Senator ABOUREZK. We have fourteen witnesses, total-fourteen sets of witnesses and the next witness will be number five, Pat Gardner. Is Pat Gardner here? The next witness will be number six and that's a set of witnesses, Roy Barr and Edward Gamble from Angoon. Are they here? Then we're moving right along here. Ed Thomas and Doug Modig from Ketchikan?

STATEMENT OF ED THOMAS, CHAIRMAN, INDIAN REORGANIZATION COUNCIL, KETCHIKAN INDIAN CORP., ACCOMPANIED BY DOUG MODIG, CHAIRMAN, JOHNSON-O'MALLEY PARENT COMMITTEE, AND COMMUNITY PLANNER

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you. My name is Ed Thomas. I am a Tlingit Indian residing in Ketchikan. I am chairman of the Indian Reorganization Council, which is called the Ketchikan Indian Corp. I'm also director of Indian education in Ketchikan. Doug here is the chairman of the district wide Johnson-O'Malley parent committee, and also the community planner underneath the grant we received under the grants part of Public Law 93-638-or we're going to receive, we hope. Did you have anything to say?

Mr. MODIG. I didn't prepare any particular comment, but I would like to respond to some of the questions that were asked earlier, specifically concerning whether or not we should have a regional kind of concept, or participation on a local level.

Senator ABOUREZK. I would like to hear your views on it.

Mr. MODIG. OK. Even though one of my positions is chairman of a regionalization committee, one of the concerns I have specifically has to do with whether we're going to get local input into the specific kinds of things that happen on a national basis and State basis and things that happen on a local basis.

For example, is the implementation of Public Law 93-638-what is it, where is it going, what has happened to it, why aren't the people informed, what will it take to get the things to happen at a local level that are supposed to happen?

I may somewhat get a little off course because of a lot of things that relate to that in that the actual implementation of Public Law 93-638 is kind of tied up in different kinds of issues and never ever gets to the community such as the contract negotiation problem with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Tlingit and Haida Central Council. Also the fact that our own particular community, that the grants haven't up until almost 6 months after the program had already started, or something like that.

Another concern is, if everyone wants to regionalize, if there is to be a regional kind of concept, how are we going to meet the needs of Ketchikan when the needs of Ketchikan may be different from, let's say, Craig or Klawock or Sitka or Petersburg?

Senator ABOUREZK. If you had a regional organization doing the contracting, wouldn't the regional organization go to the Ketchikan community and say, "Look, what do you need? We're representing you. What do you need? We've got some people that can come in and handle this for us, this particular contract," wouldn't they do that? Mr. MODIG. I'm sure that they would-I'm sure that's what their intention would be. However, how would that be feasible to do that?

Senator ABOUREZK. Why wouldn't it be?

Mr. MODIG. OK. I was talking with a person that was running for House of Representatives and they said-I asked them, "How are you going to meet the needs of the Ketchikan community?" Their response was, "I'd come to Ketchikan once every month and sit at the city council chambers and talk with the city council." The question I had was-was the city council meeting the needs of the people? They're not. Obviously, otherwise, there wouldn't be some of the social problems there are now. The problem has to do with contact and are you going to reach the people on the local level, the people that have some specific needs that need to be dealt with. What you're saying is you can blanket a problem and you can find some people that will represent you or a regional corporation that have a lot of particular responsibilities could meet any particular need on an individual basis or even a community basis.

Senator ABOUREZK. We're talking about self-determination contracting-let's take welfare services. How is that handled in your community right now? Who is handling the welfare?

Mr. MODIG. It's handled by the Tlingit and Haida Central Council, Southeast Agency.

Senator ABOUREZK. It's handled by them now. Are you satisfied with the way it's being handled?

Mr. MODIG. I don't have much contact with them. In other words, I would like to say, "No, I'm not happy with them," but I can't specifically give you facts and figures and say why I'm not happy with them. The only thing that I can say is that the people that aren't receiving services, it's obvious that they're not receiving services and nobody does anything about it until there's some documentation, until there's a needs assessment done and, you know, something very, very radical happens that would cause people to get interested. For me to say that Tlingit and Haida is not meeting the particular needs of the community, I cannot say that for sure.

