Now, when this Garrison Dam was built and the mass relocation had to be effected, what happened was that our Indians went through a complete shuffle. All of our organizations, such as religious organizations, political organizations, and so on, were completely disrupted and destroyed. Those Indians, who had formerly occupied a certain area and had a community of their own, had to scatter out. Today we find ourselves with new neighbors, a new kind of environment.

I am told when you impose a change on any group of people, and this is true whether this group of people is Chinese, Africans, or whatever they are, that three things happen. You have hostility, you have self-destruction, and you have apathy. Believe me, I have seen all of

this.

So, today our problem is to bring these people, reestablish these community organizations and organizational structures, and put them back into a functioning status.

For this reason, I believe that the National Service Corps will help considerably.

I do believe firmly that the time has come for a change. The time has come to try a new approach, believe me.

That is the extent of my statement, Senator.

Senator BURDICK. And you believe, do you not, Carl, that this legislation will provide for that new approach?

Mr. WHITMAN. Yes, I believe that the $5 million that everybody seems to be concerned about will serve as a gimmick that will make the production go into really high gear.

Senator BURDICK. I believe you were in the room this morning when the Attorney General testified?

Mr. WHITMAN. Yes, sir.

Senator BURDICK. Did you hear the various steps and the various duties outlined for the Peace Corps man in the Apache area, what he might do?

Mr. WHITMAN. Yes.

Senator BURDICK. Do you think a Peace Corps man could do a simillar job in Berthold?

Mr. WHITMAN. We made an application laying out our situation to them. I think that heretofore the Bureau of Indian Affairs has made a mistake in their views by trying to offer a blanket solution. I certainly don't expect the National Service Corps to make the same mistake.

Senator BURDICK. Could you briefly outline specifically, or as specifically as you can, some of the things that the corpsmen could do on the Berthold Reservation?

Mr. WHITMAN. First, we have a self-helf housing program that is in the making at present. This is self-help to the last degree. It concerns people, Indians who live off the reservation just right next to the New Town which is located off the reservation. This group of people has been disowned by practically everybody.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs says that because they live off the reservation they are no longer their responsibility. The State of North Dakota states these are Indians, so, therefore, they are not their responsibility.

The New Town has a tendency like everybody else to go on hoping that a problem will disappear automatically if you ignore it long enough.

There has been a tendency to sweep the problem under the rug and keep it hidden. Anyway, they were ignored.

I went to this group and had a meeting with them and motivated them to the extent that they want to do something about their situation.

For this reason, they decided on a self-help program. However, they are trying to gather the money themselves, and I want to assure you that money is one scarce commodity in this place. Even under those circumstances so far they have accumulated $700 so far. However, when they get to this new place what we will run into is the fact that we don't have any skilled carpenters to show them how to build homes. We don't have a skilled electrician ot show them how to wire their homes. We don't have any skilled plumber to show them how to put the plumbing fixtures in.

We would like to have a landscaper who will come and help them landscape this new place.

One of their objectives in this new self-help housing is that they want to make this new community the best community in the world. After meeting with them, I am sure they are going to make the best community in the world.

That is the reason why if some people with these skills will come and show them how to do things, it will be a great help. The National Service Corps can do that.

Senator BURDICK. In other words, the byproduct of this program would be an upgrading and retraining of many of these Indian people in these new skills?

Mr. WHITMAN. Yes, sir. In the process of self-help, this is one of the results. Proceeding on this through self-help these skills would be learned and from this will further economic development.

What I am getting at is this economic development will be the natural sequence to this self-help housing.

Senator BURDICK. What other areas would corpsmen help in?

Mr. WHITMAN. I certainly think the educational section should not be overlooked. In our particular reservation I think we have been somewhat discriminated against. As a matter of fact, the Indians do not have any control as to who should be selected to teach, for instance. For this reason I think we need to have our educational system revamped to the extent that it fits our particular need.

That is why I am hoping that the National Service Corps will find somebody who is an expert in the educational field who will have the courage to tear down the educational system on the reservation and build it from the bottom up.

This is probably true of the national education system as it is. It more or less consists of patchwork and nobody has the courage to tear it down and start from the bottom up. I believe it has lost its focus.

Senator BURDICK. What might be done in the area of health?

Mr. WHITMAN. In the area of health, certainly again this self-help housing would be one of the ways of meeting and improving this health situation.

Senator, I would like to answer this generally, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been concerned mostly with the effects, not the cause. I am more concerned about attacking the cause. In our particular case, the cause is economic and social generally. Once you take care of these things, then I am going on the assumption or at least the hypothesis that their health will naturally improve, that the economics of the people naturally will start earning more money.

In talking to the superintendent, I accused him of not doing anything. He said, "Yes, we are. We are going to enlarge our welfare facilities; we are going to build a new jail; we are going to build a new health clinic."

I replied, "10 years from now you will be increasing these facilities as long as you don't kill the germ that is causing these effects." I am going on the premise that the National Service Corps will concentrate on the causes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs will be taking care of the effects.

Mr. BURDICK. Thank you very much. You have given us some very enlightening testimony and I think it will be a help to the committee.

Mr. WHITMAN. Thank you.

Senator BURDICK. Is Mr. Clifton Clemens here?

STATEMENT OF CLIFTON CLEMENS, MEMBER, CITY COUNCIL, WASCO, CALIF.

Mr. CLEMENS. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I am happy to appear here today to enter into the record my personal testimony in support of S. 1321.

My name is Clifton Clemens. I am a businessman renting property and am a member of the city council from Wasco, Calif., located in Kern County in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Wasco, a small, prosperous town with a population of approximately 8,000, is completely surrounded by irrigated farmland. It is a typical basically agricultural valley town.

