Dr. Brewton Berry has made an important contribution to the investigation of the Special Subcommittee on Indian Education with a recent report to the United States Office of education entitled "The Education of American Indians-A Survey of the Literature." His work was funded under a grant from the Bureau of Research, USOE, project No. 7-0813. The Bureau of Research deserves our congratulations for their foresight and initiative in funding this badly needed research. During the initial hearings of the subcommittee in Washington, D.C., several witnesses stressed the point that there was a serious lack of reliable data and good research in the field of Indian education. To the extent that data and research findings did exist they were not readily available or well known. Now, for the first time, all interested and concerned parties have a comprehensive bibliography of the research that has been conducted. The subcommittee has labored hard to determine the extent of our failure in providing an equal educational opportunity for the American Indian. Senator Wayne Morse and I conducted the public hearing in Portland, Oreg., which revealed that dropout rates for Klamath Indian children had apparently doubled since that tribe had been formally terminated by the Federal Government. The hearing also revealed that many tribes scattered throughout the western part of the State of Washington suffered from school dropout rates of anywhere from 50 to almost 100 percent. These Indian children have been in public schools since the 1930's. I was also appalled to learn from the testimony of the Deputy Area Director for the Division of Indian Health that the infant mortality rate for Indians in the three-State northwest region was almost twice the national average. Thus, not only do large numbers of Indian children drop out of school but many never survive to get to school in the first place. Perhaps the most shocking finding was that the adolescent suicide attempts on the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho and the Quinault Reservation in Washington were 10 times or more the national average-in short, of epidemic proportions. In addition, the problem of psychological maladjustment of Indian adolescents was a serious problem on practically every reservation. These are only a few of the examples that have come to my attention while serving as a member of this subcommittee. The findings point to both the general neglect and complexity of the problem. In providing a thorough summary of the research on the causes of the problems, Dr. Berry's report provides an important foundation for the work of this subcommittee. It will be of great value not only to the research community but also to thousands of teachers, administrators, and students across the country. Senator RALPH YARBOROUGH, Chairman, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U.S. Senate. |