Conference on racism in the law ; no.4: Racism in civil court proceedings; Indian law, poverty and paternalism. ; Conference on racism in the law

Richard Bancroft is a former member of the board of materials of San Francisco. He is currently a director of bot. He is a graduate of Howard University of Law School and he is the former president of the San Fran Cisco NAACP. I would like to introduce it this time, Mr. Richard Bancroft. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Honored guests, speakers at the head table, fellow lawyers, ladies and gentlemen and friends. I'd like to say at the outset that I'm very grateful to the organizations that have called together this conference, certainly timely. Of course, I wish there were more people here. It's rather a sad commentary on the state of our bar,

one after profuse publicity in various magazines and newspapers and perhaps elsewhere that went unnoticed by me. There is a group here composed of perhaps no more than 100 people. Maybe there are 151 all over in their seats, and if I'm a poor guest or maybe there are 200. Happies I am to see the size of this group call together on such short order and under the auspices of the great group of organizations that are the sponsors here. I nevertheless have to express my dismay and disgust at the obvious exemplification of racism at the bar in the Bay Area as reflected in this miserable attendance today. There are many, many people who certainly should be present

based upon the statements they make in all quarters of the Bay Area and the positions they hold and could learn something indeed from the discussion that has taken place. On the other hand, in very many respects, I also wish I were not present, not because I am apathetic, not because I am unconcerned, but for a number of reasons, a complex of reasons, which I'll go into. They have to do as well with the fact that I do not have a prepared set of remarks for you today, and I'd like to share the reasons for that with you. I was not misled into believing that this would be a conference of black lawyers. It was evident when I had my first conversation with Jim Herndon that it would not be.

I note with regret, although I understand the absence, that most of the black lawyers in the Bay Area are not here. I think that an explanation is due you for the disjointed and perhaps even incoherent set of remarks I'm going to give, which result from the fact that my thinking has succeeded along different lines. I think I should explain to you, first of all, that had I been addressing a group of black lawyers at this time, I would have had an entirely different set of remarks to make. I must say to you white lawyers and friends of white lawyers and relatives of white lawyers that I really cannot talk to you. I really don't have anything much to say to you. The topic is designed as racism in the law,

and this topic has been a topic for lawyers groups, civic groups, and others. Time and time and time again, and will be time and time and time and time again in the future, and not a damn bit of change is going to result in so far as the basic problems of minority people in this country are concerned. We can engage in exercises to erase or minimize our guilt. We can engage in activity which keeps us in some sort of frenzy motion. We can rethink. We can re elucidate. We can re-explain. We can re-modify. We can change our views on pinpoints of opinions. We can have new points of view, but we will not, I wager, change by one, significant bit.

The situation of the minority peoples in this country, with conferences alone, nor with studies alone, nor with reports alone, nor with the Turner report alone, nor with all of them together, nor with all the reports, nor with all the studies. The problem of racism in America is so vast, it is so deep-going, it is so all pervasive, it is so vicious in its invisibility, in the thinking and in the concepts of people that a great deal more has to be done than meaning, discussing, passing resolutions, and engaging in the process by which these somehow mount into petitions and resolutions that are directed to authorized bodies.

I am told, and we are all told, and I have been a lawyer for a fairly long time for me, and consequently, am steeped in the concepts of our law and function in the courts every day, and in before administrative bodies every day, with a course of conduct which is regulated by these concepts, we are taught respect for law. We are then taught, respect for order, and then they are put together, and it is said, respect for law and order. And these sound like great phrases, who could disagree with respect for law and order? It is like love of motherhood, holy and sacrosanct.

