because many people have been quite sick over the division in Alaska of the political lines on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Beltz, of Nome, who is of Eskimo lineage, indicated that he would like to speak on this mental health, and he represents probably a third of our total population when you get down to blood lineage.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I am acquainted with the Senator. We met in the lunchroom the other day. Would you proceed? Would you identify yourself for the record first.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM E. BELTZ, SENATOR FROM THE SECOND DIVISION, ALASKA TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE

Mr. BELTZ. I am William E. Beltz, senator from the second division, Nome, Alaska. I have been a business agent of this local here for I am president of the Alaska Council of Carpenters, and I am a member of the Arctic Native Brotherhood.

I am in favor of the bill. I think that it would be a step in the right direction.

In the field of construction, which has been my work, an injured person on a job, the first thing is to give first aid, and if a person is not competent in giving first aid, you can injure him more than the initial injury if it is administered wrongly.

So I feel if proper medical authorities are in the stations that you can take care of a person who is partially mentally ill and he can be cured.

Father BOILEAU. One more point, Mr. Chairman. I would like to bring up a point here which is part and parcel of our four points we proposed to you, and that is this: Due to the fact that many people say that the native people of the various villages are not trained for jobs, many construction companies bring in men from outside in Seattle. Mr. Beltz can correct me on this.

I believe they bring them in with free transportation and meals; where, if a native is hired in Alaska he does not get that same privilege. The question was brought up in the case of Fort Yukon where they tried to hire the natives. They hired three natives who are actually skilled in mechanical lines, but when it came to pick and shovel work where there is no skill, the rank and file members of the people who are hired were from outside of Fort Yukon; is that correct?

Mr. BELTZ. Yes.

Father BOILEAU. That is a condition which we would like to have stopped.

Mr. ABBOTT. On that point, Father, I note a reference here to the Davis-Bacon Act, and because of the Bureau of Reclamation construction activities our committee has from time to time found itself involved with people who administer and who are responsible in the Department of Labor for the Davis-Bacon provisions. I wonder if one of your group wishes to send to the committee for inclusion in the record at this point the specific reference of violation of the Davis-Bacon Act, because the committee chairman has found they are most cooperative and frequently with the time and space factor they have not been particularly apprised of the operation of the Davis-Bacon provisions at local level. It would be helpful.

Mr. BELTZ. I can say this: The Davis-Bacon Act is not violated. It pertains only to the scale of pay. The scale of pay is paid, but these are fringe benefits that are brought in in order to induce specialized trades to come on in and work in outlying districts. The fringe benefits are that room and board will be paid. But then the original people that are in the area do not get that benefit, but they would get the employment.

Mr. ABBOTT. I would like to make one observation here: The University of South Dakota communicated to the committee about 2 months ago the results of a conference held on an overall assault on the Indian problem in the State of South Dakota, and as I recall they have a population about the same as your native population, around 38,000, in South Dakota.

I believe you would find the approach of that conference of the University of South Dakota at Vermillion an interesting one. It is done at local level on a cooperative basis and with the cooperation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to look at the long range as it is labeled there-rehabilitation of their tribal economy.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Gillam or any of the witnesses, I was troubled by a previous remark which indicated that if this bill were passed Alaska might come in at a later date and say, "Well, we can't handle the financial burden and we will have to go back to the Federal Government for aid."

I would like to ask any of the witnesses: All of you have talked with many people about this mental health bill, I know. Have you ever heard a suggestion it would be wise to get Alaska's head under the tent and then after the bill was passed to go back to the Federal Government and ask for more financial help?

Mr. GILLAM. That has never come up in the board of health. We have never taken that attitude. There is no such thought in the board of health. I personally have no such thought. Further, I personally have never heard that remark in Alaska.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you.

Father BOILEAU. Just give us a foothold and we will walk ourselves. Mr. BARTLETT. Well said.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Thank you very much, gentlemen. We appreciate your testimony. It has been most valuable.

