Kent Ford (activist)

Transcription

Good morning. On behalf of the Gilcrease Museum and the University of Tulsa, I would like to welcome you to Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are pleased to work with the National Archives and the Nixon Foundation to present this forum on Native American Self -Determination from the Nixon presidency to the present time. Oklahoma is the home of many Indian nations that are directly affected by the policies that will be discussed in this forum. The Gilcrease Museum is one of the nation's great repositories of archaeology, art, and archives that document approximately 10,000 years of human habitation in North America. Scholars from across the country and around the globe come here to research in our collections. It is now my honor and pleasure to introduce Geoffrey C. Shepard for the Richard Nixon Foundation, who will introduce the forum. Thank you Bob. I'm Geoff Shepard and I was on Richard Nixon's White House staff for five years and I have the honor of helping to produce the Richard Nixon Legacy Forums. This will be our 21st Nixon Legacy Forum and we cosponsor them, the Nixon Foundation and the National Archives. The Archives has the documents, as they should, and what we're able to produce are the people who wrote the documents. So they have the what and the when, and we produce the why. And the whole purpose of the discussion here is to give future historians and scholars, in addition to our audience today, insights into why certain things got done. Today's is a special forum because we have two panels. We have a panel that did the policy initiatives, and then we have a second panel at one o'clock of the "so what", the therefore. And we certainly hope you'll stay. There's a break in between. You can go have lunch in the restaurant of the museum. There's a special connection that I'm going to mention here as we start, between Richard Nixon and the American Indians. As you may know, Richard Nixon went to Whittier College. And I know this because I went to Whittier College. And Richard Nixon went out for football. And he had neither the size nor the talent to play on the varsity team, but he warmed the bench for all three years he was trying to be on the varsity team and he's written in his memoirs that the coach and that experience was determinative in his life. And the interesting thing is the coach was an American Indian. He was a Louis Enos Indian from the, born on the La Jolla reservation and he went to the Sherman Indian Boarding School in Riverside, California. His name is Wallace "Chief" Newman. He coached athletics for twenty years at Whittier college. Had seven winning football seasons, seven championship football seasons, three of which were during the era that Richard Nixon was out for football. And President Nixon has written in his memoirs that, second only to his father, Chief Newman was the male who had the greatest impact on his life. That he taught him two things: that if you try hard enough and train hard enough, your team can beat any team you face, and that when you get knocked down, and you will get knocked down, in football and in life, your only choice is to get up and get back in the game. And Richard Nixon credits that, this effort to try and try and try to play, to qualify for the varsity, even though it didn't work, as having a huge impact on his life. So when we talk about the why, why Richard Nixon took time as President to spend a lot of thought about the rights of the American Indians, my money is on Chief Newman. With that, let me introduce the moderator of our panel, Reid Chambers, and he's a perfect moderator because he was Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior for three years, 1973 to 1976. He has lectured in seminars on Indian law, federal Indian law, for 30 years at such great universities as UCLA and Georgetown and Yale, and he is the name partner in what is the preeminent law firm on Indian affairs in Washington, D.C. , Sonosky and Chambers. So with that, let me introduce Reid Chambers and let him moderate our panel. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. I want to just set a brief context because you really want to hear from these panelists, let me briefly introduce them. I may not get all of their titles right, but all of them were very influential in both developing the Nixon Indian policy and in implementing it. Our first panelist will be Bobby Kilberg. Bobby was a White House Fellow at the time the Nixon message was written and was very actively involved in the writing and development of that message, and thereafter served on the White House staff, both for President Nixon, I think domestic council, and for President Ford, and later came back on the White House staff I think the President Bush 41. And then Brad Patterson was a long time senior White House official. I first got to know Brad in 1971 when I was teaching Indian law at UCLA and coming back with Indian cases, presenting them to him and I was amazed that someone as high in the White House as Brad Patterson was willing to meet with a young lawyer representing Indian tribes in the west, but he was always accessible. And Brad also served through the Ford administration. The next panelist is Kent Frizzell. Kent had several titles. First Kent was Attorney General of Kansas, was an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1970, I think, and then became the Assistant Attorney General of what was then the Lands Division, handling Indian cases for the Justice Department. And in the second Nixon term, after Kent brought a peaceful settlement to the Wounded Knee occupation, was the chief negotiator for the government, did a marvelous job on that. Kent became the solicitor, which is the general counsel of the Interior Department. Served there for about 2 years and I had the honor of serving under him as his Chief Indian Lawyer, the Associate Solicitor for that period and really til the end of the Ford administration, or almost the end. And Kent went on then to become Undersecretary of the Interior and then became the Director of the National Energy Law and Policy Institute here at the University of Tulsa, until he retired in 1994. Wallace Johnson, Wally Johnson succeeded Kent as the Assistant Attorney General in the, what was then the Lands Division in the Justice Department and was, at a time when Kent and I were sending an increased number of cases protecting Indian rights over to the Justice Department, Wally was the man who was actually litigating those cases and supervising the staff to litigate them. And one thing he'll probably talk about is establishing a separate section or group within the Justice Department that just litigated Indian cases for protecting tribal rights. Now let me just take two or three minutes to set a context for the Nixon policy. Whenever I talk to people in recent years about Nixon's policy, that he favored tribal self-determination, which means tribes controlling their own communities, making their laws, being ruled by them, administering the federal programs like a state or local government would in terms administering many federal programs, I sort of get nods-- I'm talking about talking to normal people about this, people who don't spend their lives thinking about Indian law and policy-- the people kind of nod and say, "Well sure, that's right. That's clearly the right policy." And looked at from 40 years vantage point, it clearly seems right and it seems even obvious. But it wasn't obvious in 1970. In fact, for the 200 years before 1970, the basic Indian policies of the country had oscillated between two concepts. The first concept was to assimilate Indians, more or less forcibly, maybe with a transition time, and eventually to abolish Indian reservations and separate Indian rights. That policy started after the Civil War. The idea was to break up the Indian reservations, the buffalo were dying in the West, and allot the lands and transform the Indians from hunters to farmers. And once lands had been allotted to every head of household, why then the rest of the reservation would be opened up for homesteaders, and that was seen to be good because the homesteaders would come in and the neighbors would help neighbors and within a short period, one generation basically, the theory was the Indians would simply be assimilated and Indian reservations and tribes would disappear. Teddy Roosevelt called it, the allotment policy was what it was called, called it a mighty engine pulverizing the tribal mass. That was a strongly held viewpoint really until the New Deal, and then again in the 1940s and 1950s after the second World War, an even harsher assimilative policy was the policy of both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, and Nixon was Eisenhower's Vice President, where as quickly as they could, the federal government would terminate all the trust responsibilities for tribes and sell the lands, distribute the value of the lands per capita to tribal members, and save the expense of being a trustee for Indian tribes. No more trust relationship. The other concept was even worse. The other concept that dominated Indian policy, with one exception, before Nixon became President, was the idea that Indians were racially inferior, that they couldn't really be assimilated. They had to be isolated from the dominant society, that was behind the Trail of Tears that brought many tribes to this state, and that the society needed almost to be protected from them. Some tribes were simply imprisoned to protect the dominant society from them. But the idea was really a racial segregation to keep them away from the dominant society. The one exception, but it was a brief one, was during the New Deal. During