Jan Crull, Jr.

Jan Crull Jr. is a Native American rights advocate, attorney, and filmmaker.

From 1979 to the beginning of 1981, Jan Crull Jr. was a volunteer on the Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico where he made many contributions to the well-being of the Ramah Navajos. Although a volunteer, a title - Assistant to the President and the Chapter (the reservation's local government) - was conferred upon him by a community vote already in mid August 1979.

His securing Federal legislation Public Law 96-333 was a major accomplishment for it provided the Ramah Navajos with a legal right to lands that they had been living on for generations and which made the people living on the lands in question eligible for the services and benefits provided by Federal government agencies and departments. The legislation had had a turbulent nineteen-year history because of disputes regarding it within the New Mexican Congressional delegation, the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, and local Navajo and Navajo Nation politics and between all of them because of its ties to railroad right-of-ways to the Starlake Coal Fields. While others, including U.S. senators and lawyers from leading Washington, D.C.firms, had been unsuccessful in seeking Congressional action on this matter, Crull had succeeded. In obtaining it, he also taught the Ramah Navajo how to succeed in obtaining all mineral rights underlying the lands he had secured for them with Public Law 97-434 .

Crull's work for the Ramah Navajos led to his nomination for the Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1981. His nomination was endorsed by U.S. Senators and U.S. Congressman who had worked with him to secure passage through both houses of the U.S. Congress, specifically Dennis DeConcini, Pete Domenici, Manuel Lujan Jr., John Melcher, and Paul Simon.

In the early 1980s, Jan Crull Jr. served as a professional staffer with the U. S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education then chaired by Paul Simon. Crull was responsible for developing legislation reauthorizing the Tribal College Act(The Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act ), creating special provisions for Native Americans in the Library Services Construction Act , and other matters related to Indian education. Sensing the negative impact of what would subsequently be called Reaganomics on Indian education and especially the Tribal Colleges, he called for a meeting of all tribal college presidents and other Indian leaders on the afternoon of July 21, 1981 at the now defunct American Indian Bank in Washington, D.C. There he proposed the creation of an American Indian College Fund akin to the United Negro College Fund and having the U.S. government provide matching funds to a level determined by the U.S. Congress. This "matching idea" was based on the reworking of the old Allen Bill language and incorporating it in the reauthorization legislation for the tribal colleges.

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