OPA

Proposed regulations to, govern the administration of Bureau of Indian Affairs adult education programs are being published in the Federal Register, Acting Deputy Commissioner Martin Seneca said today.

The proposed regulations provide a definition of the term "adult education" and give guidelines for the administration of funds and programs including the contracting of the programs.

The BIA has operated adult education programs since 1955 but has not had published regulations or manual guidelines for the administration of the programs. Comments on the proposed regulations should be sent within 30 days of publication to the Director of Indian Education Programs, 1951 Constitution Ave., N.W. , Washington, D.C. 20245.

For additional information call Mary Asbill, 202-343-7387.

The Department of the Interior announced today publication of final regulations in the Federal Register for designating public easements on lands conveyed to Alaska Natives under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The regulations are designed to carry out the terms of the Federal District Court decisions in Alaska by Judge James von der Heydt in July and subsequent policy decisions on ANCSA by Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus in Marc of 1978.

"One of the early objectives of this Administration," Secretary Andrus said, "was to improve substantially the way in which the Settlement Act was being administered with the central theme of speeding up the conveyance of land. I have reconfirmed the objective of faster land conveyances again recently to Governor Jay Hanunond, and this is a part of that ongoing program."

"The easement policies of the Department are intended to carry out the intent of the Act to protect basic public rights of passage and access over lands conveyed to Natives under the Settlement, but to do so in a manner which recognizes the basic rights of private land ownership which the Act also intended for Natives.

The final regulations reconfirm the intent of the proposed regulations published last May to create a limited, non-duplicative system of easements which allow access across Native lands to public lands and along major water­ways. The final regulations respond to public comment by clarifying several issues, including definitions.

The definition of a "major waterway" which involved a three factor standard involving transportation use, resource value and commercial use, has been modified in the final regulations to a standard which is simpler and intended to meet communities which argued for a more usable and understandable test The new standard requires "significant use" for access to public lands or between communities.

Copies of the regulations and additional information are available from: Don Argetsinger, Office of Assistant Secretary for Land and Water Resources, Department of the Interior Room 6629, Washington, D. C. 20240; Beaumont McClure, Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior Room 3070, Washington, D. C. 20240; and Robert Arnold, Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior 555 Cordova St., Anchorage, Alaska 99501.

Assistant Secretary -- Indian Affairs Forrest J. Gerard announced today the detail of Phoenix Arizona Director John Artichoker to manage the training and personnel assistance project which will determine the feasibility of establishing a national training center for Indian tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Gerard said Artichoker's educational background and professional experience make him eminently qualified to carry out the congressionally mandated study.

An acting area director will be named for the Phoenix area shortly, Gerard said. Artichoker's detail was effective December l, 1978, and the study will begin in Phoenix.

Assistant Secretary -- Indian Affairs Forrest J. Gerard announced today the detail of James Canan, Billings Area Director to the Bureau's Management Improvement Program, where he will manage the field operation portion of the program. Gerard said he selected Canan for this assignment because of his many years of experience as an area director, his knowledge of the BIA's field operations at both the area and agency level.

Canan's detail was effective December 3, 1978. His duty station will be Billings, Mont., and an acting area director will be named shortly in Billings, Gerard said

Richard C. Whitesell, Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Flathead Agency at Ronan, Montana, has been detailed to act as Area Director at the Bureau office in Billings, Montana. He will serve in this capacity pending the appointment of a temporary successor to James Canan.

Canan was recently assigned by Assistant Secretary Forrest Gerard to manage the field operations portion of a BIA Management Improvement Program.

Whitesell, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, was formerly an Assistant Area Director for Community Services in Phoenix, Arizona, and for six years was Education Program Administrator at the Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota from 1971 to 1976. He served at Riverside School in Oklahoma from 1969 to 1971.

Whitesell, who served four years with the U. S. Marine Corps, graduated from the State Col.1ege at Dickinson, North Dakota and earned a Masters degree in Education from South Dakota State University in 1969.

Whitesell, 42, also has served as teacher-coach in the Brockton, Mont. public schools and at the BIA schools at Pierre and Cheyenne River in South Dakota. He is married and has three children, two sons and a daughter.

