OPA

Agreement has been reached between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the commissioners of Klamath County, Oregon, covering future maintenance and improvement work on the 764-mile road system of the Klamath Indian Reservation, Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay announced today.

The agreement provides that when Federal responsibilities and services to Klamath Indians are terminated by Secretarial proclamation on or before August 13, 1958, under the so-called "Klamath Termination Act" passed last August, the County will take over full responsibility for maintaining reservation roads and integrating them into the County system.

Meanwhile the Bureau agrees to make specified improvements on 79 miles of the reservation roads at an estimated cost of $916,000.

The agreement is typical, Secretary McKay said, of arrangements which the Bureau of Indian Affairs is making not only at Klamath Agency but in other tribal areas affected by termination laws. The purpose of these arrangements is to make sure that the Indians involved are provided with the usual range of State and County services after termination of Federal responsibilities in the particular area.

Broader educational opportunities for Indian youngsters from the primary grades through the university level and more effective conservation of Indian soil and water resources are two of the prime benefits expected to result from increased Indian Bureau appropriations for the fiscal year which began July 1.

Important, though less sweeping, improvements are also in prospect in the fields of relocation, trust property management, forestry and law enforcement.

With an increase of $3,925,103 over the $32,692,827 available for education last year, the Bureau plans to step up the total enrollment of Indian children in both Federal and Bureau-aided public schools by more than 5,000 students. This will bring. Indian enrollment in all public schools and in Federal schools to an all-time high of roughly 100,000.

Most of the new enrollees Will be Navajo children entering school for the first time as a direct result of the Bureau's Navajo Emergency Education Program launched in the spring of 1954. Under the operation of this program the enrollment of Navajo youngsters in schools of all types was stepped up from a level of about 14,000 or roughly half the school-age population, in November 1953, to nearly 23,000 during the school year just ended.

With the increased education appropriations for the current fiscal year the Bureau will be in position this coming fall to round out the emergency program and open the schoolhouse doors for all Navajo children previously denied the opportunity because of lack of facilities. Continued effort will be necessary, however, to keep abreast of the tribe's school-age population which is growing at the rate of about 1,,500 a year.

Bureau assistance to Indian college and university students will be more than doubled under the new appropriation. With an increase in funds for this purpose from $22,935 to $50,000, the Bureau's scholarship program will broaden in scope from less than 200 students benefited last year to around 420 in 1955-56.

Funds for soil and moisture conservation, hiked by $990,000 to a record level of $3,661,672, will enable the Bureau to broaden and speed up the land and water saving work now under way at 45 Indian agencies and to initiate the program for the first time on the Flathead and Northern Cheyenne Reservations in Montana.

The Bureau's Voluntary relocation program, involving aid to Indian workers and their families in resettling away from the reservations and locating suitable jobs, will be almost doubled in coverage. Appropriations for this purpose, which have been around $579,600 for the past several years, have now been raised to $980,000. The number of Indians assisted by tile program is expected to increase from about 2,600 to roughly 5,000.

With an increase of $674,934 and a total appropriation of $1,987,639 for management of Indian trust property, the Bureau will be able to hire additional professional and clerical employees in this work and speed up the processing of oil and gas development leases and other realty transactions arising from requests of Indian landowners. Requests of this type have increased about 300 percent over the past four years and a tremendous backlog of cases, extending back as far as 1942, has developed both in Washington and the field offices. The Bureau now expects to eliminate this backlog and put its realty operations on a current basis in the reasonably near future.

An increase of $100,000 in forest and range management funds, from $2,085,000 to $2,185,000, will be used chiefly for carrying out sanitation salvage sales of over mature timber on Indian lands which are threatened with destruction by bark beetle and other pests.

Additional funds for law enforcement, amounting to $62,930 and bringing the appropriation for this item up to $400,000, will be used principally to expand the Bureau's policing operations on reservations in North and South Dakota. During the past year the Bureau had to take over enforcement work on the Devil’s Lake Reservation in North Dakota because of a decision by the State Supreme Court holding that a 1948 Federal Statute, conferring jurisdiction on the State, was ineffective.

