Committee on Indian Work Awards New Grants
Diocesan Press Service. May 11, 1970 [87-5]
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- The National Committee on Indian Work of the Episcopal Church has announced approval of six new grants for Indian and Eskimo community development projects totalling $30,092.
This is the second group of grants to be approved by the N. C. I.W. In February seven grants coming to a total of $42,500 were approved by the committee.
In making the announcement Kent FitzGerald, executive secretary of the N.C.I.W., said that contributions to a special Indian-Eskimo fund established at the Church's special General Convention in South Bend, Ind., in 1969, have passed the minimum goal of $100,000 set by the Convention and now stands at $101,175.
He said the Committee now has in hand additional applications for grants from Indian communities throughout the country which would require an additional $100,000 and expressed the hope that contributions will continue to be received.
"The fund thus far," he said, "has barely scratched the surface of unmet needs of Indians and Eskimos, both in rural areas and in the cities."
Current grants are going to the following projects:
Wisconsin Demonstration in Indian Educational Opportunity, $10,000. This project has been endorsed by the Great Lakes Intertribal Council, an organization representing all the tribal groups in Wisconsin -- Chippewa, Winnebago, Oneida, Stockbridge, Menominee, and Potawatomi. It will be directed by a seven-member, all-Indian administrative committee. The project will serve 35 Indian young people who will graduate from high school this year. Twenty-five will be entering college, and ten will be enrolling in vocational or technical schools. All will be provided with pre-college or pre-vocational or technical institute orientation this summer, full scholarships for the school year 1970-71, and highly personalized counseling that will begin with the summer session and continue throughout their freshman year. The project's goal is to demonstrate the success young Indian people can have in college and other post-high school training if they have orientation and counseling services geared to their special needs and are relieved from worry about financial resources. N.C.I.W. is joining in this project as an ecumenical venture with several other churches. The total cost of the project is $75,000.
Chief Ojibway Original Products, $5,000. This grant goes to an Ojibway (Chippewa) arts and crafts cooperative with a current membership of 150 in northern Minnesota. The grant will enable members to purchase raw materials and to open three merchandising outlets with a goal of $15,000 in sales this summer. Many of the craft workers are older people with limited incomes who live in seriously depressed parts of northern Minnesota.
Paiute-Shoshone Cultural Studies Project, $3,500. This Nevada-based project's aim is to develop written forms of the Paiute and Shoshone languages based upon an adaptation of the Japanese Kana phonetic system, and to instruct Paiute and Shoshone children in the Nixon and Fallon communities in reading and writing their own languages. Japanese Kana specialists from San Francisco will be working with Mr. David Tybo, lay vicar of St. Mary's Indian Mission in Nixon, in developing the written forms of the two languages. Three Paiutes and three Shoshones will be instructors in the project, and the subject matter will consist of Indian legends, myths, and history. Mr. Tybo, who lived in Japan for 12 years, speaks fluent Japanese as well as his own Shoshone language. The project, which is being watched with great interest by local public school officials, is sponsored jointly by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Council at Nixon, the Paiute-Shoshone Tribal Council at Fallon and St. Mary's Episcopal Indian Mission.
The Jones Ranch Navajo Community Deep Water Well, $6,967, will bring safe drinking water for the first time to a small Navajo community in an area south of Gallup, N.M. Because of the peculiar land ownership situation in the off- reservation area, where thousands of Navajo live on scattered land allotments on the public domain, there are hundreds of communities where the need for domestic water has never been met. Many families still have to haul water in barrels by pickup truck or by horse and wagon for distances as far as ten miles. The community members planned the project, got all the estimates for the well drilling, necessary equipment and materials, and will contribute the required labor.
Project Lighthouse, $2,125. This grant will enable a small Indian center to be established in Mobridge, S.D. It will serve the 500 Sioux Indians living in Mobridge, as well as a large number of Sioux from the neighboring Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Reservations, who come into Mobridge every week to shop and to visit with each other. Project Lighthouse has an all-Indian board of directors and will fill a long unmet need once it has been established and assured of local community support. Various religious groups are being invited to use the center for holding services in the Dakota language both on weekends and during the week.
With another grant, N.C.I.W. voted to contribute $2,500 toward an $8,000 cost of developing a proposal to be submitted to various foundations and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for funding four pilot project urban Indian centers -- one in Minneapolis, one in Los Angeles, one in Fairbanks (Alaska) and one in Gallup, N. M. The funds to be sought through the larger proposal will be used to provide training to Indian center staffs in organization and management of community services and to provide the four centers mentioned with staffs which can offer an adequate complement of greatly needed services to the increasing number of Indians (and Eskimos, in Alaska) who are moving into urban locations -- already estimated to be from one-third to one-half of the country's 600,000 - 700,000 Indians. The grantee, which is known as the Task Force on Racially Isolated Urban Indians, has a seven-member all Indian board of directors.