Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/48

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Findings and Recommendations
21

ordinated, and the Indian Service has not had the benefit of the expert staff that some of these agencies maintain.

The question must also be raised as to whether the relationship of the Indian Service to the churches and the missionaries could not be materially improved by closer coöperation, particularly in developing and executing social and economic programs. In several jursdictions there was some evidence of friction between the government personnel and the missionaries or between missionaries of different denominations. Where this friction exists the Indians often take sides and constructive developmental work is retarded. Responsibility for such a situation is not invariably one-sided. Several missionaries suffer materially from lack of adequate support, from isolation, and from lack of close contacts with the churches or boards that have sent them into the Indian field. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that they sometimes lose perspective and become involved in controversies over what are after all relatively minor matters. When such controversies arise they frequently involve religious matters in a degree sufficient to make them extremely difficult and delicate from the standpoint of government administration. One of the problems of the Indian Service is how to reduce this friction and to prevent it from hampering progress.

Recommendations. The fundamental requirement is that the task of the Indian Service be recognized as primarily educational, in the broadest sense of that word, and that it be made an efficient educational agency, devoting its main energies to the social and economic advancement of the Indians, so that they may be absorbed into the prevailing civilization or be fitted to live in the presence of that civilization at least in accordance with a minimum standard of health and decency.

To achieve this end the Service must have a comprehensive, well-rounded educational program, adequately supported, which will place it at the forefront of organizations devoted to the advancement of a people. This program must provide for the promotion of health, the advancement of productive efficiency, the acquisition of reasonable ability in the utilization of income and property, guarding against exploitation, and the maintenance of reasonably high standards of family and community life. It must extend to adults as well as to children and must place special emphasis on the