Show A Plan an to Help e the to Neglected Navajos The plight of the odd Navajo Indians who live Jive in the isolated region where the states of Utah Arizona New Mexico and Colorado join has frequently been called to public attention The federal government has been repeatedly criticized for neglecting these people after the white men took the best of their land and confined them to a reservation reservation reservation reser reser- which is incapable of supporting supporting supporting support support- ing them in a condition better than semi- semi starvation Now there is a proposal for helping the Navajos which comes close to home It is that all or part of the abandoned Bushnell General hospital at Brigham City be turned into inta a boarding school for Navajo children One of the major points of federal neglect of the Navajo has been tion There are schools for less than thana a third of the Navajo children Even where education is available facilities and teaching staffs are below accepted standards Several years ago Utah's superintendent of public instruction Dr E. E Allen Bateman criticized the federal government for this neglect He blamed a lack of educational facilities for Indian Indian Indian In In- dian children in southeastern Utah for a sharp increase in illiteracy in Utah Under the Bushnell program it is proposed that some 2000 of the Navajo children who have never had an opportunity to go to school be boarded at the abandoned hospital institution where they would be given basic schooling schooling schooling school school- ing taught to read and write and perhaps perhaps perhaps per per- haps trained in some vocations Whether or not this plan to use Bushnell Bushnell Bushnell Bush Bush- nell for a Navajo Indian school wins government government government gov gov- approval certainly there is a federal responsibility to do something for the education of these forgotten people eople Educational opportunity should be the birthright of every American American- and certainly these Indians have the first claim on the name American |