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way and with such constant repetition that they cannot miss the point that the Indian problem will begin to be solved the day that Indians themselves set seriously to work on it. On that day, too, some of us should be around to help. Actually the process has long since begun. We are trying to speed it up and put new life into the project. Just to illustrate, the superintendent of our State Sanatorium, who has been wrestling with Indian patients for years, trying to get them to stay in the institution until their cure is completed, told me the other day that in the last couple of years, the rank and file of Indians is beginning to cooperate noticeably better in the treatment plan, resulting in a marked improvement in the TB situation.

The problem down have its hopeful aspects; it does not really offer any great obstacles, as might be the case were race prejudice involved , or as is often the case in many social problems pertaining to alcoholism, dependency, neurotic people, or unemployment.

I am a social worker. We are accustomed to going to the office in the morning to wrestle with problems which are impossible compared to the problems of Indians, and yet we set out for the day's work with a hopefulness that somehow results in accomplishment with our "impossible" situations. Indians work under much more hopeful circumstances because our working materials are excellent. The Indian is as intelligent as the white man--in some respects, he is superior, particularly in manual dexterity, so important to being a success on most jobs. He has a sense of pride that gives him strength; he has a rich background of tradition and knowledge; he excels in many things which are well respected in America; he has a cheerful, outgoing personality and a sense of humor all his own; he has a good memory and a sense of loyalty and friendship; a capacity for diligence. With all those assets he has much to build on and the solution of his problems should be much simpler than those with which we social workers often deal.

But the Indian will not begin to see the solution of his problem until the consciousness overtakes him that he must adapt himself to a white man's world, and live as neighbors with white folks. Because he must eventually compete with the white man in order to be successful, he must adapt himself to our civilization and the white man's manner of thinking and doing. In other words, good or bad, the white man is here to stay. When the day comes that the Indian feels a bit ashamed of feeding his children gray, half-raw rabbit meat which would turn the white man's stomach; when he quits chopping up his furniture and burning it to warm his shack; when he sees the desirability of filling up the open crevices in the one-room shack in below-zero Minnesota; when he finds a job and says to his friend, "I can't go with you tonight because I've got to get up early tomorrow morning to go to work or I may be fired;" when he begins to think that the finest thing for his children is to go to school and do just as well as the white boys and girls;  then he is well on the way to solving his own problems.  A college president told a graduating class: "All that stands between you and the top of the ladder, is the ladder." That might also be said to the Indian. 

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