Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/72

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Findings and Recommendations
45

In supplementing the Indian incomes and in home decoration, encouragement should be given to native Indian arts and industries. They appeal to the Indians’ interest, afford an opportunity for self expression, and, properly managed, will yield considerable revenue, much more than can be secured by encouraging them to duplicate the handiwork of the whites. Their designs can be readily adapted to articles for which the commercial demand is reasonably good. Persons who have interested themselves in this field uniformly teport that the demand for Indian art work of high quality materially exceeds the supply, and that insofar as there is an over supply it consists of work of poor quality. A little intelligent cooperation and aid in marketing would doubtless tend rapidly to correct this difficulty.

In recreation and in other community activities the existing activities of the Indians should be utilized as the starting point. That some of their dances and other activities have objectionable features is of course true. The same thing is true of the recreation and the community activities of almost any people. The object should be not to stamp out all the native things because a few of them have undesirable accompaniments but to seek to modify them gradually so that the objectionable features will ultimately disappear. The native activities can be supplemented by those activities borrowed from the whites that make a distinct appeal to the Indians, notably athletics, music, and sewing, and other close work demanding manual skill. The Indians themselves should have a large hand in the preparation of the program.

The work for families and communities must be done by a well trained, well qualified personnel because to an exceptional degree its success turns on the quality of the workers employed. Mention has already been made of the personnel needed in these fields for the Division of Planning and Development. On the reservation five distinctive types of service must be rendered to families: (1) Health promotion, (2) adult education for home making, (3) promotion of economic efficiency, (4) treatment of personal maladjustments, and (5) community recreation. Through the Civil Service Commission eligible registers should be established for each of these five classes of positions so that specially qualified persons may be available for communities with outstanding problems of a specialized character. It will not generally be found necessary or