THE MOSCOW SUMMIT : President’s Comments on Indians’ Life Style Decried

President Reagan, whose human rights agenda has annoyed his hosts at the Moscow summit, came under attack on Tuesday for human rights abuses at home after he remarked on the “primitive life style” of American Indians.

Dennis Jennings, staff member of the International Indian Treaty Council, called Reagan’s comments, made to Moscow State University students a day after he told Soviet dissidents that Moscow was lagging behind in respect for human rights, “completely hypocritical and racist.”

The council, which represents 98 Indian nations, sent a three-person delegation to Moscow to “define for Reagan what human rights abuses are--the continued removal and isolation of native people in the interest of corporate privatization of our lands,” Jennings said.

Jennings told Reuters news agency in a telephone interview from his San Francisco office that Indians disputed Reagan’s suggestion of oil-rich, intentionally backward Indians.

‘Tens of Thousands Died’

“That’s a hypocritical lie. There were tens of thousands of Indians who died in the face of European expansionism and other political programs of the United States,” he said.

“I think that he has really revealed himself in all his ignorance and all his arrogance for the whole world to see,” said Suzan Harjo, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians.

“He’s insulted our traditional, cultural and religious ways by referring to them as primitive life styles,” Harjo said.

Harjo and Jennings were responding to Reagan’s answer to a Moscow student’s question when he suggested that many American Indians got rich on oil profits and that others chose to remain second-class Americans by staying on reservations.

After describing U.S. programs for education and welfare services for native Americans, Reagan said: “Maybe we’ve made a mistake.

“Maybe we should not have humored their wanting to stay in that kind of primitive life style. Maybe we should have said: ‘No, come join us, be citizens along with the rest of us.’ ”

‘You Get Rich Pumping Oil’

He continued: “Many of them have. Many have been very successful. And I am very pleased to meet with them and talk with them at any time and see what their grievances are. . . . Some of them became very wealthy because . . . you get very rich pumping oil.”

Harjo, whose group represents about 850,000 American Indians, disputed Reagan’s notion of the oil-rich Indian and his comment that he was willing to meet with native Americans.

“The oil-rich Indian with very few exceptions is like the welfare queen that no one could ever find,” she said.

“Indian people have tried to meet with this President for almost eight years,” Harjo added. “This President refused to meet with Indian leadership; he lied about that.”