On Assignment; 1017; Indian Education Cutbacks; Georgia O'Keeffe; The End of Miss USA

Broadcast of on assignment is locally funded by KNME viewer contributions and by a grant from the Mountain Bell Foundation. Proposed Reagan administration cuts in Indian education funding are the source of growing controversy in New Mexico and in Congress. It just concerns me that just as we're beginning to roll and just as we're beginning to get something done, as parents are feeling more and more comfortable as participants in the education of their kids, we're going to dump the whole process and try something new. Georgia O'Keefe, an American master who called New Mexico home, the legend and her art. She established an American painting, a style for herself that is not derivative and it

has its own source that comes from within her. And in the aftermath of Glitz and Hype, Miss USA pageant must be worth a post-gripped. She's a typical American girl, a little bit better. Good evening. What you see here is the work of a master, one of 21 paintings by the late Georgia O'Keefe on exhibit here at the New Mexico Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe through April the 12th.

It is difficult to exaggerate the influence of Georgia O'Keefe on the art of the 20th century and equally difficult to exaggerate the influence of New Mexico, which for decades she called home upon the art of Georgia O'Keefe. That story coming up shortly. First in its 1987 budget proposals to Congress, the Reagan administration has recommended a dramatic reorganization of federally funded Indian education programs, not to mention significant funding cuts as well. Those proposals have generated a good deal of controversy among Native American groups, educators and some members of Congress. The contours of that story with New Mexico's third district Democratic Congressman Bill Richardson, a member of both the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Carmen Taylor, Program Director of the National Indian School

Board Association, and Regis Pecos, a member of the Board of Education of the Bernalillo Public School System, as well as a member of the Board of the Santa Fe Indian School. First our producer Matthew Snowden has his background report. One of the primary functions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs is Indian Education. The Bureau of Indian Affairs provides educational services for nearly 40,000 Indian students enrolled in 181 schools nationwide. There are nearly 10,000 students attending more than 40 BIA schools in New Mexico. And two of the three post-secondary institutions operated by the Bureau are located in the state as well. The Bureau of Indian Affairs runs Indian Education in two ways.

One, through direct BIA supervision and administration, and two, with congressional passage of the Indian Education and Self-Determination Act in 1975, tribes are allowed to contract with the BIA to run their own schools. The Sky City Community School, at the Pueblo of Acoma near Grants, New Mexico, is directly administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although under BIA supervision, Sky City Community School's curriculum and operation is established by Acomas to be within state and BIA guidelines and to meet tribal needs. We do have a valuable education that is taught and that's one of the things that our elder people want us to teach here at the school. With that in mind, we ensure that our students learn a culture and a tradition of Acoma tribe. A boarding school, Santa Fe Indian School, contracts with the BIA to provide educational services

for Indian students from across the country. And educators there are quick to point out that Indian students have needs that go far beyond those of non-Indian students and they say Santa Fe Indian School is meeting those needs. They are members of sovereign nations. They're members of communities that have got a historic relationship with the federal government. They've got to know things about who they are in relation to the rest of the world, specifically as Indian people that is probably not going to be taught or dealt with in a lot of schools. Indian kids have special needs and the special needs are directly related to who they are where they come from, what their place in this state is, what their place is in this country, what their place is in this world. And if they're not dealt with in that regard, they're going to wind up with only a partial education.

But despite the recent successes, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Ross Swimmer declared in January that BIA education is, quote, alarmingly, substandard. Claiming BIA students were not making the grade, Swimmer announced that if tribes did not wish to contract the operations of their own schools, then the contracts would be turned over to state governments. To accompany his initiatives, Swimmer also announced an $850 tuition fee for the BIA's three institutions of higher learning. But Indian educators say the Assistant Secretary's initiatives threaten the core of Indian education, just when results are coming into view. It's quite apparent that kids are doing better and it just concerns me that just as we're beginning to roll and just as we're beginning to get something done, as parents are feeling more and more comfortable as participants in the education of their kids, we're going to dump the whole process and try something new. It concerns me that sometimes that typically is the way the government does business.

I felt like we're going to have to start all over again. We're going to have to start rebuilding our educational system and what we have built. What I have seen, what I have learned, the culture and the traditions and consolidating what is in existence right now in the educational system, I feel like we're going to have to do it all over again. This means riding the curriculum over again and also finding for the facilities, finding for the monies, finding for what's rightfully ours as far as the pueblo of Acoma. This whole initiative is an example. I don't think has anything to do with kids and what's in their best interest as students. I think it's an economic issue. I think that the country wants to cut spending. I think that Mr. Reagan, the good man that he is, has consistently said the federal government is doing things that the state should be doing.

