National Reports
NETBOY, ANTHONY
National Reports Death of an Indian Forest By Anthony Netboy Portland THE KLAMATH Indian reservation, consisting of 850,000 timber-rich acres, lies in the mountains of eastern Oregon. Until...
...The Klamaths own in common about 3.8 billion board feet of commercial timber, growing on 600,000 acres...
...Since there are only 2.100 persons enrolled in the tribe, every man...
...Public Law 587 permits each adult to leave the reservation and take his share of the common assets in cash...
...50 toward paying shipping charges for their household goods, a bit of money toward subsistence for the first four weeks, up to $50 per person to buy tools and equipment, etc...
...Nevertheless, according to a Stanford Research Institute survey, perhaps 70 per cent of the Klamaths will elect to terminate...
...we need more time...
...Should this happen, the Bureau of Indian Affairs will have to sell as much as 2.7 billion feet of tribally-owned timber before August 13, 1953...
...With the advent of the Eisenhower Administration, which adopted a policy of preparing as many Indian tribes as possible for independence, they succeeded in getting a bill passed and signed by the President in 1954 which removes the Klamaths from Federal control by August 1958...
...It is interesting, though, that Willi termination and all its consequences staring them in the face, many Indians are recoiling from it...
...Many inducements are offered: transportation from the reservation to the city...
...Since the majority are unskilled workers, they live in squalid, dreary tenements, shunned by whites...
...It is difficult to see why many would be willing to exchange the carefree life on the reservation for a competitive existence in the city...
...Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles, cities where there are now concentrations of displaced Indians...
...But about five years ago some of the younger men organized a movement to free themselves from Federal control and secure their share of the tribe's immense assets...
...If termination is not put off, it will throw the Klamath tribe into chaos and put the members in the poor house...
...This is only one of several Indian termination bills passed by the 83rd Congress, but it is clearly the most important because it jeopardizes an immense tract of valuable timber needed by the region and the nation at large...
...What he means is that the cash derived from the sale of tribal assets would be quickly dissipated by most of the Indians...
...Boyd Jackson, a member of the tribe's executive committee, recently told a Wall Street Journal reporter, "Our people are less prepared to manage their own affairs today than 40 years ago...
...The timber would probably be offered in small blocks to small companies to get the maximum returns for the Indians...
...woman and child would stand to gain about $40,000 if the reservation were entirely liquidated...
...Democratic members of Congress from Oregon—particularly Senator Richard L. Neuberger and Representative Edith Green—are planning to introduce measures that would postpone the termination date and have the Government purchase the reservation lands for inclusion in the national-forest system...
...Until recently, its inhabitants were a quiet, docile people, living contentedly under Uncle Sam's stewardship and garnering an easy livelihood from the "green gold" on the reservation...
...The Indian Bureau is proceeding with plans to get as many Klamaths as possible to leave the reservation...
...The more thoughtful Klamath leaders are rapidly coming to feel that termination must be postponed and PL 587 amended...
...The younger Indians generally favor termination, but the older ones, who were born and lived most of their lives on the reservation, feel the tribe is not ready to be cast adrift...
...Studies of Indians in the big cities reveal that they tend to become truly dispossessed persons...
...The dumping of so much stumpage in a rush sale, in an area with an installed sawmill capacity of only 400 million feet per year, would be disastrous for the country...
...A number of "gyppo" outfits would then move into the Klamath Basin, cut the trees as quickly as possible and leave behind a decimated forest...
...It is encouraging them to migrate to Chicago...
...the Government will also grant Indians who move to the cities funds to buy medical and hospital insurance, clothing and household tools...
...They prefer to receive a good income from tribal lands without working for it, to hunt and fish in the mountains and streams, and to have access to Federal hospitals and social services...
...At current stumpage prices, this may be worth from $80 to $100 million...
...Under recent legislation...
...I do not know how many Klamaths have taken advantage of these lures...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 2
