Start the Recall - Recall Nez and Lizer

Navajo Times Letter to the Editor said it best, there are more intelligent Dine leaders who can do a better job than just passing out food in order to prepare for the next election.  The bottom line is our Dine are dying.  We should not be fighting about the CARES money.  There’s no Ahilna’anish which was promised during campaign.  Let’s vote in someone who cares for our Dine ways.

Leadership has become a Nez-Lizer campaign tool
June 18, 2020

It has become alarmingly obvious that the leadership in Window Rock has segued into a campaign run for President Nez and Veep Lizer.

All of these visits to the chapters/areas of need and the resulting photo ops are just a paid advertisement to support them in the next election. This is the time that they should be spending in a war room with phones connecting them to the Navajo Nation department heads, BIA, IHS, chapters and field reps.

They should also have constant contact with the COVID-19 relief groups in order to help coordinate an effective relief effort. Another obvious sign about the lack of maturity, wisdom, and seriousness about leading our Navajo Nation is the constant infighting within our tribal government. Important logistics issues should be discussed daily, using maps, briefings, and movement of donations.

Most importantly, a daily accounting of the donated funds being used towards helping our people should be made public. Logistics involves the movement of, the storage of, and the delivery of items with an accounting report. We have veterans and retired persons whose résumés include work in logistics. Handing out potatoes and toilet paper is not why we elected Jonathan Nez and Myron Lizer.

Every time I see their pictures in full PPE gear and police officers standing near them with only a mask, I get very worried. We should not be sacrificing Navajo Police officers just so the president and his entourage can look good on camera. Recalling this administration in the middle of a pandemic might fix the problem.

There are other people out there with the qualities of leadership, honesty and wisdom to effectively carry us through. Their love of our cultural history and traditions, their respect for our basic beliefs, their proven leadership qualities, work ethic and résumé must be considered now, before it’s too late. The fiasco in Window Rock must stop.

Barbara J. Morgan

Santa Fe removes controversial Kit Carson statue

The Black Lives Matter has become a fierce storm in America, so fierce that many American cities are removing racists depictions of American history.  One such historical figure is Kit Carson who betrayed the Dine by leading the American military against the Navajos.  The Mayor of Santa Fe has decided to remove Kit Carson's statue that was standing in Downtown Santa Fe. (Santa Fe mayor calls for removal of controversial monuments, statue of Spanish conquistador) Navajo Historian Wally Brown explains that the Dine rescued and revived a young Kit Carson in the San Juan Mountains.  The Dine adopted Carson and gave him a Navajo wife.  Later on, Carson led the charge against the Dine and executed the Scorched earth campaign against the Dine in Canyon De Chelly.  Like the first Pilgrims that came to America, Kit Carson represents that despicable human being who kills the hands that helped him.


Wally Brown explains that Navajos recued Kit Carson and adopted him

Medicine man blasts Nez for imposing foreign belief on Dine

The NPR put out an interesting article about loss of Navajo culture during the pandemic. (Navajo Nation Loses Elders And Tradition To COVID-19) The pandemic is impacting the elder community by a ratio of about 2-to-1. For every three deaths, two are elders age 60 and above. This is particularly true for the Navajo. The Navajos are losing many elders due to the pandemic. In this article, Medicine Man Ty David says that he knows about five medicine people who have passed away from Covid. He is concerned that no-one bothered to relearned these medicine people's ceremonies. All the kids are in school learning the white man's ways of western education.

But even prior to the pandemic, the Navajo Nation was in a crisis of losing its traditional culture. The crisis came to head in the 2015 Navajo Presidential Election. Some tribal leaders tried to support the traditional values by putting in a requirement that our leaders speak Dine. However, the Navajo People themselves voted out that requirement by making it meaningless by giving it back to the people to decide by their election vote. Since then the Navajo People have mostly ignored and avoided this culture-loss issue, perhaps because the Navajo People don't want to deal with the loss of language and tradition within their own selves, families, and circles, and it is too hard to relearn. Perhaps the Dine people avoided this issue because their families have switched to other beliefs, or they engage in interracial relationships. After the election, it was apparent that we were losing our language and culture rapidly, but few people took any real measure to save our language and traditions. Meanwhile our elders, the people who are knowledgeable and carry the culture, have been dying at a fast rate, so fast that we are now losing endangered ceremonies to extinction. Like Ty Davis says, the Covid pandemic has exacerbated this trend.

The article goes further highlighting other medicine practitioners who blame colonization and the church. Medicine Man Avery Denny blames President Jonathan Nez for imposing a foreign religion on the Dine by selecting a pastor for a vice-president, having his Monday morning meetings with Church evangelicals, covering up and protecting the virus break-out from the church rally gatherings in Chilchinbito and other western agency chapters, giving exemptions to Church faith groups to meet during the lockdown, disrespecting Dine traditions by going to Israel to praise a religion foreign to our ancestors.

One Navajo Council delegate posted that the virus came to the Dine because President Nez ran to Hweeldi where he broke a major restriction set by our Dine ancestors to avoid Fort Sumner. Our people say thar our people, particularly Dine leaders, should respect our ancestors and our people and going to Hweeldi is plain disrespectful to the ancestors, elders, and people.

 Currently, a lot of people are concerned that President Nez vetoed the Navajo Council's plan to spend the $600 million CARES funding because he claims that the Council's proposed plan was not comprehensive. People are particularly concerned that Vice-President Lizer has been meeting with a national evangelist. (Franklin Graham visits the Navajo Nation to offer support for COVID-19 response efforts) I hope that the President does not pay his Church buddies using the CARES funding. How much more can the Dine people tolerate to have their inherent beliefs trampled on by the most visible Navajo leader? Do the people care? 

Overall, the article was a great article. It highlighted some strong issues that the Navajo are contending with during this world pandemic.