I mean, this whole initiative sounds like a Reagan idea, not to say that Mr. Reagan is bad or his ideas are bad, but rather how they're carried out, how they're handled, could serve to hurt more than they do help. And so, Carmen Taylor, actually Carmen, before we begin this conversation, I should explain to our viewers that we invited representatives of the Interior Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to join us for this conversation about these proposals coming out of the Interior Department and the Reagan administration. They declined to participate. We regret that, but Carmen, I think we need to try to understand it anyway. There are really two separate issues here. One, the substance of the proposed reorganizations coming out of the administration today. And the other is the manner in which those proposals were formulated. I'd like to talk about, if you don't mind, the latter first, and we'll go to the substance of them.

How much say did Indian groups like yours have in the formulation of these proposals? None. The first that we heard about them was sort of in a rumor stage in December. We'd made an announcement to some of his officials, and it wasn't until, in January, when he began meeting with tribal officials and organizations. But by then, the proposals were already formulated. All right. Then to the substance. Assistant Secretary Swimmer, who is, I guess, nearly as I can tell, the closest thing to a single architect of these proposals, argues that after a century of neglect Indian education in this country is in disarray, in many instances, that almost anything you do will be an improvement into these majors are calculated to improve Indian education. Isn't it conceivable that they could?

It's conceivable that they could. I think that the better avenue for improvement would be to follow the intent and the spirit of the laws that have been passed to improve Indian education, the Self-Determination Act in 1975, and the Education Amendments of 1978, which were designed to put control of education into the hands of the Indian people and the communities. These laws have not been very well followed or implemented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I think he could much better spend energy improving the system and accordance with those laws. What are you saying? Clean up the BIA's Act, rather than redirect the attention? Is that basically what you're arguing? Yes, I am. All right. There are three institutions of higher education for American Indians in this country. Two of them happen to be here in New Mexico. Funding cuts have been recommended, tuition increases have been recommended.

The tuition increases, as I understand, Mr. Swimmer, based on the argument that if you have to pay for your education, you value it more. I guess my question is, what's your feeling about that? I guess you probably do value something that you have to put a little into. I think he's starting out a little high. His proposal of $850 for tuition is extremely high. I think it would probably put more students in a position that are not being able to attend those institutions. Is that all right? So you see this, having the consequence of driving kids out of school? Yes, I do. Particularly at the same time, the Department of Education, Mr. Swimmer says that there are other sources of money that students can draw up on to attend these institutions. In the department, there's a lot of money in the Department of Education that's drying up at the same time, and so there's going to be less resources from other sources as

well. Regis, the view from local school boards, you serve on a local school board, Bernalillo school board, as well as just generally the view from the state education community. Those proposals involving elementary and secondary education. How one would the impact on Indian education, two, how would the impact on public schools? It comes at a very unfortunate time in that the state in the general context is facing some very severe financial shortfalls to accommodate an influx of children for the most part who have a different learning style as one, linguistic needs for which the state generally as public school institutions have not done an adequate job to address some unique problems

that exist and to ask the state to accommodate an influx of children who primarily make that choice of going to a bureau school because of the kind of environment that's more acceptable to that person's identity makes that choice to begin with, and now you're going to ask the state as a system to accommodate them when it's not prepared, compounds the situation of the financial shortfall that the state presently is experiencing. We heard Carmen say that groups like hers, if he weren't consulted at all in this matter, was there any consultation with local school officials, state school officials before these new proposals were promulgated? If they were, I'm not aware of them at all. We happen to have several tribes within the existing public school district. Those people had never been.

You would think that that particular area really would be the kind of a scenario that you would be looking at in terms of a tribal, bureau, state kind of a relationship which I think could be workable, but without consulting the various people within the state's hierarchy, it's impossible to say that we would be accepting of this kind of a proposal when we've had very little, and yet it's going to have some major impacts on the state generally. If you were to be consulted, what would you tell them? What would you say? The first response would have to be some consideration for the financial resources to be made available to accommodate the influx of children. That, I think, is going to be a major point of discussion when presently the public schools find themselves in a situation where they don't have the adequate resources to meet the needs as they exist for the general population of the state.

