OPA

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I return to Shiprock for the dedication of this splendid new factory constructed by Navajo effort to house the largest industrial facility in the entire State of New Mexico.

The Navajo people have indeed moved into the, space age. In this plant, a subsidiary of the world-wide Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, Navajos are today assembling some of the components that go into our Apollo rocket systems.

I congratulate the Dineh* -- and Chairman Nakai and officers and members of the Shiprock Chapter, and other members of the Navajo Tribal Council -- for the patience, persistence and foresight that has brought this community into the orbit of America's future. I also congratulate Dr. Lester Hogan, President of Fairchild Semiconductor, and other officers of that corporation who joined hands with the Navajos and with the Federal Government in a venture that was, in fact, a real gamble in the beginning. It takes imagination and belief in the potential of Indian Americans to accomplish what has been accomplished here at Shiprock in the past three years. The company has grown from a modest operation with 50 workers -­functioning temporarily in Shiprock's recreational center building -- to a plant employing 1,200 -- including more Indian people than any other plant of any kind in the entire United States. All but a small handful of the employees, including supervisory employees, are Navajos -- and I am told Fairchild's objective is not only to double and possibly triple the current payroll in the near future but to convert all jobs to Indian occupancy as quickly as Indian skills can be trained to assume the entire range of responsibilities.

These developments didn't happen by spontaneous combustion. They happened because the Navajo people believed in themselves, and convinced others that the belief is well-founded. They happened because Indians employed here have demonstrated aptitudes and attitudes that are necessary ingredients to successful private industry. They happened because a kind of partnership effort was involved -- a four-way partnership of private industry, tribal authorities, Federal aid agencies and the larger New Mexico community.

*Navajo name for "the people" - meaning themselves.

­­­Be assured that during my tenure as Commissioner of Indian Affairs this kind of all-points effort will become a feature of the BIA's efforts to assist Indians to develop themselves and their resources to the maximum degree. Indian areas -- even the vast and somewhat remote

Navajo area -- cannot support their populations in forms that no longer relate to the economy of this Nation as a whole. The Navajos have proven that it is' possible to be Indian and be modern -- indeed, that the best safeguard to survival of a people is to bolster ancient custom and tradition and belief with know-how related to the broader community.

The Navajos have already made a good start, as shown by a decision of the tribal council to retain a firm of urban planners to out­line a comprehensive plan for the entire reservation. This latest important tribal council action follows a series of other moves to pro­mote industrial growth. One is the establishment of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority which is now providing water, natural gas and electricity to many parts of the reservation. and I cannot fail to mention the new Navaho Community College. What a farsighted move this is -- to provide a means, here at home, for training Navajo workers and supervisors in the various skills and technologies that will be necessary to the economic improvement of the Navajo region. I know this college has been a long-time dream-come-true for a number of Navajo leaders dedicated to the proposition that education is basic to continued Navajo vitality.

These new developments strike my eye and heart with particular awareness because I come here today as one returning to the scene.

Navajo pride is growing -- I sense it strongly in this tremendous gathering here today, and I sense it among the several Navajo individuals with whom I have spoken personally. At the same time, the shape of Navajo land is changing. Where once only the dramatic works of nature itself comprised the profile of the land, now the shape of towns made by man are forming. Such places as Window Rock, Fort Defiance, Chinle, and Crownpoint -- to name but a few -- were once hardly more than place names and now they are becoming centers of Navajo life. These are places where that most valuable of all Navajo resources, the Navajo people, can live, work and thrive.

I first became acquainted with Navajos and their problems when Secretary of the Interior Krug asked me to serve as chairman of a task force appointed to review your plight following the terrible winter of 1947. Much of our report was incorporated in the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Program, I have kept up with reservation development, here and elsewhere.

One of the most interesting developments is the fact that the Indian population is growing at a great rate. This is exemplified by the Navajos in particular. Only a decade or maybe a bit longer ago there were only 85,000 Navajos, Today your numbers exceed 120,000 and by the turn of the century, at present rates, there will be about 340,000 Navajo people.

­­All of these people cannot possibly expect to live on lands that are not producing the most they can in terms of today's economy. It is not enough to be farmers and ranchers. It is also necessary to be storekeepers and manufacturers and miners and producers of new kinds of goods from traditional resources. All kinds of products can be made from the resources of the forests. New kinds of foods can be produced, processed and packaged to supplement the agrarian life. New income can come from purposefully planned recreational developments to attract the tourist dollars and still not detract from the natural beauty of some Indian lands.

There are jobs and job opportunities of many kinds yet to be created in Indian areas. This must be our objective. For, while many Indians will perhaps wish to venture into the urban, areas in search of new opportunity, many others will prefer to remain in their homelands.