A new Assistant Area Director for Administration in the BIA's Portland Area has been appointed by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson. He is William V. Battese, who has been serving as Acting Deputy Area Director in the Anadarko, Oklahoma Area. The Portland Area includes three states: Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

"Bill is an Indian himself --a member of the Potawatomi Tribe and he has more than 25 years experience working in Indian programs. He will be a valuable addition to the Portland staff," said Commissioner Thompson.

Battese came to the Anadarko Area Office as Administrative Officer in 1970. Prior to that he had held administrative posts at the Pine Ridge, Papago and San Carlos agencies. He was employed by the Navajo Tribe from 1958 to 1963 and for eleven years was an auditor and inspector in private business.

Battese is a member of the American Institute of Internal Auditors. He is a veteran and a graduate of the Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kansas. He succeeds Francis Briscoe who is now the Portland Area Director.

Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Forrest Gerard announced today that Earl J. Barlow, a Blackfeet Indian, has been appointed Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Indian Education.

Barlow has been Superintendent of Schools in Browning, Montana since 1973. He has also served as the Montana State Supervisor of Indian Education and has worked for thirty years as a teacher, principal and education program administrator.

Gerard announced the appointment at the annual meeting of the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards in Denver. He was a luncheon speaker at the meeting. Gerard said, "In education circles and particularly in Indian education, Mr. Barlow is recognized as an educator who knows what needs to be done and how to get it done." Gerard noted that Barlow's experience included highly successful work with diverse tribal groups at the state level of planning programs and said that this kind of ability was "urgently needed at the national level."

Gerard said that the Education Amendments Act of 1978, enacted in November, called for major and significant changes in the operations of BIA education programs and greatly expanded the authority and responsibility of the Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs. "We are especially pleased, therefore, to be able to fill this position with a person of such high qualifications."

Barlow, 51, graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in social studies and also earned a Master's in Education from that university. He is married and has six children (five daughters and one son). Barlow has been a consultant and teacher at Montana State University, has been a superintendent of schools in three different school districts and administrator of state-wide education programs for the educationally disadvantaged. He began his career in education in 1948 as a teacher at: Hot Springs, Montana.

Leo J. O'Connor, an enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, has been appointed Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Yankton Agency at Wagner, South Dakota. Acting Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs Martin E. Seneca, Jr. said that O'Connor's appointment was effective December 3, 1978.

O'Connor has been the Agency Administrative Officer. From 1971 to 1976 he held various positions with the tribe. He was the acting tribal chairman, executive director of the tribal development program and director of the business and claims committee.

An army veteran, O'Connor also worked as a counselor in the Wagner public schools system and was an administrative accountant for the South Dakota State Training School. O'Connor, 40, is a graduate of the Aberdeen School of Commerce.

Indian educators, students, tribal community representatives and Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel will meet January 8-11 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to begin implementation efforts for two major pieces of Indian education legislation enacted in the closing days of the 95th Congress.

Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary Rick Lavis said that 12 Task Forces, selected through consultation with tribal councils and national Indian organizations, will work with a BIA steering committee to implement the Tribal Controlled Community College Act (PL 95-471) and Title XI of the Education Amendments Act of 1978 (P.L. 95-561).

Lavis said "the Education Amendments Act calls for substantial changes and new developments in the organization and administration of Indian education programs both in public school systems and in BIA schools. In accord with our policy of Indian self-determination, we will be working closely with the Indian community to accomplish the purposes of the legislation." Lavis said the conferees would be identifying issues and resources, formulating action plans, and beginning to develop proposed regulations.

This will be the first meeting of the Task Forces. In early November, Lavis asked Indian leaders to nominate individuals to serve on the various groups which will deal with such issues as school boards, education personnel, student rights, funding formulas, education policies and other matters involved in implementing the new legislation.

A summary of comments and recommendations from BIA school admini­strators, made at an early December meeting in Phoenix, will be made available to the Task Forces.

Lavis has been given responsibility for managing the policy and planning actions necessary for implementing the legislation by the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Forrest Gerard.

Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus today signed an order restoring to the Quechan Indians 25,000 acres of land within the original 1884 boundaries of the Fort Yuma Reservation in Arizona and California.

