Volume 1 Number 2
January 1962

W. W. Keeler

Chairman, Task Force on Indian Affairs

Vice President, Phillips Petroleum Company

An address delivered before the Indian Education Conference at

Arizona State University. Tempe, Arizona, March 24, 1961.

Education is a field in which I certainly can't claim to be an expert. I don't know how many of you people know about the time I got into the jam, appearing as an expert, but I think it might bear repeating.

About four years ago I had occasion to go to the Gulf Coast to visit one of our company's refineries there. I had just landed at Houston when I was welcomed at the gate by Dr. Herman Kaveler of our company, an expert in reservoir engineering. He rushed up to me and began to pump my hand and said, "Bill, am I glad to see you!" I asked, "What are you so glad to see me about?" and he replied, "You know Jones, who is our attorney, who handled oil matters before the Railroad Commission in Texas at the hearings"? "Yes," I replied. "Floyd Jones," he continued, "had an automobile wreck on his way to the hearing this morning; he cannot testify, and the only person who can testify and who knows all about the matters and can answer the questions is Yours Truly, Dr. Kaveler."

"Well," I said, "What does that have to do with me?" "Well," he said, "I was scheduled to give a speech today before the Texas Petroleum Engineers Society, but now I can't give my speech, and, seeing you here, I am asking you to give it for me." "What is it about?" I asked, and he replied, "It's the water flooding practices in the Burbank oil field." I said, "Well, all right; when do I give this speech?" He looked at his watch and said, "You're 15 minutes late already." I asked, "Where is the meeting?" He replied, "Down on the mezzanine floor, Room A, at the Rice Hotel."

So I rushed down there just as fast as I could go. I arrived at the Rice Hotel about an hour late, rushed up to the mezzanine, looked in Room A; there wasn't a soul in there, and I thought, "Well, I must have misunderstood him." I rushed down and looked in Room B, then to Room C and there was a crowd in there and I noticed a sign back of the speaker—could see just an edge of it—and I heard the speaker saying something about how deep the holes should be dug; and I thought, "Well, I've got the right place and, frankly, this is going to take a little courage." I walked in there and practically pushed the young man who was speaking aside and began apologizing for the situation that had occurred-that Dr. Kaveler was on his way to Austin, and I was here to give his speech. I indicated that I knew very little about the subject matter and couldn't answer their questions, but I'd be very happy to have them write their questions down. I launched into the speech and got along pretty well. I paused two or three times and looked up and decided I wasn't pronouncing some of the production engineering terms properly, because there were puzzled looks on some of their faces.

Finally, I finished and turned around, and it was with a start that I saw, for the first time, that sign. You can imagine my surprise and consternation to find out that it read: "Texas Grave Diggers Association."

I have very carefully prepared my speech tonight. I would like to start out first by saying that I saw some things last year that impressed me a lot. Now, I want you to hear me out on this before you start drawing any hasty conclusions. I took a trip to Russia in August of last year. I headed an American Oil Delegation, and we traveled some 7,500 miles in that country. We were over there a little over a month. We went to the other side of the Ural Mountains and got over into the edge of Siberia. I think the Russians are still a long way behind us in almost everything, and I certainly don't have the fear of the Russians that I had when I went over there. But the thing that impressed me most was something that had to do with the people, and that's one of the things I'd like to talk about, because I think something of the same sort may be a problem that you folks run into.

Out there in the hinterland we ran across a really dynamic situation, where people were rapidly putting up all kinds of flats and apartments and, true, they were way below our American standards, but they were doing a terrific job, and the people worked night and day to get the job done. There are a lot of things about the Russian system that I certainly didn't agree with; in fact, I would say that, generally speaking, we came away from there feeling even more sure that our ideology was the real ideology and that certainly we would never want to live under that type of system.

When we were coming back, we visited a large power plant on the Volga River, and I talked to the chief engineer. This fellow, in his forties, was the chief engineer in this tremendous power plant. I found out that eight years before he'd been what they call a "Kulak," an individual who has been living in almost starvation conditions with no hope and practically no indication that he would ever be anything but a Kulak. I wondered, "How is it possible?" I began to check with refinery workers; I checked with people all over Russia—everybody that I could get to talk to—and I found them really more interested in finding out about Americans than anything else. They think that we're about ready to bomb Russia, and they have the idea that they're out to do everything they can to try to make more of everything so they can stop Americans—the imperialists, the capitalists, the war-mongering Americans—from blowing the country apart. So, there are a lot of things they don't know about us. But they had given the people something to work for, and like the former Kulak, everyone was going all out in response to the urge to save his country.

