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natural resources, and the disbanding of 10 regional
Bureau of Indian Affairs offices.
July
The first World Eskimo-Indian Olympics
are held.
In what will become an annual event, Inuit, Aleut,
and Indian athletes gather in Fairbanks, Alaska, to
participate in the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics.
The four-day competition includes games, such as
the arm pull and blanket toss, that were traditionally
played by Alaskan Natives to build their strength and
stamina. The event also features traditional dance
contests and displays of Native arts and artifacts.
July 10
The Keeler Commission issues a report on
Indian policy.
In February, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall ap-
pointed a five-person special task force to investigate
how to implement an Indian policy of self-deter-
mination. Chaired by William Wayne Keeler, the
principal chief of the Cherokee, the commission five
months later issues a 77-page report recommending
that the Bureau of Indian Affairs abandon the Ter-
mination policy (see entry for AUGUST 1, 1953) and
instead work to promote economic development in
Indian communities. Specifically, it encourages the
government to find ways of attracting businesses
to reservations, offer increased job training and
placement to Native Americans, and quickly settle
outstanding Indian land claims.
August
The National Indian Youth Council is
founded.
Ten young Indian activists—most of whom are col-
lege students—meet in Gallup, New Mexico, to
form a new pan-Indian organization, the National
Indian Youth Council. The council is founded in
part as a response to the conference endorsed by the
National Congress of American Indians held two
months earlier in Chicago (see entry for JUNE 13
TO 20, 1961). The youths had appeared at the
meeting uninvited, but the delegates allowed them
to voice their views, some of which were reflected in
the Declaration of Indian Purpose produced at the
conference.
Nevertheless, the young activists found the
delegates’ approach to Indian policy reform overly
conservative, prompting them, with the encourage-
ment of many tribal elders, to create an organization
through which they could express their more radical
opinions. In the years to come, NIYC will be instru-
mental in organizing protests, including the “fish-ins”
held in Washington State to demand the recognition
of Indian fishing rights (see entry for MARCH 1964).“[The] weapons employed
by the dominant society have
become subtler and more
dangerous than guns—these,
in the form of educational, re-
ligious, and social reform, have
attacked the very centers of
Indian life by attempting to re-
place native institutions with
those of the white man....
Our viewpoint, based in a tribal
perspective, realizes literally,
that the Indian problem is the
white man, and, further, real-
izes that poverty, educational
drop-out, unemployment, etc.,
reflect only symptoms of a so-
cial-contact situation that is
directed at unilateral cultural
extinction.”
—the National Indian Youth
Council in its Statement of Policy
at the 1961 Gallup conference