through a deliberate policy of delegalizing him!

The so-called "Indian Problem" has repeatedly been said to be really a white man problem... that is, the problems of the Indians were created by the white man, not the Indian. The "problem" is generally defined as being economic by the Government...the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of Interior under the Assistant Secretary for Public Land Management has the prime responsibility for administering Indian affairs but the U.S. Public Health Service Division of Indian Health, the Economic Development Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity, Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Office of Education, Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture also make substantial annual investments in Indian program. The "problem" is generally defined as being cultural by the academicians. . .the American Indian and the reserva

tions are the training tools and laboratories for many would-be anthropologists and sociologists along with countless educational researchers. The "problem" is generally defined as being social (whatever that is) by the church people (who all seem to have divine instruction to save us), the law enforcers (who say all would be well if we would just stop drinking firewater, stop having so many children, and go to work), and the schools (which all claim to want to educate and civilize us to become good members of society) which have always been under non-Indian control.

Basically the "problem" is that Indians are Indians! Generally speaking, Indians are not eager to become members of the "gray society" resulting from total assimilation. The fact that most tribal groups found themselves isolated and stranded on islands steadily decreasing in size has seriously aggravated the situation. Because of the Indian Allotment Act of

1887 the Indians on alloted reservations found themselves not especially anxious to assimilate but because of rapid deterioration of tribal land holdings many were forced to make a choice between humiliating dependence while on the reservation or leaving the reservation and losing their identity. Further aggravation has been in the form of the education systems putting on steady pressure to develop non-Indians (less than onethird of Indian children now attend government-run Indian schools, although through the Johnson-O'Malley Act many public school districts receive payments for Indian children and thus indirectly this support puts a premium on Indians. . .again). Many Indian families have voluntarily moved to urban areas to seek employment. Many Indian families are forced to move to urban areas to seek employment because of the general rural situation in America today. Today less than one-half of all American Indians live on reservations! There are not very many alternatives when the Indians' land base is decreasing, the Federal Government has been committed to the goal of helping every Indian join the mainstream through various techniques, and the Indian finds himself delegalized when he does go, even temporarily, into the mainstream. With all of this against him, one researcher recently said after much study that, "the Indian is not feasible; by all reason he should not even exist!"

An important factor in the story of the vanishing American Indian is the practice of classification by degree of Indian blood by the Government for purposes of determining eligibility for certain serv

ices and trustee status of property.

The way it works is simple: a full-blood Indian (pure-blood if you prefer) married to another full-blood produces only full-blood children. A full-blood Indian married to a white person produces half-breed children (one half Indian and one half white). A half-breed married to a white person produces children who are one quarter Indian, etc., etc. (The simple rule is to take one half of the nationality or racial makeup of each parent and add them together to identify the offspring.) Most Indian tribes maintain a list of tribal membership known as Rolls. On the advice of the Government, most tribes now use a system of enrolling only those persons who are one quarter or more "Indian." In most cases, persons of less than one-fourth Indian blood are not eligible for services. by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the USPHS Division of Indian Health. Thus, there are thousands of people who themselves identify as Indian and are identified by their communities (and their parents!) as Indians but are delegalized and are not considered to be Indians. Besides identification, these people stand to lose services in education, health, and property management.

Another important factor is the matter of where you live and where you were born. As long as an Indian meets the degree-ofblood test and resides on a reservation, he is eligible for the full range of community services. But no matter how much Indian you are, when you leave your reservation you lose your legal identity as an Indian and become ineligible for services which were available before. Since over one half of all Americans Indians have already left their reservations and more

are becoming delegalized every day, it should be obvious that we are indeed a legally vanishing race!

