklahoma, February 13, 1913, Mr. Holmes came with the Bureau as Probate Attorney with headquarters at Wewoka, Okla., in March, 1951, and later became Area Counsel at the Aberdeen, So. Dakota Area Office. Prior to his appointment as Superintendent of the Rosebud Agency in May, 1956, he was program officer in the Aberdeen Area Office. He holds a law degree from the University of Arkansas.

Award of a $3,079,459 contract for construction of school facilities that will provide for 719 additional Indian children at the Chinle School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

The contract provides for construction of a new educational plant to take care of 1,000 elementary pupils. The new buildings will replace existing overcrowded and obsolete facilities and will include a kitchen-dining room, a 34-classroom school building, four 256-pupil dormitories, an electrical generating plant, thirty 2-bedroom duplexes, nine 3-bedroom duplexes, six 6-unit efficiency apartments, and the necessary roads, walks and other site improvements.

The successful bidder was Lembke Construction Company, Inc., of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nine higher bids, ranging from $3,106,000 to $3,518,365 were received.

Trust restrictions on allotted Indian lands, scheduled to expire in calendar year 1960, have been extended for an additional five years, Acting Secretary of the Interior Elmer F. Bennett announced today.

This order, and a similar order issued last December extending trust restrictions expiring during 1959, reverse 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.

Acting Secretary Bennett said the new orders reemphasize the Department’s stated policy of taking all precautions against ending Federal supervision over Indians before they are competent to end their status as Federal wards.

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 Indians who 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 said that it had no accurate estimate of the acreage covered by the new order, but that it would run into the thousands.

Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today approval of a recommendation made by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons for transfer of the Department’s function of approving contracts between attorneys and Indian tribes. Commissioner Emmons recommended that the function be shifted from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Office of the Solicitor of the Department.

The transfer will be effected as soon as the necessary order has been developed and formally approved by the Secretary.

Congress has required by law approval of such contracts by the Secretary of the Interior. In recent years the Commissioner of Indian Affairs has been performing this function under a delegation of authority.

Transfer of Narolf Nesset from superintendent of the Cheyenne River Indian Agency in South Dakota to superintendent at Standing Rock Agency, Fort Yates, North Dakota, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Mr. Nesset succeeds Harold W. Schunk, recently transferred to the Rosebud Agency in South Dakota. The new move is effective December 13, according to Indian Commissioner Glen Emmons.

A native of Maddock, North Dakota, Mr. Nesset joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1936 as a teacher at the Fort Yates Community School on the Standing Rock Reservation. In 1944 he was named principal of the school and one year later became principal of the Bureau’s school at Fort Totten, North Dakota, on the Turtle Mountain Reservation. He resigned in 1949 to become self-employed and returned to the Bureau in 1950 as Reservation Principal at the Cheyenne River Agency. Two years later he was appointed superintendent at Cheyenne River and has been serving in this position ever since.

He attended college intermittently beginning in 1930 and received an A.B. degree from Valley City (North Dakota) State Teachers College in 1944.

A new superintendent of the Cheyenne River Agency will be named later.

Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today that the Bureau of Indian Affairs will make a payment at the earliest possible date to persons who are entitled to share in the western Creg0n Judgment Fund. The checks should be in the mail during the next few weeks.

The Western Oregon Judgment Fund was set up as a result of two claims cases against the United States which were decided by the Court of Claims in 1950 and 1951. Seven groups of Western Oregon Indians were entitled to share in the fund which originally totaled over $2,600,000. Since it was originally established the fund has been reduced by attorneys’ fees and increased by accrual of interest. It now amounts to approximately $3,000,000.

The payment which is being made at this time; Secretary Seaton explained, will be only partial since the rolls of those entitled to share in the Fund have not yet been finally determined. At present there are approximately 2,000 persons named on the rolls of the various groups. Almost 1,000 other individuals have appealed from their exclusion from the rolls. Their appeals are being processed.

In determining the amount which should be paid at this time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs made the hypothetical assumption that each appeal would be decided in favor of the appellant. Thus the amount to be paid now represents a minimum entitlement and may be supplemented by a later payment if any number of the pending appeals are subsequently rejected.

Payments will be made first to competent living adults whose names, are on the rolls. Because the 1954 congressional law governing distribution of the fund requires special action by the Secretary to protect the interests of minors and mental incompetents, the payments on behalf of such individuals will require additional time. In the case of deceased persons whose names are on the rolls, probating of the estates will be necessary.

The following tabulation show the number of individuals now on the rolls of each group and the payment which will be made at this time to each eligible individual.

In addition to the six groups sharing in the five funds, a judgment has been awarded to the Molallala or Molel Band. No names are on the roll of this group at the present time although a number of appeals for inclusion on the roll are pending for determination.