Indian Affairs Shakeup
Indian Affairs Shakeup
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was poleaxed by Indian malcontents and administrative irresolution around the time of the November elections, is under new management. Deputy Commissioner John O. Crow has resigned, after saying publicly of Commissioner Louis R. Bruce, "I don't like the support he gave to the unruly mob. He couldn't administer anything." Ronald L. Siegler, White House press secretary, has announced that Bruce and Harrison Loesch, assistant secretary of the interior, are "leaving their posts." Bruce departs without the usual words of praise; Loesch rated "the appreciation of the administration" All three—Crow, Bruce, and Loesch—had earlier been suspended from their functions by Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton.
It is fitting that heads should roll after the unresisted removal or destruction of much of the contents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. Reluctance to take steps that might involve injury or even death to human beings can be sympathetically understood—tho [sic] every day our government finds justification for deadly acts. But what conceivable excuse could there have been for allowing Indian hoodlums to remove, without interference, truckloads of government records and other public property? Why were the vandals given $67,000 of public money to get them out of town — and out of the reach of law enforcement personnel in the jurisdiction in which they had committeed criminal acts? Somebody bungled, and somebody should be held responsible for what we called at the time "a shocking failure of nerve"
Richard S. Bodman, another assistant secretary of the Interior Department, is now exercising administrative control of government Indian operations. He rightly says, "It is essential that we continue to provide critical and life supporting services to Indians without interruption, regardless of existing controversy and unresolved issues." Contrast the position of Dennis Banks, spokesman for the raiders calling themselves the American Indian Movement, who boasted, "We have destroyed the BIA. They ain't got nothin' to work with." Which of those two, Bodman or Dennis Banks, shows a humane concern for the immediate needs of individual Indians thruout [sic] the country?
The BIA of course serves all of us, not just Indians. Most of us recognize that the government of the United States needs to make a more honorable and constructive record in dealing with Indians in the future than it has made in much of our national past. Discredited persons and policies should be replaced by other persons and policies.
One policy not needed is craven submission to criminal bullying. Such submission only encourages repeated interruptions of the "critical and life supporting services" of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If there was any official support for the vandalism of Banks and his associates, one good result of that vandalism can be the identification and elimination of such support.