[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
HONORING NATIVE AMERICAN VETERANS
______
HON. BILL RICHARDSON
of new mexico
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, October 5, 1994
Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in
calling to the attention of the U.S. Postmaster and the Citizens Stamp
Advisory Committee in work on Vera Allen, a young woman from Thoreau,
NM.
Ms. Allen has been working very hard for the past 2 years to have the
U.S. Postal Service issue stamps honoring the contribution made by
modern native Americans. Ms. Allen has argued that native American
World War II veterans deserve more respect and recognition. She has
lobbied hard to have Clarence Tinker, a native American general, Ira
Hayes, who was among the Marines who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, and
Frank Billy Jealous of Him, an Army scout, to be honored by the people
of the United States through a commemorative stamp series.
As chairman of the Native American Subcommittee I am very happy to
recognize the remarkable achievement of Ms. Allen, a 17-year-old high
school student in the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Academy, commonly known
as St. Bonaventure. She is a marvelous role model for any teenager
across the country on what can be achieved through hard work and
perseverance.
Mr. Speaker, this is the very least we as a Nation can do to honor
our Native American war heroes. I urge my colleagues to review an
article and favorable editorial in the Albuquerque Journal and to help
Ms. Allen in her proposal to honor Native Americans.
[From the Albuquerque Journal, Sept. 4, 1994]
Stamping Out Indian Stereotypes
(By Leslie Linthicum)
Toreau--It started, like a few other important things, with
Elvis Presley.
Eighty-year-old Alfred Becenti looked at the new Elvis
postage stamp and was dismayed.
``That wiggly guy?''
His granddaughter brought up the subject of the stamp in
history class at high school and asked, ``Isn't that crazy?''
Elvis, never the rage in Navajoland, had accomplished one
more thing from the grave. He had gotten sophomore Vera Allen
thinking--about respect and about how the U.S. government
shows it through the 1-inch squares it sells for postage.
That was two years ago. Now as then, Allen is like a
tornado with a heart, stirring things up and then setting
them down in a better place.
She was already busy organizing students to sit with kidney
dialysis patients as the hospital in Gallup and cleaning up a
drinking spot up at Castle Rock when she went to the local
post office in 1992 and inquired about stamps depicting
Indians.
Postmaster Dorothy English dug through her stamp registries
and handed them over. Allen went through the books, line by
line, looking for people who looked like her and her family.
There were Dakota chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, who
died at the end of the 19th century; Cherokee leader
Sequoyah, who died in 1843; and Pocahontas, the Indian
princess credited with saving colonist John Smith from
execution. She died in 1617.
The newest Native American stamps were depictions of rugs
and war bonnets.
``There nothing really modern about the Native American,''
says Allen. ``It's like, `Oh, they wore war bonnets. Oh, they
make rugs.' There's nothing about us now.''
Allen was 15 then. She is 17 now, a senior, and awaiting a
decision by the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee on whether
her proposal for a series of Native American stamps will be
accepted.
It has been a two-year journey through federal bureaucracy,
American history as told by White authors and Allen's own
experiences with racism as the daughter of a Navajo mother
and Black father.
To be truthful, Allen says, ``I'm kind of sick of it. I was
hoping I could just send off a letter and they'd say `Here's
your stamp.'''
Allen is slumped dramatically in a chair in the lounge at
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Academy, more commonly known as St.
Bonaventure, where clusters of mobile homes and metal
buildings house kindergarteners through seniors.
This is the school, in the eastern checkerboard of the
Navajo reservation, that served as the murder scene in Tony
Hillerman's newest mystery, ``Sacred Clowns.'' Before it
became a minor celebrity, the school had plugged along for 14
years, educating a couple of hundred students from the
surrounding Navajo communities each year on the strength of
donations and teachers who volunteer their time.
Allen has been a student at St. Bonaventure since she was
in eight grade when she moved from Albuquerque to live with
her mother's people six miles north of Thoreau in a community
called San Antonio.
From the start, Allen and her brother, seven years younger,
didn't fit in. They were city kids, used to seeing movies as
soon as they came out and walking to the corner store.
