An Alternative View (Primary Sources)

Fascinating stuff is coming across my inbox today from dad ... not sure why, but I thought I'd share. One of my dad's favorite stories was how, during the 60's, he invited two Russian diplomats, and his friend Bob Crane, in his non-stop efforts to proselytize for a paradigm shift to Kelsonian thinking. I must have been about 4 years old, and idolized my dad. We used to have a special handshake. My dad would say, "Up the Capitalist Revolution!" I, of course, would repeat him. When doing the toast to our Russian guests, on cue, I repeated, "Up the Capitalist Revolution!" which got a good laugh from everybody around the table.

In this email exchange, Bob Crane, reminisced about an old friend. 

Norm,

    The person you are thinking about is Bill Miller, who set the world javelin record in 1952 and won the silver medal at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, though he had previously beaten the 1952 gold medalist that year.  In 1972 he trained to renew his career but tore a muscle and retired for good.  He is now 82 years old and still kicking.

    Bill is not a Navajo but an Eastern Cherokee, though he was born in New Jersey.  He is an Annapolis grad and served in the U.S. Marines in Korea when I was there.  After his Olympic victory he spent several years as a coach to several teams in the Far East, but worked with me in the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO)after my friend Don Rumsfeld chose to head this so-called "anti-poverty" agency rather than any higher office when he retired from Congress and  joined the Nixon Administration. 

    Bill worked with me for several years in the 1970s and was responsible for me becoming the Founding Executive Vice President of the American Indian National Bank and then President of its consulting firm, The Native American Economic Development Corporation (NAEDC), in 1974.  As you remember, I was Deputy Director of the OEO in 1970 and then joined Commissioner Louis Bruce as BIA Ombudsman as one of the "Katzenjammer Kids" until the oil companies covertly organized the Trail of Broken Treaties as a radical insurgency designed to undermine our legitimacy in transforming the BIA. 

    My infamous 200-page Crane Report, prepared at OEO, was designed to remove the BIA from the Department of the Interior, which represented the mineral, timber, and cattle industries at the expense of Native American sovereignty, and to elevate it to a cabinet level agency directly under the President of the United States.  It was to have a lower house in the form of the NCAI (National Congress of American Indians) and an upper house composed of the NTCA (National Tribal Chairman's Association).   Since I was Richard Nixon's personal adviser on Native American affairs both before and after he became president, our goal was not to fight poverty, which is another term for keeping people forever as wage slaves or as welfare addicts, but instead to promote economic and political prosperity, which Nixon once referred to as Red Power.  You and I worked together in 1974-1976 when I was arranging for both the Navajo and the Crow nations to take over their own coal reserves and thereby quadruple their profits beyond the pittances they received from the Westmoreland and other corporate raiders, which would have precipitated a real movement of self-determination based on the then world movement of independence at the conclusion of the then formal regime of Western imperialism.  When it became clear that I was about to be assassinated, Sigrid insisted that I retire from Indian Affairs.  I have not seen Bill Miller ever since, but I think often about him and Ernie Stevens, who was Vice-President of my NAEDC and last I heard was chairman of the Oneida in Milwaukee, and whose son is president of the American Indian Gaming Commission.

    Although I am now far away as University Professor at the Center for the Study of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies in the Qatar Foundation's Faculty of Islamic Studies, I get back to America regularly, including a ten-day seminar the last week of June and the first of July this coming summer in Herndon, Virginia on a Global Awakening.  I get three months of paid vacation every year, so it would be great if we could have a reunion of the old timers.  I am one year older than Bill, and Ernie probably is a year or two younger.  My favorite person is Peter MacDonald, who was a man of vision, but was entrapped by the Federal Government and imprisoned for twelve years.  At least he was not assassinated and still holds court, I have been told, in Window Rock.  I recommend that we get together at the Taos Pueblo, where I want to visit the grave of the Taos religious leader, Paul Bernal, a man of vision beyond all others.

Peace, prosperity, and freedom

through the interfaith harmony

of compassionate justice,

Bob

(aka Abine Ganadi Lgo,

which is Navajo for He Who Runs  in the Morning)

-----Original Message-----
From: Norman Kurland 
To: Dr. Robert D. Crane 
Sent: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 6:14 am
Subject: Name of Navajo Colleague who worked at OEO in late 1960s.

Bob,

Thanks for your other email today.

I forgot the last name of Bill, who was a Navajo and former Olympic athlete who both of us knew at OEO.  Do you recall his last name?
I am discussing with Dr. Robert Ornelas, a minister and head of a sucessful hip-hop group, who is well-known among Native American tribes throughout the US, especially the chairman of the Navajos.  Like you, Dr. Ornelas is part Native American, and could be a helpful communicator of the Just Third Way.

Keep up the great work,
Norm

-- 
Norman G. Kurland, J.D.
President
Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ)
P.O. Box 40711, Washington, DC 20016
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