Positions in Federal Government
In 1948 he was selected as Vice Chairman of the Tribes Executive Committee and President Truman appointed Keeler as Chief in 1949, where he would remain in that position until 1975. Under President Johnson’s Administration, Keeler was appointed as a member of the National Advisory Committee for the War on Poverty Program and was put on the President’s Committee on Economic Opportunity. Alaskan Governor Walter Hickel appointed Keeler chairman of a task force to find ways to improve utilization of native labor. Also under President Johnson, the Secretary of Interior of the time appointed Keeler to head a group to with the focus of reorganizing the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although these appointments are most likely attributed to his success as a businessman as well as a white appearance, they should not diminish his success and accomplishments in the Cherokee nation.
Keeler’s success in the oil industry and work with the federal government coincided with his older, more conservative upbringing. Clyde Warrior—an Indian activist from the 1960s—once mockingly described him as “a little brown American.”
Read more about this topic: W. W. Keeler
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