statements, to express their views or perhaps for additional questions? Will you gentlemen be here tomorrow? Mr. Moses. I believe we could be. We have other things to do, but I believe we would have to cancel them to attend this meeting. Mr. HALEY. You can be here then tomorrow afternoon? Mr. MOSES. Yes. Mr. HALEY. With that understanding, the meeting is recessed until 2: 30 tomorrow. (Whereupon, at 12 noon, the subcommittee recessed to reconvene at 2:30 p. m., on Friday, July 22, 1955.) COLVILLE INDIAN LANDS, WASHINGTON FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1955 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 2:30 p. m., in room 1324, New House Office Building, Hon. James A. Haley (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. HALEY. The committee will be in order. Yesterday at noontime the committee still had under consideration H. R. 6154 and H. R. 7190. At this time, before calling any witnesses, I would like to place into the record, first, a telegram from Lawrence Nicodemus, chairman of the Coeur D'Alene Tribal Council; also, a telegram from Joseph Garry, president of the National Congress of American Indians; a telegram from Robert Burnett, president of the Rosebud Reservation Sioux Tribal Council, and Moses Two Bull, Ogalala Sioux Tribal Council; also, a letter addressed to the chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, signed by Hiram B. Runnels, of Nespelem, Wash. Without objection, they will be made a part of the record. (The documents referred to follow :) Hon. JAMES A. HALEY, House Office Building, Washington, D. C.: TEKOA, WASH., July 21, 1955. We understand H. R. 6154, Colville and restoration bill, is coming up for hearing. At a meeting of the Coeur D'Alene Tribe, held Saturday, July 16, a resolution again passed expressing support to Colvilles for land restoration but opposition to sections 4 and 5. We feel these provisions should be embodied in a separate bill for the best interests of the Colvilles and other tribes. The inclusion of these provisions in 6154 is not at all necessary to the land restoration but represents a pact to secure support for nonopposition to the rest of the bill which is desired by the Colvilles. Their worthy efforts should not be saddled with such dangerous deals which are opposed by many of the Colvilles and neighboring tribes. LAWRENCE NICODEMUS, Chairman, Coeur D'Alene Tribal Council. Hon. JAMES A. HALEY, Member of Congress, PINE RIDGE, S. DAK., July 22, 1955. House Office Building, Washington, D. C.: The National Conference of American Indians sincerely urges that any and all land-restoration bills be passed. From my personal knowledge acquired from contact of several tribes, however, it is quite obvious that they would like to see this bill passed without sections 4 and 5. Is it possible for this bill to be amended to delete sections 4 and 5 and this bill read to restore all land in this status to the respective tribes thus clearing this matter up once and for all? JOSEPH GARRY, President, National Congress of American Indians. Hon. JAMES A. HALEY, Member of Congress, PINE RIDGE, S. DAK., July 21, 1955. House Office Building, Washington, D. C.: Wish you urge amendments to H. R. 6154, Colville land-restoration bill, to delete sections 4 and 5. If bills cannot be amended as herewith recommended, we strongly urge it be opposed and defeated for following reasons: (1) If passed, this same precedent could be used on other reservations for termination; (2) same precedence could be used for taxing other reservations. ROBERT BURNETT, President, Rosebud Reservation. Sioux Tribal Council. MOSES TWO BULL, Ogalala Sioux Tribal Council. NESPELEM, WASH., July 18, 1955. To the Chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs MY DEAR CHAIRMAN: We are told that termination of the Indian Bureau for the Colvilles of the State of Washington would be a blow to our Government wards. The Indian, the Congress of American Indians, the Association of American Indian Affairs, deplore the idea of termination, liquidation, and taxation, and so does our delegation we are to represent us in H. R. 6154. Remember, there are over 2,000 Indians whom are landless. Now our only problem to solve is termination of the Indian Bureau. We who know the situation. I am past 70 years of age. The only thing that is hanging fire here is our vast resources of timber, that is why the Indian Bureau wants to prolong the Colville Indian Reservation-too much money is handled by them. There is something radically wrong. Our present council follow the dictates of the office. Now the State of Washington Welfare Department asks each and every Indian who is on their rolls for assistance. Want each every applicant to sell their allotment or they will be stricken from the rolls. I say that is why we need termination of our Indian Bureau because at the present time there are 321 applicants who want patents to their land. The Indian Office and our Superintendent, Mr. Floyd H. Phillips, who will be at the hearing on H. R. 6154, a bill sponsored by the Bureau and not by the Colville Indians. We want liquidation for every adult Indian who wishes to withdraw from the rolls as as Colville. Insert this in the bill. Pay the member what is coming to him. Let him terminate himself, if he has $3,000 due him give it to him. He is tired of the Indian Bureau. He would like to run his own affairs for a while. Sincerely, I remain, HIRAM B. RUNNELS. Mr. HALEY. The first witness I have on my agenda is Mr. Ben Brown, one of the county commissioners. Will you come forward, please? Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chairman, I wonder if Mr. R. C. Watts could speak first, or do you have an objection? Mr. HALEY. It is perfectly all right with me. STATEMENT OF RICHARD C. WATTS, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, WASHINGTON STATE ASSOCIATION OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Mr. HALEY. Will you state your name for the record and designate whom you are representing? Mr. WATTS. Thank you, sir. My name is Richard C. Watts. I am executive secretary of the Washington State Association of County Commissioners, the statutorily designated spokesman for that State's 39 boards of commissioners. I speak today both in that capacity and also as the direct representative of the board of commissioners of Ferry County, who are not themselves present for the simple reason that the county could not afford to send them here in person. Mr. HALEY. With that introduction, you may proceed with any statement you care to make. Mr. WATTS. Thank you, sir. The matter before the committee here today, H. R. 6154, Mr. Horan's so-called restoration bill, is of such nature that the committee may wonder at the interest of commissioners of counties other than Ferry and Okanogan, the only counties directly concerned with the measure. That interest could, of course, be explained simply on the basis of a fellow feeling among men who practice a common profession-that of local government. But the interest of the other commissioners in this particular measure goes deeper than that. It is an interest rooted in the fact that the commissioners of our State feel that their primary function is one of service to the people of their communities, and there are Indian people in almost every one of the counties in the State, whether an individual county has a reservation within its. boundaries or not. It is our belief that Indians are people just like other people, that they are citizens in the same sense as any other citizen of our counties is, and we therefore are as interested in the welfare of the Indian resident as we are interested in the welfare of any other of our citizens. Since the bill before you has a great deal to do with the welfare of the Colville Confederated Tribes, it will have a very great influence, both directly and indirectly, upon the welfare of all the other Indian residents of our State. Further, H. R. 6154 embodies an approach to termination of an Indian reservation which well may be a guide for similar action with regard to the several other reservations in Washington State. Since we are convinced that this approach is sound, we are naturally anxious that its soundness be preserved. My presence here today as the official representative of all the commissioners of the State of Washington serves as a measure of that interest. We have in fact taken a direct interest in this particular subject for a long time. I have before me a letter written to Senator Hugh Butler as long ago as August 18, 1949, giving our association's feelings in regard to the welfare of the Colville Tribes. I have another letter written to Commissioner Glenn Emmons as late as November 13, 1953, expressing a direct interest in the same matter. Obviously this interest of county commissioners in the welfare of the people they serve takes two forms. First is the interest in the citizens as the people whom the commissioners are elected to serve; the second is the interest of the commissioners in the affairs of their counties in their capacities as budget officers for the counties. One of the primary functions of the county commissioners of Washington State is that of finding tax resources with which to finance the governmental services they are required to render their people. Almost the sole source of revenue for Washington county government and the only one of any significance in Ferry and Okanogan Counties is the property tax. The amount of revenue that this tax will yield is of course dependent upon the amount and the value of the taxable property within the county. Small amounts of low-value property produce small amonts of revenue; large amounts of valuable property produce high revenues. With this elemental thought in mind, I would like to direct the attention of the committee to the longer of these two maps here, which is that of Ferry County. On this map the Colville Reservation area is shown in brown. The Colville National Forest is shown in green. State-owned and tax-exempt school land is shown in orange, and game land in red. The only area in that county which pays taxes is in white. Thirteen percent of the property in Ferry County must pay 100 percent of the tax burden, and the tax revenue produced by that white area is the sole source of revenue that Ferry County has at all. How that county has kept its head above water financially I don't know, except that during the thirties they collected property instead of taxes and have sold that off a piece at a time. I believe now their sole ownership is down to about two cemetery lots. They finished their year last year $1,500 in the red and faced a $30,000 deficit, I believe, at the first of this year. Their tax base is so stringently limited that they are in desperate straits. It is no small wonder that the commissioners of these two counties are so anxious to find a solution to the budget problems with so large a percentage of tax exemptions present, nor that they so heartily endorse H. R. 6154 as an attempt on the part of the people whom the commissioners serve to aid in the solution to these problems by making a contribution toward the cost of those services which the Indians receive just as do their non-Indian neighbors. I might add that this spirit of cooperation-of this desire to be mutually helpful to one another-has characterized the relations of the Colville Tribes and the two boards of county commissioners as I have witnessed them over a long period of years. The two groups, and the representatives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, have provided, it seems to me, one of the most outstanding and heartening examples of mutual recognition of a common problem and one of the most inspiring examples of real cooperation that has been offered in some time. For many years these three groups have approached their problems together-not always from the same approach and not always to the same end, but always in a spirit of mutual trust, understanding, and a desire to be helpful to one another. Perhaps it would be helpful to the committee if I were to trace some of the historic landmarks in this attempt by the counties and the Colville Tribes to solve their problems over the years since 1892, the year the north half of the reservation was thrown open for homestead entry, after the orginal allotments had been made. On October 29, 1915, Ferry County made a claim against the United States Treasury for payments in lieu of taxes on the Colville Reservation, and later in the same year, Stevens County did likewise. Upon being informed by the Treasurer that these claims could not be allowed, the two counties joined with Okanagan County in asking the Congress to make a specific appropriation for this payment in lieu. By the act of June 7, 1924 (43 Stat. 599) the Secretary of the Interior |