However, the use of this phrase traditionally has been and is today to repress stifle change, to repress and stifle reform, to repress and stifle the individuals who would move to make this American climate, one in which people can live and freedom and decency. They are words behind which hide the most pious, sanctimonious of the racist in America, in the deep south they say peace and order. In the deep south where Negro lawyers would take their lives and their hands in many situations, even appearing in court with certain defendas, where being heard by a judge with an ear that's even reasonably attuned to common sense

is an utter impossibility and where in California in civil cases, which is my assignment, so I'm going to pay some attention to that, brief attention. In our civil courts, it is civil matters, from the moment of person of color, or a poor person is injured, for example, if we're talking about personal injuries, or from the moment he gets involved in any case where his opponent is an institution, of any sort that has the means to engage counsel and large firms of counsel and to duly handle a case. From that very moment on, the wheels of justice, in the interest of quote law and order, proceed to grind him down and down and down until his rights,

as they come out cannot barely be recognized. The various forces that impinge upon him have to do with instances like this. A white or black lawyer gets a phone call from someone in an insurance company or that colored girl you're representing. Now, how much do you want for that? Or when the client walks into the court house, if he speaks Spanish and does not speak English, he cannot find an information desk where someone speaks his language and can direct him to the proper courtroom. Nor are the documents that appear in the courtroom, nor are the documents that publicizes appearance in the courtroom in his language. I don't want to get into details

about the civic, what happens in the civil courts or administrative bodies. Because it's evident that if the Colonel report is at all near accurate and it is nearly accurate, there is prejudice throughout America. There is prejudice among all Americans, our society breeds prejudice and there is not a single living American in my judgment who is totally free of prejudice. Not even black Americans because we too are bred in this system. We too are bred in this system. And I criticize no one in this audience anymore than I criticize myself in anything I say today because the feelings that come from childhood and from childhood experiences and the kind of education that we get cannot that easily be laid aside. No matter what the process of intellectual growth,

save and accept by some constant day-to-day inner wrenching of yourself to avoid the excesses which this prejudice will bring forth. A lot of the people who should be here are not here today because they don't believe that there is racism and they don't believe they are racists. Following their logic, the racists are in this room. You're the only ones concerned with racism, so all of you must be the racists, which is absurd. In the civil courts, a medical report from a doctor may be a report which comments about the very long nails of this Mexican woman who was in my office to be examined today or whose husband came with her as though to help her with the language barrier, but obviously it was put on.

And with respect to Negroes, the factors of exaggeration and lying arise from the notion abroad in America that Negroes lie, all Negroes lie. So that if there is any seeming contradiction or seeming inconsistency, then this becomes elevated by virtue of the prejudice and by virtue of the racism into the kind of bias that makes it impossible for there to be fairness and justice, for minority group peoples, beyond Negroes, minority group peoples, beyond minority group peoples for peoples. I believe that if the death of Martin Luther King meant or should have meant anything to us, it should have meant that from this day forward, forgetting anything that happened in the past

in the lives of any one of us, from this day forward, each of us must make a moral commitment. Each of us must undertake a personal responsibility. As a lawyer, to do whatever you can as a lawyer to argue sterile desuices and precedence and rules and regulations and read cases and law review articles and all of that stuff. But far beyond that, because that's a mere beginning, to engage in the day-to-day struggles in our society to help realize the dream of this nation. It has been said many, many times by lawyers and by their organizations, their bar associations, et cetera, we lawyers lead America,

look how many lawyers have been president. Of course, all our lawyers, all the justices of the Supreme Court are lawyers. In our other courts, in many offices in government, it's lawyers who lead the way in our communities and politics. Lawyers do so many things. We are leaders. Well, it was never a better time for lawyers to lead if we are such leaders. And to lead in the community in pursuit of the ideals and the dream of moral human beings. You know better than I, and I'm not talking about morality in a sense that has to do with prudishness or narrow-mindedness. I'm talking about a kind of responsible commitment to the promise that our society can be free,

democratic, wholesome, and meaningful for all of its citizens. Even the least of them, even the most meek of them. Now, it may well be, and recent events may help us to inquire as to whether it may well be that lawyers cannot provide this kind of leadership. The greatest American leader of this century struck down by an assassin's bullet was an educated Baptist preacher, black man of the South, man of the soil, close to black people, with a dream and a vision and with love in his heart with a feeling of humanity that transcended national boundaries and among his leaders

