ustxtxb_obs_1981_10_09_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

nity. “There is enormous need to reeducate the Indian people, to help them understand that they can be more than imperfect white men,” he says. “Housing and alcoholism are not the problems. They are the symptoms. The Indian people don’t have a history of dealing with the city or with alcohol for that matter.” With other sources of funding, perhaps from Dallas or the state, the DIC health program might survive. If not, it will probably again become a volunteer clinic in which all services will have to be donated by health-care professionals in the city \(and that of course depends on their Lucero would like to see DIC coordinate its efforts to a greater extent with However, because AIC is located in East Dallas and DIC is in Oak Cliff and because of what have been called somewhat vaguely “political differences,” the two organizations have been largely independent of each other. AIC was founded by the first group of Indians who came to Dallas as a result of the relocation program of the BIA. At present AIC operates a pre-school program in East Dallas, Oak Cliff, and Fort Worth, alcoholic counseling service in Grand Prairie, and some nutritional services. However, AIC was notified in May that their request for 1981-82 funding through the Department of Education was denied. The present director of AIC is Jody Tiddark, a full-blooded Comanche, who looks almost Caucasian. Interestingly enough, in a 1972-73 survey, 90.6% of the respondents stated they had no difficulty being identified as Indians in Dallas and 89% said that they were proud to be an Indian. Yet one gets the impression from Indian administrators in Dallas that “looking Indian” often creates various problems. Lucero maintains that “To make it in the white man’s world Indians are often forced to lose allegiance to tribe and community.” But then again, Lucero explains that “Indians are stereotyped in such a way that people expect them to look a certain way high cheekbones, straight black hair, brownish skin, and so on, but what most people don’t understand is that that doesn’t always hold true. Some Indians are fair-skinned and have blond hair and blue eyes.” Lucero himself is a blend of Seminole, Mescalero Apache, Irish, Mexican, and black and proud of it. The man said to be the only Indian millionaire in the Metroplex, Bo McGee, president of Forward Manufacturing Co., which produces oilfield and earthmoving equipment in Fort Worth, points out that “to succeed an Indian, regardless of what he looks like, regardless of Deanna Cheshewalla, DISD Indian Education Director tribal identity, must accept the white man’s ways.” McGee calls himself “an ultra-conservative businessman, a Republican, who shies away from Indian politics because they’re too radical, too liberal.” Asked about other successful Indian businessmen in the Metroplex, McGee said he didn’t know of any. He has a reputation among some Indian administrators of not hiring many Indians. “Out of about 50 employees, two or three are Indians,” he says. “I’d love to hire more, but they are just not qualified. They don’t have the necessary training.” According to Bill Koweno, director of the CETA program at DIC, “it wasn’t until CETA was initiated in 1974 that Indians really started to have a chance to make it in a highly competitive job market.” Although Indians were getting blue collar work “truck drivers, welders, auto mechanics, printers” Koweno feels that in the last six years the training through CETA has been beneficial. Overall, though, Koweno has mixed feelings about the BIA: “They paid for me to get a college degree, a B.S. in business administration in 1970 from Cameron University in Oklahoma, but then again, in Dallas, the BIA could have done a lot more. They were too paternalistic and caused individuals not to learn everyday business practices. For example, in any Indian business transaction the BIA acted as a mediator, a middle-man. And consequently the BIA often hurt the Indians in their attempts to establish their own businesses.” Generally, the problems Indians have getting jobs and starting their own businesses stem from poor education. Deanna Cheshewalla, director of Indian Education for the Dallas Independent. “We’d fight back, but we barely know how. Bernice Johnson Photos by Alan Govenar the biggest obstacle facing Indians in the schools is that “there is virtually nothing they can relate to. In most cases the curriculum is planned in such a way that it does not take Indians into consideration. After all, Indian people know that they have lived on this continent for maybe 50,000 years, but when they get to school and look at the history books they discover that there are only two pages written on Indians.” During the ten years she has worked for the DISD Cheshewalla feels that she has made some progress counseling Indian students, tutoring, and writing cultural reference guides, which can be used by teachers as resource materials. At present, Cheshewalla is revising the reference guides, focusing on the four major tribes in Dallas Choctaw, Sioux, Navajo, and Cherokee. Like the directors of the other Indian programs in Dallas, Cheshewalla is uncertain about the prospects for continued funding. If the Indian education program is curtailed, Cheshewalla fears that the consequences will be devastating: “In Dallas the Indian population is younger than it is in other cities. Most Indians are between the ages of 18 and 35, and their children are in grades K through six. If we lose funding, there’s a good chance that many of these children will never graduate from high school.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11