Volume 15 Number 3
May 1976

More than 600 participants registered for the 17th annual Indian Education Conference at Arizona State University April 2. The convention topic, "200 Years of Indian Education: What Now? Where Now?" served as a guide for all 14 workshops, which kept the educators, administrators and students busy and interested. Dr. Roger Buffalohead of Washington State University at Pullman delivered the keynote address.

Two workshops which attracted a large audience and active participation between panelists and listeners were "Indian Elders Look at Education" and "Indian Youth Looks at Education." Mr. Buck Austin, Navajo Elder, Kayenta, Arizona, and Mr. Venito Garcia, Papago Elder, Sells, Arizona, spoke in their tribal languages with interpreters translating comments and questions in the first workshop named. In the second workshop, Miss Claire Manning, an ASU student and Miss Indian America XXI, moderated a panel of 10 students from Arizona community colleges and universities in a lively give-and-take session.

Other workshops included such subjects as: "Involvement of District, State and Federal Agencies in Indian Education," "The Role of Indian Women in Education," and "The Role of Parent Committees in Indian Education." The higher education of Indians, both as young people and as mature adults, was covered in two workshops, and "Bilingual/Bicultural Education" was the topic of another.

Moderators for the workshops included Joe Herrera, Executive Director, Commission on Indian Affairs, Santa Fe; Emerson Horace, Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation, Mesa (Arizona) Community College; Prof. Walter Currie, Department of Native Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario; Phyllis Bigpond, Assistant Director and Mental Health Coordinator, Phoenix Indian Center; Milford Sanderson, Director of Community High School Planning, The Hopi Tribe, Oraibi.

Also, Reva Crawford, Education Director, Phoenix Indian Center; Peterson Zah, Director of the DNA Legal Services, Window Rock, Arizona; Dr. Morrison Warren, Director of the I. D. Payne Laboratory at ASU; Jerry Hill, Special Education Coordinator for the BIA, Albuquerque; Prof. Harvey Paymella, Director of Native American Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; and Cecelia Miller, former Director of the Kee N Bah Child Development Center, Phoenix.