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[[newspaper clipping]]

The Sacramento Bee
Superior California News by McClatchy Newspaper Service
Friday, February 19, 1971 Page 81

Indians are Elated As DQ University Clears First Hurdle

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University of over the first hurdle in its bid to obtain a 640-acre former Army base as the site of a school tailored for Indians and Mexican-Americans. 

"We've brought in a winner, our first in a hundred years," exulted Grace Thorpe, daughter of famed Indian athlete Jim Thorpe and information officier for DQU. "Custer's last stand was just a century ago." 

Robert Cooper, regional director of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, said Thursday he was forwarding DQU's application for the square mile of surplus military property 70 miles northeast of here at Davis to Washington with a recommendation for approval. 

Because the site cost the government more than $1 million, he said, the application must be approved by the Department of Justice before the HEW can turn over title to DQU's acting board of trustees. 

Dr. Jack Forbes, an acting DQU trustee who teaches Indian studies at the nearby University of California at Davis, said the intention is to provide a university designed specifically to meet the needs of young Indians and Mexican-Americans. 

There will be remedial teaching to bring them up to date academically, then vocational training to help them get jobs, and later courses that will lead to conventional degrees. 

Forbes, a Powhatan, said such courses as history, for instance, may turn out different from those in most colleges. 

"I don't think an honest education is possible at a public university," he said. 

DQU is named after the Indian who founded the Iroquois Federation and the god-hero of the Aztecs. 

Around 50 Indians occupied the former Army communications base last Nov. 3 after DQU first had incorporated itself and applied for the property. 

The occupation came after UC Davis also applied for the land to use for agricultural experiments. 

Early this year UC Davis withdrew its application, and on Jan. 15 the Indians received the keys to the place, a forest of antenna poles with four usable building and two barracks in the middle. 

"DQU shows we can do something for ourselves, entirely by ourselves," said Miss Thorpe. 

Miss Thorpe is no stranger to Indian agitation. She gave up a real estate business in Phoenix last year to join the Indians occupying Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, later moving on to Indian efforts to regain wilderness land in northeastern California. 

She suggests those ventures might have turned out differently, if like DQU's well-organized sponsors, they had confronted the government with legal documents and concrete plans. 

DQU's acting board of trustees is headed by David Risling, coordinator of Indian studies at UC Davis who is a Hoopa from northwestern California. Acting vice chairman is Luis Flores, a Chicano engineer who left Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley to head Chicano studies at UC Davis. 

Another acting trustee is Tom Campbell, a coastal Pomo who was handed the keys to the DQU site by an HEW representative Jan. 15. 

"You should have seen Tom's face," says Miss Thorpe. "I'll never forget it as long as I live." 

Miss Thorpe supervises a staff of 15 volunteers who are working up material to publicize DQU. 

"We're hurting for money," she explains. "The Ford Foundation has made us a grant of $100,000 to pay faculty salaries, but that wont come in until October. Last week I had to raise $600 for insurance and another $200 for an accreditation fee, and somehow we got it together." 

Risling said yesterday the Carnegie Foundation also has committed a large sum of money for operation of DQU, but the amount has not been made public until final approval of Carnegie officials.

Dr. Robes says, "We're holding a meeting at DQU on Feb. 21 to plan the future and elect a permanent board of trustees. We want it to be entirely democratic, and I think it's one of the most important meetings that Indians and Chicanos in this country will ever hold."