50 Apply for Africa Teaching Plan; Indian Reservation Project Proposed

Plans are being drafted for a project to send 12 University students to work on Sioux reservations in the Dakotas this summer, Byron Stookey, Jr. '54, associate director of Advanced Standing, announced yesterday.

According to Stookey, Dean Monro will receive a written outline of the program on March 20, which he plans to submit to the University for approval at the end of the month. If the project is sanctioned, Stookey will begin making appeals to several foundations for financial support.

Under present plans, Harvard and Radcliffe students selected for the program would leave for reservations on June 26, to live and work with the Indians until Sept. 8.

Project Based on Indian Requests

The project is based entirely on the requests of the Indians themselves, stressed Dorothy Lee, lecturer in Anthropology and a co-sponsor of the project with Stookey. Personal contact was made with Indians on South Dakota reservations "to find out what they want, and not what we think they ought to want. They are overwhelmed enough by projects cooked up in Washington without invitation," she said.

The Sioux tribes have recommended recreational supervision, teaching, farming, research and industrial counseling as the work they need most.

The students would do most of their recreational work on the playgrounds. Projected activities include "keeping the children 'alive' during the summer," and teaching the Indians how to use facilities "which are just rusting away now because they don't know what to do with them," Miss Lee commented.

The Indians have also requested students to teach preschool children and to do research on the comparative living conditions of Indians and whites. A study of this sort would, they feel, help to combat existing prejudice.

Other jobs would involve working with delinquents on a reservation farm and aiding in the relocation of a Sioux village which must be moved to free area for a federal dam and highway.

If the present proposal is accepted, it will serve as a pilot for an expanded program which might eventually include volunteer work in New York's Harlem, in Pueblo villages in New Mexico, and possibly with migrant laborers, tenant farmers, and share croppers.

One purpose of the plan is to act as a training course for students who wish to participate in international peace corps projects. A summer's work in this kind of program could eventually become a prerequisite for working abroad, Miss Lee noted.