Page A3 THE SACRAMENTO BEE Own People Critical Hurdles Block Indian Aide's By John V. Hurst Bee Staff Writer "I get a lot of criticism from the Indian community for working with the governor," says H. D. Timm Williams, director of Gov. Ronald Reagan's Indian Assistance Project office. "But it's the first time any Califor nia governor, so far as I know, has ever had any Indian in his office. Try to be an Indian and get to the gover. nor and see what you're faced with. That office is definitely needed." Yet Williams has had his own prob. lems reaching the governor, as events have proved since March 1970. That is when Reagan created the IAP office. It filled a vacuum left when the legislature at Indian insistence, it should be noted allowed the State Advisory Commission on Indian Affairs (SACIA) to die. Long Gap Thus it took him more than a year to set up a face-to-face meeting between Reagan and leaders of various segments of the California Indian community. At this meeting held late last June, the Indians presented Reagan with a set of written questions. They sought his position on such issues as federal termination of the Indians' special This is the fourth article in a five-part series examining some of the attitudes and factors be. hind the new militance of California Indians. treat status, federal-versus-state jurisdiction over Indians, the California land claims settlement, health, education, housing and employment. Yet when members of the activist American Indian Movement (AIM) began agitating for the governor's answers in March, nine months later, it developed that no one in the gover nor's office could recall what the questions were. No Records The papers presented to Reagan had. apparently, been lost. Nor had anyone taken minutes. Next time I'll know better," said Williams. "I expected a secretary to be there. "The Indians were told to bring in their questions in written form. He (Reagan) took the requests from the "They're still trying to find out Yet Williams is not disheartened. H. D. Williams, Jeft, and Larry Kibby. he says of Reagan, "and that, given Others are not so certain. AIM ac- Tired of Waiting "Maybe it's time we had a Wound. Yet Kibby has accomplished per haps more than he recognizes in his efforts to go through channels. As Sen Mervyn Dymally, D-Los Angeles. pointed out the other day, the new Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Indian Affairs was pretty much Kibby's idea. The committee, with Dymally and Sen. John Harmer, R-Glendale, as its co-chairmen, has no power. But it can call hearings that focus legislative and public attention on Indian prob lems. It has held its first such hearing -on the governor's mansion site. Others are planned on federal funding cutoffs and on how Indians are at the bar of justice in California. An inkling of what California has done for its Indians since the federal government stepped aside is contained in the final report SACIA submitted in 1969, before it went out of business. Notes Defect "Shortly after the termination of (federal) services," it says, describ. ing conditions which have changed little in the years since, "a serious fault became apparent: "Neither the Indians nor departmental personnel - federal, state or local - were sure of which agency had jurisdiction and responsibility for the needed services to Indians in areas of health, education, law enforcement, housing, sanitation, employment, etc.... "For many years this lack of knowl edge was used as justification for each of the several levels of government to disclaim responsibility for indian welfare." "I've found many sympathizers," says IAP's Williams, "but very few that have any understanding at all. (Williams himself was accused of some lack of understanding by campus critics who last year got Stanford University to drop his option as the Indians' - now the "Cardinals" gametime mascot, full-regalia, "Prince Lightfoot.") Primary Function "My office's duty to the Indian community," he says, "is to assist in opening doors for them, to help them deal with the system, to break down some of the barriers. "I can't offer any more than the support of my office in getting the message to the governor." A problem here, however, is that Williams has no direct access to Reagan: He must go through the gover nor's staff. And the problems he attempts to communicate, while pressing, are sel com new. "California Indians," says Joe Carril of Davis, spokesman for the Cali Continued fornia Indians for a Fair Settlement, "receive less than $30 per person of the National Indian Health Service budget, compared to more than $320 per Indian in other states." They get "less than $12 per Indian child" of federal Indian education funds, "compared to. in some states, more than $200 per Indian child. "There is a documented need for more than $15 million to make the housing of rural California Indians livable. Last year the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget for California Indi an housing was a meager $1 million Not one of the homes improved with these funds was brought up to coun safety standards. As for California Carillo says: "Since Gov. Reagan has been of fice, the state government has spent support of Indians at Wounded Knee, SD. Bee Photo SACRAMENTO BEE Many Tongues Indian Disunity Erects Barriers To Solutions By John V. Ilurst Bee Staff Writer Part of the confusion stems from the very diversity of California's Indian population: As many have roots outside the state as in it; an estimated 75 per cent are landless: most have been turned out by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to make it on their own or not at all. It is a diversity that extends to the realms of thought and opinion, for unanimity of purpose or program is as rare among Indians as it is among the rest of the population. "The past is the past," says Larry Kibby of the activist American Indian Movement (AIM). "The issue today is a political issue." AIM advocates returning to the treaties restoring to the Indians not only their lost land base - or a rea sonable facsimile - but the lost nationhood which allowed them sole control over that land. Taking land from existing owners, for return to the Indians, might cre ate problems greater than those created when the Indians lost it. But advocates of the nationhood approach