Albert Bender: Obama must do more for jobs in Indian Country

President Obama has said that he will issue executive orders where Congress will not act. We can rest assured that Congress will do nothing to help American Indians in the jobs category; hence, executive orders are a must.

In regard to Native American unemployment I had written, in the Native press, what Obama could do early on in his presidency based on programs initiated during the Great Depression of the 1930s. During that era thousands of Native Americans were employed on reservations under a separate division of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in soil erosion control, forestation improvement, restoration of grazing lands and other land-based conservation programs. American Indians were employed in developing natural resources on reservations across the country. This division of the CCC was called the Indian Emergency Conservation Work (IECW) program or the Indian Division of the CCC, popularly abbreviated as the ID-CCC.

The CCC itself was established as an agency to provide employment and training to young men and war veterans, and separately to a limited extent to young American Indian men who could not find work otherwise during the Great Depression. The CCC included public works projects and also conservation and the development of natural resources, which is where reservations were involved. Ironically, because of these programs, for many Indian peoples, the Great Depression was a time of comparative plenty due to the CCC. Participants received food, clothing and a base monthly wage.

During this time officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) became very excited over having an Indian component in the then newly formed CCC. These authorities knew that the reservations were in dire need of soil erosion control, forestation improvements, restoration of grazing lands and other CCC-type projects that could provide employment to Native Americans. Further, BIA leaders strongly believed that Indians should have their own organization apart from the regular CCC. President Roosevelt heartily approved it. In the first program sign-up period over 14,000 Native Americans were employed in just six months' time.