The Indian Bureau's total appropriation for the new fiscal year is $71,832,498 or $5,508,116 more than the amount appropriated last year in the fields for which it still has a responsibility. Last year's appropriation, however, actually totaled $9l,112,460 since it included $24,198,578 for the Indian health program which was transferred July 1 to the United States Public Health Service, and $589,500 for Indian legal work which was taken over by the Office of the Solicitor of the Interior Department in July 1955.

Clarence W. Ringey, superintendent of the Umatilla Indian Agency, Pendleton, Oreg., will move to the comparable position at Western Washington Agency, Everett, Wash., on July 17 and will be replaced on July 31 by William E. Ensor, Jr., administrative officer of the Cherokee Agency, Cherokee, N.C., the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced today.

At Western Washington Mr. Ringey succeeds Melvin L. Robertson who transfers July 14 to be superintendent of the Menominee Agency, Keshena, Wis.

A native of Clarissa, Minn., Ringey joined the Indian Bureau in 1931 and for 10 years served as farm agent at Red Lake Agency, Red Lake, Minn. From there he went to the now abolished Tomah Agency, Shawano, Wis., as a field aid and later became assistant to the superintendent. In 1947 he transferred back to Red Lake as farm management supervisor and two years later was promoted to district agent at the Great Lakes Consolidated Agency, Ashland, Wis. After three years in this assignment, he transferred to the Minneapolis Area Office as Realty Assistant. He was appointed to his present position of Superintendent at Umatilla in 1954.

Ensor came with the Bureau in 1928 as assistant clerk at Tuba City, Ariz., and after one year moved to the Cherokee Agency where he has been stationed ever since. He has been administrative officer at Cherokee for the past 10 years and recently served for several months as acting superintendent.

Promotion of Benjamin Reifel, a Sioux Indian and doctor of philosophy in public administration, to be area director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Aberdeen, S. Dak., was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay.

He will succeed William O. Roberts, area director at Aberdeen since February 1954, who retires on August 31 after 38 years of continuous and progressively responsible service with the Indian Bureau.

Mr. Reifel, a veteran of the Indian Service, who has been superintendent at Pine Ridge Agency, Pine Ridge, S. Dale., for the past year and a half will transfer to the Area Office on July 31. The two men will work together in the Area Office during the month of August.

Born on South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux Reservation in 1906, Reifel received his early education in the reservations schools and then went on to South Dakota State College at Brookings. He graduated there as a bachelor of science in agriculture in 1932. The following year he joined the Indian Bureau as farm agent at Pine Ridge where he took over 21 years later as superintendent. From 1935 to 1942 he was organization field agent, helping Indian tribes and bands to form tribal or business councils under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

After four and half years of military service, he returned to the Bureau in 1946 as tribal relations officer at Billings, Mont. In 1949, he took three years' leave of absence for graduate study at Harvard University and was awarded his doctorate in 1952. Following a brief tour of duty in the Bureau's Washington Office, he was named superintendent of the Fort Berthold Agency, Elbowwoods, N. Dak. in 1952 and shifted to the Pine Ridge assignment in 1954.

Mr. Roberts was born in Schuyler County, Missouri, in 1890, and has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs continuously since 1917. During his first 10 years with the Bureau he served as a teacher at Pima, Arizona, a land lease clerk at Ponca, Oklahoma, financial clerk at Pawnee Agency, Oklahoma, chief clerk at Omaha, Nebraska and Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, and superintendent of the Indian school at Leupp, Arizona. In 1927, he rose to the rank of agency superintendent and served in that capacity at Cheyenne River Agency, Rosebud Agency, and Pine Ridge Agency, all in South Dakota. In 1946, he moved to Muskogee, Okla., as superintendent of the Five Civilized Tribes Agency and was designated as area director in 1949. After eight years at Muskogee, he was transferred 17 months ago to the Aberdeen assignment.

Removal of Federal restrictions which have operated for years to hold the lands of a limited number of admittedly competent Indians in compulsory trusteeship against the owners' wishes was announced today by Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs W. Barton Greenwood.