and associates are poor people and people from all walks of life, minority group people who are even now marching and gathering to march toward Washington in a great place for people's demonstration. It may very well be that the kind of leading role which lawyers ought to play from this day forward is to help these people to choose their leaders to counsel and guide them in the selection of leaders and in the training of leaders and helping them express the valid aspirations of the people whose condition in our country is daily growing worse. I want to take a moment to say

that in the history of black people in America, there have been blacks among us who as I would like to call them half-backs like myself have somehow gotten through when I was thinner. And younger. Have somehow gotten through the defensive line which prejudice the prejudice of white America puts up. To be a half-back, you have to be born lucky. Your parents have to be somehow lucky. For example, I was born in Albany, New York. Now maybe that's lucky because I don't have a Southern accent. Nonsense. My parents happen not to have a Southern accent so I didn't pick it up

from them to any extent nonsense. Somehow I had to go to school maybe because my father made me. I don't know. And somehow I had to try to get some kind of decent grades. I don't know why. But lucky. Lucky. And somehow, when I was on the streets as a fighter and as a professional entertainer and not in school at all, some social worker said, maybe you want to go off to school and give me a kick in the rear and got me off to college. Lucky. Because I might still be on that street. And then when I finished college I was working for a labor union and fighting on the streets again. And I was called to service and I was lucky I survived and got back home. And there was a GI bill of rights and I finally got into law school. Very lucky.

And all the while somehow I didn't hit somebody in the head although frankly I tried on some occasions. And for whatever I did, I didn't get caught. And I was lucky. Lucky. So that in practicing law I've been able in some fashion to support myself and my family and to do some things in the community at a limited insignificant level but I'm here and I'm lucky and I'm lucky. And all of us are lucky who have not had the misfortune to have been caught in this machine without the chain of luck that allows you to sneak along this torture with route

to get to some position where you're a lawyer or something like that. The time has gone for any of us, black lawyers, white lawyers, decent lawyers, American lawyers. The time has come when we can no longer allow the factor of luck to be the deciding who have not had the misfortune to have been caught in this machine without the chain of luck that allows you to sneak along this torture with route to get to some position where you're a lawyer or something like that. The time has gone for any of us black lawyers, white lawyers, decent lawyers, American lawyers. The time has come

when we can no longer allow the factor of luck to be the deciding factor and whether a person lives at a poverty standard of living or higher or whether his lack of luck, if you want to put it that way and having a black skin under our system, his lack of luck in being born black should be the factor which makes it possible to discriminate against him and to exercise great prejudice against him. I don't want to talk a whole lot longer, not today. I think there ought to be a lawyer's conference among black lawyers and other things ought to be said there. All lawyers should engage in community activity, black lawyers as well. All lawyers should make a moral personal commitment black lawyers as well.

Black lawyers should and must organize large significance, successful law firms headed by black lawyers integrated with young white attorneys and able to take on the cases in this community that deserve to be taken and handled by a firm of that sort. It is the absence of such a law firm which puts a great civil libertarian, Charles Gary and the position of representing the Panthers. The Panthers had to have a white lawyer, none better, could they have than Charles Gary for his determination, his conviction, and his integrity. And I know when I finished law school I was over at bulk, I came out here from Washington on a fellowship, got a master's at bulk, I came out looking

for a job and someone in personnel thought gee, or whatever they call a placement, we ought to send him to somebody to get a job. So I got the business car, of a lawyer in San Francisco now a judge. And I went to his office and said, I want a job. And he said, fine, gee, you've done well, sure, where are you from, et cetera. It was very pleasant, I don't mean to suggest he wasn't, but then he gave me another card, he said, see this man. He turned out to be a Negro lawyer, very old, practicing alone, soul practitioner, and it happened to be in a situation at that time that didn't make sense to me, and wouldn't have made sense to any black lawyer at the time. Of course, I got the message. Don't waste your time. There are no integrated law firms

in this town. There are no black lawyers in an integrated situation in San Francisco. Go to one of your own kind. But I was fortunate, and this is the relevance of the story. I met new Charles Gary and untried as I was. He put me to work at what was for me, a fantastic salary, worth a lot more than I was worth at that time, writing a circuit court brief in the now famous Wells case. I worked in his office as best I could doing what I could to write that brief. And I've known Charlie for all the years since then, but at the same time. When I talk about the prejudice in the white community, there is its counterpart in the black community which I can easily call self-hate which will result in even

