action being taken. But I think a study in this particular case is necessary so that we know where we are going.

I think with the kind of leadership you are going to provide in the Senate that out of this study we will be able to fashion legislation which will be truly meaningful for the Indian people.

I sat for 6 years on the Indian Affairs Subcommitee in the House of Representatives and the thing that bothered me was when decisions were being made for Indians at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Interior Department, and they were developing a program for the Indians, the Indians were always the last to be consulted. A blueprint would be made up and the Indians would be called back to Washington and they would be asked to ratify the proposal. I always felt that was a ridiculous way of proceeding.

Senator ABOUREZK. I agree with exactly what you say, Senator Tunney. The resolution you speak of, the Study Commission, is not one intended to delay the problem as a great many studies are. It is an honest effort on the part of this Committee to try to find legislative solutions. I frankly don't know the answers. I would be the first to admit that. I want the smartest Indian consultants in the country. We want them to say what is wrong. For too long that kind of input has been lacking.

Senator TUNNEY. Well, I want to thank you for your interruption because I think it is indicative of the problem that Indians feel isolated and left out and thereby frustrated.

Second, the bill that you introduced to require the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service to receive their authorization for 2 years rather than having an open-ended authorization. I don't see how we are going to develop any kind of meaningful over'sight control over these two agencies unless we have this kind of review that would occur every other year. I am appreciative of the fact that it is a little bit more effort for the congressional committees to have this kind of oversight review, but this is a function of individuals that serve on the committees and not of the system itself.

The system should work if the members of the committee are prepared to truly take those responsibilities seriously. I must say that with you serving as the chairman of the Indian Affairs Subcommittee I think that the Indians are incredibly lucky to have had the good fortune to have such leadership at this time because I happen to know the kind of person you are, the kind of diligence with which you pursue your work and I think a 2 year authorization in that kind of a review is desperately needed. I think it is about time the Bureau of Indian Affairs justified their existence before a congressional committee every 2 years with some really hard-hitting questions. Hardhitting questions prepared by the committee trying to dig into the activities of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, demonstrating what it is they are doing for the Indian people rather than demonstrating what they are doing for themselves to maintain themselves as a bureaucracy. That is what we have had too much of in Washington recently. Too many people on the Federal payroll think their only justification for going to work in the morning is to receive the paycheck rather than to represent the people in the country they are paid to

represent.

Well, I would like to get on with my testimony, Mr. Chairman.

Harland James said, "I'd like to get out of this dump mainly because of it being, it isn't our land where we're living."

Andy Garrison said, "All the houses all our people live in now are not a house-a shack. Our houses are so small that large families sleep out in summertime and in winter we move in and are close like sardines. We can feel each other breathe."

Kenneth Kizer said: "When the wind blows it goes right through the house."

Elmer Dick said, "We're drinking ditch water-there might be dead cows, or something bathing in it-"

And Wesley Dick said, "A ditch, mind you, which is so dern polluted that no white man would survive or even drink this water. The way we have been neglected is something the Government should be ashamed of."

These people are not characters from a cheap dust bowl novel, but native Americans living in Coleville, Calif.

Mr. Chairman, Wesley Dick is right. The Government should be ashamed.

The rights of native Americans steadily have been eroded by illegal treaties, disease, war, manifest destiny, and downright deception. The sanctimonious expressions of shame by the Government demonstrate no more than gross national hypocrisy. It is time to quit entertaining the romantic museum-oriented concept of the Indian and start responding to native American rights.

The Snyder Act of 1921 is the legal base on which the Bureau of Indian Affairs predicates most of its services to Native Americans. It is important to take special note of the wording of that act. It states quite clearly that the Bureau is to "benefit, care for and assist Indians throughout the United States."

But the Bureau has ignored that mandate. The reason- -on paper, at least, is money. The Federal Government benefits most, it believes, when it provides the fewest services. Hence, the smaller the client group, the lower the cost. That's a pretty simple formula. But by that formula, Indians simply disappear. That is why there are urban Indians and State Indians and terminated Indians and landless Indians.

Whatever convenient adjective is used, the Native American is the ultimate loser.