To open up the options -- this is my objective as Commissioner. And it can be done only through the four-way kind of effort that has been demonstrated here at Shiprock. Through joint planning by private industry, Federal and state government, and the Indian people themselves.

This kind of economic development planning will have its impact upon the social betterment of Indian communities -- for there is no way to draw the line between the term "social progress" and the term "economic development." Each is only a theoretical concept until they come together. The betterment of human living is the objective of developing natural resources.

You have all heard about Indian people moving into the "mainstream" of American life. Where, I submit, does the mainstream begin and end? In my mind, the mainstream of America runs from the rich tidelands through the mountains and across the plains for three thousand miles. Indians are in the mainstream. The only problem is, their areas have not been as well developed for human habitation, nor their resources as well developed for human use, as have most other areas and resources of the country.

It is beginning to happen. It is happening there in Shiprock. And I salute 'the efforts of all people and all organizations that combined to make it happen.

Approval of a reorganization under which the United Pueblos Agency with headquarters in Albuquerque, N.M., has been divided into two smaller agencies was announced by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett.

The new Northern Pueblos Agency, with headquarters, in Santa Fe, N.M., will serve the eight northern pueblos -- Nambe, Picurt, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, San Juan, Santa Clara, Taos and Tesuque.

The new Southern Pueblos Agency, with headquarters in Albuquerque, will serve the southern and central pueblos -- Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Sandia, San Felipe, Santa Ana,.Santa Domingo and Zia.

Commissioner Bennett said the reorganization will open the way for increased participation by the Indian people in the management of their affairs by making Bureau specialists and officials more geographically accessible for consultation and cooperation with Indian leadership.

He said the reorganization will provide more effective services to Indian people through the increased contact by Agency personnel with the individual pueblos and more efficient use of Bureau manpower through reduction of time lost in travel.

The eight northern pueblos some time ago requested the establishment of an agency at Santa Fe. The reorganization was also supported by the All-Indian Pueblos Council by a 17 to 0 vote on December 14, with two Pueblos absent.

Of the 333 positions involved the Northern Pueblos Agency will have 87 positions and the Southern Pueblos Agency 246. Of the 87 positions being assigned to the Northern Pueblos Agency, only about 25 will be physically moved from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, as the others are already in the Northern area. These transfers will be accomplished over a period of time to avoid severe impacts on individuals and to conform to budget stringencies, Bennett said.

The establishment of the two new agencies is being programmed so that there will be no overall increase in costs from those already estimated for the existing United Pueblos Agency, plus five positions which are being transferred from the area office.

A new superintendent will be appointed for the Northern Pueblos Agency. Kenneth L. Payton, superintendent of the United Pueblo Agency will remain as superintendent of the new Southern Pueblos Agency.

Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel today announced his opposition to a proposed California-Nevada interstate water compact because it would adversely affect the rights of the Pyramid Lake Indians and threaten destruction of the Lake itself.

In a letter to Robert Mayo, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Secretary Hickel urged that the Administration oppose the compact as drafted.

He recommended that the Federal Government enter negotiations with the two States as span as possible and work out a new formula.

The interstate compact seeks to allocate the use of water in the Lake Tahoe, Truckee River,Carson River, and Walker River Basins, proposing to divert additional water away from Pyramid Lake and use it for irrigation and other purposes. Pyramid Lake, located about 30 miles north of Reno, is fed by the Truckee River.

Secretary Hickel pointed out that the effect of the compact would be to take away from the Indians their legal right to the waters, except those already decreed for agricultural purposes.

Secretary Hickel said that "utmost consideration be given the future of Pyramid Lake as being the rightful home and fishing grounds of the impoverished Indian tribe and as a highly valuable economic asset to them resulting from recreational development of the area." The tribe is the sale owner of Pyramid Lake and most of its environments.

The Secretary said that the compact would hinder Federal efforts to preserve high, quality, unpolluted water in and near the lake. He called it "a natural resource of unique value to the nation."

"Pyramid Lake is a recreation resource of national significance because of its large area and the recreation, sport fishing, aesthetic, geologic, ecologic, archeologic and historic values it provides," the Secretary said.

"The lake offers greater potential high quality water recreation for large numbers of users than any other lake in Northern Nevada or California."

Secretary Hickel also noted that the compact seeks to limit the Federal Government, both as a sovereign entity and as trustee for the Indians.

He suggested a "less ambitious but worthwhile and attainable" formula which would serve as a framework for recognition of existing uses but would be "flexible enough to accommodate future resolution of remaining conflicting claims."

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Harrison Loesch today directed the, Commissioner of Indian Affairs to replace immediately the Superintendent and the Principal of the Chilocco, Oklahoma, Indian school pending completion of a thorough investigation of conditions there.

