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LUM 250A -36 /
MONOLOGUE: Adolph Dial l eC rL -
TITLE: Miscellaneous Field Notes and Commentary
DATE: September 21, 1971
D: September 21, 1971. Adolph Dial speaking. I'm recording some of the
facts of last week's meeting in Aspen, Colorado. The American Indian
Historical Society met in Aspen, Colorado last week, the fifteenth
through the nineteenth... At the Society, the American Indian Historical
Society, there were 125 Indians throughout the country invited to attend.
About eighty-five or ninety showed up, or maybe as many as one hundred,
and the Lumbees were well represented. In this group was Brantly Blue,
of the Indian Claims Commission,uh, Samuel Kearns, student from Pembroke
State University, who was the ex-president of the Lugbee Student
Association, and Dr. Bobby Brayboy, Lt. Commander of the U.S. Navy,
who is presently working on another degree at the University of North
Carolina in Public Health. And we were, as I say, well represented,
myself, Adolph Dial, was vice-chairman of the Second Convocation.This
was the Second Convocation, the first was held in __
Bobby Brayboy who appeared on one of the panels, and Brantly
Blue gave one of the major addresses of the week. And he was on a hot
spot, too. He served on the Claims Commission, and Lumbees have never
been concerned with Indian Claims, never been in wars with the govern-
ment, and never have any legal claims for some reason or other. However,
perhaps we ought to have, maybe. But the Indians in the group seemed
to think that he was not sympathetic to their cause, and that the
government recently has purchased land for nine cents per acre and forty-
seven cents per acre, and so forth, and taken California where they
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wanted a dollar-and-a-quarter per acre and they wanted to settle for
forty-seven cents per acre. I remember things very little. But he was
on a hot spot, there Indian Claims was a very touchy subject to those
people where they have claims and they feel they're not getting a
fair break. And of course, Brantly Blue was on the defensive because
representing the Claims Commission, they only have the authority to
go by the law, and Congress has laid down the law, and that is saying
that land will be worth a certain amount per acre that it was at a
certain date, and of course, what it amounts to is not very much, and
of course then, you have their side too, that the land over the years,
and the interest on the money and so forth, that they ought to be
getting more. But it was a very, very touchy and a very hot subject.
Perhaps I ought not to record this, but Mrs. who is
head of the Indian,who the Indian Historian, and the
wife of Mr. Rufus who is President of the American Indian
Historical Society, who came by Brantly Blue, and.on Friday morning
at breakfast and said, "Well, you're a good sport, but I don't agree
with all you said," and he said, "Well, if you can do so well, why
don't you go up and do it?" And he didn't like that, and he came over
to me, and said, "Listen, you better go over to your friend Brantly
Blue and say and tell him that I said to cool it." And I didn't move
immediately,, and then Mr. came over and _
to say about what Brantly had said. Of course, finally I went over there
and I said, "Brantly, says 'Cool it,' And he says, "I'll
tell my side, and I'll just say what I want to, whether they like it
or not." And someone had said, "Well, Mr. sister is there
at the table, his sister. And he said, "Well, good, then
she can tell him what I have to say!"
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So you can see, that Indian Claims is a very touchy issue with the
American Indians. I talked with one fella who didn't attend the meeting
the night Brantly spoke, and said, "Well, I didn't see you last night,"
And he says, "Well, I don't want to hear anything discussed on claims
because it's so near and dear to me. I just rather not be there." And
I think the Indians of the West and all over the country have had a
dirty deal on Indian Claims. We spend all this money sending rockets,
a man to the moon, and rockets up and so fonh, why not give the Indian
people a little to live on, because that's all they were
long ago. And Linda Oxendine has a
place where the National Congress for the American
Indian, Tom Oxendine was a public relations man, the P.R. man for
the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
_Ellen Sehierbeck
is the of Indian Education for the entire United
States. Sehierbeck is spelled S..E..H..I..E..R..B..E..C..K. It was
pointed out at the American Indian Histerical-iSociety that there
was an organization of Indian M.D.'s. And of course, they only have
thitty-five in this organization, but they thought perhaps that a few
more were throughout the country. I pointed out that we had sixty-
seven M.D.'s among the Lumbees including one lady, helping the others
who had their office in California. Now, they know that the local
doctors have to work and _
those are the ones and so forth, bit oftentimes, Lumbees go
away and become _or rather they go as whites, and this
was a very popular thing to do, if you could pass for white,several
years ago, but today everybody's wanting to claim that they have
some Indian blood. It's very popular today to have some Indian blood,
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I see my secretary laughing, she was long ago.Some of
these have gone away, and but
as I said, oftentimes they feel they will get along better not to
be Indians, but be white, and this is, just comes from
Yes, it's a matter of individual opinion, and hopefully, they're
prepared to be Lumbee. Of course at times it's impossible. Had
a friend in Detroit once and told him I was Indian, and he never did,
after we were very good friends, and after I told him I was Indian,
Ae began to get his cold shoulder, my wife and his wife. My wife
and his wife more or less had the parting of the ways.Discrimination
is something that you really don't understand. You don't understand
when you read about it, you don't understand when you hear about it,
you don't understand when you see it on the T.V. You don't understand
it when you hear it on the radio. You have to really be part of it.