Harland James and Andy Garrison and Kenneth Kizer and Elmer Dick and Wesley Dick are among those losers. Their words, which I used at the beginning of my statement describe what happens when the Federal Government abdicates its trust responsibility to the Indian people.

I have been trying since April of this year to persuade the Bureau of Indian Affairs to apply for and hold in trust 38 units of Federal surplus housing-and I underline the words "surplus housing”—for this small group of Paiutes near Coleville. These houses could significantly improve their standard of living. In addition, I have requested that the Forest Service relinquish the land they own which surrounds the houses.

Both have refused. BIA states it is not authorized to act on behalf of 38 landless Indians. Once again the Government has applied its simple formula of declassifying Native Americans to a conveniently

ineligible category. I might say that housing is sitting right there. It is abandoned by the military services. It is standing there. Indians need a place to live but they are not going to live there apparently unless we can get some action by the Congress to make this possible. The Government seems to have forgotten that the only reason native Americans are landless is because the Federal Government cheated them out of their land base. From 1851 to 1853 the Government negotiated 18 treaties with California Indians. These treaties were never ratified; therefore, the Indians could not stay where they were, nor go back to their homes.

The landless Ione Miwaks share this problem. They were scattered throughout Amador County and moved to their present location because BIA promised a Rancheria. A mortgage on the land, and the subsequent bankruptcy of the owner proved to be more than BIA could cope with, so title and reservation status never materialized. So the Iones continued as squatters with three houses, a trailer and land that was promised to them in 1915.

Fifty-seven years later, with the help of California Indian Legal Services and the California Land Project, the Iones obtained title and a new promise from the Secretary of the Interior for reservation status. So far, nothing.

The Jamul Dieguenos are not so fortunate as the Iones. They are squatting on a piece of land with few houses, a totally inadequate water supply system, poor sanitation facilities and no job opportunities. Here, title might serve to make things worse. Although they lack the basic necessities of life, the Jamul Dieguenos have managed to maintain a strong traditional culture and sense of community. I believe it is the only community where Diegueno is the first language spoken. In this case, recognition would mean facing the inevitable problems of taxes, speculators, used car dealers-all of which might tend to threaten the culture and break up the community.

The so-called "urban Indians" suffer a similar plight. In most cities there is an overt attempt to proceed as though Indians do not exist. Programs for hiring and training Native Americans in the inner cities are virtually nonexistent. One of the primary needs of urban Native Americans is more participation at the Federal and State levels and not as tokens.

Mr. Chairman, the quintessential importance of Indian-owned natural resources-land, water and minerals-in the struggle for economic development has been documented so thoroughly elsewhere that I need not reiterate it here. It is enough to say that, without these resources, most Indian reservations in the Western United States are uninhabitable, simply economically incapable of supporting life. The Government of the United States for 100 years has been engaged in a conscious and effective scheme to usurp the natural resources which Native Americans need to survive.

The plight of the Pyramid Lake Tribe of Paiute Indians is well known. The tribe owns Pyramid Lake, and it is not only their most valuable resource, it is indeed the very means of livelihood for this fisherman tribe. Yet the Bureau of Reclamation, acting in the name of the United States, has for 70 years diverted huge quantities of water from the Truckee River, which feeds into Pyramid Lake. At times the diversions have completely stopped all inflow into this huge lake,

and they have consistently run as high as 50 to 60 percent of the total flow of the river. The diverted water is transported in a primitive and wasteful canal to support the Newlands Reclamation Project in central Nevada, which has been cited as the most wasteful, economically inefficient reclamation project in the entire United States.

So Pyramid Lake is dying, and with it the hopes of the tribe for economic development and prosperity. This beautiful desert lake has declined a foot every year, over 70 feet since the project was built in 1906, because there is no longer enough water feeding into it to support it. A study by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation several years ago found that Pyramid Lake is the single greatest remaining undeveloped recreational resource in Northern California and Nevada. Potentially, if properly developed, the lake could provide millions of dollars in income to the tribe, and boundless recreational opportunities to millions of people in the San Francisco, Sacramento and Northern Nevada metropolitan areas.

Instead, the lake gradually but inexorably declines. It is an alkaline lake, and so the increasing salinity levels caused by the reduced inflow of fresh water has drastically reduced the productivity of a once bountiful fishery, the present and traditional means of livelihood for the tribe.