Located within the city limits is the Wasco Housing Authority which operates a 144-unit farm labor center as part of its overall program. This center, maintained by the local housing authority for the past 13 years, has housed over 3,000 families and has supported itself entirely from its rental income. Because of its short occupancy periods and limited income, there has been no major repair possible on these units; consequently, they are in poor condition. Community laundry and toilet facilities located outside the shabby one-room living units are long since outmoded and certainly not conducive to good sanitation and health habits.

At present, there are approximately 700 persons living in this crowded area. Many of these people are not migrants by choice but are caught in a pattern which is their only means of an earned livelihood. In this erratic pattern of existence the children are cheated out of the opportunities normally provided for others. They have little or no feeling of individuality, or of being wanted or needed in a community.

Fortunately, for the farmers and business people of this area, the center has been a temporary shelter for the families who move with

the crops. Thus, they have been available, when needed, to help chop or thin the cotton, hoe the weeds, pick up the potatoes, prune the process fruit crops, along with many other hand-labor operations necessary to our prosperity.

Unfortunately, we who have progressed through automation, consolidation, organization, and so forth, have been so busy with our own personal problems that we have neglected to give adequate, if any, thought to the needs, the rights, or the problems of the less fortunate migrant people. On the other hand our school authorities, as well as health and welfare agencies have been very conscious of the real problems of the families who follow the crops.

Our school district is faced with the problem of educating about 200 additional youngsters during the months of April and May. These additional youngsters usually have not attended schools to any extent during the year. Many do not speak or understand enough English to benefit greatly from the usual instruction. An evaluation of the achievement level of these youngsters reveals that 80 percent are 1 to 3 years educationally retarded in relation to their ability.

At least three corpsmen could be used in conjunction with the elementary schools. They could help overcome language barriers by teaching basic English; help integrate migrant children into regular classes; help in developing and encouraging parent responsibility. They could work both in the school and in the migratory camp, under a parent-child-corpsmen relationship. The latter would promote confidence, understanding, and trust, and allay suspicion or fear. The problems noted by the school people are common to nearly all areas and groups along the migrant trail. While these problems are major in specific areas they are common to many States, and thus require the interest, inspiration, and encouragement of self-improvement on a person-to-person basis with the assistance of a National Service Corps.

I believe the city council, supported by both the elementary and high school authorities, the local housing board, as well as other civic groups would request a National Service Corps program for this area.

It seems to be the consensus that the duration for the project should be at least 2 years and possibly 3. The project would not duplicate or replace existing projects or personnel. Rather, it would supplement and vitalize present inadequate efforts.

Phasing out would depend upon quality of the job done and the community consciousness developed during a National Service Corps program.

Agriculture is mechanizing, too. The automatic cottonpicker is a highly complex machine. Each does the work of about 40 farmworkers and costs about $20,000, but it is not simple to operate one. Is a person with a third-grade education going to run one of these? Unless the migrants, and seasonal farm laborers, get more education or training, they will find it difficult to compete for jobs which require operating the new farm machinery.

At this time many workers specialize in working in a few crops and move with them rather than changing from crop to crop in the same locality. Actually, as many as three different labor forces are now used in Kern County during the course of the work season. Why should a farmworker in Kern County move his family to Riverside

County to pick potatoes when he could work right at home picking peaches or grapes? Despite the advance of automation there continues a need for skilled hand labor.

Mechanical cotton-chopper, cotton-picking machines, automatic potato-harvesting machines, and many others have changed crop practices in this area. However, with the planting of new grape vineyards, nursery stock, fruit-and-nut orchards, and numerous vegetable crops, the need for seasonal hand labor still exists and will

continue.

One of the goals of the National Service Corps, again, would be to help increase the variety of skills among the workers so that they can better fulfill the communities' needs over a longer period of time, thus reducing the migration necessary for livelihood.

Corpsmen could be used to teach these farm skills—driving, pruning, care of stock, and farm-machinery repair.

The health habits of these families leave much to be desired. Illness is carried from camp to camp, and strikes hardest at the very young. Babies die senselessly from diarrhea. Because of poor food habits their resistance is low to a multitude of illnesses, compared to the resident child whose parents can provide him with decent, sanitary home conditions.

A corpsman is vitally needed to work with the migrant mothers teaching homemaking, basic child care, and sanitation.

The National Service Corps with dedicated and competent personnel could do much to bring about community consciousness of our "across the tracks" needs. This person-to-person motivation can and will have far-reaching, long-range benefits in the dignity of achievement on the part of those for whom it is designed. This may sound a little idealistic, but compared to trips to the moon and around the earth in orbit, it is not too unrealistic.

The real values of the National Service Corps effort will accrue not only to the helped but to the helpers if this job is well done.

Here I would like to say that I speak with little more than average experience in this particular area, having spent in 1960 6 months on the island of Sardinia working with hard core refugees who had been moved from one part of the country to another, finally winding up. in southern Italy in the area of Naples. These people, hard core refugees, needed the help of understanding people, people with a little experience, who could help them to want to do the things that they ought to do, to begin wanting to live again.

When we, the people, understand the problem, we can do something about it. Many of the children of the moving masses have little or no opportunity for self-improvement because there is no one to advise them. The parents are busy in the fields, sometimes leaving the small children with older ones in the cabins, and other times taking them to the fields to play in the dirt or to sleep in the hot, dusty cars. And the flies are very thick in the heat and dust of that situation. Children have been killed in past years by being run over by trucks or pickups in the field, when they have found a shady place under a burlap sack to sleep, and the pickup trucks have run over them.

Alert corpsmen working on a common level of understanding can guide, advise, and encourage these children and youth to better living with dignity. The problems involved are not local or common to