AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTHS DEMAND STUDENT RIGHTS
The movement for student rights in the United States, which has seen freespeech fights and antiwar struggles by white students and the formation of black student organizations on many campuses, reached out to another section of the population recently. A group of eleven Indian youths walked into the office of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in Los Angeles, California, April 8, demanding the adoption of a student bill of rights.
According to the Los Angeles Times, "All agreed it was something of a historic event. Never before in Los Angeles, and only once before in another city, had migrants from reservations broken with traditional Indian silence and voiced their grievances in a body."
The proposed bill of rights voiced strong dissatisfaction with counseling, job placement, housing, subsistence allowances and social-recreational activities provided by the government.
The document was signed by about 100 of the more than 200 Indians between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six enrolled in vocational training schools in the Los Angeles area.
The Indian students have formed an organization called the Indian Student Action Council to coordinate the protest.
The director of the government relocation center put off the militant
youths, claiming that he would have*to
study their demands before taking a
position. He agreed to meet once a month
with the Student Action Council, but a
number of the Indians reportedly felt
little had been accomplished.
The Rev. William Ng, director of
the Indian Welcome House and a supporter
of the protest told the Times, "Many coun-
selors have a low image of the American
Indian and have set very low goals for
him. The BIA is geared toward six- and
nine-month vocational training courses
rather than two- and four-year colleges."
Most young Indians are "encouraged"
to take training in manual skills, such .
as welding and auto repair, rather than
more advanced or professional training.
The institutionalization of this discrimi-
nation was testified to by the director
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs himself,
who told the Times that his relocation
center is "limited by law to offering the
type of vocational training it makes
available."
The Indian youths also demanded
that they be assigned to schools located
close together instead of scattered
throughout the county, and that they be
allowed to follow the same course sched-
ules as those of non-Indian students.
Some students have had their. school days
lengthened to compensate for shortened
course schedules.