Congressman Richardson, let's go back to the higher education funding cuts, tuition increases on the grounds. If you had to pay for your education, you're going to value it more. Gentlemen, what's your feeling about these proposals? Well, I think these proposals are dead in the water as far as Congress is concerned. The tribes weren't consulted. The Congress wasn't even thought of. It's an abdication of the federal responsibility towards Indian education. I think what the Reagan administration wants to do, first of all, they don't want to spend any money on education. They've cut education budget for fiscal year 88, 30 percent. They've tried to zero out Johnson, O'Malley, Indian education programs. Now they're camouflaging this. We don't want to spend any money with this attempt to say, well, we're going to turn over to the states. Imagine the state of New Mexico with its education crisis right now, having to absorb 10,000 more children.

It can't happen now. And I think what we need to do is make the program better. There is, perhaps, one good side to this entire crisis provoked by swimmer. And that is maybe we should sit down and find a way to improve the delivery of Indian education. But I think as Regis said, it's going to take resources. Maybe there's too much red tape in bureaucracy. It goes through too many processes. The BIA is the world's biggest, sometimes most inefficient bureaucracy. Maybe there's a way we can make this proposal for the better. But as far as the Congress is concerned, my committee on education and labor and interior, we're going to hold hearings on this, but this proposal is dead in the water. Well, let me follow up on that because I sort of thought you'd say that. What matters is you have a strong interest in this subject matter, just by virtue of the nature of your district. Not all 400 and some odd members of Congress have that same fundamental interest. Is it not conceivable that this can be sold as a, both a money-saving and an efficiency

of improving major and other members of the Congress will say, hey, look, this sounds pretty good to us. Bill, I understand you got your district, but there you go. Well, I think there's enough compassion and recognition of the Indian role in the federal process for my being able to get support from a broad cross-section. Interestingly enough, Mr. Swimmer did not consult even with Republican governors in the states that were most affected. So he didn't do his political work before announcing this proposal. Pardon me, this sounds like bad politics. What else is going on here? Is there another story that we should know about? Assistant secretaries, secretaries of interior normally on something like this do consult with members of the congressional delegations that would be affected with groups like these folks, groups with local school boards, with governors? Is there another agenda here that we ought to contemplate? I think the other agenda is, as I said, this privatization, decentralization extends also

to our federal relationship with the Indian people, and I think that's flat wrong. It also is the undercurrent of the basic administration policy to continuously ask for increases in military spending. We all want a strong defense, but I think education is also a strong defense. And our Indian children, our New Mexico children, are getting slashed across the board. It just happens to be that interior of all the departments in the federal government is probably the weakest bureaucratically, so they gave interior the smallest budget. So then they had to make excuses, and this excuse is turned over to the state. The state can't absorb it. The governor has enough problems of his own with our own state education problems. Plus, we have a commitment to the Indian people for education. It's in the treaty. It's in our self-determination act, and you just unilaterally can't get out of it. I want to go back to funding cuts for higher ed.

We're on the board here at the Sanfay Indian School. Do you buy Carmen's analysis that those funding cuts and the tuition increases would in fact decrease student enrollment at this institution? Maybe not so much at this institution, but the post-secretary institutions is likely to see a higher drop in its enrollment. For one major reason, there are many Indian students or individuals out there who make the choice of not having to go to a four-year institution for the single reason that they don't have the financial resources to make it through because of the limited amounts that families can contribute toward that goal. Those people make, in the very beginning, a very difficult choice of where to go. Now you're asking those very individuals who choose to go to two-year institutions who have to pay a certain amount of money, and the first choice that they make was to

go there because they didn't have the financial resources to go to a four-year institution. So obviously, the obvious response to that is, yes, you're going to see a decline in enrollment in those institutions. Carmen, before we began this conversation on camera, you were telling me that the assistant secretary, Swimmer, had spoken to Congressman Yates of the House Appropriations Committee, and it was your impression that he had got a reception would be called positive. If you hear Congressman Richardson now say it's dead in the water, are you encouraged by that or are you still worried? So your confidence, would you buy that analysis? I hope so. I mean, I'd like to think that that's the right analysis. As I said before, what it might result in is a re-examination of the delivery system of Indian education. I think that's healthy. There's a lot of actors involved. You've got the federal government, the state, the tribes, local school districts.

