INDIANS: Twin Stalemates

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A solution might have been reached early last week were it not for another stalemate in Washington. This one was between the Justice Department, which had been called in because of possible federal law violations, and the Interior Department, which runs the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That agency is in many ways the core of AIM'S grievances. Justice Department officials and AIM last week reached a tentative agreement, whereby the Indians would lay down their arms and walk out of the camp, if a top Interior Department official would show up at Wounded Knee the following day to negotiate a list of AIM grievances.

Rift. Incredibly, the Interior Department balked. In a state of confusion since the firing of several BIA officials and the illness of Secretary Rogers Morton, who is being treated for prostate cancer, Interior had reacted to the entire Wounded Knee affair with stubbornness. Marvin Franklin, the acting director of the BIA and himself an Indian, said that he would rather quit than talk with AIM leaders. "This is strictly a law-enforcement problem, a Justice Department matter," he told TIME Correspondent David Beckwith. "How can you deal with criminals? How can you handle revolutionaries?"

As the rift between Justice and Interior grew, White House officials became more and more impatient. At week's end they took charge of the Wounded Knee affair for the first time and accepted Assistant Attorney General Harlington Wood's plea that Interior officials be forced to take some action. Franklin was ordered to fly to South Dakota to deal with the Indian leaders. As negotiations progressed, a settlement seemed nearer. But no one was quite as optimistic as Franklin, who declared rather cavalierly before flying from Washington that the situation was "not as serious as those Wild West movies on television would have you believe. All those people on the reservation are related, you see. and they all have a lot of fun."