the FDR administration, the Interior Department did try to strengthen tribal self-governments, organize tribes that had other problems, but the idea of enforcing a trust responsibility was not a dominant part of that policy. So when President Nixon came in, he announced, rather than terminating the trust responsibility, it would continue indefinitely as long as Indian tribes wished to do so, and the federal government should actively enforce the kind of responsibility that a trustee has to a trust beneficiary. So the Federal government holds in trust about 50 million acres of lands, water rights, other natural resources rights, rights to hunt and fish, holds those in trust for tribes or individual Indians and President Nixon in his message gave the charge to the departments to actively enforce the trust responsibility and to do it permanently. And all of that was a dramatic break from anything that went before and it has, I think, set the stage , our second panel particularly will address this, for the policy that succeeded for 40 years. I mean, most presidents have issued Indian messages or executive orders after Nixon-- both Bushes, President Reagan, President Clinton, President Obama-- essentially embracing and carrying forward this policy and no administration has tried to forcibly assimilate Indians since 1970. So it was a sharp and, I think, a very good break from the past. So our panel will particularly address two items. Our first panelist Bobby Kilberg will talk about the message itself, the 1970 message that President Nixon sent to Congress announcing the policy of self-determination. Brad Patterson, I think will also, was involved with that, and will talk about that and other activities that he was involved in the White House in implementing the policy. And then the second two panelists, Kent Frizzell and Wally Johnson, will talk about their role in implementing the policy and I think it was mainly because, or in large part, I suggest it was because of these two men that the policy has endured for 40 years, because I practiced law in Washington, as Geoff was saying, for four decades. I've watched Presidents announce policies and roll them out and then the bureaucracy kind of stagnates and sort of lags behind the policy. People in Congress fight it. Well there were people in Congress trying to fight the Nixon policy, people in OMB trying to fight it. Brad I think will talk about that a bit. We had a Solicitor in Kent and an Assistant Attorney General in Wally who were fully committed to implementing this policy and I think they will talk about why that was and what they did and I think that's a major reason why the policy has endured. So thank you and I now want to introduce my friend Bobby Kilberg. Good morning! Hello! Forty-two years ago, it's just a blink in an eye as my kids would say, but it was 42 years ago. And President Nixon's message on Indian policy really was historic. It was a definitive break from the past and it committed the United States forcefully to a policy of self-determination without termination and it provided the building blocks, as Reid said, to make that policy a reality. Two initial important observations: first, I've been asked a lot over the past 42 years what was the origin, the genesis of President Nixon's interest? Was it that President Johnson has verbally started down this path? Was it that Nixon had read Alvin Josephy's comprehensive memorandum in January 1969 to Jim Keogh, who was one of President Nixon's most trusted advisors and his director of speech writing? No, I think it was basically that he believed federal Native American policy was destructive, discriminatory, debilitating, and simply not right. The President did have a very strong set of moral beliefs, and forced assimilation and termination ran very much against his very core, and I was a White House Fellow and Geoff was a White House Fellow with me, we can tell you that we did not know the President well, I did get sufficient glimpses of his thought processes to say, I think, with some confidence that he also personalized his beliefs. In this case personalization related to Coach Wallace Newman, his football coach at Whittier. And Geoff described that relationship to you. What struck me most about it is that the President felt that Coach Newman had never given up, that he was proud of his Indian heritage, though he was discriminated against in those days when Native Americans and other minorities simply were not selected as coaches for major football programs nor selected for major honors as players. The President believed, because he once told me, that he thought that Coach Newman would have been a consensus All-American if it had been a different time, and that he would have been a coach at a Big Ten school rather than Whittier, with all respect Geoff, if it had been a different time. But that was just simply not possible in those days. Nixon thought that was terribly unfair and he promised himself that if he ever had the chance, he would correct the wrongs against Native Americans on behalf of the coach. So I think that part of the July 8th Indian message from President Nixon was part payback for Coach Newman. It was also consistent with the President's belief that you provide opportunity for everyone, but you don't force everyone in to the same mold. For example his extraordinary federal financial support as President to historically black colleges fits that same pattern: self-determination and opportunity without forced assimilation. President Johnson's 1968 Indian message in which he did mention the concept of self- determination and also some contracting, the establishment of the National Council on Indian Opportunity, Josephy's memo, Bill Veder's, you all remember Bill Veder, Bill Veder's views on the trust responsibility, the Senate Sub-Committee on the Indian Education Report, Edgar Cahn's "Our Brother's Keeper", and OEO's approach, which was a very open approach, to working with Indian tribes and communities. Those all provided context within this framework. The second important point I want to note is that President Nixon had a very top-down management style and John Ehrlichman, who was head of Domestic Policy was it, period. Thus everything went up from John and everything came down from John. We will never know how much of the specific policy initiatives were really John's and how much personally were the President's, but it didn't matter because John Ehrlichman had the authority to speak for the President and he did so. And appropriately, he never let you know anything more than that. Thus we need to give John Ehrlichman major credit for the President's Indian message and policy because he was integral to it. He was the central decision maker. Now, let's turn for a second to how the Indian message came about. It was October 1969, at a 7:30 a.m. White House senior staff meeting, which I was fortunate to attend, not because I was a member of the senior staff, I was only 24 years old at that time , but I was a White House Fellow. So I normally sat on the side of the room and not around the table. Len Garment and the other real senior staffers were at the table. This morning, John Ehrlichman opened the meeting by saying that the President had talked with him and was interested in reviewing federal Native American policy. John noted that the President was not pleased or satisfied with the state of Indian opportunity in this country. John then asked whether anyone in the room had any expertise in the area. Now remember, this is 1969, and there was dead silence. I hesitated for a while because I was supposed to be the young back bencher, but when no one else weighed in, I raised my hand and I said, well you know I went to Yale Law School, and we did kind of interesting things at Yale Law school and one of the things were senior theses. And I did my senior thesis on community control of Indian education, and I'd been out on the Navajo reservation my senior year at Yale working on an Indian education lawsuit against the BIA that would have been brought by DNA, which was the first Indian reservation OEO program on behalf of the Chinle Chapter of Navajo Chapter. So Ehrlichman looked at me and said, "You're drafted." And then John asked Len Garment to work as a senior advisor and counselor on the project. Now one of the first steps that Brad Patterson, Len Garment's executive assistant, and I took was to consult with Bob Robertson, who was the director of the National Council of Indian Opportunity, NCIO, which reported to Vice President Agnew. NCIO, as most of you know, had been established by executive order by President Johnson in his March 6th Indian message. NCIO was chaired by the Vice President and, listen to who it was composed of, because this is important. It was composed of the Secretaries, the chief officers in the cabinet, of Interior, HEW, Agriculture, Culture, Commerce, Labor, and HUD, plus the Director of OEO, and six Indian leaders that were appointed by the President for two year terms. In August 1970, President Nixon expanded the council by executive order to include the Attorney General, because it became very clear that land and water and other of those related issues were central, plus two additional Indian leaders for a total of eight Indian leaders. NCIO had already started a series of eight public regional forums on Indian issues and programs around the country. They were seeking both reservation and urban Indian input and building, in part, on President Johnson's 1968 message. Their goal was to prepare a set of recommendations for consideration by President Nixon and we welcomed that input vehicle. On January 26, 1970, again, this is very indicative of how seriously President