a militant organization like the Panthers. Selecting a white attorney due to the absence of a firm of black attorneys who can afford to free a man to handle the various bits of litigation that are involved in this important case. I've just been handed a note that I have one minute. I'll honor that. I'd like to conclude by saying I think that lawyers in their responsibility themselves in their community have to take a new look at themselves in their responsibilities and recognize that whatever they do in their offices and in the courtrooms will not now or ever again be enough, not for me, not for you, within the sound of my voice. This is an individual test that's a matter of one's own conscience.

But I say to you that no better feeling can come from resolving within yourself to do something about that. And I call you to devoting the rest of your life meaningfully and significantly to making it possible for minority people and poor people to lead this nation toward its freedom only they can do it. Thank you, Mr. Bandcroft. I will moderate for this session on the special problems of Mexican Americans in the young law and racism and pre

and post courtroom proceedings as Sandra Cox who is an attorney at the staff of the Western Edition Neighborhood Legal Service Office. We're very happy to have Sandra Cox participating in chairing this session. Thank you, Mr. Herndon. Honored guests of the sponsoring organizations. Our next speaker brings to us some information about a very old minority in our country. One that has been most ignored and one that's awesome and afterthought if it's thought about at all. Mr. George Duke, the 1959 graduate of the Harvard Law School also has had a great change in after he joined the California Rural Legal Assistance Program

in 1966. He serves now as the director of the Indian Services Division of that organization and he will speak to us now on Indian Law poverty and paternalism. Thank you. Can you all hear me back there? I think Jim Lorenz has given you a great insight into why the Indians are in their present predicament about which you all I'm sure know something in general but not much specifically. That insight is power and this nation are not numerous enough to influence the events which control their lives. And in the state of California which happens to be one of the more numerous states in terms of Indian population

that is also true. Also as a preface to these remarks I should say that my presence is in itself a symptom of the problems of the Indian people because to my knowledge and I have made efforts to find out there is not one California Indian in the state of California who is an attorney. There are perhaps as many as four or five or even seven or eight persons of Indian blood in the state who are attorneys but none of them so far as I know is of native California birth. And we're there as many lawyers who are Indians as there are lawyers in proportion to the population generally there should be some 40 attorneys in this state who are

native Californians Indians. It is perhaps interesting to note that the Negro community has had Negro attorneys here today and the Mexican American community has had Mexican American attorneys but there are no California Indian attorneys. That's a deficiency which we hope will be remedied there are several programs at law schools now recently begun to train Indians as lawyers but we have a long way to go before the profession begins to feel the effects of those people. I have very little time to discuss with you an extremely complex problem. I'd be so bold as to say more complex even than the problems of the Negro and the Mexican American. We all, I suppose, see things through our own narrow perspective and perhaps my perspective is narrowed over the last year but I think because of the invasion of their lands, the annihilation, physical annihilation of the people

which has occurred in this country including California because of the strong clash of cultures because of the fact that unlike any other group, the Indians are this very day in 1968 subject to a special agency of government, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. For all of those and many other reasons, I think that their problems are more complex, more subtle, more elusive than any other minority group. I certainly am only beginning to understand some of them. I would like to take just a minute to briefly give you some idea of how many Indians there are in the United States and California and so that you'll have some general background because I think the Indian has been dehumanized through television, through the movies, through books, through life magazine, and so on. And we always think of the Indian as a savage, perhaps noble,

perhaps not, a symbol, but never a flesh and blood human being with individual differences and personality. So let me try to give you some background on that. In the United States as a whole, there are approximately 550,000 Indians, 380,000 or so live on reservations. In the state of California, there are approximately 40,000 native California Indians, 30,000 in the rural parts of the state, and of those only about 7,000 actually reside on reservations. There are, in the state of California, over 100 Indian lands. Many of you, as I was the case with me, when I started, I'm sure don't know that, but there are many reservations in the state of California. In fact, there is over half a million acres of Indian land in this state. Those Indian lands are dispersed throughout the state, and they range in size from one small reservation