Maybe there's a process there that can be cut down a bit to more directly serve the need of the Indian child. But I think there still has to be a role by the Indian people in making those decisions. We're talking about, though, basically going into the BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and re-examining a lot of procedures and assumptions that point which they operate, are you not? Contracting procedures. But I think how the bottom line also has to be, how much is we, are we as a nation ready to devote in terms of resources? You still need curriculum changes. It's going to take resources, buildings, building a school, training of individuals. You've got to spend the federal dollar on it. And I think it's a question of staying within our deficit projections. But recognizing that education is a future investment that brings tax dollars to. It's not another budget item that should be cut indiscriminately. Higher education in the Reagan budget this year is cut 45 percent.

It's across the board. I don't think the nation tolerates that. And it's like the entire Reagan budget. A lot of it is dead in the water. And I'm confident that this proposal of Mr. Swimmer is exactly what I described it at. It has a very limited chance. I'd like to bury it before it gets anywhere. Hell, another point here is that, for instance, we passed the bill last year that the delegation sponsored, that moved the Institute for American Indian Arts out of the BIA because of this budget uncertainty. We made it independent, a quasi-de-independent board, but still with some federal funds. I think that's positive. Another initiative that we should consider perhaps is the education issues affecting the country. Why don't we have systems, for instance, when a school district improves academic performance? It gets certain incentives. I think we should not obscure the fact that we need some new ideas in education. We need some new techniques of training our teachers, of delivering education to the children.

It's not all going to have to be money. But consultation is so important, and when you unilaterally make a policy, not even consult with the principals, not even consult with the Congress, and announce it without even informing your Republican governors that this most affects Arizona, New Mexico, several other western states, you kind of wonder how serious they are about significant reform. Well, folks, it seems to me you're telling me it's back to the drawing board's time. We'll see what happens on this. I sure appreciate this a lot. Thank you. Thank you. In the public school system, we wouldn't be able to... Our cultures wouldn't be respected. In a public school system, the people are not taught in respect to their traditional

values here at the Indian School. We're taught with not only by Indian teachers, and that's a mutual respect. And as Indian students, we need that. Like you were just saying, we have to learn two cultures. In school, we just don't have to learn the white man's way of government. We have to learn our own Indian way. We have our tribal government. We have to learn how to... We have our own Indian civil rights, plus we have our United States civil rights, and we have to deal with both. In a public school system, there's a value class, because people come from... Indian people come from a society that stresses the community and communal activities. And in a public school system, it's really competitive. And those classes are real... Well, there's so much of a class that the Indian students are really frustrated. And at times, you know, it becomes real kind of too much to handle.

Well, we're all a minority group in China, trying to strive for academic achievements, trying to get up and show the world that we're just as good as anybody else. And we just want the opportunity, the opportunity to show it. That's all. I mean, Indian people, as a minority, don't get much credit. And in retrospect to history, Indians are really thought of as inferior, intellectually and politically just about every area of society. And Indians, what Indians have to do presently is establish themselves as a community and leadership. They have to really establish a name for themselves in modern society. Georgia O'Keefe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

She died 98 years later, just a short distance from this museum in Santa Fe. At the age of 12, she told a friend she intended to become an artist, and she did. In time, becoming a legend as large and individual as her art itself. Much of O'Keefe's early life was spent in the East, and in 1917, her first one woman show opened at the famous New York gallery known as 291. Headquarters of the pioneering American photographer Alfred Stiglitz, later to become O'Keefe's husband of nearly a quarter of a century. In 1929, O'Keefe visited Northern New Mexico for the first time. After she nor her art would ever be quite the same. Perfectly mad-looking country, hills and cliffs and washes, too crazy to imagine, all thrown

up into the air by God and let tumble where they would. It was certainly as spectacular as anything I have ever seen, and that was pretty good. In 1940, O'Keefe's affection for New Mexico was confirmed when she purchased this ghost ranch house near Avacue. And shortly thereafter, this landmark in Avacue became her home and studio for the remainder of her life. It is here in 1973 that O'Keefe met a young potter and sculptor who would become her close friend and protege. A young potter came to the ranch, and as I watched him work with the clay, I saw that he could make it speak. The pots that he made were beautiful shapes, very smooth, near the sculpture.

