KAREN:  Yeah.  Was -- you were talking about the -- the time period, and that was at the time when Native claims was being settled and -- right?

ROY:  Right. 

KAREN:  It was all going on at the same time.

ROY:  Yes.  Precisely at the same time.  The lobbying for the claims settlement began in the mid '60s, early '60s, and culminated in 1971 with the passage of the Settlement Act. 

KAREN:  So what drew you to working for -- for the health program?  Why did you apply for the job? 

ROY:  I always liked health, to begin with.  I guess had my parents been a little bit more better off and had I been a little bit more capable financially, I would have become a medical doctor, probably.  I -- I long -- I long thought that that would have been the case for -- I, for a long time, thought that.  But yeah, couldn't, didn't. 

But I've always had an interest in health.  I always, in high school, I scored well in biology and physics.  And I always gravitated to the health section of Time Magazine when I was growing up, too, when it would appear in the house, I would look at what the health section says.  I liked health, so it was no wonder I went there.  I applied for the job when it came open. 

KAREN:  What was the most challenging in the job for you? 

ROY:  Well, people are always the most challenging.  Reconciling wills are -- of the many players, was really the challenging part of the job. 
And I didn't suffer a lot of anguish over that.  I just did it.  And I haven't -- I guess I have a nature that I like to get along and work with people and I don't like fighting with people and I want to be pragmatic about this and find a way to get the thing solved.  And we have a mission to do and how can we put our heads together to solve it.  So it was sort of an attitude, I think, that that attitude helped me. 

But that was the hardest part of the job and I could see where you could burn up -- burn out pretty fast if you got too authoritarian or got too -- got too fixed in your own ways. 

And there were many good ideas out there, and you needed to reconcile them all and bring them together for the improvement of the program.
 
And I think we all thought alike in those -- in those days.  And so that -- it could have been a hard part of the job, I guess, but -- but it really didn't turn out for me to be a -- too hard a -- but I could see it could have been, you know. 

KAREN:  Uh-hum. 

ROY:  Now, the other hard part was convincing the Federal government to give enough money to the program.  That was always a constant battle.  Writing budget documents and having to tell health aides there would be no raise this year.  We can't give you any more money.  And for years, the health aide wage remained static.  No -- there was no -- not even an inflationary increase, you know. 

KAREN:  What was the wage, do you remember? 

ROY:  It was very minimal.  It was just a few hundred dollars a month.  3- or $400 a month.  It wasn't much.  2- or 300 even, as I recall.  Yeah. 

KAREN:  Yeah.  I mean, they were on call --

ROY:  They were on call 24 hours a day, yeah. 

KAREN:  Yeah. 

ROY:  So it was not justified, but it was all we had, you know. 

And in some ways, we were relying on the -- on the neediness of the people to maintain that work force out there.  They were -- they were too needy to quit the job paying the meager wage, but at the same time, they knew the village needed the help and they were the provider and people were relying on them. 

So in a way, it was sort of an injustice, you know, that we -- we treated those people that way for so many years.  And that was a hard part for me to reconcile that. 

I understand Congress has limited money, you know, but we were, in some ways, we were just -- I often thought, well, why don't we just cut this thing way back and just do a few villages and -- and pay them decently and do it right.  And -- but it didn't work that way.  We -- instead we just didn't expand beyond what we had done. 

We had covered virtually all of the large villages, nearly 200 villages, and we had provided for a basic health aide -- primary health aide, and then we provided for alternates, alternate health aides to spell them off whenever they just couldn't be there. 

KAREN:  So was there a population cutoff for the village and which qualified? 

ROY:  Yeah.  There was -- you know, we couldn't do the really tiny villages, like the ones with 25 or fewer, we just -- just couldn't get to, you know.  25 or fewer people. 

KAREN:  Right.

ROY:  So that -- that was kind of a hard thing to reconcile was the lack of money and having to tell people we just -- you're working, we know you're working hard and we know you're really doing your best and you're on call 24 hours, but all we can pay you is 2- or $300 a month.