When this photo was taken in the spring of 1940, Kenneth Marmon was one of six Native Americans employed as an Organization Field Agent with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. His responsibilities included assisting Indian tribes in establishing processes to write tribal constitutions, to hold tribal elections, and to organize economic programs that would promote tribal self-sufficiency.
Original caption: “Kenneth Marmon, a Pueblo Indian of New Mexico, is employed as an Organization Field Agent with headquarters at Arlington, California. Mr. Marmon has been in the Indian Service since 1923, when he received a position at Sherman Institute as teacher of mechanical drawing, printing, and boys’ placement officer. As a boy he attended the government day school at Laguna Pueblo, and later Sherman Institute where he was graduated in 1911. He then went to riverside Polytechnic High School and New Mexico State College. After his discharge from the U.S. Army in June 1919, Mr. Marmon worked for the New Mexico State Highway Department, where he was employed as an inspector and project engineer. He left Sherman Institute in 1935 to become an Organization Field Agent. His responsibilities include assisting Indian tribes to set up machinery for writing constitutions, holding tribal elections and developing tribal responsibility for political self-government, as well as organizing economic programs toward tribal self-sufficiency. This picture was taken when Marmon, who is one of six Indians employed as Organization Field Agents, attended a conference in Washington on organizational matters in the spring of 1940.”
