Charles E. Minion

Executive Secretary, Southwest Association on Indian Affairs

and Executive Director, New Mexico Commission

on Indian Affairs

The Southwestern Regional Indian Youth Council came into being because of the need for it. The stimulus it has furnished Indian youth in its quest of post high school education has been evident in the rapidly increasing enrollment in institutions of higher learning, especially in the Southwest where the emphasis has been strongest. The spark has become a blaze.

Objectives of the Indian Youth Council are three-fold:

When this program was started, the average of Indian education was the fifth grade, compared with the tenth for the Nation as a whole, and anything approaching a solution of the Indian problem seemed impossible without higher education.

It started in 1954, in collaboration with the Kiva Club, an organization of Indian students at the University of New Mexico. Four mid-winter meetings were held in Saint Francis Auditorium, in Santa Fe, under sponsorship of the Southwestern Association on Indian Affairs (then the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs), with high school students from the Santa Fe Indian School in the audience together with several tribal leaders. In those days, the Santa Fe Indian School had a college preparatory department, and seniors and juniors were invited to attend. We learned from them that Indian students of high school age are as eager to enter into discussions as college students, and just as keen.

It was evident almost from the first that the challenge was to expand the scope of these conferences and bring in high school and college students from various parts of the Southwest, to accelerate the trend toward higher education and give more students scholarship aid that would enable them to stay on. And so, after the fourth annual conference in Santa Fe, the first Southwestern Regional Indian Youth Council was held at the University of New Mexico in the spring following the last of the winter meetings. Delegates from Arizona State College, Flagstaff, attended, the first group outside New Mexico to participate.

Beryl Spruce, a New Mexico Pueblo student at the University of New Mexico, who was then President of the Kiva Club, presided at the first regional meeting. His opening address (Note 1), was a ringing challenge to students to depend upon their own efforts, to accept the stern discipline imposed by reason of the special obstacles confronting Indian students, and to resolve to return to the reservations after graduation, and serve their people.

This extemporaneous speech, which has been called "The Gettysburg Address of Indian Education" has been circulated at Youth Councils all over the Indian country, and in foreign lands. A missionary in Southern Rhodesia wrote for copies in the hope "there may be a Beryl Spruce among our African youth." It would be difficult to estimate what this one item alone has meant to Indian education and the spirit of dedication which it has evoked, or the status of Indian education today without the accumulative effect of the Youth Councils.

The Sponsor has published reports on each of the regional conferences, but the only ones still in print, beside Beryl's speech, are those of the Third (BYU, 1959) and fourth (U.N.M., 1960). All material is available from the Sponsor without cost.

The second regional meeting was held at Arizona State College, Flagstaff, in 1958. More colleges and high schools in the Southwest were represented, and approximately 200 were registered. At BYU the following year, 250 attended.

The next year (1960) at the University of New Mexico, 350 registered from 57 tribes and bands and from seventeen states. This was the result of continual, year-round effort by the Sponsor to acquaint more and more students, tribal leaders and educators with the program. Several letters are sent out to the mailing list (now containing 2,000 names) each year, giving information on the forthcoming conference, its program, arrangements, and so on.

At the 1960 gathering, the delegates, without thinking of what it would involve, voted to go to the University of Oklahoma, at Norman. This meant a round trip of 3,000 miles or more for some, as well as much time away from classes, with the result that attendance at Norman was greatly reduced. There were compensations, however, in getting acquainted with Indian students from Oklahoma and seeing how different conditions there are from New Mexico and Arizona.

The Sponsor has not thought of establishing a National Indian Youth Council. Rather, it hoped that by demonstrating the value of these meetings, several regional Indian youth councils would be established, and if, when this was done, there was a demand for a national body, with delegates from the various regional conferences attending, this would come as a natural outgrowth and not as a forced development.

The Sixth Regional Indian Youth Council will meet at Brigham Young University in 1962. This will be the last convention of the Southwestern Regional Indian Youth Council at such great distance from the original home of the Council, New Mexico.

When the program was first established, it was thought that after ten of these annual meetings, their value would have been demonstrated to Indian students and tribal leaders from all over America; moreover, the continually increasing attendance and crowded campus conditions would make it advisable to narrow the area of participation, so that students could attend area meetings closer to home and school, where similar conditions and problems exist.

Thus, there would be a regional conference on the Pacific Coast, one in the Northwest and another in the Middle West; one for Utah, Nevada and Wyoming, another for the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas; one for Oklahoma, where there are so many Indian schools; and one for New Mexico, Arizona and Southern Colorado.

And so, with the tenth conference at BYU next year, each of these areas will establish its own regional councils. Each will have its own distinctive name, and the Southwestern Regional Indian Youth Council will return to the heart of the Southwest and remain there, for as long as Indian youth needs it and wants it.

