Indian Rights: Too Little, Too Late
Washington Post, November 23, 1972
By Howard Armstrong, special to The Washington Post

PHOENIX – There was a long pause following the question, then the manager of Phelps Dodge Corp.’s copper mine at Ajo, Ariz. said yes, his company had assigned its substandard employee housing to Indians.

But the company “is far along in its effort to integrate its housing, he said.

How long has it taken the copper giant to integrate housing for Indian employees, now numbering 96 of a total of 1,258 workers, counsel for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission subcommittee wanted to know.

“Since 1954,” said mine attorney John Boland.

“I’m even more disturbed if it’s taken eight years, interjected commissioner Frankie M. freeman, hearing chairman.

Commission counsel John Powell Jr. told mine manager D.H. Orr that his mine is located next to one of the largest Indian reservations in the country and asked, “Do you feel any sense of responsibility to provide employment opportunities for the Indian people?”

Orr said he did.

“Do you think that 96 employees is carrying out that obligation?” Powell queried.

Orr paused again, then said quietly, “Apparently not.”

The exchange was among hours of testimony at a Civil Rights Commission hearing that exacted testimony of widespread job discrimination, poor health care and disparity of justice borne by Arizona’s 95,000 Indians.

Commissioner Manuel Ruiz, Jr. and Mrs. Freeman had heard statistics and testimony that framed a bleak outlook on Indian life in the Southwest.

Mrs. Freeman said the same pattern of Indian troubles emerged in similar hearings earlier in Albuquerque, N.M.

Among examples of Indian plight listed by witnesses and in commission reports:

· The Bureau of Indian Affairs reports Indian unemployment at 36 per cent in the Phoenix area and at 38 per cent in the Albuquerque area.  Statewide unemployment is 4.2 percent in Arizona and 6 per cent in New Mexico.

Of the 43 reservations in the two states, five report unemployment under 10 per cent, but 17 say that 40 per cent or more of their relatives are jobless.

· Indians hold 17 percent of the federal jobs in Arizona, but the great bulk are in grades GS 1 to 4.

In New Mexico, state agencies employ 198 Indians among 10,557 employees.  Although Indians account for 7 per cent of New Mexico’s population, hey hold less than 2 per cent of state jobs.

· Bruce Porter, personnel director for Southwest Forest Industries, told the commissioners his company operates a large lumber mill and store on the White Mountain Apache reservation at McNary, Ariz.  Among the 281 employees, 62 are Indian.  No Indians are in management in the industry that uses trees on the reservation.

· South of Casa Grande, Ariz., Hocla Mining Co. is developing a huge copper mine on the Papago reservation.  Jim H. Hunter, project manager, testified that the company employs 51 Indians in a work force of 550.  A company personnel manager said Hocla has no formal program for encouraging Indian employment at the mine.

· Several Indians testified in both cities that it is common for patients to “sit for hours” at Indian Health Service clinics before seeing a doctor.  A Tucson Indian testified that she has known patients to because they either could not get to clinics or were superficially treated when they arrived with serious illness.

Dr. Charles McGammon, director of the Phoenix area HIS, a witness Friday, said that because of understaffing and lack of funds, physicians spend an average of one minute with each Indian patient.  “There is inadequate quantity of service,” he said.  “The quality of service is very good.”

Another witness, William Gremley, director of the Indian Special Emphasis program of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, said that none of Arizona’s eight copper mining companies has an affirmative action program to hire Indians.

Gremley said there are a few industries among the 91 that border reservations in Arizona that are “contemptuously discriminatory.”  A few are aggressively hiring Indians, but most are “simply indifferent,” he said.

He urged the commission to attempt to have the phrase “if qualified” removed from federal contracts that give hiring preference to Indians in some areas.

Mrs. Freeman said she has heard that phrase used against blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans in hearings across the nation.

“I feel like I’m hearing a broken record,” she commented after several employers said they hire Indians “if they are qualified.  What bothers me is that the word ‘qualified’ only applies to minorities.  It is an excuse for discrimination.”

She said the commission will likely urge new laws.

Chronic Indian problems exist, she asserted, because existing civil rights laws are not enforced.

Other hearings will be held in 1973 concerning both reservation and non-reservation Indians in other areas of the nation.  A special hearing is to be convened early next year to hear problems on the Navajo reservation, the Nation’s largest.