It would become an important artistic relationship for both O'Keefe and the young Juan Hamilton, whom we visited recently at the Avacue studio on the eve of his departure for New York and the opening of an exhibit of his own work, and through whom we hear echoes of the voice of Georgia O'Keefe. The meaning of a word, to me, is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Color and shapes make a more definite statement than words. Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

Georgia O'Keefe was cast into the limelight of the art world at a fairly early stage in her career, and her expression through painting was really a very personal, private, intense expression, and to do that she needed to be alone and to find that space in New York wasn't always so easy. I began talking about trying to paint New York. Of course, I was told it was an impossible idea, even the men hadn't done it too well. From my teens I had been told I had crazy notions, so I was accustomed to disagreement and went on with my idea of painting New York. She respected him and his ideas concerning art in the art world more than anyone else's

if there was anyone that she would want to have, take a liking and approve of her work it was Alfred Steglitz. His greatest contribution was in the field of photography where he was able to almost single-handedly establish photography as a serious art on the same level as painting and sculpture. Steglitz had a very sharp eye for what he wanted to say with the camera. When I look over the photographs Steglitz took of me, some of the more than 60 years ago, I wonder who that person is.

It is as if in my one life I had lived many lives. The full range of her emotional expressions were revealed through those photographs and of their relationship it was really a portrait not just of her but a portrait of their relationship and then photographs of her with her car which to some extent were symbolic of her leaving him leaving Lake George and coming out west. A hand on the wheel was definitely for me anyway, he had symbolical overtones. She was taking control of her own life and moving on to some extent. So in the late 1920s she and Rebecca Strand, the wife of the photographer Paul Strand, came

out to New Mexico together and I think they were invited by Mabel Dodge-Luhan and once she started painting and working out here it was really her own world. She knew that this was for her it was hers and she started coming out every summer and working out here. When she saw Ghost Strand she said I knew that was mine. She took all of the things that interested her and that spoke to her, but the Pedronol

mountain which she painted so much in a lot of her landscapes she was fascinated by that mountain and she had a joke which went glad told me if I painted that mountain enough he'd give it to me. Up here you can see some of the favorite places Miss O'Keefe like to paint her adding

hulls are behind me over here. Up over that way we see the cliffs and dry what she called in her painting dry waterfall Ghost Ranch Cliffs they actually all waterfalls when it rains hard enough where you see the little slits in the cliff there'll be a lot of rain water rushing down there and going on into the royals and turning into a thundering river actually and they go on further. Off beyond to the south is the Pedronol which is one of her favorite mountains which you painted over and over again came the subject for a lot of her work. Probably one of the most beautiful places to her in the world. She said I've traveled all over the world but I don't think there's anything as good as this. A flower touches almost everyone's heart.

A red hill doesn't touch everyone's heart as it touches mine and I suppose there is no reason why it should. The red hill is a piece of the badlands where even the grass is gone. You have no associations with those hills, our wasteland. I think our most beautiful country. I have picked up seashells and rocks and pieces of wood that I liked and when I found beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home too. I have used these things to say what is to me the whiteness and wonder of the world as I live in it. George O'Keefe's initial reaction upon meeting one Hamilton, the whole thing she loved

to tell, obviously. I've not heard a lot from the other side and there were two people met that day. One Hamilton's version of that initial meeting and then the subsequent meeting. Well they were actually three original meetings that took place before I really got to know Miss O'Keefe at all. The first meeting I was working up at Ghost Ranch and a gentleman named Ray McCall that was the head of maintenance had to go over to do some plumbing repair and I'd been there about seven months and I was starting to wonder whether George O'Keefe even existed because I'd never seen or died by in the car. I'd never seen anything. So Ray McCall was in his pickup and he was going over to the house that Ghost Ranch. He said I have to go do some work at George O'Keefe's house to come along and I said sure. So here was my great opportunity and the thing I noticed most was how completely different

her world was just like you talk about her, the photographs of her, how she couldn't take a bad photograph. Her own world and her environment were so very much her own and different from others. Her watercress salad being fixed in a little basket in the kitchen and it's just a very wonderful, pure world that she lived in. But when we walked in the room and George O'Keefe was standing there, rather that she made it very easy for me because she completely ignored the fact that I existed. She said hello to Ray and she may have been annoyed with him that he brought someone along but she looked right at me as if I was transparent, so if I didn't even exist. So that was my first meeting and probably the only thing that I got from it that really symbolically was important to me was that she had a large Indian pot, a half of a pot that she'd found in the hills that was sitting on top of her fireplace.