Nixon took this. On January 26, 1970, the Vice President held a meeting of the NCIO cabinet and Indian members in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing of the White House. Most meetings in the White House complex do not take place in the West Wing. If they take place in the West Wing, it's because they have inherent importance to the President. And as indicative of that, in attendance were: the Vice President, Interior Secretary Hickel, H.E.W. Secretary Finch, Labor Secretary Shultz, Agriculture Secretary Hardin, Commerce Secretary Stans, HUD Secretary Romney, the old George Romney, not the new Mitt Romney, and OEO Director Rumsfeld, plus the six Indian members, including LaDonna Harris who is with us here today. Plus, Len Garment attended, Bob Robertson, C.D. Ward, who was a policy advisor to the Vice President, Brad Patterson, and me. Bob Robertson and the Indian members of the council presented the findings from the regional forums and a set of recommendations for consideration by the full council. LaDonna Harris had been chosen to speak on behalf of the Indian members. And when she spoke, I just got to tell you guys, she was so moving and powerful and charismatic that the room was literally spellbound, it was something to see. And I know she's out here somewhere and I'm going to ask her to stand up even though the cameras can't see her. Where are you? LaDonna? She literally was and is a force of nature, whether it was with cabinet members, White House staff, including me, Lan Bradge , John Ehrlichman, Senators and Congressman, or the media. She was unstoppable and she was unbelievable. And whether it was pin holing Senators one by one by one when we were working on Blue Lake. Would they meet with Bobby Kilberg? No. Would they meet with Vice President Agnew? No. Would they meet with LaDonna? Well, yes! She had this ability to connect with them and really make a difference. Who else could have convinced me as a kid to walk into the BIA occupation building with her when AIM occupied the building and there were molotov cocktails on every single step, just to see what we could do to help! Nuts! We took the NCIO draft recommendations and we circulated them formally to each cabinet member on the council, as well as to the Attorney General and the new Office of Management and Budget, and these officials sent the recommendations to their senior department folks for review and comment. The Vice President through C.D. Ward was a big supporter of these proposed initiatives. We held many subsequent meetings, especially with Interior, OMB, Justice, HEW, and OEO to massage, strengthen, alter, and finalize those recommendations. In those recommendations -- and they were very important ones -- self-determination took central stage, as did rejecting termination. The right, in addition, the right to control and operate federal programs through contracts, education reform, including the right of Indian communities to control their own schools, economic development legislation including broadening the revolving loan fund, providing loan guarantees and permitting long term tribal leasing of lands, additional resources for Indian health and urban Indian programs, the establishment of the Indian Trust Council Authority, the creation of the Interior Department Assistant Secretary for Indian and Territorial Affairs, and the return of Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo people. We had major confrontations with Justice and OMB. And you gotta remember, OMB was a new agency. Before you just had the Bureau of the Budget, and then they expanded it to the Bureau of Budget of the Ash Commission to BOB and OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. When you took that word, that M letter, and put management in it, it meant that they had an awful lot of power and they had the right to look at everything that every department and agency did. And they had a lot of problems with the Indian Trust Council Authority and contracting, and they had problems, as did Agriculture, with Blue Lake. We had support on most issues from Interior Secretary Hickel, who worked closely with a special assistant Maury Thompson, who was an Athabascan Indian from Tanana in Alaska, as well as with Assistant Secretary Harrison Lesh under whom the BIA was located. It's interesting to note the BIA was located under the Assistant Secretary for Public Land Management. There were also people on reservations, but it was located under Public Land Management. And Harrison did have some concerns at times about our approach. And also with Louis Bruce, the BIA commissioner, who was very supportive, Ernie Stephens, Sammy McMahon, Brannie Pipeston, and Art Desarta, from his staff, were very very strong advocates. We also worked very closely with Don Rumsfeld and his deputy, Frank Carlucci at OEO, who had a very progressive view of Indian policy. We decided to move forward with Blue Lake, but to separate out the Alaskan Native land claims issue because of its complexity and sensitivity, and because it was not yet ready for primetime. In April of 1970, after three months of negotiating with the federal government and having discussions with the Indian community through NCIO and other organizations such as NCAI, the National Council of American Indians, we presented an initial decision memorandum for the President in late April, which was signed by Vice President Agnew. John Ehrlichman reviewed the memo with me and sent it back for better development of major parts, including the Indian right to control and operate federal programs through contracting, the Indian Trust Council Authority, and Indian control of Indian schools. John Ehrlichman had been the decision broker on every major aspect, with Len Garment, through Brad Patterson, providing advice and counsel. Thus when the final decision memo was ready to go to the Oval Office in June, John basically knew that it would come out intact. To my knowledge, there never was a meeting with the President and all the federal government stakeholders on our Indian policy proposals. President Nixon worked solely through John, who would convey back to our working groups the President's ideas and concerns. For example, I vividly remember John telling me that the President was adamant that we be absolutely certain that no one in Indian Country viewed self- determination as a disguise for termination. I think President Nixon's historic statement of self-determination without termination took all the Indian policy-watchers by surprise. They did not expect that from him and that was because I don't think they really understood him. There still remained a great deal of work to be done once President Nixon approved the concepts and specific policy initiatives, and negotiations and arguments about specifics continued right up until the release of the President's special message to the Congress on Indian affairs on July 8, 1970. For example, we released the message without having an Indian Trust Council Authority pill approved. Darryl McKitrick and Don Crable at OMB opposed this message and measure, and they'd convinced Assistant Director Don Rice that it was a bad idea fraught with unexpected consequences. We had similar problems with the contracting-out legislation, but that was in better shape by July 8th. Well we announced them all and eventually legislation went up to the Hill on those. I'm going to talk hopefully in the Q and A because we don't have time now, but the fact that the message was announced in the Cabinet Room of the White House, with the Taos Pueblo Indians and leadership, and the President's unwavering and strong strong report for Blue Lake, is a story in and of itself. But it's extraordinarily important, and I hope we'll get to it, because it says something very special about President Nixon's character and his belief in what he was doing. And good luck for us just as it turned out, because it was done that way, the whole entire Indian message got a lot more public relations and media presence, which is very important when you're trying to actually pass something through the Congress, than would have if it hadn't. For example the New York Times, the next day, had the front page with the President and the Taos Pueblo people in the Cabinet Room, front page picture, in color above the fold-- did they have color then? I think so-- but above the fold, on page one. And they followed that through with an entire, well this was when the New York Times was much bigger, entire page of the entire message verbatim. That would not have happened if it hadn't been done through the context of Blue Lake and having the President present the message that way, so I hope we get to discuss that later. Now we certainly want to come back to the Blue Lake story, but our next panelist is Brad Patterson of the, it's just been talked about, the White House staff. Bobby has spoken of that eloquent message of the President. That message of 1970 is one of the great state papers of the Nixon administration. I want to give you four examples of how we on the staff saw to it that that message was implemented. First, our 1854 treaty with the Yakama tribe in Washington had an attachment, a map showing that the boundaries of that reservation included a section of land on the side of Mount Adams. Back in Washington, the map got detached and misfiled. Lacking the map, the Department of Agriculture went ahead and included that particular section of land as part of a national forest. The Yakama objected in vain. Then the map was found and the Yakama leaders came to our office, our office, and asked for restoration. The Department of Agriculture said, "No!" We asked the Interior Department if the restoration could be made and