The Secretarial Order transfers administration of the land from the Bureau of Land Management to the Bureau of Indian Affairs as Trustee for the tribe. The action implements an opinion by Interior Solicitor Leo M. Krulitz that the land belongs to the tribe because conditions imposed by the 1893 agreement under which the tribe would have ceded its "non-irrigable" acreage to the United States were never met. Krulitz' ruling reverses two previous Solicitors' Opinions, one rendered in 1936, the other in 1977.

Most of the 25,000 acres are in California with a small portion in Arizona. While most of the land is still considered non-irrigable, it is now thought that between 5000 and 5500 acres are practicably irrigable. The restoration will more than triple the size of the reservation's land base, now an area of around 9200 acres, on which 860 of the tribe's 1725 members live.

The order protects valid third party interests, such as leases, patents, easements and rights of way which have been issued over the years--some before the reservation was established, some since the Department first ruled over 40 years ago the lands did not belong to the Tribe.

Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Forrest Gerard said, "With the entire Indian community of the United States, I am pleased to see the rights of the Quechan Tribe acknowledged and upheld by this Secretarial Order. The Order does not give something new to the tribe, but rather recognizes that their property had never been ceded away. The Secretary's Order is an act of justice, not of benevolence."

The Fort Yuma Reservation, situated along both sides of the Colorado River is southern Arizona and California, was established by Executive Order in 1884. In 1893, the Quechan notified the President and the Congress that they were willing to cede their reservation to the U.S. in return for receiving allotments of irrigated land, hoping to improve the tribal economy with smaller, individual plots of productive farm land.

An agreement was negotiated in 1893 for:

• An allotment and irrigation of irrigable land to members of the tribe;
• Sale of surplus irrigable lands to settles under strictly prescribed conditions, after all member were allotted land;
• And the opening of non-irrigable acreage to settlement by proclamation of the President;
• The holing of proceeds from the sale of surplus land in trust for the tribe at 5% annual interest.

The Congress ratified the agreement in 1894, adding two more conditions: an irrigation canal would have to be started within three years or right-of-way granted by statue a year earlier would be fortified; and, each adult Quechan male would receive free water for acre of his allotment over a 10-year period.

"During the following decade, allotment did not occur, the President did not proclaim the non-irrigable lands a part of the public domain and open to settlement and the irrigation canal was not built," said Krulitz in his opinion. "In short, the cession of 1893 was conditional, the United States never met its conditions and the non-irrigable acreage remains in the Tribe." Krulitz said allotment and irrigation did not occur on the reservation until Congress passed the 1904 statue applying the Reclamation Act to the Ft. Yuma and Colorado River Reservations. But the 1904 Act appears to have been completely unrelated to the cession agreement and ratifying statute, said the Solicitor. It therefore did not effect the conditional cession. The terms under the act for the sale of surplus irrigable lands and the handling the proceeds from such sales differed significantly from those in the 1893 agreement and the Congressional ratification a year later.

Departmental records show that until the 1936 Solicitor's Opinion, the Fort Yuma non-irrigable acreage continued to be administered as tribal lands, indicating that the 1904 Act was not viewed within the Department as having fulfilled the cession conditions.

In 1975 a draft Solicitor's Opinion, asserting Indian ownership of the 25,000 acres, was widely circulated within and outside the Department, Krulitz said, and a decision was expected to be issued in favor of the tribe. But in February 1976, the Solicitor upheld the 1936 opinion. The unexpected move sparked a controversy which led to hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs.

During those hearings, then-Interior Secretary Thomas Kleppe agreed to direct his Solicitor to prepare a formal written opinion explaining the decision to uphold the 1936 ruling. That became the 1977 Solicitor's Opinion, issued on January 17, 1977.

"The sharp and continuing divergence in legal views with respect to this issue persuaded me that the matter merited reconsideration," said Krulitz.

He said the Quechan Tribe has previously recognized that its title to the lands in question is subject to valid existing rights of third parties and also to lands taken by the United States for reclamation uses.

A lengthy list of the third party rights which would be protected is attached to the Secretarial Order. The order also provides for correction, within ninety days, of those rights which may have been erroneously described and inclusion of rights inadvertently omitted.