The effect of the move, which applies only to Indians actively seeking unrestricted title to their lands, is to equalize the status of all competent Indians in their dealings with the Bureau.

Since 1947 fee patents or unrestricted titles have been issued on request to competent Indian owners but have been withheld from those whose lands lay inside a federally or tribally managed timber or grazing unit. As a result, numerous Indian citizens with highly successful records of business or professional accomplishment have been unable to exercise their own judgment in the management or disposal of their properties.

To illustrate the old procedure, Mr. Greenwood cited the case of a woman with one-eighth Indian blood who began in 1951 applying for a fee patent to her 120-acre trust allotment on the Colville Reservation in Washington. This applicant lived off of the reservation, was married to a non-Indian, and was successfully engaged in farming with her husband. Her property holdings in non-trust status were valued at $28,500. Yet her application was denied for a period of nearly four years merely because her trust land was part of a timber management unit.

Numerous other cases could be cited, Mr. Greenwood said, where the holdings frozen in trust by the old procedure were too small to provide an adequate living for owners who lived elsewhere. Some, however, were large timber tracts worth thousands of dollars which would not bring revenue to the owner for 20 or 30 years as long as they remained in trust status.

Another adverse result of the former policy is related to the so-called “heirship” problem on Indian trust allotments. This is the problem which has developed following the death of the original allottees and the inheritance of the land by numerous and sometimes scattered heirs. In some cases, the Indian Bureau has to use a common denominator in the millions to compute the division of proceeds from the lease or sale of a 160-acre tract. Retention of allotments in trust status over a period of years against the wishes of the owners has led in numerous cases to further complication and compounding of this basic difficulty.

Under the new policy, trust restrictions will be removed from the land holdings of individual Indians upon written application of an adult owner if the applicant has shown ability to manage prudently his real property and business affairs. The Department will, however, consider requests for exceptions to this policy in cases where an extreme hardship to other Indians can be clearly demonstrated.

The new policy was adopted by the Indian Bureau following numerous conferences and consultations with the Indians primarily affected--those seeking unrestricted title to their lands.

The consolidation of two Choctaw Indian schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Oklahoma was announced today by Acting Commissioner W. Barton Greenwood. Wheelock Academy, established in Millerton in 1832, will be closed and its students will use dormitory facilities at Jones Academy and attend public schools in nearby Hartshorne.

The move will reduce operating costs per pupil to about half of the present figure and will provide better educational opportunities for the children.

Enrollment at the two academies had been greatly reduced in the past three years as more and more Indian children attended schools in their own districts. There were 80 boys enrolled in Jones Academy last year and 70 girls at Wheelock - far less than the capacities of the schools. Classrooms at Jones Academy have not been used since June 1952, when students boarding there started attending the Hartshorne public schools.

The consolidation was discussed with the Choctaw people and endorsed by their representatives. The Oklahoma State Department of Education also was consulted.

Jones Academy was selected for the consolidation because of superior facilities and their more economical operation. In addition, only minor remodeling will be necessary at Jones to make separate dormitory facilities available for boys and girls.

Indian people in Oklahoma, Bureau officials pointed out, have always favored public school attendance. The first school system at public expense in Oklahoma was established by the Five Civilized Tribes. The State public school system has welcomed Indian attendance, and Indian children, with the exception of those requiring boarding care for welfare reasons, go to local public schools.

Appointment of Thomas M. Reid as Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs was announced today by Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay. Mr. Reid has been serving as staff assistant to the Commissioner since December 1953, specializing in the field of resources (extension, forest and range management, irrigation, management of trust land, roads, and soil conservation) and program development.

As Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Reid will be concerned primarily with the readjustment of Federal responsibilities in Indian Affairs and will serve as personal representative of the Commissioner in contacts with Indian tribal groups affected by recent terminal legislation and with local, State and Federal agencies in carrying out Bureau policies.