they said "Yes!" We then requested Attorney General Mitchell to settle the issue, and he ruled for the restoration, and we did it. Second, an Indian named Stevens was contesting taxes which the IRS had assessed. His appeals went to the Ninth Circuit, which was considering the IRS brief for the prosecution. Our office intervened and instructed Interior, as a trustee, to file a second brief for the Indian's defense. Two opposing briefs? Both by the Federal Government? In the same case, to the same court? Unheard of. But we did it. We insisted on it, and Stevens won. Len Garment and John Ehrlichman then instructed the Attorney General to continue that split brief procedure. Third, Alaska: we purchased it, we gave it statehood, but left wide open the question of who had title to its lands. Then oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay. The Alyeska company planned an 800 mile-long pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to the Port of Valdez, but it would come right through land which was claimed by the Indians. The natives sued to stop the pipeline and they won, but the judge told them, quote, "Get busy and take this matter out of the courts entirely," unquote. By this he meant, of course, legislation. The pipeline executives came and sat on my office sofa and said, "What do we do now?" I told them that there wouldn't be any pipeline until the Congress enacted and the President signed an Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and furthermore, an act which was acceptable to the natives, who had been left out of our drafting. I telephoned Don Wright, President of the Alaska Federation of Natives. I said, "Len Garment and I are hosting a luncheon in the White House mess. You'd better get down here, because we want to know your views." So, we worked together and we put out a new draft. OMB fought our proposals, claimed that we were being too generous. To settle that issue, a meeting was called with John Ehrlichman. It was with Secretary of the Interior, Roger Morton, OMB Director Shultz, and us. Ehrlichman informed us he had discussed this issue with the President, who had told him that he wanted to continue to be forthcoming about Native American affairs. Forthcoming. What a word of art. Secretary Morton then exclaimed, "Oh, hell. For the Nadians, let's make it 40 million acres and a billion dollars." That was the decision. And here's a picture of Don Wright joining the President and Secretary Morton on the day when we sent up our revised bill. When he signed it, the President broadcast a special statement to to the AFN convention meeting in Fairbanks, saying quote, "I want the delegates to be among the first to know that I have just signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, a milestone in Alaska's history and in the way our government deals with Native Indian people." Fourth: Federal treaties of the 1850s had assured the tribes of Western Washington that they had rights to their usual and accustomed grounds and stations, fishing rights. But after several decades, non-Indians with bigger boats and better technology started taking over in those locations, and the state of Washington began to issue regulations limiting Indian fishing. In 1970, after several ugly confrontations, the tribes filed suit, named U.S. v. Washington. I took the initiative at that point of talking directly with the US attorneys for western Washington, reminding them of the very strong wording of the Nixon message about defending Indian trust rights. The US attorney took heed. His brief turned out to have been very effective, and in February of 1974, Judge George Bolt issued his historic decision upholding the Indians' voting rights. It was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit and largely affirmed by the Supreme Court. I'm going to end by describing three crises in Indian affairs during the Nixon years, which were so directly and expertly managed by the White House staff that the potential violence in each case was minimized. First example: On November 20, 1969 some 79 Indians seized the vacant island of Alcatraz. The next morning Len Garment telephoned the federal agency head responsible for Alcatraz, Robert Kunzig, the administrator of General Services. "What are you going to do about the Indians on Alcatraz?" "Whoa!" Kunzig answered, "Simple. I'm calling in the Federal Marshals and I'll have the Indians out of there by noon tomorrow." Garment flatly countermanded him: "You will do nothing of the sort. Call off your marshals. We are sending a representative from the Vice President's office to meet and talk with them." Kunzig, very angry at Garment, complied. Thus began 19 months of meetings, visits, demands, and negotiations. The Indians cut off the power at the lighthouse, which the Coast Guard had warned us was vital for navigation in the San Francisco Bay. In the end, both the Indians and the press lost interest. Time Magazine called it Enemy at Alcatraz. On June 11, 1971, marshals peacefully removed fifteen Indians, six men, four women, and five children, took them back to the mainland, gave them lunch, and a free night in a hotel. Next, the American Indian Movement, a group of urban Indian activists, organized a march on Washington in October of 1972. The head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Harrison Loesch, unwisely had issued a declaration to the BIA, quote, "Not to provide any assistance, either directly or undirectly," unquote, to the some thousand protesters who jammed into the auditorium of the BIA and then took over the building. They had demanded a meeting with John Ehrlichman, who, with Leonard Garment being out of town, told me to meet with the AIM leaders at 8 o'clock. The police came on the scene, there were ugly confrontations, typewriters were stacked at the top of stairwells, and gasoline was brought into the building. At 8, a Vice Presidential staffer, Bob Robertson, and I, in a room in Main Interior, met with a furious, strident group. They opened the meeting, "You know Mr. Patterson, we're going to die tonight!" The conversation went down from there. Two hours of impassioned threats and incantations. At 10:30 we were told that the armed police units were going off duty shortly and they had to know right away whether they were to storm the building. Loesch and Robertson and I conferred. The two of them argued that this was a law enforcement situation and that the police should act. I differed and called White House Law Enforcement Counsel Bud Krogh for guidance. Krogh said, "No, no police attack. The administration will go in the morning and get a court order." Krogh and Attorney General Kleindienst talked on the telephone and aired their differing views. Krogh arguing for restraint, Kleindienst, the Attorney General, demanding another court order to clear the building. On Monday the 6th of November, the very day before the President's election, Krogh telephoned Ehrlichman to tell him of his differences with Kleindienst. Ehrlichman then went to President Nixon. He reported back, quote, "The President agrees with you. There's too much room for disaster. Call Kleindienst and shoot down the possibility of forceful removal tonight. Figure out how to get this done," unquote. It was done with the help of $66,650, which Carlucci extracted from the OEO funds to pay for tickets and get food to the Indians and get them home. Next, finally, in February of 1973, several hundred of the AIM invaded Wounded Knee village on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation, seizing the local trading post and taking its owners hostage. Three hundred federal police surrounded the occupied village. Shots were exchanged, resulting in the killing of two Indians and the partial paralysis of one of the marshals. Our policy was nonetheless to avoid any violent counterattacks. Senior officials from the Department of Justice, including Kent Frizzell, went out there with them to implement that policy and to negotiate with the occupiers. After seventy-one days of trying, patient, persistent negotiations, there was an agreement. The President, the White House would send a five-member negotiating team, Bobby and me and a representative from Justice and Interior, to meet with the Indian leaders. As we get off our helicopter the Indians isolated, then surrounded me. "Mr. Patterson," they demanded, "Give us the Black Hills now!" I had to explain that if I were the President himself, I could not take that action. Over several days, we explained how Congress did violate the Treaty of 1868 after Custer's defeat and the discovery of gold. And we emphasized that it was not the President, but only the Congress, which could undo or compensate for that ancient injustice. Lengthy letters were later exchanged. Nine years later, in rejecting a lawsuit by the residents of Wounded Knee Trading Post, who had accused the government of quote, "negligent and improper actions," unquote, at both the BIA building and Wounded Knee, Commissioner Thomas Lydon of the Board of Claims used these words, quote, "The government acted reasonably and with praiseworthy restraint and with concern for the lives of all involved and with a remarkable imagination and constructive creativity in handling the occupation and dispossession of the BIA building. It is my opinion that the government's actions both before an action and during the civil disorder at Wounded Knee were at all times reasonable, responsible, and proper," unquote. I take my hat off to the members of this panel, to those who helped organize it, to my boss Len Garment, to the late John Ehrlichman, and to President Richard Nixon, for their farseeing leadership in Native American affairs, to the things that they did and the things that, wisely, they did not do. Thank you Brad, and thank you for the honor of serving with you in that administration. Our next speaker is Kent Frizzell, who was both the leader of the Justice Department division litigating Indian cases and then the Solicitor at the Interior Department throughout the Nixon administration. