OPA

Joseph W. Gorrell, Deputy Director of Interior's Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR), has been appointed to direct financial management programs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Commissioner Thompson said, ''This is a position of critical importance so I am pleased to fill it with someone so highly qualified and competent."

Gorrell, 43, has been BOR's Deputy Director since January, 1975. He was formerly a staff assistant to Interior's Assistant Secretary for Land and Water Resources, a budget examiner with the Office of Management and Budget and a program analyst with the Department of Agriculture.

Gorrell began his government service as a forester after graduating in 1954 from Purdue University with a BS in Forestry. He later earned Masters' degrees from both the University of California at Berkeley and Yale. In 1968 he received the Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Catholic University.

In his new position as Assistant Director (Financial Management) in the Office of Administration, Gorrell will be responsible for program planning and budget development for the Bureau. He will also have responsibility for the accounting operations and the compensation and employee data systems.

Gorrell reported for duty April 12. He succeeds John P. Sykes who has retired.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today the appointment of David N. Burch as Superintendent at the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Intermountain School in Brigham City, Utah. Since 1970, Burch has been Deputy Assistant Area Director for Education in the Phoenix Area Office.

Intermountain was once the Bureau's largest school as an off-reservation boarding high school for Navajo Indian students. It is now an inter-tribal school, and the administration was transferred from the Navajo Area to the Phoenix Area last summer.

Burch, a Missouri native, is a 1958 graduate of Chadron State College in Nebraska. He earned his Master's degree in 1967 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.

An Air Force veteran, Burch has worked with the BIA since 1958. He has been a teacher, department head and school principal. He was the Education Program Administrator on the Turtle Mountain Reservation at Belcourt, North Dakota before moving to the Phoenix Area Office.

Eddie V. Edwards, a Choctaw Indian, has been appointed Assistant Area Director (Resources Management) for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Sacramento, California office, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

Edwards has been a Trust Services Specialist in the BIA's Washington Office of Trust Responsibilities.

A Navy veteran, Edwards has a BA in engineering and industrial arts and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Oklahoma City University. He has also
completed special courses in public lands, water rights and management in continuing education programs.

Edwards, 46, began working for BIA in 1971 as a realty specialist in the Muskogee Area Office. He had previous experience with the Veterans
Administration, Cherokee Community Organization and the New Mexico and Oklahoma State Highway departments.

George E. Keller, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Rosebud, South Dakota Agency.

Keller has been the Community Services Officer at the agency the past four years.

Keller is a graduate of the Chadron State Teachers College, Chadron, Nebraska and has a Masters degree in education from South Dakota State University.

He was Principal of the Ewing Public School, Ewing, Nebraska for six years before coming to BIA in 1963 as a Guidance Supervisor for the Flandreau School and Rosebud Agency. He later served as Principal at the pierre Agency and Education Program Administrator at the Lower Brule Agency. Keller, 45, is a Rosebud native.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today that John J. Pereau, a Sioux Indian from the Fort Peck Reservation, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Crow Creek Agency in South Dakota. Pereau, Economic Development Officer at the agency, has been functioning as the Acting Superintendent since April of this year.

A Marine Corps veteran, Pereau came to work for the BIA in 1960 at the Billings, Montana area office. He was a realty specialist at the Crow and Northern Cheyenne agencies and was the Reservation Programs Officer at Northern Cheyenne before coming to the Crow Creek Agency in 1973.

Pereau, 42, attended the Billings Business College and Eastern Montana College.

Casimir L. LeBeau, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, has been named Assistant Area Director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Minneapolis Area, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

LeBeau has been the Tribal Operations Officer in the Minneapolis Area since 1967. The office serves Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan.

A Coast Guard veteran, LeBeau began his career with BIA in 1946 at the Cheyenne River agency. He spent ten years, beginning in 1957, as Field Representative for the Minnesota agency before transferring to the Area Office.

Approximately 20 percent of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) agricultural water supply available under Arizona's basic entitlement to water from the Colorado River has been allocated to five Indian tribes by Secretary of the Interior Thomas S. Kleppe.

The allocation, contained in a final notice signed today and to be published in the Federal Register, provides that, from the time the project
becomes operational in about 1985 until the year 2005, the five tribes will be entitled to 257,000 acre-feet of water per year for agricultural use on their reservations in Central Arizona.

The remainder of CAP agricultural water will be divided among non-Indian users in Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima Counties.

By 2005, much of the water delivered through the $1.6 billion project is expected to have been converted from agricultural to municipal and industrial use. Following that year, the tribes will be entitled to either 20 percent of the remaining agricultural water or 10 percent of the total
annual deliveries through the CAP, whichever is to their advantage.

Annual allocations by tribe for the first 20 years are as follows:
Ak Chin, 58,300 acre-feet; Gila River, 173,100 acre-feet; Papago, 8,000 acre-feet; Salt River, 13,300 acre-feet; and Fort McDowell, 4,300 acre-feet.