Lumbee Indian Caucus is still under fire, on voter registration, the
reason being that the white power structure in Robeson County hates
to see the minority registered, because it might be a threat to their
position. People are beginning to think more and more in terms of our
Lumbees and doing something for them, because absolute
and absolute necessity.Received a telephone call this morning from
Mr. Robert Kusel, K..U..S..E..L, of the Home, which is
the home of Corporation, and he said
that he wanted to know a little about the Indians, and do a little
research on them, and do something,for eifty-five to ninety percent
of his people are Lumbees, and he'd like to establish a yearly
scholarship for some Lumbee Indians, and I don't know where we'll
meet next week. He didn't say whether we'd have to
or some other place. But he pointed out, that they have had some labor
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trouble, and of course, it was all for,like a misunderstanding, as
well as I recall, a few months ago, some of the boys had turned over
a pair of trailer and the man came down and aaid,"What do
you want?" And they said, "Well, we want so-and-so fired,"and he was
fired, and "We want a raise of twenty-five cents an hour," and he
was granted that. Perhaps other companies will see that this is good
to follow. One North Carolina student here enrolled at Pembroke
State University says that the school system at Robeson County is the
worst that you've ever seen, and that there seems to be a lot of apathy
here, and she says, "Well, I guess the people just,they don't seem to
care, but I guess they can't do anything about it." One former member
of the Beard of Education said to a friend of mine on one occasion,
"If we advocate the Lumbee Indian, who's going to work our ?"
In spite of all the drawbacks and so forth, the Lumbee Indians are
probably the most progressive Indians in the country, economically,
socially, and politically. Visited the Navaho reservation less than
a month ago, and one of my old friends there, a white friend who
used to teach at Pembroke State University,his wife said, that uh,
for the
Navaho Indians, and if they happen to have a cover over their little
they really having something. Most of the
people there will be driving a pickup truck, instead of automobiles.
and a few of them have
gotten a trailer but a nice home was out of the question. I didn't
see a single one. Navaho reservations today, thirteen million acres
population having twenty-five thousand. One thing that impressed me,
was the community, the Navaho Community College, Ned Apopoles(?),
spelling very difficult, Ned Apopoles, was, he is president of this
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community college, and he says, speaking of a community serving its
people, and a college serving its community, he says"We have people
enrolled in Navaho Community College who have never been to a
school in their lives, who can't read one sentence.The community
college seems to be serving the community the best it can; they
teach welding, they teach sheep raising, and
all these things. Personally, I feel that Pembroke State University
needs to play ageater role in the community.And I'd like to say
right here that basically I oppose admission scores for college
students. I think what's important......(a little interruption there),
as I was saying, I'm not sure that I go along with any score for
admissions into a state college or university. What's important is
the finished product. If a student takes five years,to finish, six,
seven, eight, or ten, you don't necessarily have to lower the
standards just because you've taken students with lower college
board scores. Everybody is intrested today knowing about Lumbee
Indians. A girl, Miss Pat Carr from St. Andrews, just left the office
and she's doing a research paper, and uh, she seems to have a certain
amount of aprehension about going into the community, and seeing the
people and asking questions. She has now handed up the prospect to
talk with the principal. He'll probably be by later. Back to my original
subject of the total enrollment of Pembroke State University today among
the Indians isn't much different from what it was many, many years ago.
Now, this was saying that the University is not serving the community in
the way that it ought to. I feel that a real university is going to meet
the needs of the community, because that's its primary purpose. This
was originally an all Indian school, and it was set up for that purpose,
and although we're very glad to have white students here, I feel that the
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original purpose of the school ought not to be ignored. There would be
more Indians here, many would like to attend, but they can't pass the
College Board Scores. They can't make that score, minimum requirements
for admission, and this is because of background and poor schools,
and so forth, and so on. Lumbee Indians have a tendency to take their
very bright students or their very successful students, and say, "Look
at so-and-so, he did so-and-so, he's a doctor, he's a lawyer." But they
overlook hundreds and thousands of others who were not so successful,
and Lumbee Indians have a way, or the upper class, of ignoring other
people who really need help. And there's a separation in society,
like you would find in any society. The upper middle-class don't
waste much time, which is mostly, the upper middle-class dontt waste
much time with the lower economic group, and of course, this is bad.
This is real bad,aside from not It seems over the
years at Pembroke State College have been very low, and the students
who have not been attending it's not because of the money as much as
it is not being able to meet the minimum requirements on the College
Board Scores.
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