U.S. Accused Of Exhibiting BIA Damage
U.S. Accused Of Exhibiting BIA Damage
Several Indian leaders have accused the federal government of delaying restoration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building so that damage incurred in a six-day seige there can be shown to the public.
Two weeks after Indian protesters left the building, documents and destruction on the first two floors lay untouched, except for the footprints of hundreds of persons who have been given guided tours of the sacked structure.
Spokesmen for the White House, General Services Administration, Department of Interior and BIA yesterday either refused to comment or denied responsibility for the inaction.
Peter MacDonald, chairman of the Navajo nation, the largest Indian tribe in America, said federal officials are "trying to make a historical monument" of the building, thereby diverting attention from the underlying causes of the takeover.
Hank Adams, a participant in the siege and principal negotiator for the sponsoring Trail of Broken Treaties caravan, yesterday wrote President Nixon to find out why the two main floors are virtually untouched, with records strewn about halls and offices, in some places waist deep.
Adams, MacDonald and other Indian leaders inspected the building on Tuesday. Adams wrote that he was "shocked that there had been no efforts . . . to protect, recover or restore documents and records."
A White House spokesman said last night that Adams' letter had not arrived, but he added, "I can't help noting it is a late-blooming concern."
Responsibility for the clean-up rests with GSA, the government's housekeeper. Peter Boulay, a public affairs officer for GSA, said workmen cannot begin the cleanup, however, until BIA employees "pick up their files"
The two men directly responsible for overseeing the cleanup, Assistant Interior Secretary Harrison Loesch and BIA Deputy Commissioner John O. Crow, both refused to comment on the delay.
Work is being done on the basement and top floor of the three-story building. Signs in elevators say that the first two floors are not to be disturbed.
Loesch had said last week that the cleanup was being delayed so that "congressmen and other interested parties" could see the damage.
The tours of the building are not conducted by professional guides, but by various employees of the BIA and General Services Administration, Loesch said.
He noted that while the debris had not been cleaned up, gasoline that had been poured into orange juice bottles for potential use as molotov cocktails had been removed as a safety precaution.
"They replaced the gasoline with water," Loesch said.
Members of a new Impact Survey Team, formed from a cross-section of Indian organizations to assess the impact of the sacking of the BIA headquarters, toured the building on Tuesday.
Navajo nation chairman MacDonald, a team spokesman, compared the tour of the BIA to "a tour of the Grand Canyon."
"Our guide said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, you are now in the basement. The tour will start here. It will take 30 minutes. Please stay with your group'," MacDonald said, mocking the guide, Robert A. Smoak, building facilities manager for the Department of Interior.
"Upstairs, he said, 'You are now walking on official, historical Indian documents. Please lift your feet straight up so you won't destroy the documents,'" MacDonald said.
He said he picked up some of the debris on the floor and found it to be "mostly manila envelopes and carbon copies of 1970 budget reports. But if it is so important, why do they let people walk on it?"
Adams said that "all papers are being exposed to greater disorder, disarray and damage under the practices adopted since the Nov. 8 evacuation."
Alluding to efforts to have stolen documents and artifacts returned to the government, Adams said, "As one who has acted through all forms available to me for the protection of such materials during all the days of this month, I find the actions of department-level federal officials controlling this matter . . . unconscionable . . ."
Adams, an Assiniboine-Sioux from Frank's Landing, Wash., also asked Rep. Julia Butler Hansen (D-Wash.) to investigate. Mrs. Hansen's office also had not received the request by last night.
William Farrison, Pheonix area vice president of the National Congress of American Indians, who also toured the building Tuesday, suggested that additional damage, in the form of painted slogans, had been added since the occupation ended.
"The paint is still wet," Farrison said. "On the first floor hallways, it appears each tribe is represented. Some of that was certainly put there since the people left the building," Farrison said.
Loesch said, "I doubt that very much." He said the paint might still be sticky because "it was thrown on thick, without being stirred."
He also said pictures taken by GSA photographers on Nov. 9, the day after the occupation ended, could be used to compare against the present condition. The prints were made available to a reporter yesterday.
The prints incidated that nothing had been added to the walls since that date. Some of the original paint was sticky shiny and gave the impression that it was fresh, however.
Loesch said visitors are "not walking on any important papers. Only trash remains."
Only a few of the BIA's 426 Washington employees have returned to work. The others are on administrative leave, an action that costs the government an estimated $27,000 a day.
Estimates of when the employees will return to work have been revised several times, with another three weeks now being talked about as a target.