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to have you in the audience. I want to share some recollections of Indian policy under the Nixon administration. Now mind you, I didn't become involved with the federal government, including the laws and policies, until 1972, two years after the Nixon message to Congress. And in that message, President Nixon set out on an enlightened policy with respect to Indian policy that has become popularly titled, as you know, self-determination, not termination. What does that mean? Well, that means different things to different people. To me it means that the federal government should abandon its paternalistic policies toward Indian tribes and individual Indians. They're capable, the President felt, of administering their own tribal governments, implementing their own programs, and yes, making their own mistakes, just as non-Indian cities, counties, and states have made mistakes since inception. President Nixon also said the duty of the federal government is to fulfill its obligations to the Indian community as what? As their trustee, and that imposes a solemn obligation on the trustee to the beneficiaries of that trust, the Indian communities of America. That federal trust responsibility to Indians was set out as far back as the 1830s. The Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 2 cases, that was 1831, and the next year, Worcester v. Georgia, in 1832. Under that Trustee Doctrine, the United States must protect interests of the beneficiary, including the to honor the treaties that this nation entered into with the tribes. We also must protect the Indian rights to natural resources and their lands, including water rights and the rights to hunt and fish. It goes further. We must protect the tribal authority and resolve state and Indian jurisdictional issues. I am pleased to say that after spending 1.5 years at the Department of Justice and then going on to the Department of Interior as Solicitor, President Nixon gave me the opportunity to participate in that grand adventure. And I'll forever be grateful. Thank you, Kent, and I'll forever be grateful for the opportunity to serve under you in those years. And our last speaker is Wally Johnson, who was Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department handling Indian cases from 1973 to 1975. I'm going to break practice this morning and stay in my chair because when I finish presenting an overview we're going to have a conversation or we'll just sit here. I have had a wonderful opportunity to reflect as I listened to my colleagues about what it is we're doing here and what it was that happened 40 years ago. Each of us has a different perspective. I'm a product of the Justice Department. I served under 8 separate attorneys general and tend to look at this issue through the lens of a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. Now, as it turns out, what I'd like to do in my few minutes this morning is pose two questions. And the questions set up our conversation this morning, but they also link together with the scholars and government officials that will speak this afternoon. The current Solicitor of the Interior Department is with us and as I was listening to my colleagues refresh my recollection, I thought of two things. And the question is what is the United States? And the second question is how do you change your culture? Now, when I was a young prosecutor, about 25 years old, there is no question that everything was black and white. And if it was white, they agreed with me. And if it was black, they were wrong. The fact is in this arena, we're talking about grey. Kent and I reminisced a little bit earlier and decided that maybe the best thing that happened to us was that he hired Reid Chambers. Reid is an extraordinarily dedicated, competent lawyer who spent his entire life focused on Indian rights. He wrote a reminiscence, which will be part of the research guide for our taping this morning. And he wrote 100 pages explaining every one of these issues in great detail. What he did was present one position. And if you understand the way the government's organized, and you listen to particularly Brad and Bobby, it's pretty complicated. Kent as Undersecretary at Interior, after he'd concluded his term as Solicitor-- did you have eight bureaus? Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, on and on and on. Every one of those agencies had a position and they were grounded in some long tradition. So, when I say what is the United States, the United States in my forum were the courts. That's where we waged our battle. And together we waged the battle over natural resource allocation and use, the Yakama case, the Alaskan Native Claims, are all issues that were within the sphere of my responsibility. But the reason that the United States prevails in 95% of the cases it enters into in litigation is because it speaks with dignity and authority and with the integrity of the legal process behind it. And when Kent came to me with a recommendation for litigation, he had gone through a process of reconciling all of the bureau positions. And what I had to do was then reconcile those positions in your recommendation before filing a lawsuit within the rest of the government. And by the way, it gets even more complicated, because when you get into the appellate process and go to the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General is absolutely in control. And the reason I posed this issue in the context of our conversation this morning is, upon reflection and with the benefit of the wisdom that comes from 40 years of watching change, we changed things forty years ago. I think it was the attitude and the moderation and the integrity of the process with Len and John and Mr. Nixon that turned that ship of state and it continued to turn. Now, how did we help do it, Kent and Wally . The way we pursued litigation policy. When I took over at the Justice Department from Kent as Assistant Attorney General, all of the Interior Department cases were tried by one group of attorneys . There was no identification for people who were committed to protecting the trust responsibility and the fiduciary interest. We changed that. And, in fact, Reid, I think that section is still active. Very much so, Wally. So, what I'm saying is that, as we consider the movement between black and white and the gray area that much policy is developed in, that ship of state turned and basically began to recognize the rights of the Native Americans and essentially their voice became the voice of the United States. Now we'll talk a little bit about the split brief and that issue I think in our conversation, but the fact is there was a change and I'm anxious to hear our afternoon conversation about how that played out over the last forty years. So, thank you for including me. I'm delighted to be here And I'm glad I didn't have to walk to the podium. I'm getting older. Wally, thank you, and thank everyone. You and everyone else on the panel for all your service to Indian country. It has been a marvelous change. Bobby, I'm going to circle back to you first. You wanted to talk about Blue Lake. And our conversations about it indicated there was some political push-back from powerful congressional forces. That's to say the least. And then I'd like to open that up for all of the panelists to talk a little bit about the political push-back you faced in, well, Interior or, Wally, I know Kent had a good deal of political push- back on some of the things he was trying to accomplish. And so this wasn't uncontroversial, and I think the country may have changed its minds about Indian rights pretty much as a result of the work everyone did. So let me call on you first. I don't know if everybody in the audience knows the history of Blue Lake, but it's worth probably summarizing for a second. In 1906, which was 64 years before, excuse me, allergies or something out here, 64 years before President Nixon stepped in, President Teddy Roosevelt by executive order took the Taos Pueblo sacred Blue Lake and the 48,000 acres of surrounding watershed lands, which were high up on Wheeler Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and they made it part of the National Forest, to be administered by the National Forest Service. And whether it was a surveying error or whether it was intentional, the Taos people had lost the lake and the land, and it was a very long, long fight to get it back. It became over time a unique symbol of everything that was wrong and unfair and of violation of basic rights to the Indian community. And when President Nixon wound up signing the legislation that restored Blue Lake, he said it. He said "This is more than just a land settlement. It's a symbolic turning point in the history of those who were the first Americans, and the beginning of the new era." Now, the controversy. And again, the controversy in it some way just made the Indian message all the better because of the attention the Indian message got because of that. This was, first of all, the message was going to be put out in late June, the entire Indian message, and was going to be released as a press document, but not in front of any Indian leaders or the press or anybody, due to some other scheduling difficulties that they had at the White House at that time. So basically, we were going to take this document, this is an original 1970, and