Now, granted the reclamation project, duly authorized by Congress, deserves some water. But hydrological studies suggest that the overall efficiency of the transport and irrigation system is less than 40 percent. More than 60 percent of this precious desert water is wasted. This is a violation of the western common law doctrine of beneficial use of water. It is a violation of the clear terms of the so-called Orr Water Ditch Co. decree and the Olpine decree. It is a violation of which the Commissioner of Reclamation and the Secretary of the Interior are aware, and yet which they continue to countenance.

Last year the Pyramid Lake Tribe won an injunction in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, directing the Secretary of the Interior to improve the efficiency of the Newlands project and increase the inflow into Pyramid Lake. But it is an indication of the Interior Department's posture that the Pyramid Lake Tribe had to go to court to sue the Secretary of the Interior, their supposed trustee, in order to slow down the theft of their water.

Other equally egregious examples abound in California, Mr. Chairman. For example, the Quechan Tribe of Indians on the Fort Yuma Reservation in Yuma and Imperial Counties, provides a tragic case study for the committee to consider.

In 1893 a fraudulent, forged, and altogether unconscionable "arrangement" was forced upon the Quechans by the Colorado River Irrigation Co., with the connivance of the Department of the Interior, for construction of an irrigation canal and diversion of Colorado River waters. At the time the Quechan negotiators could neither read nor write nor understand English. Yet, this "agreement" which purports to authorize the robbery of their water and the use of Indian land has been solemnly enforced and upheld by the Secretary of the Interior.

The Pechanga and Cahuilla Bands of Mission Indians, also in San Diego County, provide another bizarre case of bureaucratic injustice. The Indians on the reservations share water rights in the Santa

Margarita River and the underlying ground water basin with a huge residential development of the Aetna Corp., Rancho California. There has been extensive litigation and there are detailed court decrees governing rights to the use of water by the Pechangas and Rancho California. Yet the decrees have been wholly ignored by the Department of the Interior. Rancho California has far exceeded its decreed rights in diverting water from the Santa Margarita River to irrigate their well-kept golf course, supply their manmade lake, and generally maintain their 100,000-acre development. Rancho California has also pumped water out of the ground water basin, to the point where a spring which was the reservation's sole source of water went dry. Consider the irony of this. The Pechangas, who have court-decreed rights to use of the water, now have to haul water in bottles in order to sustain life on the reservation. They have been robbed of their water and the Department of Interior has consistently refused to exercise its right to prevent unreasonable extractions from the ground water basin, or to protect Indian interests. Even worse, the Department now proposes to construct the Santa Margarita project, a vast reclamation project, which will further exploit that scarce water, to enrich private individuals at the expense of the Pechangas and Cahuillas.

These stories could go on for the rest of the week-a litany of shameful indifference and illegality in which the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Interior, and Department of Justice have been historic actors.

Under the circumstances, Mr. Chairman, I think it would be disingenuous to hold out the hope that these agencies of Government will suddenly experience a reawakening of conscience. The bureaucratic recalcitrance is so deeply ingrained that we would do well to regard the BIA and Interior Department simply as adverse parties and establish Indian policies accordingly.

A number of general policy proposals have been advanced, with which I am in complete accord, including the immediate creation of an independent Indian Trust Council Authority, an independent Indian Affairs Office operating out of the Executive Office of the President, independent Indian lawyers, solicitors, hydrologists, and technical staff, and so on. In addition, there are numerous specific proposals that will help individual tribes: Congressional opposition to the proposed California-Nevada interstate compact, which would freeze into law the inequities which are now destroying Pyramid Lake; withdrawal of congressional authorization for the Santa Margarita project; and many others. However, I would like to devote the balance of my prepared statement to briefly outlining two proposals which I think would greatly help the landless, Executive order and treatyreservation Indians to establish their rights and protect their in

terests.

First, the Congress should focus immediate and critical attention on the voluminous report of the National Water Commission, and reject those proposals which are destructive of Indian interests and inconsistent with Federal trust responsibilities. To take just one example, recommendation 14-6 of that report, at page 482, suggests that the United States should compensate non-Indian users of water which by treaty and right belongs to Indian tribes. The objective is laudable: