The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by Students at the University of Michigan Saturday, June 21, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 End nUsing dece tionS N THE WAKE of a dorm dirctor's charge of official tampering with next year's housing budget, two stu- dents yesterday went before the Regents to protest the secrecy of Housing Office activities and to call for a full investigation of its operations. However, Feldkamp, in bewilderment over popular disrepute of his office in general and his new "econo- mizing" plan in particular, has failed to recognize or own up to the consistent theme running through his deal- ings with students. Whereas many of the more academic departments of the University have in recent years been forced to allow students an equal role in much of the decision mak- ing, the Housing office continues operating from a his- torically elitist position. JT IS BECAUSE of this sort of attitude that Housing administrators have barred students - and their own employees-from access to pertinent reports on the dorm-system budget as well as alleged administrative over- expenditures. If John Feldkamp ever really wants to reestablish some sort of credibility with the students on this cam- pus, he's going to have to begin by opening access to housing information to students files, so they might be allowed some.real input on the operations and priorities of the Housing office. THE LIGHTER SIDE Keepin' the Guvnuh happy By DICK WEST WASHINGTON-Peace. Harmony. Brotherhood. You don't have to be a Republican to appreciate those qualities. Even Democrats could feel uplifted by the sweatness and light that broke out in the GOP this week. There on the tbe was Sen. Barry Goldwater discissing reports that conservative Republicans were bent on dropping Vice President Nelson Rockefeller from the GOP ticket next year. Old political foes, Goldwater and Rockefeller. The two poles between which thunderbolts flash- ed at the 1964 GOP convention. Yet when asked whether Rockefeller should be the party's 1976 vice presidential nominee, Goldwater couldn't have been more complimen- tary. "I've always thought that Nelson Rockefeller would make a fine secretary of state," he re- plied admiringly. TO THE UNTRAINED ear it might sound like Goldwater was whamming Rockefeller with quaint praise. But no. It turned out he actually was looking out for his erstwhile adversary's own best interests.W ace "I would hate to waste a man's talents on the official and he assured me the Democratic hi- vice presidency when the vice presidency really, erarchy had nothing but admiration for Wallace's as Jefferson said, is about the worst job in abiilties. government," Goldwater explained. '"I would hate to waste a man's talents on the As I was saying, solicitude of this sort trans- governorship of Alabama," the official said. "Wal- cends party lines. I expect as the campaign lace should be encouraged to expand his horizons, wears on that similar manifestations of sweet to move in new directions, the better to make accord will erupt among the Democrats. use of his unique attributes." The benevolence may have started already. I said, "Does that mean you favor him for the You may have heard allegations that the Dem' 'Democratic presidential nomination?" ocratic "establishment" is maneuvering to abort "I have always thought that George Wallace the political ambitions of George Wallace. Pish would make a fine governor of Mississippi," the and Tosh. official fervently opined. I WAS TALKING just the other day to a party Dick West is a syndicated UPI columnist. Kiamaths: Victims of Big Lumber By DAVID WEIR "They made many promises but they kept only one. They promised to take our land, and they took it." -bumpersticker in Klamath Falls, Oregon KLAMATH FALLS, OREGON - The last hereditary chief of the Klamath Indians is waging a solitary battle to regain the site of his grandfather's village. Edison Chiloquin, 51, is the only Klamath to turn down a small fortune from the federal government for his share of the tribe's reservation, which was taken over by the U.S. Forest Service. For six months now, his check for $103,594 has been gathering dust in a local bank. Meanwhile, Chiloquin is demanding thu re- turn of a logged-out, 800 acre parcel of land worth much less, in dollars, than the government wants to pay him. "They can keep the money," The Klamaths agreed to term- ination because they thought it meant the end of the white man's control over their :and. "The idea of termintion, re- members tribal leader Einathan David, was to get the govern- ment out of the Indian business at'd let us run our own affairs. But it didn't work out that way." Instead, the Klama'hs were given two choices -- to sell their land to the U.S. Forest Service, or to submit to a trusteeship arrangement with the U.S. Na- tional Bank of Oregon, which was appointed by the govern- ment to take over the financtal responsibilities formerly held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Three-quarters of the approx- imately 2,000 Klamatns opted for the money, and in 1901 they re- ceived $43,000 each for their share of the 800,000 acre reser- vation. The rest of the tribe, ir- cluding Chiloquin and Davis. re- mained under the baak'c feudal- "The government has tried to legislate our Indian blood right out of us," charges Dorris Chiloquin, "but it won't work. We will always be Indians." says Chiloqut. "To me this land