[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.

                          ____________________