Putting Haskell Indian Nations University in charge of training workers for a national repository of American Indian records sounds like a good deal to many Haskell officials.

But Wilbur Wilkinson, CEO of an all-Indian consulting firm based in New Town, N.D., says it’s not good enough.

“The entire thing should be at Haskell,” said Wilkinson, addressing about 200 attendees Tuesday at a national conference on plans to move millions of U.S. Department. of Interior records to a central location in Lenexa next year.

Wilkinson said the facility should be built either on the Haskell campus or in Lawrence. And, he said, the facility should be run by Haskell.

“This thing shouldn’t be piecemealed out,” he said.

Wilkinson’s comments were part of a panel discussion aimed at letting tribal leaders weigh in on issues surrounding the move.

Several times, Wilkinson directed his comments toward Abraham Haspel, an assistant deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior attending the conference.

Afterward, Haspel said Wilkinson underestimated Haskell’s role in the new facility.

“I look at this as a three-legged stool,” he said. “The Department of Interior owns the records, NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) is making available one of the best record-storage facilities in the world, and Haskell is going to be in charge of training,” Haspel said. “It’s a marriage. We need all three to make this work.”

Haskell Indian Nations University senior Joseph Hunter, Anadarko, Okla., directs conference attendants to a bus headed for the limestone caves near Lee's Summit, Mo. Representatives from various tribes and organizations converged on Haskell Tuesday to talk about moving millions of American Indian records to a facility in Lenexa.

Dan Wildcat, an American Indian Studies professor at Haskell, said the university was in no position to run an archive expected to house between 200,000 and 250,000 cubic feet of documents.

“I took (Wilkinson’s) comments as a compliment, but what he’s talking about would take just an incredible amount of resources — resources that would far exceed what we have available to us at Haskell,” Wildcat said.

Wildcat is overseeing development of the new records management curriculum at Haskell.

Swisher announced that Haskell would be receiving a $100,000 curriculum development grant later this year from the Department of the Interior.

Haskell expects to begin offering degrees in records management in the fall of 2004. Plans call for the Lenexa archive opening next spring.

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The archive will house millions of documents tied to the Department of Interior’s past management of tribal assets.

The department’s handling of these assets are at the heart of an ongoing $137 billion class-action lawsuit — Cobell vs. Norton — filed on behalf of 280,000 American Indians, accusing the government of systematically pilfering tribal lands and assets.

The conference continues today. American Indian scholar and author Vine Deloria Jr., who addressed the conference Tuesday evening, will meet with students from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today at the conference room at Navarre Hall.