this is what we put out in the press room, 150 copies. So I'm sitting there, carrying 150 copies of these down to the White House press room and, those of you who know the White House, there's the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, and then there's this ramp that kind of goes down to the press room. So I'm carrying these documents, and coming from the other way, from the East Wing of the White House where the Congressional Relations offices were, I saw this blur. This person was just racing through the portico by the rose garden and as I approached the press room he, fellow named Ken BeLieu, who has head of the Senate Congressional Relations for the President, came the other way, swung open the door and knocked me down, like I was a football player. Just knocked me sprawling down. 150 copies of these went up in the air. And I just looked at him and I said, excuse me, "What the hell are you doing?" And he said, "You can't release that to the press." I said, "Oh yes I can. Mr. Ehrlichman told me I could," and whatever John said, you did. He said, "No, you can't." And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because Senator Anderson," who was a Senior Senator, Democrat from New Mexico at that time, "opposes this." And I said, "Why does he oppose it?" He said, "Because he believes it's unjust, it's unfair, that the executive order was correct, and it invades ranchers' rights, and he feels so strongly about this that he's going to vote against the ABM," the anti-ballistic missile treaty that was coming up in the Senate, "if the President supports the return of Blue Lake!" And while I'm lying there on the floor, I looked at him and said, "You've got to be kidding me." So no. So he helped me up and I said thank you. And we started walking. He said, "What are we going to do?" I said, "Well, let's go see John Ehrlichman." So I took him upstairs to the second floor of the White House, and I explained to John what had happened, and John looked at him like, "You're out of your mind, but all right." And John called Rose Woods, who was the President's secretary. Said, "I need to come down with Ken BeLieu and see the President on an important matter." So the President luckily was available. And John Ehrlichman and Ken BeLieu went down to the Oval Office. And I was not invited to come in, but I stood right outside the door. And what seemed to me an eternity, it just went on and on and on, there was obviously a discussion and then the Oval Office door opened and the President looked at me and I swore that he winked at me. He didn't wink. But I swore he winked at me. And Ken BeLieu looked like he'd been run over by a Mac Truck. He was just white. And they came out and I said, "What happened?" And John Ehrlichman said, "The President is going to support the restoration of Blue Lake. And beyond that, the President wants us to invite the Taos Pueblo people to come to the Cabinet Room of the White House and we're going to release the entire Indian message in front of them and make it clear to the country that the President is in favor of self-determination and he is in favor of the return of Blue Lake." Now, the very fact that that happened, just the odd circumstances, meant that what you had as a very important message took on a whole new symbolic aura to it and the image and the picture and the beauty of the Taos Pueblo people in the Cabinet Room with the President of the the United States, the Vice President of the United States, Secretary Hickle, HEW Secretary Richardson, who else was there here? John Ehrlichman, Len Garment, Don Rumsfeld, the Kasiki, the Pueblo Governor, the Tribal Secretary, Paul Bernal. I was there as well. Brad Patterson was at his son's wedding in Switzerland and was climbing a mountain, but the image of everyone standing there and the President saying that he supported the return of Blue Lake was quite extraordinary. And you've got to remember that the Cabinet Room, historically and to this very day, is used by Presidents to meet with heads of state, Governors, Senate leaders, House leaders, never with "an interest group". And the President made it very clear this was not an interest group. This was a tribe, they had tribal sovereignty and he was respecting the fact that they had tribal sovereignty and the deep respect he showed for them. that was really quite something. One or two other points that really I think just say something about the President. When we would walk through the halls of the Congress, as I said, "Well O'Donnell could get people to see us who wouldn't see anybody else. And if nobody else, they wouldn't see anybody else. You could always speak with authority and say the President wants 'cause he really did want in this case and the blue like legislation was the first legislation ever overturned...well, let me back up. The senate interior and insular affairs committee defeated the legislation. We said we were going to go to the floor of the Senate. Never before in the history of the Senate Internal Affairs Committee, remember that Congress in those days was very seniority oriented, never legislation that had been defeated in the committee, been approved by the full senate. Never. But this happened. And who are your key players? Senator Fred Harris. Democrat from Oklahoma. LaDonna Harris, commache from Oklahoma and head of the American Friendly Opportunity and President Richard Nixon. Think about that. What an odd trio that was. what an extraordinarily effective treaty that was. And they had the help, on the Democratic side, of Senator Ted Kennedy who was a young Senator at that time, and Senator George McGovern who later on was going to run the president and Bob Griffin from Michigan and Mac Mathias from Maryland and for the importance and the day of the vote, he sends a jet, an Airforce jet, to pickup Bob Griffith from Michigan so he would be there on time for the vote. And Senator Mathias was stuck in something that took the President's foot [sp?] on this. going on in Maryland, he got the Maryland governor to send - had been Spiro Agnew but wasn't - state troopers to get Mac Matthias and have him come men with a motorcade, so he was there on time for the vote. And, when the vote happened, we were all keyed on Barry Goler [sp?]. He wouldn't tell anybody how he was gonna vote, he wouldn't even tell LaDonna. and at the last minute he got up there and there was this hush in the senate chambers. And he got up and he said, "I've been thinking about this for a very long time and I have decided that it is fair and equitable and right that the Taos Pueblo people be restored to their native land and to Blue Lake. And there was just this silence, and he said the heck, he said, you know we'd probably be better off if we just returned the whole darn state to them. Everybody looked at [xx] Everybody realized he didn't really mean that. When they recovered The vote was...what was it, Brad? It was 72 to...What was the vote? Seven two to 12 or ten? Seventy to 12. And then what happened was, in the set of chamber you're allowed to be up in the chambers, but your not supposed to say anything, supposed to be very very quiet years old and all the rest of us were there. And he had two canes with him. One cane was an ancient cane, given him by a King and the other cane was a cane that Garment had brought out with him in 1970 to give from President Nixon - excuse me, it was the Lincoln cane, that Lincoln had given him, the other was a cane that President Nixon had given through land [xx] to the taos pueblo people in the ceremony in 1970. And the kasiki[sp?], who was 94 years old - you weren't supposed to stand - stood up and held those canes aloft in the air. And I can still cry when I think about it. It was just the most extraordinary moment. And all the Senators turned and looked, and they started to applaud! Nobody ever applauded in the they started to applaud. And it was an emotional moment that carried forward to the signing of the legislation in the White House on December 13, 1970 in the East Room And everybody was there, bipartisan, interior secretary now is Thurston Lorrin. The Harris's were there, the Indians were there. It was an extraordinary day, and the president sat down, and there's a picture of it right there, sat down with the Kasiki, and Paul Barnao, and those of you are Indian know how the Kasiki made a very long prayer and speech, and Paul Bernal translated, even longer than what the Kasiki said, he went on and on, and the President said and there I'm going, Oh God, I'm going to lose my job. This is, no his said. And he's getting very antsy. But he wasn't, he was really, really listening and after they spoke he stood up an he was very emotional and he said how much this meant to the American people and to the Indian nations and to himself and he sat down and he signed the legislation. And then he left and he was late he was now very late, and he was supposed to go make a speech to the employees at HUD, and again if you were a young White House staffer you rarely had interchange with the President, but he looked at me and he said, young lady, come with me. So I walk with him and we're walking torwards the motorcade and I said Mr. President I am so sorry this took so long and I realize it took a lot of your time and he turned around and he put his hands on my shoulder, and he said, young lady, don't you ever apologize. This was one of the most important things I've ever done in my administration. And is was a wonderful day. I am only Sorry I couldn't stay longer. He believed it, he felt it, he felt he had done the right thing. He felt the Indian message and self determination was the right thing and it was a part of President Nixon that a lot of people often