and small reservations in this state for simplicity are known as rancherias. The size of one acre up to the Hoopah Reservation in Humboldt County of 86,000 acres. The people residing on these lands range from as few as one person to as many as 800 or 900 people on the Hoopah Reservation. There's a state advisory commission on Indian Affairs in California, and in February of 1966, they issued a report on Indians in rural and reservation areas. It's a very comprehensive report, goes into all aspects of the living conditions of the Indians in the rural parts of the state. And again, perhaps I'm viewing things through an hour perspective, but that report documents how by every standard health, housing, education, employment, the Indian stands at the bottom. Also on March 6th of this year, President Johnson

delivered a special message to Congress on Indian Affairs. And he said, this is, of course, in national terms, 50,000 Indian families live in unsanitary, dilapidated dwellings, many in huts, shanties, even abandoned automobiles. The unemployment rate among Indians is nearly 40%. More than 10 times the national average. 50% of Indian school children double the national average dropout before completing high school. The California report points out the three times as many Indian children dropout before completing high school as compared to non-Indians. The average age of death of an American Indian today is 44 years. For all other Americans, it is 65. That's the President's message. And there are, of course, many other details, but this is not the time to go into those. The Indian, particularly in the rural parts of the state,

like any other minority group, suffers from racism. We have encountered numerous examples of discrimination in jury selection, discrimination in governmental services, such as school buses, police protection, other municipal services, exclusion from unions, exclusion from government employment and other employment, and so on down the line. Everything you can say about the Negro and the Mexican American is true of the Indian in the rural parts of the state where our experience is, and I gather, perhaps to a lesser extent, also in the urban parts. I think we should recognize that part of this problem no doubt lies with the Indian. Indian culture, the Indian personality, has been shattered by the physical annihilation, which has occurred in the state of California. At the beginning of the 19th century,

they were estimated to be some 175 or 80,000 Indians. By the end of the century, they had been diminished to some 19 or 20,000, literally decimated. Many were, of course, massacred, but many others died from diseases brought by the white man, which they were unable to withstand. And from starvation, when their lands were taken and their source of food was cut off. But recognizing that there is a component of Indian disability, I think we must nevertheless acknowledge that there is a very strong component of racism, which accounts for the situation of the Indian in this state and throughout the nation. But what I would like to talk with you about principally today is not the ordinary kind of racism about which you have heard a great deal and what I would have to say would merely be a repetition of that to a large extent.

What I want to talk to you about is what I might call race-connected disabilities of the Indian. What I mean by that is that by dent of being an unterminated Indian, and I'll explain in a moment what unterminated Indian means, the Indian finds himself caught up in an intricate mesh of laws, regulations, practices, policies, known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, principally, and some other government agencies who deal exclusively with Indians, such as the Indian Health Division of the United States Public Health Service. It is by virtue of being an Indian and being caught up in this legal administrative system that the Indian finds his options curtailed, finds that he is not truly a free man. It's amusing perhaps in an ironic way that it wasn't until 1924 that Congress saw fit to make Indians, the original Americans,

citizens of the United States. Many had been by individual prior to that, but it was not until 1924 that a general Indian citizenship act was passed. But that act, while in name, making the Indian a citizen of the United States, and title to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen, did not, in fact, liberate the Indian. Let me explain briefly what I mean by termination or what is meant by termination. Termination means the ending of the special relationship of the Indian and his lands to the federal government. Indian reservations are held in trust by the federal government for the benefit of the Indians. The land is owned by the government. The Indians reside on it, and the government administers the land. When the Indian is terminated, he loses his rights to special benefits as an Indian, such as job training,

in some states health services, during the Eisenhower administration. It was thought that the government had botched the Indian problem badly for 100 years. They'd spent billions, and the Indians didn't seem to be progressing, things were even getting worse. So the thing to do was to get the government out of the Indian business. And there was a very intense drive to do exactly that, to terminate Indians. Unfortunately, like many ideological, Lee-based principles, it did not work in practice. And it was found in practice that when the lands were conveyed to the Indians, just as it happened 100 years ago, the real estate speculators, the unscrupulous businessmen, were not long behind. And we haven't encountered that very situation in California, where even before termination actually occurred, businessmen, auto dealers, have come in and tricked the Indians out of the land. Partly because the Indians are not terribly literate

