kind of alternatives do we have to take care of these Indians in the urban areas? There never has been that kind of research done by the Federal Government to alleviate those questions that would eventually frustrate the American Indians. I think it is time it had been done.

Senator ABOUREZK. Well, it really kind of dovetails with your recommendation that there ought to be a review of the Indian laws now. This is not only a major review, but a major effort of recommending what ought to be changed.

The second piece of legislation is the authorization bill, as I recall it. Presently the Bureau of Indian Affairs has an open-ended authorization. If you understand the working of Congress right now there is a two-stage process before any money can be appropriated by the Congress. The first step is what we call authorization by a substantive committee. For example, the Indian Affairs Committee.

The second step is the appropriations done by the Appropriations Committee. Most Agencies in the Government have an authorization process, that is discussions, debate and passage of the bill that says we authorize expenditure of so much money for this program or that program. Then the appropriations bill would just say so much money is approprated for the program we talked about in the authorization bill.

Well, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service have what is known as open-ended authorizations. The Snyder Act and other pieces of legislation that said there is authorized such sums of money permanently as are needed to operate the programs. Then the BIA and the Indian Health Service go directly to the Appropriations Committee every year to ask for the money they want. There is no real review or accountability by the BIA because the Appropriations Committee does not have time to go in depth into these programs to find out whether they are working like they should, whether there ought to be a new program, whether some of them ought to be abolished or changed or whatever.

So the authorization bill I am talking about would require the Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to come before this committee. Originally, I proposed they should come every year. I have since become convinced that it ought to be every 2 years, to explain what they are doing and what they want to do, to let us ask questions of them. In that kind of open debate you can probably approve legislation and the program. That bill is being considered by the committee now and I would like your comments on that.

Mr. EDMONDS. I think if the Bureau itself is going to be part of the system that they should report to the subcommittee to make sure those allocations submitted for Indians, wherever they are, should be reviewed by your committee to make sure they are disbursed in the right direction. I don't think there has been enough of this done by any committee to make sure the Bureau is living up to its commitments, because they are representing Indians. My feeling is that an Indian is an Indian wherever he is.

Senator ABOUREZK. Well, the BIA has never had to answer to anybody. It is my view or my opinion that is part of what is wrong, because they just go off in their own direction. This is an effort to make them account. It is not a perfect system but it is more perfect than what we have now.

Mr. EDMONDS. Hopefully, within your subcommittee you do, you know, have the participation of American Indians.

Senator ABOUREZK. Well, that was my next comment. There is no way for Indian people to become involved in legislation that affects them, not any real way. The way this committee operates at this time is that we would hope most of the questioning that is to be put to the Bureau of Indian Affairs comes from the Indian people themselves through our committee so we can ask the questions that need to be asked, because if you don't let us know what is wrong we won't know. These hearings that I am having now will continue. We can't get to Los Angeles or San Francisco every year, but we hope to be here periodically.

Mr. EDMONDS. How do you know that the BIA would respond to some of the things you ask them?

Senator ABOUREZK. Well, it is a pretty good lever, really. It depends on the skill of the committee in eliciting that information, of course. If they say they are going to do something they pretty well have to live up to it because it is on the public record. If they don't fulfill what they promise to do we have the next authorization hearing where they have to answer for that. That is part of the overall process that ought to be made to work and it is not working right now simply because they have the open-ended authorization.

Mr. EDMONDS. Well, I have been in the Los Angeles area and the only thing I believe in is results. When I see it happening, then I know you guys are on the ball.

Senator ABOUREZK. Well, I can understand that. Go ahead.

Mr. EDMONDS. The second recommendation is to have more funds and programs developed in the urban areas that meet the needs of the American Indians. Those needs are 1,000 times what they were on the reservation.

Third, give more directors to urban, rural, States, Federal, and city to respond to needs so they can become more competitive and participate in society because that is where the ball game is and that is where we will have to adjust.

Senator ABOUREZK. Well, thank you very much, Randy.

The next witness is Mr. Gus Adams, director of the Indian Center of San Jose. Is Mr. Adams here?

Mr. ADAMS. Yes.

STATEMENT OF GUS ADAMS, DIRECTOR, INDIAN CENTER OF SAN JOSE, SAN JOSE, CALIF.

Mr. ADAMS. We have an Indian center at San Jose that is quite similar to the Indian centers you have just listened to, the San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles centers. We service an estimated 10,000 Indians that reside in the county of Santa Clara. The need is pretty well documented because the unemployment rate of American Indians in the bay area ranges from 22 percent to 40 percent.

I would like to share with you some of our problems and frustrations and hopefully some of our success which we have been able to achieve in attempting to serve the Indian people residing in the county of Santa Clara.

