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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 8, 1972)
Morton cites Nixon administration efforts in Native American affairs Rogers Morton, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, delivered the keynote speech at the opening of the National Tribal Chairmen’s Association (NTCA) con vention Monday afternoon, and he took this occasion to remind the participants how much the Nixon Administration has done for them. Although no outright campaigning was done, the undertone was evident. He listed Nixon Administration achievements, compared these achievements with those of past administrations, and attributed the slow progress of Nixon’s proposed legislation to the “obvious political lethargy” of the “Democrat-controlled Congress” where he said “desperately needed Indian Legislation is languishing in committees. Rogers opened his speech by reading a letter from President Nixon addressed to the NTCA. In the letter Nixon thanked the NTCA for the assistance it has given the Administration “in our determined efforts to translate new attitudes toward American Indians into effective actions. “Our policy, as you know, is firm and unwavering: greater self-determination so that America’s Indians can manage their own affairs.” Nixon said he welcomed the guidance and assistance of Native Americans in “our common efforts to press vigorously forward the programs to improve the living standards of our Indian population.” In his own remarks, Morton said “Funding is the strongest indicator of commitment in government” and ex Photo by Matt McCormick Delegates to the National Tribal Chairmen’s Association convention listen to Morton’s keynote address. plained federal government funding ef forts of Indian programs. He cited a 20 per cent increase in Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) funding during the Johnson ad ministration. against a doubling of BIA funding during Nixons administration. Morton cited the following Nixon ad ministration moves toward ‘‘im plementation of self-determination": —Currently, a majority of top BIA executive positions in Washington are filled by Indians, and the number of In dians serving as BIA area directors has risen from one out of 11 to seven out of 12. —All 200 BIA schools now have Indian advisory school boards or education committees. —Indian tribal leaders are now setting forth their own priorities for the use of BIA funds, and BIA is acting on these priorities. Morton said the federal government will spend $174 million on Indian education this year. Money for Indian college scholar ships has been increased by $12 million and 7,000 more students are getting assistance than were being helped in 1969. he said. Morton recognized problems of urban Indians, saying, “1 suspect that one of the questions most in your minds is whether the BIA will change its long standing policy of concentrating only on affairs of on-reservation Indians. The President said it clearly in his Indian message to the Congress—BIA will concentrate its efforts on serving Federally recognized tribes. We are, however, investigating the feasibility of cooperative programs with other agencies to provide social services for urban Indians. ‘‘Nevertheless, let me put it on the line. We will not diminish the funds made available to reservations from BIA to provide service to off-reservation In dians.” Morton closed by saying “You are the leaders of America’s Indians and I am listening to your voice and the voice of your people. We are listening to you.” Benny Atencio, chairman of the All Indian Pueblo Council, Inc., which represents the nineteen New Mexico Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton Pueblo Tribes, tried to question Morton but Morton declined to answer any questions from participants or reporters, saying he had to return to Washington. He referred Atencio to other Dept, of Interior members present at the convention and left. Morton said the last four years "have been marked with incredible strides in education, economic development, and the achievement of self-determination, but the progress we seek is being slowed by legislative delays. Today, desperately needed Indian legislation is languishing in committees of the Democrat-controlled Congress.” Morton said it has been very hard for him to accept criticism from this congress about inactivity in the BIA, when it is “sitting” on legislation and preventing the administration from moving forward with “progressive” programs. He cited this as “obvious political lethargy” and said he feels very partisan about it. Morton also said that a balance is needed on the self-determination issue. He said that non-indians who have given a life’s work to the BIA should not be completely thrown out and washed out. OSPIRG releases ad report on auto pdealers in Portland Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) recently released a report on “Bait and Switch Advertising,” compiled by two University students, Hal Fay and Dan Mulholland. The report, which deals exclusively with the ad vertising practices of 12 Portland automobile dealers, uncovered several instances of misrepresentative ad vertising In one case, the OSPIRG report led to the signing of an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance by Joe Fisher of Joe Fisher Ford, two weeks after the report was turned over to the district attorney. In its investigation of the 12 dealers, OSPIRG discovered two other dealers who used "bait and swit ch” advertising. According to the report,, similar legal actions are not expected against those two “in the hope that the uncompromising terms of the Assurance will prove to be a deterrent to other dealers practicing similar illegal sales techniques.” Fay calls the report a “success from one standpoint. The car dealers are aware that people are checking on them.” They must now be more explicit and more careful in their advertising, he said. The “Bait and Switch Advertising” project came about as a result of a University class taught by Professor John Wish “Consumer Problems" aUows students to receive 15 hours credit during spring term working on projects such as “Bait and Switch Ad vertising.” “The main purpose of the project," Fay said, “was to educate the consumer that this practice is prevalent and hopefully they will be aware of that when they go into a car lot.” According to the report. Day and Mulholland feel that their investigation helped bring about a distinct change in advertising practice, “a change that benefits the consumer by eliminating elements of bait and switch and deceptive advertising.” Fay and Mulholland used volunteers, students from both the University and Portland State University, and from the community, to act as potential buyers of the automobiles advertised in local newspapers or on television. The volunteer would usually make a definite effort to see the car advertised. Following their visit to the dealer’s car lot, each volunteer made out a report concerning deceptiveness or discrepancies involved in the dealers’ advertising. “Bait and switch” advertising involves attracting the customer to the lot through an insincere offer to sell and then "switching” the customer to another, less favorable, deal. Upon completion of their investigation, Fay and Mulholland confronted individual dealers with their findings, then turned their report over to the district attorney. OSPIRG is making no further checks into the area of car dealers. The office of Consumer Protection will continue to handle the situation, according to Fay. Transportation a major problem for local, state recycling groups “We’ve never had a meeting like this before,” Peter Thurston, a representative of Eugene BRING (Begin Recycling in Natural Groups) said, as he told the Emerald about a statewide conference of community recycling groups held in Junction City last week. “Mostly what we did was sit around for six or eight hours and talk about recycling problems, and how to bring recycling to Oregon on a state wide basis.” There were nine orten groups present, Thurston said: Included were high school recyclers from The Dalles, and representatives from Coos Bay and Cottage Grove, who are planning to set up recycling centers in their communities. Plans were made at the conference to distribute literature throughout Oregon on how each com munity could start it’s own recycling center. A series of pamphlets is slated for publication “sometime in the near future,” Thurston said. The big problem facing local recycling groups, according to Thurston, is transporting the glass and steel to Portland, the major market for recyclable materials in Oregon. Transportation costs money. “In Eugene alone, we collect 12 to 15 barrels of glass a week, to ship to Portland," Thurston said. Each barrel weighs six hundred pounds ” “It may not be good to pour money into a community that is not yet ready to recycle,” he said. The solution decided at the conference was to make information on recycling available to the smaller groups and help them get together with neighboring groups to pool the cost of tran sportation. When enough materials from a com munity are transported regularly to Portland and sold, the cost of transportation is covered by the sale. BRING has been operational in Eugene for almost three years. They recycle glass, steel, cardboard and aluminum. “The idea of BRING is to stop cans and things from being wasted in the dump. If someone else finds it profitable to do this, BRING (which is a non profit group) would dissolve as a recycling group,” Thurston said. It might take five years, he said, but it is possible that a city or county agency could take over the business of recycling in Eugene What would BRING do then? “Even if we stopped recycling we’d still be involved in education in some way," Thurston said. “Tied in with recycling is a lot of learning.”