many of them. Don't understand the white man's ways of doing business. Partly because they are victims of extreme economic need and to them 100 or $500 for their land may seem a great deal when they're hungry, or in need of transportation in a rural area, even though the land may be worth 10 or 20 times that amount. So termination, which is the most controversial question in Indian affairs for the last 15 years, and the controversy goes on even now, although I think at this point, the overwhelming majority of Indians are against it clearly. Termination is a very great problem. Before the Indian is terminated, he is, as I mentioned, entitled to certain benefits or services from the government, the federal government. And it is that relationship of dependency, which is the essence of the problem, as I see it.

Because in recognizing his need for assistance from the government and in the government, conversely, recognizing a moral and historical and even legal responsibility to the Indian, we get into this entire legal administrative apparatus and all that it means. I would like to cite a number of examples of specific cases that we have encountered or observed, which illustrate the way in which this kind of paternalistic system operates and how it limits the free choice, the options of the Indians. The most recent about which I got a telephone call yesterday was in Mendocino County at the Laytonville, Rancheria, a small Rancheria, where the Bureau of Indian Affairs, after many years, has finally agreed to improve the housing. There's very little new housing being built for Indians in California, even though most of it is far below code standards and, in fact, is uninhabitable. But there is a little, and this is one place right now.

I think there are perhaps three others at the moment where housing is being built. Six homes were being built by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The only problem was that the Bureau never consulted the people to ask them what kind of homes do you want. And as the homes were constructed, the Indians found that they had virtually no windows. They were like prison blocks. Not a very congenial atmosphere to live in. So you see the subtle, almost insidious relationship between the dependency on the government for the provision of this basic necessity of life and the domination by the government of the manner in which the Indian lives. The lack of genuine or, in this case, even apparent, Indian participation in a very basic decision, housing. Another example is in Sonoma County where we maintain our office, the cashier reservation,

which is about four miles in from the Sonoma Coast on a very lovely plateau. Unfortunately, rather a remote area, remote for medical assistance, stores, employment, education, virtually everything you can imagine. I might say parenthetically that the reason that that reservation and so many other reservations in the state of California and in other states are so remote is that when the government out of its large S gave back a little bit of the land that it had taken from the Indians, it gave them the poorest, most remote land that no one else wanted. That's a story in itself. But nevertheless, these Indians have lived at that reservation for over a half century and they like it. They like being out in the woods. The government, however, believing that the white man's way is so obviously superior that all Indians should immediately adopt it as tried to get the Indians into the cities.

Now, you would think with all the problems we have in the cities that the government would have realized that perhaps we ought to leave these people where they are if that's what they like especially and help them there. But instead, in its wisdom, the United States government over the past decade has helped the Indians by bringing them to the slums of Oakland and San Jose and Los Angeles from reservations all over the country for job training and employment assistance. Many of those Indians don't make it. The clash of cultures is too great. The tribal life which they knew back home which sustained them, even though it has many problems, was of course lacking in the cities. And many Indians found that they became unemployed on welfare, alcoholism became a major problem. It was back home to begin with this intensified it. And many of them, in fact, eventually drifted back home to the reservations

with one more defeat and scar. So, to relate this to the specific case of cashaya, the government decided that cashaya really wasn't a very good place to live. Now, they didn't give, in this case, even an incentive to leave there. What they did, they used the stick approach. The people had been trying to get water for several decades. They did not have a fresh source of water at the reservation. The water had to be trucked in, or they had a well which was polluted, dead rats in it, and so forth, and dried up part of the year which provided some water, but water was a very major problem. Some 80 to 100 Indians live at the reservation, including many young children. The government decided, and I have correspondence documenting this, that it was in the best interest of the Indians that they move. And for that reason, although they had the funds, and although they could have done it, they did not provide water for these many decades.