Father BOILEAU. Before closing, I would like to introduce Mr. Rockwood, who is the head of the Health, Education, and Welfare Council. They thought he would be gone so they gave me this job. Mr. ROCKWOOD. May I make one statement, Mr. Chairman? Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD E. ROCKWOOD, PRESIDENT, ALASKAN HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE COUNCIL, SECOND AND FOURTH DIVISION

Mr. RockwOOD. I am Edward E. Rockwood, president of the Alaskan Health, Education, and Welfare Council, second and fourth division.

We would want to strongly go on record, if it would help you at all, in full support of the mental health bill. We will admit possibly the

trial portion of it we don't go along with, but we will take the bill. We want it.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I think that is fine.

I would like to say at this point, some members of the committee do not agree with some things in the bill. We want the bill, and it is much easier to amend a law after you get it enacted than it is to amend it before getting it enacted.

Mr. ROCKWOOD. Certainly this council was not set up with the idea of a group of people doing good for another group over here. We are trying to be a vehicle, a vehicle of transmission from agencies, Federal, Territorial, or private or even municipal, to the people. We believe in decentralization, getting services, activities, to the people in the best way we can. In turn we also want to serve as a vehicle

of the people to these agencies.

Going along with that, maybe it may come up with some things that to us just do not make sense, but that is what the people in the villages want and need. We have disturbed them, their economy. We have set them up in the shape they are in today. It is up to us to get them out, but with their knowledge and help. So even though it may not go along with our individual ideas, we are trying to transmit the ideas of the people and not of ourselves.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I noticed there was no representative of the Alaskan Native Service in your group today. I wonder what sort of cooperation, officially or unofficially, the council gets from the ANS.

Mr. ROCKWOOD. If I may answer that, they have extended to us full cooperation or they will assist us in any way possible. The individual members of the Alaska Native Service may have a voice in our council, but the agency or any other agency or Delegate Bartlett or anybody else here cannot come to us and say, "We want this; we don't want this or that." They have no voice. We try to be the voice of the people, of the individual. If they work for the ANS, that is good because we can ask them questions and get information which we can further use to formulate ideas.

Father BOILEAU. If I might add at this point, it was brought out by members of the Alaska Native Service that they are now spending a great proportion of their money on curing illness, where they would like to spend that money on preventing it. And that is where they come in and say, "We want you to get going and help these people so we won't have so much money spent on curing and can spend more on investigation and preventing.'

Mr. O'BRIEN. Thank you very much.

(The suggestions submitted by the council follow:)

SUGGESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION OF THE HOUSE INSULAR AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

I. The basic problem in Alaska seems to be the economic one. Not only is there a need to raise the standard of living in rural and city areas, but there must be a definite program of economic development which will have security. Programs of health, education, and welfare depend upon these.

II. To produce this result, the Health, Education, and Welfare Council would suggest the following:

A. A professional exploration and tabulation of the economic potential in the rural areas.

B. An immediate and definite plan to determine ownership of the lands in Alaska, whether the owners be natives, native groups, white citizens of Alaska,

Territorial or Federal departments. There can be no secure development of businesses, etc., if there is insecurity in ownership of land.

C. A further extension and development of decentralized education, health, and welfare services. This would foster rural and family development; training of rural personnel to assist in this program.

D. To develop, where and when necessary, centers of

1. Specialized handicap, vocational, and liberal education for the specially handicapped, gifted, and talented of the rural areas. We suggest Fairbanks as the center for northern Alaska.

2. Specialized psychiatry and medicine

(a) Composed of specialists who can handle a mental institution, as well as educate citizens to the peculiar psychological problems of Alaska; (b) Who can be part of a core of professionals who will travel to the rural areas to assist in local problems of health and welfare;

(c) Who can present to educate rural leaders who have come for concentrated courses in medical and welfare problems.

We suggest these ideas to you as a particular application of the purposes and aims of the Alaska Health, Education, and Welfare Council, as manifested in the attached papers. And we urge that these problems be considered in the immediate future if at all feasible.

Mr. ABBOTT. Mr. Ben F. Potter.

