Letter from Glenn Emmons to Senator Langer Regarding Payment for Lands Inundated by the Garrison Dam Project, December 28, 1953

This letter, dated December 28, 1953, from Glenn L. Emmons, Commissioner of the United States (US) Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), to US Senator William Langer, acknowledges receipt of Langer’s letter of December 9 enclosing a copy of a petition Langer had received requesting full per capita payment to the members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation of the balance remaining from the funds authorized by the act of October 29, 1949 (63 Stat. 1026). Emmons recounts for Langer that a per capita payment of $1,000 was made to each member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in accordance with a resolution adopted by the Tribal Business Council on April 13, 1951, and approved by the [US] Department [of the Interior, of which the BIA is unit] on May 4 1951. However, Emmons continues, “after the per capita payment was made and before other provisions of the resolution were carried out by the Tribal Business Council, the tribe[s] in a referendum in 1952 disapproved the resolution of April 13, 1951. An additional per capita payment of $200 was authorized on April 15, 1953.” Since then, Emmons writes, additional per capita payments have been held up for multiple reasons. Among them is the Bureau’s position that “a long-range program for the use of the remaining funds would be more desirable and beneficial than a per capita payment,” because the tribes desired continuing responsibility on the part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to furnish services to the Indians notwithstanding the approximately $5,000,000 available to them. Emmons adds that the matter of a full per capita payment of the remaining balance was reviewed recently by the US Department of the Interior, with the outcome that “the Department did not favor a full per capita payment of all tribal funds remaining...because of the need for authorizing these funds as a part of a program looking toward the termination of Federal responsibility for administering the affairs of the Three Affiliated Tribes,” a position, he writes, that is “strengthened by the approval of House Concurrent Resolution 108, which states that it is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United states subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are practicable to other citizens of the United states to end their status as wards of the United States and to grant them all the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizens. See also: Letter from Senator Langer to Glenn Emmons Regarding Payment for Lands Inundated by Garrison Dam Project, December 9, 1953 Letter from Senator Langer to Floyd Montclair Regarding Payment for Lands Inundated by Garrison Dam Project, December 9, 1953https://commons.und.edu/langer-papers/1903/thumbnail.jp