APPENDIX (The following letters were ordered printed from among the hundreds received. They are representative of the communications received :) Mr. THOMAS E. EDWARDS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, President, Colville Indian Association, BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, COLVILLE INDIAN AGENCY, Coulee Dam, Wash., November 9, 1964. DEAR MR. EDWARDS: In response to your letters of October 14 and October 27, 1964, to Area Director Robert D. Holtz of our Portland office we are sending you the following information relative to timber sale history on the Colville Indian Reservation : 1. Summary of timber sales on the Colville Reservation from 1919 through September 30, 1964, in excess of 1 million board feet. 2. Volume and value of timber cut from 1919 through 1963 on tribal and allotted land-Colville Reservation. 3. Estimated volume of timber remaining to be cut from sale areas presently under timber cutting contract on the Colville Reservation. 4. Estimated volume of standing timber, listed by species, on cutover forest land and uncut forest land as of January 1, 1964, on the Colville Reservation. The highest stumpage rate ever obtained for ponderosa pine on the Colville Reservation was that sold on the Friedlander Logging Unit to Valsetz Lumber Co. in 1956. The company bid $49.60 for the pine and during the life of the contract the stumpage rate reached a maximum of $51.42 and a minimum of $35.10 through quarterly adjustments. Stumpage rates for Douglas-fir and other species reached a maximum of $20.21 on the Louie Creek Logging Unit sold to Glen Whitelaw in 1959. Mr. Whitelaw bid $15.70 for the timber which decreased to a minimum of $12.62 during one period in the life of the contract. Sustained yield quotas for the reservation at various periods from 1919 were as follows: Also enclosed is a list showing average prices paid for various species by years. This is the best information we have available. Sincerely yours, ELMO MILLER, Superintendent. 185 Colville Indian Reservation, active timber sales, October 1964 Estimated timber volume, Colville Indian Reservation (Jan. 1, 1964) Senator LEE METCALF, Chairman, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, DEAR SENATOR: I am enclosing a copy of the petition of the American Civil Liberties Union in regard to S. 1413: proposed termination of Federal supervision on the Colville Indian Reservation. Your committee should be aware of the fact that this legislation is being sponsored by the Colville liquidation promoters, a special interest group which currently controls the Colville Tribal Council. This legislation was approved by a single vote in a bitterly divided tribal council meeting, and is being rushed to Congress before a new tribal election takes place in May. As of this writing the same majority has adamantly refused to appropriate funds for travel expenses so that dissenting views may be expressed to the committee. In the light of this political background it would seem to me to be particularly appropriate for the committee to investigate the non-Indian resources being made available to the Colville liquidation promoters. The major difficulties in the proposed legislation seem to be 1. The Indians will have no way of knowing what their distribute share will be until after an assessment of tribal assets has been completed. No election should be held until this basic fact is known. 2. The power of the tribal council to purge dissenters through disenrollment proceedings is a cause of grave concern. 3. The proposed bill fails to take into account many valuable tribal assets. Although I personally favor liquidation and termination it seems to me that this proposed legislation contains all the defects of the Klamath Act and raises serious constitutional questions. Sincerely yours, FRANCIS CONKLIN, S.J. PETITION OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION STATEMENT OF INTEREST The American Civil Liberties Union is a national nonprofit organization devoted to the implementation of the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. It is especially concerned with governmental action which in any way restricts the liberty of citizens without due process of law. THE INADEQUACIES OF S. 1413 Section 1 of the proposed legislation provides that within 90 days after passage an election shall be held to determine whether the tribal members approve the proposed termination of Federal supervision. This provision is fundamentally unfair because at the time of this proposed termination-election the Indian voters will have no possible way of ascertaining the true options available to them. Powerful private interest groups, financed by non-Indian money, have already begun extensive propaganda campaigns among the Indians. The Indians are promised anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 each if they will vote for termination. The problem is that no one can even remotely estimate the per capita share of each Indian until a final assessment of tribal assets has been completed. Since there are approximately 8,000 persons eligible to share in the tribal assets the individual shares may run as low as $5,000 or less. The American Civil Liberties Union respectfully submits that if the termination election is to be anything more than a mere sham, fundamental fairness and due process of law, secured by the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, require that no election be held until such time as the true options available to the voters become known with a reasonable degree of certainty. This can occur only when the full evaluation of tribal assets has become known through a definitive assessment. II Substantial provisions should be made in the act for protecting the rights of individual Indians who are now enrolled as members of the tribe. The lack of