To leave the case here would seriously confuse the issue even more than it already is by the contradictions of the highly complex Federal regulations, tribal govern ments, and Congressional acts through the years. The current situation did not come about over. night. When the white man first came to America he thought the Indians were so few and child-like that with "proper training" they would soon join the mainstream (that was several hundred years ago). The very first agreements between the whites and the In dians were verbal. Later the ex panding colonies used variou other devices to acquire the lands they needed and wanted. One such device was the treaty. Later wher the Federal Government wa: formed. it also tried various de vices to get additional lands from the Indians. One such device wa the treaty. The Indian tribes wer recognized as Indian Nations and the treaties were between Nations The Indians agreed to cede larg portions of land in exchange fo certain specific things from th Government and in many cases re served for themselves certain area of land to be held in trust statu by the Government for the Indian (these were designated reserva tions). As the Nation's "Manifes Destiny" pushed it ever westward pressures built up to acquire ne lands and in many cases treatie were broken when Indians refuse to move to accept even smalle areas of land. Treaties were mad well into the latter half of the las century before the House of Rep resentatives realized the politica importance of the Indian Treati

grade levels). Because of the delegalizing process, the number of Indians meeting the tests are numbered about four hundred thousand out of a total of nearly one million. Other statistics: average educational attainment of 8.4 years of school (not measured achievement), average family size of 5.4 members, median family income of $1,500, life expectancy of 45 years, 80 percent of reservation families with incomes below poverty index, housing 75 percent substandard, and 40 to 80 percent unemployment. These reservation statistics seem to indicate a great pressure to force Indians to urban areas and thus delegalize even more. All this in exchange for approximately 3,000,000 square miles of America... 1,920,000,000 acres!

The future for the First American is dark unless certain very things are done. They will not be expensive nor impossible. These things must be done as a Nation:

(1) Honor our Indian treaties like we honor our international treaties, such as the U.N., NATO, and SEATO. An example of the degree of not honoring Indian treaties would be the caseload before the Indian Claims Commission-if treaties were honored there would be no caseload, nor need for a Commission; (2) Stop using various devices to delegalize and de-Indianize, such as tests of degree-of-blood, place of birth and residence, and deliberate educational deception by non-Indian controlled schools; (3) Increase local determination by decreasing the number of Federal employees "guiding" Indian programs and by contracting with local tribal governments for more services and through continued direct grants; (4) Enact legislation for long-range

Federal policy on Indian Affairs which assures opportunity to practice cultural pluralism by Indians specifically and all people in general; (5) Greatly strengthen coordination of existing Federal programs. These are the first steps.

When some or all of these things are done, we can turn to a new generation of American Indians which is just beginning to come on strong now and promises to increase sharply in number in the near future. . .the college-educated Indians. The college-educated Indian has been called the "button-down Indian," but I am seeing him in increasing numbers in a new and very meaningful role as the "stationwagon Indian." He (or she) holds a responsible job in the urban (or rural) society, is married (increasingly so to another well-educated Indian) and has children and a station wagon! He is having an increasing influence on other non-college Indians in the urban area and the whole family is keeping in close touch with the family and friends back on the home reservation. The "stationwagon Indian" is now socially and economically able to afford to be Indian! Voluntary integration into a technological society (but not total assimilation) is creating a satisfied and productive family man who is not bitter about efforts to force change on him because he has grown up in the space age and likely only since his new affluence has become involved in depth in Indian affairs. He now becomes a vital part of the long missing force within the tribe. . .trained knowhow combined with knowledge of both the Indian and non-Indian cultural worlds (the missing link in a sense).

But we have to face several facts about our emerging "stationwagon

Indians" if we will understand them. As they study current Indian affairs and fail to see improvements they are embittered. As they try to help and find themselves without legal identity, they become frustrated. They are found in many non-Indian places (for instance they are among the 40,000 Indians in Los Angeles, the 30,000 in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area, the 20,000 in Chicago, the 15,000 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and in many other cities like Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Detroit, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C., as well as at Harvard, Yale, MIT, University of Chicago, and UCLA).

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We have a new and energetic Indian group coming on deck now...these are truly the New Indians. . .and we must be ready and willing to turn over the leadership or they will take it away and organize opposition forces divert attention from real problems and largely waste greatly needed talent. But without the assurances that the government is taking the lead in really providing for the American Indian to seek and find his own place in the world, we will have suspicion, feetdragging, and, as in the urban world currently, unrest among the educated and apathy among the poor. This particular point in time seems to be an excellent time to right a lot of wrongs and begin to walk down the good road!

JAMES WILSON Dr. Wilson, an Oglala Sioux from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, is director of the Indian Division, Community Action Programs, of the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C. He holds a doctorate in education from Arizona State University.