There is another thing I began to realize about them: that the only important thing is the state; the individual has no importance. They think nothing of sending a wife and a husband on vacations at different times; they think nothing of taking children from the parents and putting them into nurseries and schools out of the direct control of the parents. They have left the humanities completely out of the picture. In thinking about that, and while I was busy really berating their system, I decided that I should try to find something good about it. I asked myself if there was anything there that we could use in Indian country, and I concluded that maybe there were several things. As a matter of fact, I put down three things as possibilities.

I'm still not sure whether I'm right, and I'm giving them to you for discussion—I mean for your own discussion among yourselves.

Another thing that I think is of some importance is that there are great variations in the Russian people. I didn't realize that. There are 126 dialects spoken in Russian. There are 11 different time zones; that is a tremendous width of country. You see every type of person that you can imagine. You see the blue-eyed, blond-haired little children that you might think were Finnish or Swedish. I saw several little boys that even looked like Cherokees, but were not.

Now, the thing they have done that I think is important is building on local customs and pride. One thing that they haven't done, they haven't attempted to wipe out or obliterate the culture of the people in any area the point that Clarence Wesley was talking about-they have kept that. For instance, they have all kinds of very rigid traffic rules in Moscow, but when the gypsies from over on the edge of Siberia come into Moscow, those gypsies don't pay any attention to those rules and regulations if they don't have such regulations in their own areas. I guess they tear up the traffic ticket, or whatever it is.

Now, on education, I certainly believe that great work has been done in this part of the country, in the Southwest. You have made some very important contributions to the education of Indians. I think it's important that you folks place great importance on the understanding of racial heritage and culture and a respect for its achievements. I think that is a very significant contribution. I think there are some strong sociological reasons, also, for doing that. It has been reported that the heavy rate of crime in the large cities of some of the population groups of foreign extraction is not found in the first immigrant, but their children. The immigrant parents seem strange and old fashioned to their children because their customs don't jibe with what they see in other Americans; and so they lose respect, first for their parents, and then of course they are bound to lose respect for their parents' moral values, and certainly from there I think they drift into delinquency.

I have just talked with Dr. Roessel here tonight about a statement he said I had made, that I thought where it was possible the Indian child should be in the public school. I certainly said that, and I believe it; however, tonight I would like to add a qualification. You know more about the problem, but I think in some areas there is widespread public assumption that all you have to do to make the Indian child a facsimile of other American youngsters in education and habits of mind is just put them in the public schools with the white children, and the job is done. I merely say that I qualify my statement by saying that is an over-simplification and I realize it. I realize there are many barriers between the two cultures; among these, of course, is the bilingualism; that's not a hill you can't get over, though. And then there is the problem of Indians trying to understand American education. Really, when you analyze it, and I've tried to figure it out myself, I come up with the feeling that really we're continually putting a tremendous emotional drive into these youngsters toward economic and social status.

Many of those things are outside the realm entirely of what the Indian understands; they haven't been a part of his cultural values. Also, the failure to recognize some of the intellectual habits of Indians which are part of their education when at home is a bad oversight. I say that some of the intellectual habits that the older Indians have are very, very important, and we simply shouldn't lose sight of those as something to build on with our Indian children. I'm speaking here of the craftsmanship habits that the Indian has, his painstaking ability in craftwork, his attention to detail, his patience. Also, the Indian child, without ever knowing that he's getting it, observes in nature things that the white man still hasn't seen. I don't know if it happens in Arizona State University, but I know it happens in the University of Kansas where I attended school, that many times many of our science students, because of their inability to develop the habit of discipline for this painstaking detail, have never made the grade.

Also, there is a problem with some Indian children wanting to conform to the group and avoid standing out in any one particular way. Well, certainly, there are a lot of our teachers in the Indian country who don't recognize this Indian viewpoint. They are continually trying to take advantage of the competition among students, and in many instances the Indian doesn't respond. And, of course, in some of the earlier days in Oklahoma we definitely know that some of the teachers, not recognizing this sort of situation, believed that the Indian youngster just wasn't intelligent because he didn't respond.

Also, the orientation of textbooks is something that poses a problem. I am very happy to see that something has been done about this here.