adequate safeguards to prevent arbitrary disenrollment is one of the most compelling defects in the present Indian law. On the Colville Reservation, the disenrollment power is vested in the Tribal Council, subject to the supervision of the Secretary of the Interior. Political factions in the tribal council may suppress by threat of disenrollment, any dissenting views. The American Civil Liberties Union respectfully submits that the following procedural safeguards should be provided: (1) The burden of proof in all disenrollment proceedings should be upon the tribal council. (2) The cost of research for documents and reasonable attorney's fees for individual Indians whose enrollment is challenged should be borne by the tribe or the Federal Government. (3) All tribal records relating to enrollment of an individual Indian or his relatives should be made available to the challenged person and to his counsel. (NOTE. The records necessary to prove one-quarter Indian blood are quite frequently scattered all over the United States and Canada. At best, the earlier records exist only in fragmentary form. The person threatened with disenrollment is commonly without funds of any sort wherewith to prepare an adequate defense.) (4) The principle of res judicata should be made applicable to tribal council action in disenrollment proceedings. (5) Provision should be made for prompt judicial review in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington. III S. 1413 is substantially defective in that it does not provide for a realistic and sufficiently accurate appraisal of tribal assets. Specifically: (1) Timber: Section 28 of the present act seems to imply that the present limitation of 60 million board feet of timber per year will become the basis for computing the value of tribal timber lands. There seems to be substantial reason to believe that the forests on the reservation will yield over 200 million board feet of timber on a sustained basis. (2) Mineral rights: No survey of mineral deposits on the reservation has ever been made by the Bureau of Mines and none is provided for in this legislation. If the present bill is enacted into law the Indians may have to bargain away extremely valuable mineral rights for a pittance. This could be avoided by a reasonable effort to make proper survey of mineral assets before the termination election. (3) No criteria in the proposed legislation are given for the valuation of Indian hunting and fishing rights. The fact is that many of the Indians living on the reservation depend absolutely upon their hunting and fishing rights for survival. (4) No provision is made in the proposed legislation for compensating the Indians for the recreational potential of the tribal lands. The future recreational potential of these lands is a valuable property right. (5) No provision is made in the proposed legislation for compensating the Indians for their valuable water rights on Lake Roosevelt or other valuable water rights. IV A section-by-section analysis of S. 1413 follows. Not all of the problems noted in this portion of the petition raise the possibility that the proposed legislation will be declared unconstitutional, as do the graver defects enumerated above under I, II, III. However, sound principles of public policy and basic humanitarianism require that these further difficulties be carefully weighed before a final decision is reached : Section 1: The proposed legislation is defective in that it establishes no representative percentage of Indians who must participate in the termination election. Thus, a mere handful of adults could vote away everyone's rights. To adequately protect the rights of Indian children it might be wise to provide that parents shall vote the shares of their children. Section 3(3): The definition of an adult is objectionable because the tribal members are scattered over many States with different ages for reaching majority. At Section 6(f): The alienation provisions of this section are inadequate to protect the Indians. The section now authorizes a withdrawing member to apply 100 percent of his share due him to purchase tribal properties for his own account. There should be an additional provision that such property cannot be resold until other withdrawing members have received their share in cash. Klamath, some of the withdrawing tribal members bid unrealistically high prices for property and later had to sell the property at a fraction of the bid price in order to obtain a little cash before payment was made to withdrawing members. Section 7(b): Four years appears to be inadequate to carry out the provisions of this act in a proper manner. Wherever 4 years is provided the period should be extended to 7 or 8 years. Section 8: This section is deficient in that it contains no provision to protect the Indians from speculating loan sharks. At Klamath Indians borrowed substantial sums at 12 percent interest in expectation of receiving a tribal allotment and had to repay most of their allotment because the interest ran on the loan during the time that the assessment of tribal properties was taking place. Section 9 (a) (b): Restrictions should not be removed until a trust is established for those tribal members who elect not to obtain their distributive share in cash. Section 9(c): The language of this section should be clarified to make sure that this section does not apply to Colville Indians on other reservations which are not involved in terminal proceedings. Section 10 (a) (b): Provides that after 6 months State laws apply to Indian probates. This should be changed to read that the Bureau of Indian Affairs shall probate Indian estates until the withdrawing members are paid their shares in cash. Similar language in the Klamath termination act tied up decedents' estates for over a year until the actual cash distribution was made. |