Nation: The Forgotten & Forlorn

Their average life span is 21 years shorter than their fellow citizens'. Their unemployment rate is nearly 40%, ten times the national average. Some 50,000 American Indian families live in miser able huts, shanties, tents, abandoned cars. Half of their children never finish high school. Their sickness, illiteracy and poverty rank among America's worst. Their sad estate last week moved President Johnson to declare in a message to Congress: "No enlightened nation, no responsible government, no progressive people can permit this shocking situation to continue."

Sporadic cries of "Lo, the poor Indian!" have been raised ever since the red man lost his wars against the U.S. cavalry. Johnson's document, however, was the first presidential message ever to deal specifically with the subject. The President requested $500 million in federal programs, a boost of 10% over present outlays, to help "provide a standard of living for Indians equal to that of the country as a whole." Items would cover 10,000 Indian children under Head Start, set up a "model community school system," pay for 2,500 new houses a year, allocate $112 million in health projects, provide 600 more health aides in Indian communi ties, spend $22.7 million on community-action schemes and $25 million on concentrated employment plans and vocational training, organize a $500 million revolving-loan guarantee and insurance fund, and allot $30 million a year to build roads linking isolated Indian communities to the rest of society.

The presidential message galloped up Capitol Hill at a time when Indians, for all their poverty, may be in a stronger position than they were in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The supposedly vanishing Americans now number 600,000, more than twice the estimated U.S. Indian population at the time of Custer's last stand.