Viewing page 13 of 88

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

ADDRESS OF HON. DILLON S. MYER, COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

Judge Johnson, Mr. Pryse, and folks: I am indeed glad to have the opportunity to meet with the National Congress. I was quite pleased when I received an invitation because I think it is fitting that I have my first meeting with a national organization like the National Congress of American Indians. So I did not take very long to accept when I got the invitation. I called Mr. John Rainer and said I would be there. I want to take just a little while this morning to talk with out on what is on my mind, and as far as I am concerned the rest of the morning is yours. I will be here to try to answer any questions that come up. I assure you I will not answer questions when I don't know the answers. But if I do know the answers, I will give them to you. But if I don't know the answers, we will try to find them if there is one. We will try to work them out together. I will have to leave as soon as the morning meeting is over. I have a number of engagements in Seattle this afternoon before I head back to Washington tonight. Some of you know I have been away for about three weeks now, and I have been rather busy in the field and I just want to say to those people who have attended anywhere from two to four meetings before this time and it is your own fault if you came to hear me again because I probably will repeat some things I said before and I am not going to make any apologies to you and if you get bored, that's your own business and you can go out and sit in the lobby until I get through here. There are several people that I have met here that I met when I came across the plains and up the valley. When I came into the Bureau of Indian Affairs in early May I found what I think is a pretty good organization. I have been in government a good while. I have worked with a number of organizations. If you don't believe it, ask Fulton Lewis, Jr. Most of the of the organizations I worked with have been in fields somewhat related. My first contact with some of the reservations was when I was a member of the staff of the Soil Conservation Service back in the thirties, when we were cooperating with the Bureau in providing some conservation work on some of the reservations, at which time I had an opportunity to get acquainted with some of the problems in many of the arcas.

I want to repeat that I think, on the whole, we have as good an organization in the Bureau of Indian Affairs as we have in any of the government bureaus that I know about. We have some good and some bad but that's typical of human nature wherever you find it but I think it is a good agency. I just want to add that I have had a most friendly reception both inside and outside the Bureau, and in my trip across the country , which I appreciate very much. I was alittle bit surprised to find a very friendly reception on the part of practically everybody we have had contact with in the American Congress since I became Commissioner, and I find a widespread interest in Indian problems. There's quite a variation of opinion about what ought to be done about them, ranging all the way from a certain few people--and there are very few who feel we should dispense with the problem tomorrow by abolishing everything--to those who have a very keen and deep interest in working out the kind of constructive program that I think most of us here are interested in.

-11-