And I hadn't worked for almost a year at that point when I saw that sort of broken pot on the mantle, so it reminded me of a portrait of myself. Then the second time Jim Hall, the director of Ghost Branch, said, I'm going to go to George O'Keefe so she wants me to help unload a stove from the back of her Lincoln continental would you come help me and I said, sure. So we went over and he introduced me and she might have nodded her head. So he knew I was an artist and I wanted to get to know her, so he tried to break the ice and he said, Miss O'Keefe, there's a Juan Hamilton used to live in Vermont and he had antique wood stoves in his cabin that he actually used to heat and to cook on. She turned around and said, this is not an antique wood stove. And that was the end of the second meeting. So finally, the third time I had met a painter and a writer that lived here in the valley and the writer of Virginia Kirby had worked for Miss O'Keefe and she said, well, just

go on your own, don't try going with other people and getting someone to introduce you just go early in the morning to the back door and I have a queue and earlier the better she's up at 5'30 or 6' and just introduce yourself and if you want a job or something just ask her. So I came to the door, the back screen door of the kitchen here and Candolaria Lopez, the housekeeper was there and I told her I'd like to speak to Miss O'Keefe, I was interested in work and Candolaria came over here to the studio and got Miss O'Keefe and she came to the screen door and finally on a one-to-one basis we spoke and I asked her if she had any work and she said, work, I don't have any work. So I started to turn around and walk away and she said, wait a minute, can you pack a shipping crate? And I said that I thought I could and she needed some references so she gave her Jim Hall the director of ghost range and at that time I'd also worked at Monastery of Christ in

the desert doing some carpentry work and she also knew Father Gregory out there. So she contacted them and got good references and I came the next morning and began working and I ended up being with her for 14 and a half years. Were you put off by the initial meetings? Intrigued. What was your... No, I was intrigued but I didn't really have any sense of what it would be like to know her until time passed. When did you decide you really liked her as a person? I mean those would be off-putting moments I think for most people. I think it took me several months before I really, until she started being interested in me and my work after she found out that I was a potter and she said, well if you're going to stay around here you better start making some pots and once she took some personal interest in me and started remembering my name for a long time she'd call up to Santa Finch.

I'm going to send my boy down there and or someone would come and she'd say, this is what is your name? You think she didn't know your name or do you think that was a test or... I don't know. You never found out. I never really found out. I didn't ask her but it took her a couple months before she really started winning. You are a gift to sculptor, you are a gift to potter and in time she took to the clay as well, partially into your inspiration. Did she ever master that medium to her satisfaction? No, not to her satisfaction because she was a perfectionist but she enjoyed the process and she enjoyed the effort and she'd have an idea in the night and in the morning she couldn't wait to get started and in later years she'd get one of the gardeners to help her and they executed quite a few pots together and some sculpture also and she was never totally satisfied with the results but she was engaged by the idea and by the ability to make an

effort. And that was probably the most stoic thing about George O'Keefe is that she never gave up trying. She never lost interest in shapes and forms and ideas and the creative process. The creative process she speaks about it from time to time and writes about it, that she would get these shapes in her head. She had no idea where they came from. She just knew they were there, they demanded expression. One looks at the sculpture and the work of one Hamilton and thinks shapes in one's head just begging to get out and to be executed given concrete form. Is that something that was a bond for the two of you, those shapes in your head? I think absolutely. I think we were probably in some ways as different as she as Stiglitz were but we had a similar vocabulary of forms which we communicated a great deal through.

Her rock paintings of the early 60s were certainly shapes that I had been working on and thought about and had not seen. There were some forms that I had worked on. When I saw, there were still people that think that her rock paintings of the 60s were based on some of my sculpture done in the 70s and it's if anything the contrary. But a similar interest in form, a similar vocabulary certainly drew us together. One so many pictures have been taken of Georgia O'Keefe. I've never seen one that to my mind did not capture a beautiful, physical person whether it's Stiglitz or one Hamilton. Was she aware of her physical beauty? Well, I don't think she thought that she had tremendous physical beauty. She was aware of her potential for being able to use what she had very effectively.

And she particularly with Stiglitz had a tremendous collaboration and it was a collaboration between the photographer and the subject. She would say, well, I guess I'm not bad to look at. But I don't think she was. She certainly wasn't vain in any way and as a child, her mother, she thought her mother felt that she wasn't attractive and put her in the back room when people came over to visit. But of course, the aesthetic standards of beauty might have been different at that time. She had a self-confidence and a presence that imbued perhaps a lot of the photographs that were taken over and there was sort of a joke we used to laugh about. People would come up and say, oh, Mrs. O'Keefe, you're looking so well.

