Place in an atmosphere of indian activism and even militancy. And in a famous incident, a group of native american activists took over Alcatraz Island in 1969,reclaiming it as indian land during their 18 month occupation. Amidst this assertion of cultural identity and land claims, president nixon advanced a successful proposal to repeal termination,and congress acted on nixons reform proposals. In his special message to congress on july 8, 1970, president nixon said, both as a matter of justice and as a matter of enlightened social policy, we must begin to act on the basis of what the indians themselves have long been telling us. The time has come to break decisively with the past and to create conditions for a new era in which the indian future is determined by indian acts and indian decisions. When president nixon returned the sacred site of new mexico to the people of taos pueblo in a ceremony, it symbolized the fundamental shift in u. S. Government policy towards American Indian people. At the signing of the legislation, an taos elder said a new day begins not only for the American Indian but for all the americans in this country. And indeed, from Richard Nixons administration through the present day, american president s have been disposed to view full citizenship and tribal selfdetermination as a foundation of u. S. Indian policy. We will hear today from our panelists about the key role president nixon and members of his administration, contemporaneous leaders and others played in implementing this historic move to what president nixon called a new and balanced relationship between the United States government and the first americans. It is the individuals involved, their motivations, and their points of view that make this material particularly rich and absorbing. For history is not just about ideas, but about particular people and perspectives. Our speakers, especially those who helped formulate and implement this transformation of the federal governments relationship with tribal governments, are uniquely situated to explore this fascinating and important story and bring it vividly to life for us this morning. Now it is my privilege to introduce the moderator of this mornings forum. Wallace johnson served as assistant attorney general for land and Natural Resources in the Nixon Administration. During his tenure there, he created the indian rights litigation section. Previously, he served as special assistant to president nixon and on several committee assignments. Johnson also serves as a trustee of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in cody, wyoming, which houses the plains indian museum. Please join me in welcoming mr. Johnson. [applause] mr. Johnson i will tell you, it is cold in cody. I talked to my wife out there this morning and she said it is 14 degrees at our ranch. I said, im not coming home. [laughter] my job is to provide an overview for this conversation and introduce the panelists and moderate the conversation. The fact is i am sure that our panelists will engage in an active conversation in such a way that you will forget i am around. But i do want to provide an overview of what this is all about. This is the third panel discussing essentially the same issue. We had two previous panels at the Gilcrease Museum in tulsa last spring. Basically, what we are doing is looking at those president ial papers like historians, but we have got people who were active in developing the concepts of those documents, who actually worked on them, and or who are able to sit back and interpret what they have meant as we examine the last 40 years looking at the very question that we have posited on the board. 1968 was a turning point. I am now talking a little bit as a historian, even though i am a lawyer. A turning point because lots of things came together in a very positive way and lots of things that came together in a positive way made a real difference. And it is that real difference we want to identify for historians in the future. Now, very much what we are doing is like pulling a tulip apart. Because as we get into this further, we learn more about what we know and what we dont know. And lots of what we dont know will be brought into better focus this morning, but in a way that future historians can examine the tapes of these conversations, the documents that will be developed as part of a Research Guide, and begin to get a better sense of the significance of actions that were initiated during president nixons time. Here is sort of a real short explanation of what happened in those first four hours of taping in tulsa. We know that we know that president nixon grew up in a very small, quaker enclave in california. And then he went to whittier. And at whittier, there was a person that influenced him significantly called chief newman. Now, can we point to the is way better than we are yet today. We have to intuit some of these things. And we know that he oversaw a process with people that developed a pretty meaningful change in historic direction with respect to the former policy of establishing selfdetermination. Now, and im going to be challenging some of the lawyers, they are all lawyers, on our panel, to talk about the nature of sovereignty in the constitutional context because the tribes are sovereign and yet they are dependent. What does that mean . How has that played out in history . What did it mean back then, 40 years ago, as this was all under development . So, that is what this panel is all about. There is the foundation from those first two discussions. Some of these panels all three of these panelists are the same, but other people have contributed. All distinguished scholars and public servants. And essentially, we are building on that foundation, but