style control. issacred, andtl want it back." "Nobody liked the banK,"re- Chiloquin's struggle higalights calls one Klamath. "It wouldn't the plight of the Klamaths, the even let us use our own mon- only major tribe disbanded an- eyl" der an obscure federal policy After 15 years, the remaining called termination. Pass yd by members of the tribe voted by Congress as Public Law 587 in a bare majority to eid the 1954, termination striotpod way trusteeship arrangemest in 1969. the Klamaths' tribal-status, na- Davis and Chiloquin opposed this tive rights and land in return move because a clause in the for a lump-sum paymett. bank's contract allowed the bank About a dozen tribes, most of to dispose of the tribe's land - them small, were terminated be- which still amounted to 135,000 fore Congress aband.ied t h e acres of prime timberland. The policy in the early sixties. The bank invited the government in only other large tribe termin- to condemn the land and turn. ated besides the Klamaths were it over to the U.S. Forest Serv- the Menominees of Wisconsm - ice, which *duly incorporated it but the Menominees forced, Con- into nearby national forests and gress to restore their tr hal era leased out portions to lumber ts in 1973. companies. "If we can get the land back," says Edison's wife Dorris, "our plan is to move on to it and reconstruct the tribal village. We wil gather what food we can from the land and live in earth lodges in the winter." Already, several Klamath teenagers have built earth lodges there in anti- cipation of the Chiloquin's ie- turn, and many other Klamaths voice support for their struggle. "I think a lot of the Indians around here will join us event- ually," says Dorris. "Our peo- ple just can't be happy in the white man's world." A little more than a century ago, the Klamaths controlled 15 million acres of land, including famous Crater Lake - w hose volcanic creation was witnessed by their ancestors 10,000 years ago. By 1954, when termination was passed by Congress, white en- croachment had reduced this by more than half. Today, virtually all of the land is owned by whites and the gov- ernment, and the Klamaths are for the most part landless and unemployed. After lump-sum payments of 1961 and 1974, door-to-door sales- men showed up seling $280 va- cuum cleaners for $475. Car dealers marked up hotrod mod- els by $1,000 or more. When one Indian returned a car with a faulty transmission, the dealer allegedly quoted him a $2,000 re- pair bill and then suggested: "Why don't you buy a new car instead?" The FTC eventually cited two auto dealers, a local attorney went to prison for embezzling $100,000 from two Indian clients, and a realtor was convicted of fraud. "I don't know why the gov- ernment decided to terminate us," says tribal leader Davis. "The -way I see it now, they wanted to get a hold of our timber, because that's w h a i's happened." Hatfield Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon and Rep. Al Ullman have been informed of the Chilo- quin's plight, but so far neither has chosen to lift a finger to correct the situation. The one group which has con- sistently profited from the Kla- math lands is the lumber in- dustry. Most of the big multi- national litmber companies are here. The largest one is the We- yerhaeuser Corporation. Ever since the U.S. Army built the first sawmill in the area in 1863, the lumber com- panies have had access to the Klamath forests. Major commer- cial operations date back to 1910, three years after Wey- erhaeuser first moved in. Wey- erhaeuser's influence in the re- gion is unquestionable - it shares an interlocking director- ate with the Klanmath's former trustee, the U.S. National Bank of Oregon, ad is the largest' employer in the region. Further- more, the company sent its pre- sident, George Weyerhaeuser himself, to testify before Con- gress during the Klamath teri- ination hearings in the late fif- ties. "Termination, really didn't af- fect us," says Bob Klingman, a company spokesman, "except insofar as it affected the level of harvest as permitted by the B.I.A., the U.S. National Bank or the U.S. Forest Service." All three agencies favored w i d e- spread logging of the Indians' timber, which included some of the best virgin stands of pon- derosa pine in the country. All of this has convinced the Indians in south-central Oregon that the government is virtually indistinguishable from the b i g lumber interests. "The F o r e s t Service is nothing but a holding company for the lumber firms," charges Sun Bear, a Chippewa who publishes the Indian quar- terly Many Smokes in Klamath Falls. "It watches over the land and takes care of it until the companies want to log it out, and then it leases the land over to them." The Forest Service recently informed Chiloquin that an act of Congress is required if he is to regain his land. The Chilo- quins have contacted Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield and local Representative Al Ullman among others, but so far there have been no results. "The government has tried to legislate our Indian b1o o d right out of us," charges Dorria Chiloquin, "but it won't work. We will always be Indians." "I hope Edison is successful," says Elnathan Davis. "At least then there would still be some' thing you could call Indian iand around here. Freelance writer D a v i d Weir formerly edited S u n Dance Magazine and Pa- cific Basin Reports. COPY- right, Pacific News Service, 1975.