And she'd say, when I was young, they told me I was beautiful. Now they tell me how well I am. You think of artists almost without locale, this international art knows no boundaries I had in there. Yet there's something about this place that she took to immediately. She ever talked about her first reaction to New Mexico much with you. Now she talked about, she was teaching in West Texas in Amarillo and I think it was 1917 and she and her sister Claudio took a train trip through New Mexico up to Ward, Colorado for a summer visit. And as she went through New Mexico and she saw the low adobe homes with a mud plaster and the smell of the cedar wood burning in the fireplaces and the Indians with their soroppies or whatever it was at that time.

She always knew that she'd be back and it was 10 years until she actually came back but she did come back and she had premonitions of that kind all throughout her life. When she was a child, she knew she was going to be a painter. There's a 12 or 13, I guess it was. And when she first came here, knew she came back. When she first saw this house, she knew she wanted it and she knew she was going to get it, it took her 10 years to get it away from the Catholic church but she got it. And in her paintings of New Mexico, I think they're so extraordinary because she goes beyond just depicting the landscape. She gets the spirit and the feeling of the landscape. She used to say there's something in the air, there's something in the way things smell the way it's just different, it's magical. And she was able to capture that magic in her work in a way that very few painters were and I think certainly she was one of the more exceptional landscape painters of New Mexico.

This may be a personal question. You're a young man, you met Georgia O'Keefe, a national institution, for nearly a decade and a half. She played a large part in your life, now she's gone. You're still a young man, where do you go from here? Well, I go on with the work that there is to do, I mean, there is work that began with Miss O'Keefe that relates to George O'Keefe and Alfred Stevens and will go on that I've embarked on, that does not end. There's something about a relationship that doesn't end with death and there's certainly a great deal of work I have to do on my own, relating to my own sculpture. Well, good luck. You're a joy to talk to. Thank you a lot. Thank you. Sifteen through the glitter and the glitz, the hype and the hoopla, the confusion and the controversy.

A post script on the Miss U.S.A. page and seems in order, so enjoy. My beauty secrets are some of them are when you are very tired and you have fluffy eyes. You soak cotton balls in milk and you put them on your eyes for about 15 minutes. I think that the most important thing you can do to maintain your beauty is to drink a lot of water, get plenty of sleep and to wear your makeup as... My goals as Miss U.S.A. would be to serve as the best role model for the youth of today.

I know if I was chosen, I would try my hardest and put my heart and soul into being the best Miss U.S.A. there ever was. If I were to become Miss U.S.A. would be to try and incorporate the essence of what it is to really be a woman representing the women of the United States, our individual freedoms and our right to make choices. And here in America, I think that we're taking the super image role, having our country take the lead in what many other countries want to follow in our lead and in our footsteps. I think that's what we have to offer as individuals and I think that's what I would represent as a person being Miss U.S.A. I think the image of Miss U.S.A. is a role model for all people, especially the young girls

in the country. They look up to her and her image is one, a very positive one, one that is pure and the girl next door and the all American girl. She's a typical American girl, a little bit better. You know, she's always the girl that someone else wants to be. She's nice to everyone. I think it's a really important role for all young women to portray somebody that has a lot of self confidence, somebody that believes in herself, someone that can make a commitment for a year in something that she believes in and teaching other young women how to be very confident in themselves. I did not come here to the Miss U.S.A. page and to become a Barbie doll image. I came here for the opportunities that I could find for my career as well as my own self growth, my personal growth, and I wouldn't mind having $200,000 under my doll either.

I'm very happy. Tonight's post-script, the end of the Miss U.S.A. pageant. Coming up next week, an important agenda on assignment. It is called a peace tax and it is on the congressional agenda. If passed, it could rearrange our national priorities. Once again, the goals are noble, the objectives in my judgment are sound, but it would disrupt our entire congressional process. Let's make those changes through the Congress. And horse racing, drugs, and potentially tougher new regulations in New Mexico. They are an athlete.

The only thing is that they don't have control of their own destiny like you and I would if we were, you know, athletic performers. We could take what we wanted to take, run when we wanted to run, and this sort of thing. Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe, thank you for joining us, and good night. Broadcast of on assignment is locally funded by K&ME Viewer Contributions and by a grant

from the Mountain Bell Foundation. Thank you for joining us, thank you for joining us, thank you for joining us, thank you very much.