we will talk a little bit about it too because we need to bring this panel into perspective because we have learned a lot since then. I am honored to be part of this conversation because i am dealing with three panelists who are extremely distinguished in their career, and i will briefly introduce them. And then turn it over to them and their preliminary remarks, i will ask them to explain in greater detail their backgrounds because their resumes are so long you cannot read them. I will start at the far end, with Professor Bob anderson. Im only going to say about bob that he is a young scholar who is embedded in the Indian Movement and basically has the ability to look at the elaboration of history in a very positive way, in a nonpartisan way, even though he was part of a previous democratic administration. I cannot describe reid chambers. He calls himself a subaltern to me when we were working together back in the 1970s. Well, thank you, but the fact of the matter is that this guy is a scholar, hes a lawyer, and he has devoted his entire career to representing tribal interests. He is a giant in his field. And i am leading up i wont say this is the best or that the last is best, but i will guarantee you that i have never seen a person with such passion as bobbie kilberg. She started as a white house fellow. And grabbed this issue when she was working with John Ehrlichman and has never let it go and has had a very distinguished career in government to this very day. But she has also done other things in the technology field, and as i said, i am challenging each of them to begin their remarks with explaining how they got into this area, what they have been doing since, and it will give us a context for our conversation. Dr. Lee huebner is not with us. Flu and winter have taken their toll. And there is another fellow who is very instrumental in these panels, jeff shepherd. He is the person that has organized them for the Nixon Foundation. He has a cold and could not come. He lost his voice. So, we are not limited in we wont be limited in our discussion, but i want to thank those two people who are both not feeling well and cannot be with us this morning. Now, use the podium if you want, but when we get to the conversation, we will just sit over here and talk. I would like to call on bobbie, who will start. [applause] ms. Kilberg good morning. Before i start, there is one more person actually, three more people in the audience that need to be recognized. One is sitting over there, sidi ward, who was chief of staff for Vice President agnew, had a Critical Role in developing the indian message. The second is president nixons brother. If you will please stand up . [applause] ms. Kilberg he is here to keep us all grounded. Can you all hear me . Yes. And the third is tom. Will you please stand up and be recognized . [applause] ms. Kilberg i will, i promise you, get to how i got interested in this as i go through my remarks. But my role here is really to set the stage on the development of the indian message, and give you a flavor for what went on at the white house because i think that is very interesting and relevant to how the message came out in the end. President nixons july 8, 1970 message on indian policy was historic. In a definitive break from the past and forcefully committed the United States to a policy of selfdetermination without termination, and it provided the Building Blocks to make that policy a reality. Two initial important observations. First, i have literally been asked over and over again in the last 42 years, what was the origin and genesis of president nixons interest . On september 27, 1968, as a president ial candidate, nixon issued a statement to the National Congress of American Indians convention in omaha, and that laid out significant points that appeared in his july 8, 1970 message. His july message was much stronger and more comprehensive than the nci statement, but many of the elements were in that statement. Some commentators say president nixon was influenced by an earlier 1968 message from president johnson that started a review in indian policy. Something he read alvin josephys memorandum but i think, and this was alluded to, i think there is a simpler and more accurate answer, which is that president nixon personally held a very strong moral belief that federal native american policy was destructive, it was discriminatory, it was debilitating, and it simply was not right. Forced assimilation and termination ran against everything in his moral core. As a young white house fellow, i obviously did not know the president well, but i did get sufficient glimpses of his thought processes to say with some confidence that he did personalize his beliefs. And in this case, that personalization related to coach wallace norman. His football coach at whittier college. Coach Wallace Newman was a member of the la jolla band of the Mission Indian tribe. The president said on more than one occasion that the coach had a profound influence on his life and had inspired him and his teammates to be confident, competitive, and to never give up. If you go back to those days, that was a long time ago, the president felt that coach newman had never given up, even though he was very much discriminated against. That was a time when native americans and other minorities simply were not selected as coaches for a major football programs. Rather than, with all due respect to whittiers program, nor were they selected to be major coaches or players. The president believed that coach newman wouldve been an allamerican if it had been a different time, and then he wouldve been a coach at a Big Ten School if it had been a different time but that was not possible in those days. Nixon thought it