 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company. Maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Larry Lusser from the CBS television news staff, and John Oakes from the editorial board of the New York Times. Our distinguished guest for this evening is Oliver LaFarge, President of the Association on American Indian Affairs. It may not be generally known, but a new crisis has arisen over the American Indian. Tending before Congress are a number of bills which would remove federal protection from about 60 million Indians in about a dozen states. Now our guest tonight, a prize-winning novelist, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, has long made a study of the American Indian. So we'd like to ask Mr. LaFarge just how the Indians themselves feel about this removal of federal protection. We've heard from over 70 tribes to date, and the voice has been absolutely unanimous. Yes, we have never heard so much resistance on the part of the Indians to any move as is to this so-called termination of Indian status. Well, just what does federal protection consist of? It consists of several things. There is first place, the ownership of tax-exempt land held in trust for the Indians by the United States as trustee, which we call reservations. Then there is the right of the Indians to a guarantee of education, health service, extension service, industrial aid, and a number of other services that we ordinarily enjoy from our municipalities, counties, and states on the part of the federal government. Plus, the very important and basic right, deriving from their ancient position as sovereign tribes, to have home rule municipal government by themselves within the boundaries of their reservations. Well Mr. LaFarge, why have the Indians isolated themselves from the rest of the community? Why haven't they assimilated themselves like the rest of us, more recent immigrants? I wouldn't say that they have isolated themselves. I would say that we more recent immigrants pouring in in large numbers have isolated them. We came upon them when they were totally unprepared for our way of life. We conquered them rather brutally and violently. We have shown a very marked racial discrimination against them. We have not prepared them for our manner of operation. When they leave their reservations and leave their tribes, they usually have extremely unhappy experiences and above all, we have never offered them a reasonable education. But don't they eat the same educational privileges that the rest of us do? In theory they do. In practice, they have not been offered anything approaching. The education offered to an ordinary American boy until within the last 20 or 25 years. And even now, you have tribes like the Navajos where 50% of your children of school age cannot receive any school facilities. Well, if the federal government gave up its protection of them, why couldn't the states step in and assume... Most of the Indians are in western states. The western states are on the whole not rich. If the western states had to pick up the burden of these services to the Indians, it would be financially impossible for most of them to handle it. All the Indians would do would be to drag down the level of the services the states are now able to render to their own citizens, which are below the level of the services to which you are accustomed, let's say, here in New York state. Well, President Eisenhower, I remember, said that these bills would be another step in removing the second-class citizenship status of the Indians, although he did express a desire that the bills be reconsidered and possibly amended. Now, what was he referring to there? I don't know what he was referring to, except that he was ill-informed. The Indian is not a second-class citizen. The Indians have all the rights and all the responsibilities that the rest of us have. By that, I mean the Indians have the vote, they are liable to military service, and they render military service the same as all the rest of us, and by the way, they do it magnificently. They are free to go anywhere they wish to engage in any business in which they are capable of engaging, or which they wish to attempt. To marry anyone they wish to marry, there is no limitation upon the freedom of an Indian, other than the one limitation that the land that is held for him in trust, like any trust, is a trust he can't break. But the states can actually seize this land now, you say? Well, if this termination legislation goes through, then the protection that exists on these lands and their exemption would terminate. Well, you, as the president of the Association of American Indian Affairs, you said a few months ago, I believe, that the Indians are threatened with the greatest betrayal in the last hundred years. Now, could you explain just what that betrayal consists of? Yes, I can try to. We have had in the past legislation to open the way to stripping the property and the rights as Indians from a great number of tribes, outstandingly the Allotment Act of 1887, but never have we had in Congress blanket legislation that the, not only the bills to terminate some 70, the status of some 70,000 Indians. You mean to end all federal protection? Yes, all federal protection. You give me the impression this would be like the Cherokee run if the white man would just run in and take over the reservation. That wouldn't be the case, would it? It would be the result. And because in addition to those bills for the specific Indians, there are bills pending which would, in the long run, strip every living Indian, whether he spoke English was literate, illiterate or not, of any vestige of federal protection. When you add all of those up together, you have the most serious attack on the rights of the Indians that has occurred literally since the founding of the revolution. Well, if the Indians don't want it, what's behind it? Who does want it? Well, it's, you feel a little uncertain in trying to say, partly, a lot of people are impatient with the failure we have made and think that perhaps we could do better if we merely cut these people loose. A lot of people are deceived by this talk about first-class citizenship and equality, not realizing what rights the Indians now have and what good citizens, what free citizens they now are. But on a lot of Indian land today there is oil. On a lot of Indian land that used to be thought to be desert, there is uranium. The Indians own a lot of very valuable timber. In Alaska where Indian title has never been settled and the boundaries have never been drawn, the Indians have a claim to the best salmon fishing country and the best timber in the territory. There is a lot of reason why it would be very convenient to liberate these people so that they had no protection and nobody to defend their rights. You mean they wouldn't be able to sell these properties if they remained under federal jurisdiction? They couldn't sell them or lease them except with competent advice and advice of counsel and under very strict rules. We have an example that came up in the state of Utah in a bill to terminate a small group. It came out in that bill, in the hearings on it, that there are oil structures under that land. That there is an oil company that has been trying to lease the land without going through the statutory controls requiring open bidding and the best possible terms for Indians. If those Indians are quote liberated, unquote terminated, why then that oil company can move in on these people who are very poor and semi-literate and probably drive a magnificent bargain? Mr. Laffer, does this mean the end of the Indian Bureau in Washington that these laws are passed? I've often heard the Indians complain about the Indian Bureau in Washington. It would probably end up and the Indian Bureau along with the Indians. The Indians kick it. Well, about the Indian Bureau, yes. They do. Well, Mr. Laffer, may I ask you a final question? What do you think the Indians actually want to make them into full first-class citizens of the United States? Education, general education, and help to establish themselves in economic competence to where they can earn their own livings in the same manners that all the rest of us do and acceptance, the knowledge and the economic background and the acceptance to be able to go out like any other American citizen or stay on their land like any other American citizen. And be respected and prove themselves equals. Do you think that these laws, if they were passed on to the states, would not provide them with these opportunities? They offer no provision whatsoever. They merely deprive them of the best of what chance they have for it. So to be a first-class citizen, the Indian must have the protection of the federal government, you feel? Must have the protection of the federal government and until his first classness can be innate in himself. It does not derive from legal status. It must derive from his own knowledge. Thank you very much, Mr. Laffer. It's been very interesting to have you here tonight. The opinions expressed on the Long Gene Chronoscope were those of the speakers. The editorial board for this edition of the Long Gene Chronoscope was Larry LaSerre and John Oakes. Our distinguished guest was Oliver LaFarge, president of the Association on American Indian Affairs. Soon it will be Mother's Day. Now the idea of Mother's Day was suggested by Mrs. Anna M. Jarvis of Philadelphia in 1907 with the carnation as its symbol. Now by resolution of Congress, Woodrow Wilson in 1914 issued the first presidential proclamation in which he named the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day, as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country. And in this, of course, we all join. To some, here is the opportunity to express love for a mother through a gift. And the most appropriate gift is a sparkling new watch, like one of these. 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