Mr. THOMAS. In specific areas, there is shortcoming of the central council, of course, some of them like housing, low income housing and those areas where the social services itself, I think, is pretty well taken care of as far as Ketchikan is going but I think some of the other things like housing is really a big problem.

Senator ABOUREZK. All right, who handles the housing there now? Mr. THOMAS. Individual people.

Senator ABOUREZK. Who funds it, the BIA area office or what? Mr. THOMAS. There is no funding for housing in Ketchikan, Senator ABOUREZK. There is no housing program in Ketchikan? Mr. THOMAS. There is no housing program except the State program.

Senator STEVENS. I think T. & H. has been one of the most outstanding organizations in the country to move forward with a program. The question has been limitation of funds and the ability to get approval of designation-if you're talking about federally supported program. They're had probably—John, I think I'm right, that you had a major share of the units that had been approved in the whole State, haven't you, in this region?

Commissioner BORBRIDGE. Yes, that is correct in terms of housing. It would appear to me and I certainly don't want to paraphrase anything that the witnesses are attempting to bring to our attention-it almost seems that we have two things that we're looking at. One is the overall needs that our people in Ketchikan have, which may or may not be met at the present time; the other is the assessment of the delivery of those services given whatever resources the bureau or anyone else is providing. And the question of how adequately that is being done with the resources which in their totality may or may not be adequate. I sense there are two overall questions and we seem to be melting them together, but you're right in terms of what the council has done in various areas, Senator, certainly housing in other areas.

Mr. THOMAS. It's my feeling that we're getting in just a little of the kind of testimony that we'd like to present. We have been neglected in some areas, but we wanted to hash out some of those areas here. I think we're dealing with the act itself and the way it's going to affect communities like Ketchikan.

Senator STEVENS. I don't want to seem argumentative either to what you're saying. I think there is a need for a local assessment of what is the demand for any particular service, be it welfare, housing, or anything else. There also is a need for someone to assess the relative priority of the demand in Ketchikan as opposed to the demand in Craig, Hoonah, Klawock, Hydaburg, Juneau, anywhere else in the region, and someone has to make the tough decision-if you've got so many units to go into a particular region, who gets them first. I think we all admit that nationally, statewide, regionally, and locally, we have not had enough assets to meet total needs or total demands for services. But I think this region has done a better job than any other region in trying to marshal its assets to deliver the services, deliver the assistance that is available. I do believe that you've gotten about a third to a half of the new housing starts under the Federal housing programs in this area-for Alaska that is.

Mr. THOMAS. I think I'm aware of the housing part if you want to discuss housing all day, but what I'm trying to get at is they are on phase two's and three's in some of the villages and not one house has been built in Ketchikan under the Turnkey, and those kinds of things exist, you know. We have a total of about 1,700 Indians in that town and where is the justification line there when you talk about housing?

I think we're

Senator ABOUREZK. Have you ever tried to find out why there isn't any housing in Ketchikan?

Mr. THOMAS. Yes.

Senator ABOUREZK. Why is it?

Mr. THOMAS. Nobody is building any.

Senator ABOURZEK. Why haven't they built it?

Mr. THOMAS. Because they didn't have the kind of Government structure in the community which was forceful enough and the needs assessment wasn't done on the community by the

Senator ABOUREZK. You mean the Indian community wasn't agressive enough to go and get a housing project.

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. There were a lot of different things that the Native people did not address individually. When you get a town that

size, when you don't address it individually, you just don't address it.

Senator ABOUREZK. How would that be changed if we change the definition of who is going to administer 638 services, then?

Mr. THOMAS. Well, that's what I was trying to get to. When we talk about a definition of a town like Ketchikan where we have multiple, ethnic kind of a situation that include quite a few Tsimpseans that have been living there all their lives, they feel they do not have the input into these kinds of programs because they are not Tlingit or Haida. That's under the concept of having Tlingit and Haida administrating body. I am a Tlingit myself. I'm a delegate to the Tlingit and Haida Central Council and I am vice-chairman of the local Tlingit and Haida Chapter. However, I have to speak— we're talking about two-fifths of the population of Ketchikan whọ are not Tlingit or Haida; they feel left out of input into services and justly so when it comes to some of these things.