point out there is land already in pub he hands national forests, parks, cle that would do nicely in place of what was lost. Practical Problems Other Indians are less concerned with the larger issues than they are with the nitty-gritty problems imposed on them by the policies that created these issues - food, housing, jobs, education, health and welfare. Yet California Indians themselves have stymied some of the state's efforts to assess the problems and seek solutions. In 1969 they succeeded in killing a bill which would have kept the State Advisory Commission on Indian Affairs (SAČIA) alive for another five years. They argued that SACIA established in 1961, should be staffed and run by Indians and that, as constitut. ed, it served as a barrier to them in efforts to reach the legislature. SACIA ceased to be in 1970, and Williams' office took its place. There still are other Indians whose Notes Progress Need "You can't be close to Mother Na- "I think that's true." commented Williams. "There are no more buffalo There's nothing to go back to." Such a truth is one of the consequences of federal BIA policies aimed at "terminating" the Indian's ties with the land and moving him into the white mainstream. "The greatest tragedy," says SACIA's final report, "was that in accepting termination the adults responsible did in fact disinherit future generations of their families not only in land and federal services but also in the identity of their tribal affiliation, which is primarily landbased. "Why me?" says AIM's Larry Kil by, repeating a reporter's question. "Somebody has to speak out and voice their concern. The problems of the Indians of California have got to be looked into -something has got to be done-instead of just lying on somebody's desk." AIM has no dearth of critics, espe cially of its militant ways. Yet even such presumed establishment Indians as David Risling, coordinator of Native American Studies at the Univer⚫sity of California in Davis, are unwilling to condemn the organization out of hand. Need For Action Risling, a Hoopa who has worked most of his life to improve the lot of California's Indians, says report after report and commission after commission has found and defined the prob lems, yet little has ever been done. "They (AIM) are fighting to prevent the same kind of thing from happening." he says, "to break up this bureaucracy "If you don't succeed m a political way," warns Skip Willits of D-Q University near Winters, "then I don't think we should be condemned for taking whatever action we need in take. And even Arthur D. Pheland Sr., a Fort Bragg businessman and member of a task force which is studying what can be done to protect Indian ceme teries, may be coming around. "Violence?" he asked at a meeting last spring. Everything would be washed down the drain." Yet at last month's hearing on the governor's mansion, he seemed to sound a different note "The desecretion is going to stop. he said. "In the absence of law, the indians are going to stop it. If they have to use firearms to do it, they're going to use them.” Mr. BECKER. I would like to address myself to the bill you have just brought up, mainly the Trust Council bill, and the record that was made earlier that the administration wishes just to have a staff of seven or eight attorneys in there. We find that with the 19 attorneys that we have, just dealing in the State here, it is far from adequate. We need a staff just to deal with the problems of the State of around 50 attorneys, a very conservative estimate, so that we can reach those in the cities we are unable to reach. The rural areas are beyond our grasp because of monetary reasons. Senator ABOUREZK. If I might be able to get an opinion from you gentlemen here today, if you have had time to think and consider the Trust Council Authority bill, the caseload that it would have throughout the country if it were to do its work adequately, what is your opinion on the number of staff attorneys needed to adequately staff the Trust Council Authority? Mr. SMITH. I would say it would probably be in the neighborhood, I would say, of around 80 to 100 attorneys. It would be quite large and one of the reasons that I feel that way is that we are doing many things now that would rightly belong to such a trust authority. To expand that a little further, I don't think a legal service program can take the place of this kind of authority. The reason being that a legal services program is designed to handle individual client problems and not deal with overall issues. In addition to that it has various poverty guidelines requirements for the clientele and on top of that we have no professional employees beyond attorneys. In my office right now in Eureka I have three very major trespass cases that have to do with county and State roads that were built across trust lands without any form of right-of-way. I am not a ·land expert, we do not have the backup personnel to go out and do the appraisals and give the expert opinions that are needed in this kind of litigation. In addition to that a legal services program, because it is client oriented, we sometimes find ourselves in representing an individual client, we may be contravening an overall policy. I can cite you one example in South Dakota where there were large numbers of individuals on the reservations out there who wanted to sell their individual trust allotments. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, apparently without any statutory authority, were taking these applications and basically filing them in the bottom desk drawer and refusing to act on them. The reason was a good one. They wanted to keep the land in trust. At the legal services program one of these individuals came to us and said we don't really care about the overall policy or the harm it will cause, we want our land sold. Because of our nature in representing individual clients, we had nothing else we could do beyond bringing that litigation. This is the problem we run into continuously and why they cannot take the place of the trust. In addition to that, a lot of the issues we handle are not local issues but national issues. But we are only a local program, and we can't deal with them on the required national scale. Senator ABOUREZK. Thank you very much; please continue with your presentation. |