Secretary Kleppe said that the amount of water allocated for use on each reservation, when combined with already available surface and ground water, will allow irrigation of all presently developed Indian agricultural land. In addition, it will allow the Fort McDowell Tribe to irrigate new lands it may accept in exchange for lands it now owns in the proposed Orme Dam area.

The BIA's Portland Area Office had a communications seminar October 12-13, at Kahneeta Lodge on the Warm Springs reservation. Representatives from the Northwest tribes and agencies talked with journalists and other media experts about ways and whys of improving Indian communications and public relations.

Most of the participants, an informal survey showed, thought some good things happened.

Don Sider from Time Magazine's Washington, D. C. bureau talked knowledgeable bout Indians' problems in getting accurate and adequate coverage in non-Indian publications.

Reid Chambers, formerly Interior's Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs, emphasized the effects of public relations efforts on the legislative process and in the settlement of controversial issues.

Bill Smith, Skokomish Tribal Chairman and Executive Director of the Northwest Indian Fish Commission, discussed the Indian leader's PR difficulties and what the BIA could do to help.

Roy Sampsel, the Portland Area Office organizer of the seminar, succeeded in his determination to have some "deliverables" result from the meeting. Other speakers included Dr. Sharon Murphy of the University of Wisconsin Mass Communication Department, who focused on the Indian press; Lev Richards, the Oregonian; Rick Meyers, KATU-TV: Bill Marsh, a professional public relations consultant and Lynn Engles, the BIA Public Information Officer from Washington, D.C.

Sider said that national publications have little interest in Indian Affairs - - and even less knowledge. Except for bizarre stories, Wounded Knee and others, "you have a real problem getting to us. You are just one million out of 200 million -- not a very significant part of the population."

He urged the Indians to make media contacts before their story "is ripe." He related how the Passamaquoddy Tribe got Time coverage about a claim to large parts of the State of Maine by alerting him-early, giving him background information am keeping him informed about developments. "When that story ripened -- and it was a good news story -- we knew about it, we understood it and we were ready for it."

Chambers said that the popularity of Indian people and causes is important for achieving Indian goals. Using a local illustration, he pointed out that the Warm Springs Tribe had more than 60,000 acres of land restored to their ownership in 1972 despite the clearly expressed opposition of the Administration. "The President did not want that legislation, but he signed it because Indian causes were popular then. To veto would have been politically bad."

Chambers felt that Indian popularity was a factor in some court decisions, "We have won more cases then we thought we should.

Chambers described this popular support as "delicate, based on romance or guilt, not knowledge." He said that the American public is badly informed about the nature of Indian rights and that support of Indian causes can be lost in the next few years because of back-lash forces generated by conflicts between Indians and non-Indians --like the fishing rights controversy in the Northwest.

Smith, referring to the fishing rights issue, said, "people can't understand why three percent of the people (the Indians) should have the right to harvest 50 percent of the fish." He said they don't question the right of a small percentage of the population (the orchard owners) to harvest Washington's apple crop. "They understand the orchard owners' property rights, but they don't see that the Indians have a similar property right to the fish."

Smith said violence on Puget Sound and getting some Indians killed would be publicized. "Our job, though, is to try to get heard without that violence." He said that the BIA should do more to help educate non-Indians about Indian Affairs.

Richards said that newsmen get conflicting stories from different Indians and suggested that "Indians should agree among themselves and then have one source to speak for them."

Meyers recommended that tribes take advantage of the federal regulations requiring the broadcast media to serve and be responsive to all community elements. "Make contacts at your local stations and push for your share of time," he urged.

Sampsel announced plans for follow-up activities to the seminar. These included a training program for people working on tribal newspapers and a seminar for tribal officials on public relations. He said that the Area Office would work with tribal leaders to prepare issue papers which could be distributed to the media as backgrounding materials. He promised also to send a list of media contacts in the Area to the tribes and BIA agencies and a list of tribal/agency contacts to the media people.

Engles said that his Washington office would work with the other BIA area offices to help them develop similar programs for improving tribal communications and public relations.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today the appointment of Leo Brockie, Jr., as Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Rocky Boy's Agency at Box Elder, Montana.

Brockie, a Chippewa-Cree Indian, has been the Acting Superintendent t at Rocky Boy's during the past year. He was formerly the community services Officer at the Fort Belknap Agency at Harlem, Montana.

A graduate of the Harlem High School, Brockie earned a BS in Education from the Northern Montana College in 1964. He completed the Department of Interior’s Management Training Program in 1971.

A plan for the use and distribution of $300,000 awarded to the Shawnee Indians by the Indian Claims commission is being published in the Federal Register, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today.

The award represents additional compensation for some 24,000 acres of land in Kansas sold in 1869.

According to the plan, approved by Congress and made effective March 5, 1976, approximately 40 percent of the award will go to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the balance to the Cherokee Band of Shawnee.

Twenty percent of the funds allotted to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma will be held in trust by the Secretary of the Interior, with other funds of the tribe, to be used for a tribal burial assistance program and other tribal Purposes. The rest will be distributed on a per capita basis to tribal members.

A per capita distribution of all the award funds for the Cherokee Band will be made.