And they were half Navajo and half Black, Allen didn't
speak Navajo when she moved to the reservation, but she
quickly learned the words for ``blacks'' and ``baboon,''
uttered from the backs of pickup trucks and in the aisles of
stores.
``If you're half Black out here,'' she says, ``you're not
Indian.''
Allen concentrated on school and family, diving into
science classes in preparation for a career in bio-chemistry
and getting to know Boccnti, the maternal grandfather she had
seen only on visits since she was a small child.
Allen's mother died three years after moving the children
back to the reservation, and Allen and her brother now live
with their grandfather and a cousin. Allen visits her father,
a counselor for Health Care for the Homeless, in Albuquerque
on weekends.
Allen also got involved in a summer leadership program
through Futures for Children, a non-profit self-help
organization based in Albuquerque. It was a leadership
program assignment to work on a project that would help the
community that got Allen started on her stamp crusade.
Allen asked the students in her history class to write
letters to the U.S. Postal Service, suggesting a stamp
honoring the Navajo Code Talkers. They got no response.
Then Allen began researching other Native American War
heroes, quickly exhausting St. Bouaventure's small library
and going on to the Albuquerque Public Library. What she
found was precious little.
Most books made no mention of Indians' involvement in the
armed services and other devoted only a sentence or two.
Allen was impressed by two World War II veterans, Clarence
Tinker, a little-known Indian Army general, and by Frank
Billy Jealous of Hirn, a Lakota Army scout.
Allen dropped the idea of a Code Talker's stamp in favor of
Tinker, Jealous of Hirn and Ira Hayes, the Pima who was among
Marines raising the American flag on Meatgrinder Hill in Iwo
Jima in the famous 1945 victory photo.
She talked to Tony Abeyra, a Navajo painter, about doing
the artwork for the stamps. And with the help of her mentor
for the Futures for Children program, science teacher
Christopher Pietraszewski, Allen sent more letters and
waited.
She might have been waiting still if U.S. Postmaster
General Marvin T. Runyon had not been shopping in the Santa
Fe gallery that represents Abeyra and been told by gallery
owner Sandy Green about Allen's stamp proposal. He drew his
office's attention to Allen's quest and got her proposal
before the advisory committee.
The committee should make its decision by the end of the
year.
Although the process has consumed a lot of Allen's high
school years, a trip she took to Atlanta to visit Emory
University recently convinced her that the work has been
necessary.
There, Allen encountered students who had never met a
Native American before.
They wanted to know whether Navajos had toilet paper and
TV's and whether they lived in teepees. Allen, who is
comfortable in baggy jeans, T-shirts and high-tops, was asked
where her feathers were.
``That really got me,'' Allen says. ``We don't just sit
around and weave all day and go out and butcher the sheep for
dinner. We go to McDonalds's. I wanted something that showed
that Indian people do modern things.''
____
Thoreau Teen's Proposal Merits Stamp of Approval
American Indians have a rich, complex history that
intrigues people around the world. Often, the greatest
interest centers on great Indian chiefs and buffalo hunts
from long ago.
But too many people--including considerable numbers of
Americans--don't realize that contemporary Native Americans
also have fascinating stories to tell. Among the stories are
accounts of tribal members who have made history in this
century, such as the Navajo Code Talkers who helped defeat
the Japanese in World War II.
Now, thanks to a tenacious New Mexico teenager, more
Americans may learn that Native Americans are a vibrant part
of our nation's contemporary culture. Vera Allen, a student
at Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Academy in Thoreau, has waged a
two-year campaign to have the U.S. Postal Service issue
stamps honoring modern Native Americans.
Vera, who has a Navajo mother and Black father, researched
contemporary Indian history and came up with some possible
candidates for stamps. One is Ira Hayes, the Pima who was
among Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima.
Now she is awaiting word from the U.S. Citizens Stamp
Advisory Committee on her proposal for a series of Native
American stamps. She and the nation's other Indians deserve
this answer: Yes!
A stamp is a small piece of paper, but represents a big
honor. If the committee goes along with the idea, no doubt
some letters will be postmarked Thoreau--with the Native
American stamp in the right hand corner and the name of one
particular sender in the left hand corner: Vera Allen.
____________________