CHARLES D. MARROW, M. D.
BYRON GILLAM.

Rev. GEORGE BOILEAU, S. J.

Mr. Chairman, perhaps there should go in the record at this time a letter over the signature of Anson Pratt, president of the Midnight Sun Lions Club, which states in the last paragraph:

Ben F. Potter, member of the Midnight Sun Lions Club, is authorized to appear before you, and speak on behalf of the club.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The letter referred to follows:)

MIDNIGHT SUN LIONS CLUB, Fairbanks, Alaska, September 15, 1955. To the CONGRESSIONAL SUBCOMMITTEE: Hon. LEO W. O'BRIEN, CHAIRMAN; Hon. EDITH GREEN, Hon. JAMES UTT, Hon. WILLIAM A. DAWSON, MEMBERS. DEAR COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Let it be known that the Midnight Sun Lions Club, of Fairbanks, Alaska, has gone on record of unanimously endorsing a vocational rehabilitational program for the native Indians and Eskimos of Alaska. Further, that such a vocational school be located in Fairbanks, as a central location.

Ben F. Potter, member of the Midnight Sun Lions Club, is authorized to appear before you and speak on behalf of the club.

Yours,

ANSON PRATT, President.

STATEMENT OF BEN F. POTTER, MEMBER, MIDNIGHT SUN LIONS CLUB, FAIRBANKS, ALASKA

Mr. POTTER. Thank you. I will speak briefly on account of the time.

As is generally well known, the Lions Club is a service organization, not primarily concerned with charity, social organization, or fraternal, but purely for a service to the community or surrounding areas whereby they can help the disabled, maimed, or to advance the cause of veterans.

In this capacity, this Lions Club, although we are a small organization, have asked me to come down and appear before you folks to endorse that we have vocational rehabilitation here in Alaska. That is for the native and Eskimo population.

These people have been living in a deplorable state. They are asked to help themselves, yet they have no way to help themselves. Here in the city, the city council, of which I am a member, has set aside a nice tract of land for a vocational school if it should so be desired, a tract of 40 acres in an ideal location, and there is more land available for such purposes, available with water and sewer facilities, and also to the existing high school of which a new one at present is being built. All those things are under consideration.

This will be an ideal spot as it is in the center for a center of vocational rehabilitation. The members of the school board have endorsed the idea.

The members of the council-I do not speak for them, but that has been done and all have been in accord. In fact, I have heard no dissenting voices against it.

These people, if brought here, would be of high-school age. They would be integrated with the present high-school system. They wouldn't receive only the vocational training; they would receive regular education. It wouldn't be that they would be given a crafts course and sent out without the other proper education; they would receive the regular high-school education.

In such case it might be said there might be some people that have brought up the argument of what they would call hearts and flowers of separating these students from their families. In most high schools in thinly settled and populated areas of the United States the students have to go some distances to high school. I myself, as a boy, lived 60 miles from the nearest high school on a ranch in Wyoming. So I never go home except at Christmastime, and that is the situation here. A high-school student of that age brought in could learn, and when he went back to his family at different times he could convey to them a part of what he had learned himself to help to convey it.

In establishing out in the rural area, you might establish a school out in their area right close to them, a smaller type of school, and they might learn a trade and technical points from that, but in this modern day they have to learn about the acts and ways of other people if they are going to go into the system with them. So, if such a school was in Fairbanks, then they would see what was going on in Fairbanks, they would meet the other people here, and along with their learning they would be able to learn to do and go along as people do on a regular scale.

Mr. ABBOTT. The program you envisage, Mr. Potter, would be on a voluntary basis?

Mr. POTTER. Yes; I am not seeking to add anything that would be a liability that they must do that. I respect the rights of the people, even the Eskimos or anybody, to do as they please.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Thank you, Mr. Potter. I commend the fine spirit of your fine organization and grateful for your speech.

Mr. POTTER. Thank you very much for the opportunity of appear

ing before you.

Mr. ABBOTT. Mr. J. Steinard. Would you give your full name to the reporter, please?