The high school is run by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs. It accommodates about 1,000 Indian boarding pupils from various parts of the nation.

A BIA education team, in reviewing the .operation of the school, charged' that some students had been subjected to handcuffing for long periods and to other physical punishment.

The conditions were discovered last November, but no further action was taken by the Bureau.

"I have urgently requested that the Federal Bureau of Investigation check into the possibility that criminal laws may have been violated," Mr. Loesch said. "Other actions will be taken to improve both the quality of education being offered to the students and the living environment," he added.

Mr. Loesch, sworn in. as Assistant Secretary last week and given supervision of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said he is considering a personal visit to the school within the next few days.

The Superintendent, Dr. Leon Wall, and the Principal, Clarence Winston, are being reassigned temporarily to other duties by BIA while the investigation continues. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett said Gordon Gunderson, BIA's Assistant Area Director for Education at Anadarko, Okla., has been detailed to serve temporarily as Acting Superintendent at the Chilocco School.

The award of a $968,000 contract to remodel and expand the existing Kyle School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota was announced today by tie Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Existing facilities will be remodeled and anew addition will be constructed to provide multipurpose, administrative, and instructional materials spaces, 12 new classrooms, a kitchen, and two locker rooms, together with utilities, paving, and adjunct facilities.

When completed, the project will provide complete elementary school facilities for approximately 360 children in the area. The low successful bidder was Rapid Plumbing Co., of Rapid City, S. D. Three higher bids ranging from $998,600 to $1,098,500 were received.

Award of a $980,000 contract to construct a dormitory with sleeping rooms for 64 students, a kitchen-multi-use building adequate for 128 students, and adjunct facilities, , including utilities and paving at Eufaula, Okla., was announced today by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior.

When completed, the project will provide living facilities for elementary and secondary school-age Indian children attending public schools in the City of Eufaula.

The contractor will be C. A. Cowen Construction, Inc., of Shawnee, Okla., which had the lowest responsive bid. Three higher bids, ranging from $991,143 to $1,123,000, were received.

Timber sales on Indian owned land reached a record high of $26.7 million in calendar year 1968, topping a stumpage receipts of the previous year by almost $8.8 million, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs announced.

Although the amount of timber harvested also reached a record 998 million board feet -- 98 million board feet over 1967 Bureau officials said rapidly rising timber prices were largely responsible for the income increase.

In addition to cash receipts, Indians cut more than 92 million board feet of timber for home and farm use and for fuel.

The increased level of Indian timber harvest provided about 7,000 year-long jobs in logging and milling and more than 4,700 jobs in supporting and service employment, with combined wages of about $50 million annually.

Plans are now under way to increase Indian timber sales, Bureau officials said, to help ease the present log shortage and to further increase Indian stumpage income and employment.

Several Indian tribes are taking an increased role in developing the industrial and business opportunities supported by their timber harvests. Wood processing plants have been installed by the Navajo and Jicarilla Apache Tribes in New Mexico, the White Mountain Apache in Arizona, Warm Springs in Oregon, and Red Lake Chippewas in Minnesota, with small mills located on a number of other reservations. Individual Indians are also controlling an increasing number of logging enterprises.

Indian forests are managed on a sustained-yield basis, so that the resource will be continually productive.

A Family Employment Training Center, the first established and directed by an all-Indian corporation, will open this fall at Bismarck, N.D.

Contracts for the project are being signed at the site of the Center today.

The United Tribes of North Dakota Development Corporation, whose membership includes all the tribes of North Dakota, announced that it will award the contract for the operation of the Center to Bendix Field Engineering, Corporation, Owings Mills, Md., a subsidiary of The Bendix Corporation.

The Indian tribes of North Dakota initiated the proposal for the training center when the Lewis and Clark Job Corps Training Center at Bismarck was closed.

The Development Corporation represents the Standing Rock and Fort Totten Sioux, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Gros Ventre (Hidatsa), Arikara, and Mandan. Their enterprise represents one of the largest contracts with an Indian group ever negotiated by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. The contract provides for Federal funding totaling $1,080,000 for the first year of operations.

Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel termed the new contract a "breakthrough in the exciting task of bringing Indian and Alaska Native leadership to the fore in creating programs that are not simply designed for Indians, but programs designed EY Indians."

"President Nixon stated last fall that in this Administration Indians' 'participation in planning their own destiny will actively be encouraged.' We have now begun a major venture in Indian direction of Indian programs. The businesslike manner in which the United Tribes have approached this undertaking gives me great confidence that they will carry it forward for the benefit of the Indian people in the eight states it will serve," he said.

Under the Family Training Center concept an entire family receives an education -- the basic three R's related to the vocation the trainee picks, vocational training, and a grounding in living in urban areas -- the places where most of the jobs are.