Particularly, it is very strong in our educational kind of program. As mentioned of Sitka, we have people who are not Tlingit or Haida who are most active in our programs.

As far as the regional concept, I'm not opposed to it. I think it's a good one. I think we might have to expand on it. The regular Tlingit and Haida structure so we can include some of these people-we might include some of the people that aren't Tlingit or Haida so they could have some input in determining their destiny as far as services

as well.

If I may, I'd like to go on through my testimony-we do have to catch a plane back to Ketchikan-then I will be open for some questioning.

Passing up the definition of Indian which you have before you, I'll go on to training technical assistants. As some of you may know, there is approximately in the neighborhood of $100,000 to Alaska for training and getting potential contractors aware of the laws, rules and regulations under Public Law 93-638.

In the past, so far as I can see, there has been much too much training going on in the BIA staff. Many people have been trained and very few of the potential contractors who would be the village tribal governing bodies; there have not been enough of those people included in this kind of training.

As a result, when we come to a testimony like this, lots of people don't even know what the impact of this particular act is and yet. we have a lot of trained BIA people, but when we make application, they tend to sit on the desks in their offices.

This can be probably pointed out much more clearly in the JohnsonO'Malley question. We've been working on Johnson-O'Malley southeast regional concept since last November. We've established some of the basis, we've contacted every community, every Johnson-O'Malley parent committee, every IEA parent committee and we had three meetings to form it and we set up bylaws. We set up the concept where we would contract the administration of the Johnson-O'Malley program and here we are in September and we have no program. It may not be a very big deal to some people, but we're talking about getting into the school system like in Ketchikan; it is very difficult if you don't start at the beginning of the year. Your curriculum is established,

your patterns are set and you have to wheedle it in later if you get funded.

Senator STEVENS. Could I interrupt? How much money are you talking about?

Mr. THOMAS. $125,000.

Senator STEVENS. That's substantial.

Mr. THOMAS. That's just in the district wide program. We have possibly $30,000 in two other programs who were applied for individually for individual school programs. We're talking in the neighborhood of $185,000.

These kind of programs, when they drag and you try to implement them all at once after the school year starts, is a problem. Not only that, the school district itself applies to other schools and if they don't get their funding, they are ready to dump it.

We have to fight very hard to get our Indian programs into where we have several different cultural ethnic groups in a community like Ketchikan, and it's very hard to maintain it when we lose the trust of the school district, as we mentioned before. In fact, just before I came up here, I got approached by the assistant superintendent of schools suggesting that we either get on the ball or forget about the program. That's how it is getting to be because if they start a program after the staffing has been done, they have to start a new procedure. As far as technical assistance portion which is a contract to the AFN, we have, as regional education parent committee in Southeast Alaska, opposed the AFN contract simply because from past experience-it's like somebody administering a program that's going on Miami from Omaha, Nebr. It's not that feasible for technical assistance. Even in southeast Alaska itself, it's just like administering a regional program on both sides of California. We're dealing with distances, and time is distance, and money also. That's why we oppose the AFN contract because history has proven that they have not given southeast Alaska the kind of technical assistance we believe necessary to have a good program.

I think we would, in fact, object to any portion of our grant to be utilized for the technical assistance that we do not ratify as governing body in our community.

I probably didn't touch everything. I kind of rushed through what is written down here, but I will be available for any kind of questioning.

Senator ABOUREZK. I have already kind of posed my questions to you and I have no more unless somebody else does.

Commissioner BORBRIDGE. I have a question, Mr. Chairman, a brief one and I think you've answered it in part. You have a statement, "we submitted a regional plan." Who would the "we" be specifically?

Mr. THOMAS. In what particular part, the JOM?

Commissioner BORBRIDGE. It was just a statement you made relative, I think, to JOM. You stated and I read specifically from your testimony, "In southeast Alaska, we have submitted a regional plan to the Bureau in the spring."

Mr. THOMAS. I'm sorry I didn't identify that. It was the regional Johnson-O'Malley administration program and we met and got the concurrence of all the tribal governments that were willing to participate.