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There are certain problems regarding the work of the Bureau that I want to discuss a little later, but I want to touch on them at the moment, so that there will be no misunderstanding as to what my position is regarding what I feel the general objectives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs should be. I am going to try to outline those objectives briefly and to indicate to you what I believe some of the basic needs are. First of all, I would like to say that I think that the ultimate integration of the American Indian within the United States is inevitable regardless of what any of us do about it. It is just a question of how long and how well it is done and whether it is going to be done without hurting a lot of people in ways they shouldn't be hurt. Now, I say that I want to make it clear because it has so often been misunderstood. I am not out advocating the elimination of reservations or anything of that sort. That is something that should be decided and determined, as far as I am concerned, by the people who own those reservations and who live upon them, and that's the American Indians. That is their home, their land, your people's land, and I think you should have the same right as any other American to determine what should be done with it, providing you are willing to do a constructive job about it.

I firmly believe that in order to do an effective and constructive job at arriving at the kind of independence your pepple want and should have, both as individuals and groups, there must be constructive programming both at the reservations and with regard to the functions that have been carried out by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the past, and which ultimately can and should be provided by the regular agencies of the government. I just want to say that I don't believe that the Bureau of Indian Affairs can work out those programs by themselves, and if they did, they would not be worth the powder to blow them up. Anybody that knows anything about the workings of a democratic government will know any recommendations that we made within the Bureau of Indian Affairs which went to Congress, and which were not accepted by this group of people generally, and by the individual tribes and groups, would be turned down so quick there would be no discussion about it--and that is as it should be. On the other hand, I believe very strongly that programs must be worked out in order to avoid hurting people, and I think those programs have to be worked out jointly between the tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If we can agree, then we are going to need to talk to some of the local government agencies, and the state governments and probably certain other Federal agencies. If we can reach an agreement on principle, I think we can get acceptance in Congress for almost any constructive program that is reasonable. But it has come to the time when we have to face facts and we have to determine which is emotion and what are the facts. We must sit down together and determine how much is involved in emotion and how much of the emotion can be eliminated to get down to hard tacks. This program that we are all working with is a most complex problem--of that I have no doubt, because it deals with all of the complexities of human life involving between 400,000 to 450,000 people, with all the varying problems ranging from resources to social welfare, and including all the different phases of the work affecting the normal population within the U.S.

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