was terribly unfair and i heard him say more than once that he promised that if he ever had a chance, he would correct the wrongs against native americans on behalf of coach newman. I think the july 8 indian message was just part payback for coach newman. It is also consistent with the president s belief that you provide opportunity for everyone but you dont force everyone into the same mold. His strong federal Financial Support for historically black colleges for that same pattern. Selfdetermination and opportunity without forced assimilation. President johnsons 1968 indian message did mention the concept of selfdetermination. The establishment of the National Council for indian opportunity was important. The views on the trust responsibility. The Senate Subcommittee on indian education. And the new open approach to working with Indian Tribes and communities all provided a context within this framework for the president s message. The second important observation, and this was very important, president nixon had a very topdown management style and John Ehrlichman was head of domestic policy. Period. End of conversation. Everything went up from john and everything came down from john. We will never know how much of this specific policy was really john, and how much of it were the president s personally. But it did not matter because John Ehrlichman had the authority to speak for the president and he did so. We need to give John Ehrlichman major credit for the president s indian message and policy because he was integral to it, he was central to it, he was a central decisionmaker. Let us turn to how that message came about. It was october 1969, and it was 7 30 a. M. As ron walker knows, that was the white house senior staff meeting. I attended that not because i was a member of the white house senior staff. I was a 23yearold white house fellow. But because i was a white house fellow, i was given that privilege. The senior staffers were at the table. That morning, john opened the meeting by saying the president had talked with him and wanted a thorough review of federal indian policy, and he was not pleased with the present state of affairs. John also noted that the Vice President had attended ncis october 8 convention in albuquerque to set the stage. John looked at everyone in the room and said, does anyone have expertise in this area . There was an eerie silence. When no one else volunteered, i raised my hand and said, i went to Yale Law School. That explains all you need to know. I went to gail law school, and my thesis at Yale Law School had been on Community Control and indian education. I had spent about three weeks on the navajo reservation my senior year with some of my colleagues from ale who had already graduated, working on an education lawsuit against the bia, which was brought by the First Program on the reservation. We had done that on behalf of the navajo chapter. That was about all anybody needed, so i was drafted. John asked another to work on the project and instructed all of us to work with sidi ward and the Vice President. They assigned Brad Patterson as executive assistant to work with me. One of the first steps we took was to consult with bob robertson, director of the and cio, which reported to Vice President agnew. Ncio had been established by the executive order by president johnson in his march 6, 1968 message. It was chaired by the Vice President and this is an interesting list of people on the council. The secretaries of interior, agriculture, commerce, labor. The director of oeo and six indian leaders. In august 1970, president nixon expanded the council by executive order to include the attorney general, who should have been on it from the beginning, and two other additional indian leaders for a total of eight. Ncio had already started a series of age forums on indian issues and programs around the country, taking reservation and urban indian input and building on president johnsons message. Their goal was to prepare a set of recommendations for consideration by the president and we welcomed that input vehicle. On january 26, 1970, Vice President agnew held a Cabinet Meeting in the west wing of the white house. In attendance were, and this is very relevant, the Vice President , the six indian members of the council, finch, labor secretary schulz, the agriculture secretary, the commerce secretary, hud secretary romney. As well as bob robertson, sidi ward, Brad Patterson, and me. The six indian members were appointed by president johnson. Bob robertson and the members of the Indian Council presented their findings and the set of recommendations for consideration by the council. Harris, a comanche from oklahoma, had been chosen to speak on behalf of the indian members and when she spoke, it literally was so moving and powerful and charismatic that the room was literally spellbound. It was really something to see. We took the nci draft recommendations and we circulated them formally to each member, which was standard white house procedure, as well as the attorney general and the director of the new office of management and budget. These officials sent recommendations to their Senior Department executives for review and comment. The Vice President through sidi ward was a big supporter of the many proposed initiatives. A lot of them. We held many subsequent meetings, especially with interior, omb, and oeo, to massage and finalize the recommendations. In these recommendations, selfdetermination took enteral stage as did rejecting termination. And further recommendations included the right to control and operate federal programs through contracts, education reform, including the right of indian communities to control their own schools, economic legislation, includin