We are funded by the community action program in the county and we receive $45,000 worth of funding to run an information and referral service. Our program is not unique when compared to other Indian centers because we find the problems are pretty common in almost any urban area. We spend a lot of time in giving information referrals and making sure Indians get to proper agencies, providing transportation, emergency food and clothing. Some of the things that I found, because of lack of funding, we have been forced to go out into the city and county agencies to supplement our program. It has been fairly successful in the way we have been able to persuade the Department of Social Services, the Welfare Department, to take on the special Indian caseload and it is headed by an Indian who has a MSW from the University of California, Berkeley. This has resulted in hiring three Indian people who are in permanent positions with the county and they are building up fringe benefits and all the other resulting benefits. We have been able to have the mental health department with one person who is currently coordinating our efforts to write a proposal so that we can get a halfway house.

We just finished negotiating a contract with the county to bring in three Indian people to provide referral services at the Indian center. We have been able to persuade adult education to have a preparation class at the center starting the second week in September.

All of this is based on the idea-by the way, all of these people we have hired in these positions are Indians. It is all based on the premise that Indians can best serve other Indians at any level.

We feel that we have been able to tap some of the sources but there are a lot of other areas we still haven't. We haven't tapped the county school system yet. We feel we should get Indian people employed as resource people in the county school system and we really haven't done too much about the health program. But from experience on the local level we found, I think, if we can begin tapping and if we can persuade the regional agencies to put together programs such as this in which they would hire regional people to work on a region 9 level, HEW, Department of Labor and Department of Transportation, all the agencies, based on the premise that Indians can best serve other Indians. We feel it is important to stress agency funding rather than try to isolate one program in the community and say set up a health program and set up an alcoholism program and have them diverse and separate. We feel there should be some method of coordinating them.

We have them coordinated through the Indian center because it happens to be a coalition of Indian organizations in the county. It is based on a premise I feel strongly about.

I am beginning to lean on a word called "synergism" in which you combine the best things of people or agencies or products. A good example is if you took products like chrome, nickel, magnesium and carbon, they have various tensile strengths. You can base it on a premise and say I only had a tensile strength of 60,000 people. Chrome is 70,000, nickel is 80,000 and the others 50,000. You could say the weakest link would be the last which would be 50,000. That really isn't true either. Or you could say it has a combined tensile strength of the total which is 260,000. That isn't true either. The tensile strength combined is 250,000 pounds. So I think by combining programs you

get a synergism that you couldn't get otherwise. So I feel strongly about multiagency funding and I think we should pursue this as far as we can.

One other thing that hopefully we can do is recruit Indian manpower to these agencies. I had a long discussion with Brad Patterson about this and he could give no logical reason, at least to me, why this, you know, couldn't come about whereby we could recruit people from HEW, both from Washington and all 10 regions, to have top level people to be recruited for the specific purpose, with a specific job description, in which they would be guaranteed the right to work with other Indian programs.

Brad Patterson felt this couldn't be done. But I think you would be getting a lot of expert people who are available in the Indian community nationwide that would solve a lot of problems we are talking about. You know, if it couldn't be a continuous recruiting process where you would begin recruiting Indians to the GS-12 level and more where they would be making policy decisions, where they could implement programs, and initiate them, if need be, but I think three years from now we will find a lot of these problems behind us.

You know, even if it is a limited program in which you could say, OK, for the next 12 months we are going to recruit Indian people at top level positions and guarantee them the right to work with other Indians, I think you could be amazed at the manpower you could

recruit.

To back that up I think you need to bring other people through fellowships and through internships so that you could begin developing and also promise them that they have the right to work with other Indians. This process of recruiting Indians to the Government has been too long a brain drain in which people are recruited and say, well, OK, we will teach you the process of working with people, we will send you to Washington, DC. for 2 years to learn the system. Maybe 5 years from now you could begin working with Indian people. Well, this really never happens or very rarely happens. Oftentimes by the time this Indian person does begin to work with other Indians, maybe by that time he is brain washed and has learned the full process of not rocking the boat. I think oftentimes he has become very ineffective because this brain drain has gone on too long.

I think it is time that the Federal Government, if they are really concerned about working with Indians, they could recruit Indian people that could work with them at all levels. I think it is time, you know, for clarification with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

I am just trying to relate some of the experiences I have had. It has been frustrating to find that a lot of the governmental agencies still haven't gotten beyond the simple definition of what their role is in which they borrow the terminology of what the BIA refers to in their program. They must service Indians on or near reservations.

We find time after time agencies borrow this terminology without realizing they are cutting off a big chunk of the Indian population. So I understand that OEO is acting as a coordinating agency in a task force to overcome this problem and clarify this problem of lack of definition on the part of the agencies. I hope it is successful.

I think you have read the report called, "A Preliminary Survey of American Indian Involvement in the Federal Government." I would like to refer to that. I think it is a very necessary and needed document, one that should be repeated in all agencies. This happens to refer to the Indian involvement in HEW. I think it is necessary that and in depth report be done in every agency to clarify what they have done and what they plan to do to assist Indian people.

Senator ABOUREZK. Are we able to have that for the record?
Mr. ADAMS. Sure.

[The report referred to follows:]