Another big problem that we have, and I don't know the answer to it at the moment, is the handicap of the social and economic status of the Indian family. It has been shown among white children that there is a direct relationship between the socio-economic status and academic achievement. Either in the white or in the Indian society, I am sure it is pretty hard to study and do homework when there really isn't room in which to do it. I think some of these problems may ease greatly after we've had some correction in some of the very basic and fundamental wants of the people. I know these problems are difficult, and apparently they are difficult because with many of them we don't always try to solve them by considering the humane standpoint. We had a case reported in Albuquerque. There was a Navaho group which was very, very much upset because government was putting their children in dormitories away from home, instead of building a school in the area, because it was cheaper. The government's answer was that there was a limited amount of funds, so government must do all it can to make those dollars go the farthest. On the other hand, this might very well not be the best solution, because it would discourage education when children had to be taken away from their parents.

I want to tell this story: When the Cherokee Nation was about to be dissolved, General Dawes investigated how it would affect the people. He reported to the Congress that there would be no problem "because," he said, "they are a literate people." The Cherokees had started the first Indian newspaper, "The Cherokee Phoenix," in Georgia, published in Cherokee and English, shortly after the fall of 1827; and we had the first paper in Oklahoma, "The Cherokee Advocate," in 1845. In 1851 we had a male and female seminary where they were teaching Greek, calculus, astronomy, etc. a curriculum that was typical of the college of that day. We had 122 public schools in the Cherokee Nation at that time.

What happened after the Cherokee Nation was terminated? Many of these schools passed out of existence. The federal government began to supervise the education of the children, and an attempt was made very early to send the children to school away from their home area. The theory was that they were going to learn the white man's way much more quickly; they would be assimilated, whatever that word means. But the Cherokees didn't like it because they felt that they were being downgraded. The Cherokee mothers and fathers were being told when the youngsters came back that their way wasn't any good. The Cherokee children didn't like it, and frankly, there weren't enough truant officers to keep the Cherokees in school for awhile. What happened was that we had in the Cherokees a people who had been greatly interested in education, but had changed to a people not interested in education because of the way government had employed it. As a result, until government changed its policy, many Cherokees didn't go to school, and we now have an illiterate group who have great difficulty in finding work.

My point in telling about this is just to illustrate that things involving people should be examined from all angles. I think the people of the state of Arizona, the people of the state of Oklahoma, and every place where there are Indian children, are going to have to weigh these things not only from an economic standpoint, but they have to weigh them from a humanitarian and cultural viewpoint.

Another thing that I was impressed with—Dr. Reifel said the Indian's idea of time was different from the average American and white man because the American was future minded. Here I am-looking at my watch. I live on schedule. I've been living out of suitcases and meeting train and plane schedules for years, to the point where I watch that watch an awful lot. The Indian doesn't do that; from the standpoint of time, the duration of time doesn't mean too much to him. I think, though, that this can be another Indian contribution. I think that in this country a great number of the people are plunging themselves into a psychiatric ward, in this mad push to do things in high gear. And I'm not so sure but what we would all be better off if we recognized that there are many things more important than that mad worship of the clock.

There is one thing that I do believe in. I believe that you folks are working with something more important that you realize. It is human resources. There isn't enough gold in Fort Knox to begin to equal what may turn out in the way of light for the world from among the lowliest you may be teaching.

I was very interested in talking to Dr. Roessel here tonight about the situation at Low Mountain School. He described to me how the government was going to have to shut down a school because the budget didn't include $100,000 for a road. A bunch of people there got fired up when the man from Washington indicated he would not shut the school down for another 30 days. They worked night and day with the simplest of tools to fix up the road, and when the Washington man returned, the road was in good shape. I told Dr. Roessel I felt like crying about this, and I meant it. It is very inspiring to me when people decide in their hearts they're not to be denied, when they implement their prayers with their best efforts. This can accomplish tremendous things.

I think this example that I heard about tonight from Dr. Roessel was one of those things that I've believed for a long time is possible. The Indian is an extremely intelligent individual. What motivation it takes to move him, I don't know. But I'm sure of this: that when his spirit and his morale is up, when he has a feeling of independence again, he is going to make a great contribution to this country, and you people here tonight might very well start this process working through those Indian children you're working with. I think you face a challenge in bringing out the best in those you work with.

I hope you do a good job. God bless you.