Each will need its own sponsor, to insure continuity (a new set of officers is elected each year) and to assume the considerable task of reporting and publishing reports, of mailing countless letters (postage is a large item), of printing, of secretarial and executive services, interviews with students, educators, tribal leaders and others, visits to high schools and colleges, organizing of Indian clubs in these institutions, the large volume of correspondence in answer to inquiries, expenses of travel, salaries, liaison with school officials, tribal officials and Bureau officials, as well as contacts with faculty members, counselors and advisors. Students simply do not have the time or the funds to take on these duties, and without them, it would make a great difference in the effectiveness of the program.

Because of the value of the experience to each new student officer, he assumes as much of the responsibility for the success of each meeting as he has the time for. But over all, it is the sponsor who does the ground work, much of the leg work, acts as backstop, fills in the gaps, and does what no one else has time for. Matters cannot be left to chance and the hope that things will be done on time. Plans must go forward; they cannot be allowed to falter. Someone must take up the slack. The host club takes on many additional duties at these conferences, and students with a heavy schedule find it is not easy to register delegates arriving at all hours, escort them to the dorms, and render services of various kinds.

The ideal situation would be for the students to assume the entire burden, including that of financing, and perhaps this will come, because it would be a source of great satisfaction; but the program costs several thousand dollars each year and demands an enormous outlay of time, and for this a dedicated sponsor is necessary. One who has not done this job has no idea of the time and effort involved. But things run smoothly, because the necessary preparations are made.

One of the questions often asked is, "What subjects or topics are discussed at the councils?"

These have included: effects of termination legislation; segregated and integrated education; relocation and vocational training; tribal and reservation resources development; the liquor problem; juvenile delinquency; health and sanitation; preservation of tradition and culture; recreation programs and community development; law and order; early marriages; tribal problems, Indian arts and crafts; legislation affecting Indians; welfare; intercultural relations among Indians and other races; problems of the Indian student in adjusting to college and in maintaining the Indian way of life while away from home; the exploitation of mineral and other reservation resources, including the human; changing relations between tribal and federal governments; intermarriage between tribes and between races; causes and consequences of breakdowns in family and tribal unity and in customs and traditions; the role of the Indian club on high school and college campuses; how to promote fuller participation by Indians in the exercise of the voting franchise and in citizenship education; problems arising from the development of commercial recreation facilities for the general public on Indian reservations, and others. In addition, prepared speeches are given on whatever subject the student feels moved to discuss.

One group was assigned a subject that concluded with the question, "Where do we go from here?" but this was by-passed, probably because no one wished to venture a prediction. It will come up again, however.

Because of the distance to Norman for some, a special session for New Mexico high school students was held on the campus of the University of New Mexico on April 14-15, this year. Registrations totaled 300.

There were panel discussions and workshops on early marriages, their cause and effects; causes of failures and drop-outs in high school; the need for Indian clubs on high school campuses and what their function should be; the role of faculty advisors and counselors; how to improve home conditions and conditions in general in Indian communities; causes of breakdown in family unity and family and tribal authority; voting and citizenship participation; the advantages of high school, college and vocational education.

The question is often asked, "What value has the Indian Youth Council for Indian youth?" A great deal, according to the comments and reports that come to us. Many who were really college material decided on a professional career after attending one of these conferences while in high school. The emphasis is always on responsibility for helping one's people. Indian clubs in the high schools and colleges have been strengthened. There has been the marked increase in college enrollment already mentioned, a renewed respect for one's own cultural heritage, a better comprehension of the Indian's contribution to the American way of life, a sense of the need for Indian unity, an increasing awareness of his responsibilities as an American citizen, a realistic approach to common problems and a better understanding of what they are, a dawning awareness of the New Age and the need to prepare for it, a sense of individual worth, an acquired confidence in one's abilities, and so on.

No one can attend a meeting of these fine young people, earnest and sincere in their attitude and usually more mature, age for age, than their non-Indian brothers, without feeling reassured about the future.

The wide gap between the educational level of Indians and non-Indians is being narrowed gradually as a result of the concentrated all-fronts attack being made on the problem of higher education for Indian youth. Arizona State University has an excellent Department of Indian Education; it pioneered in summer orientation courses for Indian high school graduates planning to enroll in college, and was joined in this important program last year by the University of New Mexico, with financial aid from the Navaho Tribe.

More attention is being paid to counseling, and it is hoped that it will become general practice, when an Indian is accepted for college, for the Advisor to Indian Students in that school to write to the student, inviting him to the office, so that counseling may begin when the student steps on campus; and also writing to the tribal chairman, so that the tribe will feel that it has a stake in the higher education of its youth.

In almost all of the colleges and universities in the Southwest, the interest taken in Indian students has been heartening and reassuring. For one college president who pays only lip service to Indian education, there are ten who take an active interest, and their number will increase.

The time is ripe for a breakthrough in Indian affairs, and those working in this field look for a new policy and philosophy that will give new hope to tribal leaders and increasing support to programs for higher education for Indian youth.

When the story of Indian education is finally written, the part played by educators, tribal leaders and others in the Southwest will stand out as a magnificent accomplishment. But a significant contribution to that achievement, whether it be remembered, or not, will have been made by the Southwestern Regional Indian Youth Council.