don't see, but he was an extraordinary man when he believed in something and he really believes in this and so you don't get any better than that so I'll stop. Anyone else on the panel want to talk about some of the political resistance or...Kent, we also had in the Interior Department, of course, career officials, regional solicitors, field solicitors, who would come up in the era when public power and reclamation were king in the department and really resisted the change and you wanna say anything about that? I can mention one thing about, well just one thing, about the fact in this meeting of the senate on It was the senate bill that was being considered. But the smart thing they did was to vote the revision of the senate bill as Bobby explained overcoming the objections of the Interior Committee, but bringing in the exact same language as the House bill which had been passed previously. That wouldn't have to Senate - House conference. It could go immediately to the President for signature. That was a smart idea, so it made things go a lot faster. One other little comment I could make Alaskan native claim shot. The 40 million acres and a billion dollars was what the bill came out and then we announced sending this to the Hill. And Don Wright was here, President of the Alaska Federation of Natives, and we had a press conference, And the press secretary explained the bill was going to congress, what it was like, and then invited Don Wright to take over the White House press microphone. which is rather unusual for any interest group to give out access to the press microphone at the White House. And I had a little bit in my throat because AFN buyback up there demand to 60 million acres, but the bill was 40. And I was afraid - In fact, one of the reporters said, you didn't get everything you wanted did you? but Don said, we were brought into this consultation in fairness and in cooperation, and we believe the White House and the President and the listened to our request and paid attention to them and so we're supporting this legislation. So I thought that was...it came out well it was a rather unusual scene to have the President of the united states ask a federation there from the white house podium thing that I promised myself I would say even though it was an implied company, and that was when the President opened the door of the Oval Office after meeting with John, and Ken Ballew And said it was to support Blue Lake. John said to me "The president said that Clinton Anderson can go vote against the AVA if he wants to, and he can go should go four letter word himself. And I was really proud to hear that he said that. Well we knew he had graphic language. That's right [xx] one other thing read the rather exquisite irony in these years between on the one hand the president's message and on the other hand these crises, beginning with Alcatraz. And so at the same time as these crises were going on, you had the president's message delivered and being considered in Congress. These two things, strange irony that they were simultaneous. But some of these crises got a great deal of media attention. which in a way helped us out. And the press, the Washington press, the national press, even the Soviet press, was there covering these crises. And, but they, I think, really added some motion and support to what we were trying to do and succeeded in doing. The respect to political pressures. It's a part of life. I never resented it. It didn't bother me because for every political pressure, there's was a under pressure over here. And, you might learn something by listening to both sides. I remember Congressman John Rhodes from Arizona from the CA [xx] project. He thought the position that Reed and I were taking on allocation under the Winters Doctrine for the Indian tribes was going to be CAP, Central Arizona Project, and that was his baby. As it turned out, We made some accommodations, but today the Indian tribes involved with the Central Arizona Project are utilizing 50% of the waters of that project. So Interior itself, as was suggested, is a Jeckyl Hyde type of agency. Most of the other departments of government in Cabinet positions. They have a mission. Veterans affairs, education, health, welfare, etc. They had one common allegiance from their promoters and their employees and all. At Interior, You've got the Fish and Wildlife service, for instance. The National Park Service. They're opposed to the Bureau Gland Management, the Bureau of Reclamation. The way that we handled it lifters[sp?] office and I think we surprised both the sector and under sector A1. I know that was a pyramid like a case or something right after you came on as associate solicitor, rather than taking the attorney for the Reclamation Bureau up to explain his position, and what was needed. I invited him, but I also invited Reed and he stated the Indian position. I got a note back from the Undersecretary's office saying, holy malloly, this is one of the best reapings we had. We didn't realise there were two sides to this issue. So, life was fun at the Department of Interior. It certainly was. Let me try to, do you just want to ... I was just going to ask him. What do you think would have been different if the Indian trust Council Authority had passed. And maybe explain to people what the Indian Trust Council Authority was, or our proposal. Well, Reed can do a better job of answering that question than I but, i think we both come with the conclusion, that some of the policy we implement, accomplished with basic the Indian trust council authority, but Reed[sp?] go ahead. No I I. It wasn't necessary to been successful legislatively. That has been my view Kent. I think it may be something the panel this afternoon will want to give some reaction to. Okay. But I think that Wally establishing the separate section in the Justice Department you giving the direction to me and to the Indian Division just to be the advocates for the Indians. And, you know, so often top policy makers get something presented to them when there was really only one option, and instead, as you say, we presented both of them to the undersecretary to you as solicitor as and I felt it was an advantage to be in the belly of the beast. I think you have described the Interior Department absolutely correctly. Most agencies of a more unitary direction. And constituency. Yeah. And the Interior Department is all the western interests fight it out, and the Indians had, and President Nixon saw, that because of those conflicts within the interior department in the past, Indians had been short changed, so I think it was something novel, and I'd like to get anyone's reaction on this in this afternoon's panel too. I'll turn to you, Wally, in a second for it. To put that kind of emphasis on the trust responsibility and the conflict of interest. I'm going back to Bobby's observation about Ken Ballew. I was in the White House legislative office after Ken. And when I first heard this story, I tried to find out what happened in the meeting with Ehrlichman, Ballew and Mr. Nixon. And none of my people know. but it would be awfully interesting because the fact is all politics is local and the issues we're talking about ultimately may appear to be very dry and involve land boundaries and allocation of resources. They're critical to everybody living in the western states. And the emotions and the politics are strong. Now I do know that Mr Nixon was heavily committed to that ABM treaty. And what I think I've heard or how I would interpret what I heard goes back to Chief Newman because I'm convinced in my own mind that Nixon was a very compassionate person and he had the right instincts. Now when Kent and I were enforcing the trust responsibility, I think we took it pretty seriously. And I'm not sure that the politics or the atmosphere or the attitudes in previous administrations gave it the same strength integrity that we did or at least we tried to do. But and this is a small story that I'd like to get in the record. As an attorney, and I'm suspecting that many here are, you want to fight them on the beaches, you want to fight him on the woods, you want to fight him in the mountains and you go wherever you think the decision is being made, and argue your point. Now we've heard how the BIA with Reid Chambers in the solicitor's office reconciled decisions. There was a group of attorneys that sort of came on me. Now, I'm not a pretentious person, as you can tell. I even sat here and I'm talking gently. with Hugh. But an assistant attorney general's a pretty big deal. There are only about five of them in the government. There are sub-cabinet officers and there's a bureaucracy sort of start at the bottom, you work your way up. And then the assistant attorney general relates to the attorney general. Well, there's an organization called the Native American Rights Fund headquartered in Boulder, and these young advocates burst into my offices as an Assistant Attourney General They didn't have any right to see an Attorney General or an Assistant Attorney General. They were arguing their point aggressively to protect and advance the allocation of resources in the West in competition with these very powerful interests. and i can weave all of this together in a way that makes me understand the president and the people who work for him and the that were being pursued that did in fact change the future for the tribes. Blue Lakes a classic the experiences that Brad has advanced are perfect examples of the policies that were being pursued during that time And it's all very interesting when you look back. The great thing about Paul's[sp?] policy I wanna stress again there by [xx] Republican, Nixon taking a Republican position, and the