It was not until a suit was threatened against the United States Public Health Service, that they finally agreed to provide water. And that construction is just beginning now, but this is, again, an example of how the dependency is turned against the Indian, and used to keep him trapped in a life which is not of his own decision or making. Termination generally is another area where this occurs, and it's very similar to the situation I just related to you. Housing is given to those Indian groups in the state of California who are terminating. Now, the ostensible reason is that since they're terminating and will become ineligible thereafter by law for any federal services as Indians, they should be given priority so that it can be taken care of. But the effect of it, and I dare say, the intention is to induce them to terminate

so that they can get improved housing. I've already mentioned the relocation program, which is perhaps the most drastic interference in free choice of the Indians. The government could have had it seen fit, attempted to develop industry and other means of livelihood on the reservations. And it has done this to a small extent, but not nearly what it could have. You may read from time to time in the newspapers great value who is given to it about a motel chain that's going to come in on the Navajo reservation or the Apache reservation or whatever. There's been a little of that, but it's been very, very little. Mostly what they have attempted to do is to relocate the Indians to the major cities, as I mentioned before. And they do it by giving them the incentive. They use the carrot approach. If you will go to Oakland or to San Jose

or to Los Angeles from South Dakota or New Mexico, then we will give you job training and we will give you a subsistence allowance for a limited period. What happens after the job training and the initial placement is no concern of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They are very pleased to say that we no longer have jurisdiction these people around their own. They can fend for themselves. Once again, the Bureau has dictated although subtly to the Indian as to where he shall live and the mode of life that he shall follow. I realize that it's late in the day and I will try to mention just a couple more examples. One is choice of council attorney. I don't know of any other group in the nation which must have a government agency approve of its choice of council other than, of course, in competence or minors, something of that sort.

But the Indian tribes must have the approval of the Department of the Interior before they can select private attorneys. We might add that our organization since we do not charge fees appears to be exempt from that and at any rate they haven't seen fit to raise the issue so far. Now, here again, there's a complexity. It would be nice to use the Bureau as a whipping boy and say, that's terrible. They shouldn't have a completely free choice of council, but there is an historical basis for it and a need even today to some extent for it. And that need is, again, that non-Indian attorneys have abused the confidence and trust of the Indians. And so the Bureau, as the guardian of the Indians, has felt that it was necessary to supervise who was chosen as counsel to see that he had integrity and to see that the fees charged were not excessive. And those of you who know about the recent scandal at Palm Springs know that the Bureau of Indian Affairs does not always perform its task too well.

The fees there, I might mention, ranged as high, and you won't believe this, as 340% of income in one year of the Guardians estate. And over a period of some 10 years, they were an average of 44%. These are fiduciary fees, trustees, and conservatory fees of the Indians of states. And we're talking, of course, about a state's a very great substance. The Palm Springs tribe, the Agri-Caliente, owned approximately $50 million worth of property in Palm Springs. That's an amusing anecdote because, of course, there, the land was desert when it was given to them, was given in a checkerboarded fashion with the Southern Pacific Railroad holding the alternate checkerboards. And today, we all know that things are a little different. Another instance of the journalistic domination of the Indian is the question of marriage and job training.

What relevance does a man's marital state have to his right to earn a livelihood and to obtain vocational training from the Bureau of Indian Affairs? The Bureau seems to think it does have a great deal of relevance because if a man is living in common law marriage or Indian-style marriage, which is even recognized to a limited extent by California law today as a valid form of marriage, if he is living in such a state not duly married by the civil authorities, he cannot get vocational training from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. One last example, which is perhaps the most egregious to come along in recent years, is the Indian Resources Development Act of 1967, which has been reintroduced in his presently in committee, known as the omnibus bill because it contained a whole package of provisions dealing with Indian Affairs, or as the Indians call it, rather shrewdly, perhaps, the omnibus bill.