Both mother and father receive job training. The Center provides child care for young children while older brothers and sisters are enrolled in local schools. All members of the family receive counseling and guidance on an individual basis as needed during the transition from one way of life to another.

Initial enrollment at the Center will be 25 families, 10 solo parents, 50 single men and 50 single women. The Center will serve 36 reservations in eight states -- North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

While similar centers are being operated under contract for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Madera, Calif., and Roswell, N.M., this is the first center directed by those it serves.

Funds for the Center, to be called the United Tribes Employment Training Center, will come from the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A special $700,000 appropriation approved by the last Congress provided for the conversion of the Job Corps Center into a family training center. The Office of Economic Opportunity 'donated much of the Center's equipment to the new facility.

The Indian leaders on the corporation board of directors deliberated carefully before choosing a subcontractor to run the Center to make sure that the program will meet the needs of Indian trainee families, and that there will be continuing close coordination between the corporation and the subcontractor.

In May Center site operation discussions the corporation and 16 potential subcontractors visited the to discuss and refine proposals and concepts for the Center's Subcontractors' plans and concepts were explored in detailed before the subcontract was awarded.

Thirty-three Indian high school students are among 700 youngsters from all over the country, representing the National Association of Student Councils in a leadership workshop scheduled June 16 through June 30, in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas.

The workshop is sponsored annually by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, but this is the first time that Indian students have been involved, the result of a working agreement recently completed between the Principals' group and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Indian tribes represented by the Indians include Navajo, Apache, Crow, Papago, Yakima, Gros Ventre, Choctaw, Cherokee, Pueblo, and Sioux. Alaska Natives will be represented by an Eskimo.

The students home residences range from Point Barrow, Alaska through Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

For the Indian students the first week has included an orientation program in Washington about the Workshops, about the Nation's capital, and Government generally.

They have met with various Congressmen, including members of the Indian Affairs Committees, and visited the Senate Office Building.

Another highlight of the week included a special luncheon given for them Wednesday, June 18, at the National Educational Association headquarters, which Assistant Secretary of the Interior Harrison Loesch attended.

For the second week of the Workshop, beginning June 23 at Baltimore's Perry Hall High School, the Indians will join their counterparts from non-Indian schools.

All students are officers of the student bodies of their schools.

Assistant BIA Commissioner Charles N. Zellers, who heads up the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Education Office, will be the keynote speaker on June 23, stressing the importance of student involvement in the total operation of the school system.

Following the adjournment of the Conference June 26 the Indian students will return to Washington for a Friday Seminar on Federal, local and school government, a Saturday picnic in Rock Creek park, and a Sunday baseball game, before returning to their homes

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, announced today a new edition of its popular, "American Indian Calendar" is available for purchase from the Superintendent of Documents in Washington, D.C.

The calendar, a much-requested booklet, lists important Indian events primarily in the 25 states where there are Indians having a service relationship with the Federal Government, giving information on pow-wows, rodeos, dances, religious observances, and arts and crafts exhibitions.

Typical entries include the Southern Ute Bear Dance at Ignacio, Colo., in May; the Custer Reenactment at Crow Agency, Mont., in late June; the July 4th Swinomish Reservation Festival at LaConner, Wash.; All-American Indian Days, the first week-end in August at Sheridan, Wyo., the Climax of which is the selection of Miss Indian America; the World Eskimo Olympics held in Fairbanks, Alaska in early August; the mid-August Intertribal Indian Ceremonial at Gallup, N.M., and the Navajo Tribal Fair at Window Rock, Ariz., in early September.

In announcing the booklet, the Bureau noted that many Indian observances depend upon seasonal activities and cannot be pinned down in advance to exact days. Tribal medicine men choose the day when portents seem best to them. It is suggested that tourists check in advance with tribes, local Bureau offices and chambers of commerce for specific dates.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett pointed out that some Indian reservations have some of the best fishing, hunting, hiking and sight-seeing areas in the country.

"Indian areas are often less crowded than national parks and similar facilities," he pointed out, at the same time cautioning that Indian land sometimes doesn't have modern facilities and vacationers who don't have full camping equipment should plan to stay in towns outside the reservations unless they arrange ahead for accommodations in the Indian areas.

"Visitors are welcomed by most Indian people," he said. "Each reservation has its own simple rules and they should be observed. The use of liquor is forbidden on most reservations, and the taking of pictures should be checked with local authorities."

Pictures may not be taken of certain religious ceremonies, and it is advisable to ask permission before taking pictures of individuals.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs' "American Indian Calendar" is priced at 45¢ and may be obtained by writing for Number I20.2:C12/2/969, the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.