Democrats an opposition position or a Democrat position, they were really working together. Senators like Fred Hatfield and of course the President, niether of them made it as if were a patisan matter at all and that's why most of the legislation Recommended by the President in the message and these other things Alaska native claims and blue lake and so forth were done, we're, we're on accident. as I look and so [xx] Congress when you think could we do anything like that today. But then we had bipartisan support, both sides of the aisle and we got a lot done. let me quickly insert another partisan aspect to the relationship between Reid Chambers and myself when I hired him. When I arrived at Interior, there was a vacancy for the associates list Indian Affairs. I put out the word, I interviewed 10 or 12 candidates. Reed, a young 32 year old Attorney who taught Indian law at UCLA came in and interviewed, and he was at the top of the list after his interview with me. And then during that interview, I found out that we were of opposite political instincts. You're a democrat? Oh, my God! i found out that he had actively campaigned against president Nixon in 1968 and again in 1972. Wasn't very effective Kent. Fortunately, but I told him now you got to leave those items out of your resume we send over to the personnel office at the White House. The other interesting thing is, now you should all perceive that Kent Purcell and I are extremely close, we were in 1971,72, 73, 74, 75, we are today. But when these issues, and they're all very complicated when you begin reconciling differences within the government and coming to a position. We'd sit down and talk about them almost like we're doing doing now and recognize the various interests that were involved, and we tilled it, we tilled it to the Trust, to protecting the Trust. Yeah. and we worked hard to do that, but it wasn't always that simple. And I think that was something that was new in the Nixon message, the emphasis...I mean, Nixon again was a lawyer, Len Garment of course was his law partner. I think they really saw this as a legal responsibility, in a way that prior administration had not. I wanted to circle back, Bobby to the contracting out issue. One of the really novel things Is about the Nixon message, and one of its lasting impacts was the Indian self determination act that he proposed, and congress did enact. and under that act, more than half of the money now for the Indian health service is contracted to Indian tribes and tribal organizations To directly run those programs, and a lot of VIA money is contracted too, for those programs, and housing programs. I noticed Ross Swimmer was an exemplary assistant secretary in the Reagan Administration. And his wife are here. Ross was a real champion of Implementing the self determination policy and the self governance starting starting self governance, and I wonder if the origins of the, you said that had had some pushback when you developed the ideas. But can you sort of go through how that was developed and the message and what its origins were? if there were some indications of that in President Johnson's message, there were a large sections in the National Congress of Inventor Organizations NCIO set of reconciliations they report are based on the public forums they had, had around the country with the Indian community, Alvin Josephy's memorandum which was kind of a transition planning again from him. It was huge to Jim Keogh had a large section if I remember right on contracting. And maybe Brad can help me out here. I can't remember specifialy more then that, but it just seemed to make a lot of common sense and there were a whole bunch of us who were lawyers at that time, but I think it came out of [xx] It came out a Johnson message and it came out of Giuseppe's memorandum. I will point out that I was just invited and attended in April a US Supreme Court argument, called Salazar, Secretary of the Interior vs Ramah Navajo Chapter, and the question was, 42 years later, whether the Government is required to pay all the contract costs incurred by a Tribal contractor, under the Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance act, where congress has imposed imposed an express statutory cap on the appropriations available to pay such costs. And the Secretary basically can't pay the cost for all the Tribal contractors without exceeding the statutory the Rainbow Chapter tribe went out, performed the services, and then they couldn't get paid in full because the government had run out of money. So it is an important statute. It still obviously has an implementation problems, so it will be interesting to see how the US Supreme Court comes down on it. But that's about what I remember. Brad, do you want to add to that? I was going to add something else. Excuse me. The White House staff ever since Lynn Garment, including today, has a staff person who works with Indian Affairs. And even a change in the White House staff beginning in the Garment years. I might add all of us know in terms of in the very broadest sense the natives in Australia have made great gains there and the natives in Canada have made great games. So this is happening not just in the United States but in other nations. [xx]. I do remember one of the saying[sp?] and that was [xx] It's really quite a progressive force, and the establishment by OAO of Legal Services Programs on Indian reservations had a major impact and, on the Navajo DNA, Peter Sza [sp]was the head of that. They were taking on the school system. And their basic premise was, was the case that I worked on on Channel 8 was that, hey we ought to be able to control, we know what's best for our kids and their education, we are able to control Indian education through Indian school boards and through contracting and the money [xx] and I remeber having some conversations in the White House, on that in that if that makes sense for Indian education why doesn't it make sense for all the other subject matters. You also had and the people from the Indian community [xx] here this afternoon. You also had the question that the Indian world was not what's the word - totally alive. And you had a lot of older people in the Indian community who were very tied to what was going on in the BIA and how that money was flowing. And it was the younger people were saying. Wait a minute I think I see alittle corruption here. I think I see ineffectiveness and inefficiantcies and we want changes. So it wasn't as if the whole Indian world was crazy about this. Some of the people were very threatened by it . I have supposed to cut this off at twelve o'clock or keep going, what? Ask the final comment. Alright What about some final comments? I do have one, and that is, I want people to understand that President Nixon's Indian policy [xx] it was extrodinary, but it was totally insync and not unusual for his aproach to domestic policy make you in general. And a lot has been written about President Nixon and foreign policy. A lot has been written [xx]. What people don't write about was the the fact that Richard Nixon was an extraordinarily progressive Republican on domestic policy and if you look at the broad range of what he did and what he could've continued to do if [xx] hadn't intervened. He established the Environmental Protection Agency. He established OSHA, the Office of Safety and Health Administration. he instituted the first affirmative action plan in the construction trades called the Philadelphia Plan. He started healthcare reform. He was the president who put in HMO's. Now whether you like or dislike HMO's these days - and I think they're terrible - the fact is that that was a unique, extraordinary change in the delivery of healthcare services. He set the stage for pension reform, for ERISA, which was passed under Gerald Ford, but all the spadework was done under Richard Nixon. He funded, President Johnson established the National Council for the Arts and Humanities, but Richard Nixon funded them, he funded and supported and grew OEO and I know I'm missing some things, but if you just take a look overall at what he did the domestic policy. I would argue that in the long term it in some ways outshone domestic, I mean farm policy, and this guy was an extraordinarily progressive republic president. It's worth observing too, that during the Nixon administration, really for the first time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began rigorously to force Indian preference for all positions in the BIA, and I think Kent that you talked about the paternalism before hand that the the paternalistic hold of white, well-intentioned bureaucrats administering Indian affairs and transformed that and Wally, you supported the Supreme Court case, ultimately. The Justice Department had to defend the Indian Preference Policy in the Mann - Carey case in the Supreme court and succeeded. It took a while, but Indians just won a big case on [xx[. Reed all good things run into time problems just because this is a tag team match and I don't want you people to think that were are going to lose this, when you Start on President Nixon and Civil Right. The list goes much further than Bobbie's list. He gave the 18-year-old vote. He reformed the draft. He gave the the vote to the citizens of the District of Columbia. He engineered the peaceful desegregation of Southern schools. He broke the back of organized crime in the big cities. It is is a phenomenal record of achievement in what people think of as individual rights. We're gonna take a break now. We reassemble at one o'clock. There's a around here at the [xx] but you are welcome to get snacks at. We hope you stick around for the second half of out panel. Thank you very much.