The omnibus bill is principally designed as the name implies to assist in the economic development of Indian lands. Well, that's wonderful. Just what I was talking about, that's just what they need, become self-sufficient. The only problem is it provides for no technical assistance. It does not touch on the fundamental living conditions such as health, housing, education, welfare of the Indians. What it would do is open up Indian lands to development by outside entrepreneurs, by assuring credit through loan guarantees and insurance, and by permitting the Indians to take the land out of trust and sell it or mortgage it. Now, I think it's safe to predict that if that were to become the law, much of the remaining Indian land in this country would be lost in a short period of time. And there is a historical precedent,

which we can look to, which I think proves that. In 1887, Congress passed the General Alotment Act. That act provided that in order to civilize the Indians, we've been trying to do that a long time. We would make them landowners, because that, after all, is what civilizes everyone else. So, the reservations were broken up, and the land was given to individual Indians in what are called allotments. And the Indian was then to be free to develop the allotment after a certain period when it would go out of trust, as he saw fit. From 1887 until 1934, when the New Deal Indian Reorganization Act passed Congress, which prohibited any further allotments, Indian lands in this country decreased from approximately 150 million acres to approximately 50 million acres. They were cut by two-thirds, and by far, the principal reason was the General Alotment Act. I suggest that the omnibus bill is a new General Alotment Act

in disguise, and I'm happy to say that Indians all over the country recognized it as such, and the outcry was great, and the bill was stalled in committee and still is, and we hope that it will be. But it's one more example of the government telling the Indians what is best for them, and exactly how they are to achieve that, instead of asking the Indians, what do you want, what can we do to help you achieve that? And I should mention that in connection with the omnibus bill, a rather shocking fraud was perpetrated by the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Robert LaFallett Bennett, who is himself an Indian the first in a century, and who I think many Indians looked to as a great hope, although he did come up through the ranks in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and maybe that should have raised some questions. Mr. Bennett organized nine regional conferences

around the United States to consult with tribal leaders, on the desires of the Indians, and that was to give rise. The department was then in consultation with the Indians to draft such legislation as they wanted. That was the avowed purpose of these conferences. One was held at Las Vegas on December, as I recall it was either November or December 17th through 19th of 1966. A elaborate proceedings were published, containing all of the recommendations of the Indian leaders at these conferences all over the country, and then the omnibus bill was introduced in Congress. The only problem is that we have a copy of the omnibus bill, a draft, exactly what was introduced, which predates, there's a date on it, the conferences which were held at least the one in Las Vegas, and the bill was many months in the drafting. It's an extremely long, complicated bill. It's some 40 pages and another 40 pages of explanation,

so that the bill was drafted before they ever spoke to at least some of the Indians, and the bill did not in any way reflect what the Indians asked for at these conferences. And in fact, at the hearings on the bill, when the Department of the Interior testified there were no Indians testifying, maybe there will be eventually. They were brazen enough to acknowledge that one of the men in the Department of the Interior, of course not an Indian, had drafted the bill, by himself of his own knowledge and desire. Well, the last thing I'd like to bring to your attention is the specific situation in California. I've been talking about the rendition of services to Indians and how this entraps them in a paternalistic despotism. In California, it's very strange. Beginning in the 1950s, as part of this great termination drive, most federal services for Indians

were withdrawn. To this day, they have not been replaced. As the most egregious example, a special educational program, which at that time provided $318,000 in funds for the education of California Indians in the public schools, compensatory education, and so forth, was withdrawn and has not been replaced. In the meantime, it has been put into effect in 18 other states, and this year we'll total $13 million. And there is a rather heated fight right now the California Congressional delegation is making efforts to restore it, but the Bureau is resisting that. So in California, you have virtually no affirmative services for the Indians today. What you do have is the holding of the title to the lands and administering of it. And that means that the Bureau can dominate such things as the granting of rights of way, for example, can influence in overt and covert ways termination

and can otherwise dictate, if not always openly, what the Indians shall do and how they shall live. In short, I want to emphasize that I am not arguing for the dissolution of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, nor for an end to the government's efforts with respect to the Indians. What I am arguing for is a more enlightened approach to it, which will take into consideration the actual needs of the Indians, not the white man's view of those needs, and which will give the Indians a true voice in determining what those needs are. Thank you. Thank you.