Prior to joining the Bureau as consultant in August 1953, he served two years as agricultural attache at the American Embassy first in Guatemala and then in Cuba. He also served as chief of the quarantine division with the United States mission for the eradication of the foot and mouth disease in Mexico and for four years conducted his own ranching business in Valencia County, N. Mex. From 1933 to 1943 he was a county agricultural agent in New Mexico and served for two and one-half years of this period as State extension agronomist.

Born at Roswell, N. Mex., Mr. Reid graduated from New Mexico A&M College in 1933 with a B.S. in agriculture. He is married and has two children.

Designation of Carl Beck to supervise Indian Bureau activities aimed at giving Indians wider opportunities for improving their economic status was announced today by Acting Commissioner W. Barton Greenwood.

Mr. Beck, a veteran of 21 years' service with the Bureau, has served since 1953 as field representative of Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons. In his new assignment he will supervise the Bureau's program of assistance to Indians who want to relocate away from the reservations in communities where job opportunities are more plentiful. He will also be responsible for encouraging the establishment of private commercial and industrial enterprises near the major centers of Indian population.

Mr. Beck, a long-time resident of Arizona, first came with the Bureau on the Navajo Reservation in 1929 and subsequently served in a variety of positions. He was superintendent of the Western Shoshone Agency, Owyhee, Nev., from 1938 to 1943 and then transferred to the same position at Fort Hall Agency, Fort Hall, Idaho, where he served for five years.

In 1948 he resigned from the Bureau to enter private business. He returned as a consultant in April 1953, and was named as the Commissioner's field representative eight months later.

His title in his new assignment will be Assistant to the Commissioner.

Acting Secretary of the Interior Clarence A. Davis today announced that a public hearing will be held at the Osage Indian Agency, Pawhuska, Okla., on September 6 to consider four proposed amendments to the Federal regulations governing the leasing of Osage Reservation lands for oil and gas development.

The reservation, which comprises the whole of Osage County, Okla., has a rather unique ownership pattern. While the surface lands are owned principally by non-Indians, most of the minerals are owned by the Osage Tribe under provisions of a 1906 act and are subject to trust supervision by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

More than 600 million barrels of oil have been produced from tribal lands in the last half century.

One of the proposed amendments would increase the fees paid to the surface owners by lessees for well and tank-site locations in order to bring these charges in line with current economic conditions. Under existing regulations, which have been in effect since 1932, the fee is $100 for each well on cultivated or cultivable land, $35 for each well on lands of other types, and $10 for each tank site. Under the proposed new regulations it would be $200 on cultivated land, $150 on open pasture land, $100 on other types of land and $20 for each tank site.

The other three proposed amendments are largely technical in nature. One concerns the procedure for payment of location fees where the surface owner cannot be reached in person or by mail, or where he refuses to accept the payment tendered by the lessee. Another deals with the technical procedure for gas measurement. The third is a delegation to the Superintendent of the Osage Agency of authority now exercised in Washington in connection with agreements for the rescinding of unit leases.

William V. Kastler, Assistant Solicitor of the Department in charge of Indian legal work, will conduct the hearing as a special representative of the Secretary.

Acting Secretary of the Interior Clarence A. Davis today announced the appointment of Roley Buck, Wetumka, Oklahoma, to a two-year term as Principal Chief of the Creek Nation, one of Oklahoma's Five Civilized Tribes.

Chief Buck, a full-blood Creek Indian, has long been active in tribal and church affairs. He is the father of seven children, two of whom are now serving in the United States Army. The new chief himself served in the Army along the Mexican border in 1916 and 1917 and with the infantry in France in 1918.

Buck was one of eight candidates submitted to the Secretary following consultations held last June in Oklahoma with the Creek people by Peru Farver, then Chief of the Indian Bureau's Branch of Tribal Affairs.

The new chief will serve without salary, but in accord with Federal Government regulations, will be allowed travel and other expenses while on actual tribal business.

Chief Buck succeeds John F. Davis, whose term expired June 30 of this year.

The authority to appoint a Principal Chief of each of the Five Tribes was given the President of the United States by an Act of Congress approved on April 26, 1906, and delegated by the President to the Secretary of the Interior by Executive Order on June 5, 1951.