Tribal Employee

Navajos save Bashas'

2009-06-10T10:09:00.005-06:00

Tuba City Bashas' (by Tom Zoellner)

During the economic slowdown, a lot of American businesses are cutting down. The Bashas’ supermarkets are no exception. However, the supermarkets that are located within the Navajo reservation are not in the list of stores being closed. In a previous blog entry, I mentioned how Bashas monopolized the Navajo reservation. It looks like here that the Navajos maybe saving Bashas’ during this economic slowdown. The article also shows some history on how Bashas’ extended its chain to the Navajo reservation.

Reservation Bashas’ spared
By Adam Klawonn · June 9, 2009
The Zonie Report

Thanks to the economic slowdown, Bashas’ Supermarkets, headquartered in Chandler, recently announced it would be closing five of its stores statewide. Left untouched, though, are the set of five stores located on Arizona’s American Indian reservations, which are part of the Bashas’ “Dine Market” subset.

That a corporate chain grocery happens to serve historically isolated and neglected communities happens to be one of the state’s more interesting economic stories. It is also, in my view, another reason to believe in local ownership of iconic state institutions instead of the absentee model which has served Arizona quite poorly in recent years (Chase Bank, Pulte, Gannett, et. al.).

An argument might be made that injecting a Western grocery, with all of its crappy processed food, is another means of destruction of a traditional way of life (and diet) on the reservation. But the counter-argument holds that consumer choice should play a role there just as it does everywhere else. Whichever stance you take, the relationship between Bashas’ and the tribe – especially the Navajo – has been largely a content one for the last thirty years.

The Dine Markets got started in 1980 after the tribal council of the Navajo Nation wrote CEO Eddie Basha Jr., asking him to consider opening a store in Chinle. Basha, who would later mount a campaign for governor in 1992, was a descendant of a Lebanese shopkeeper who had migrated to an Arizona mining camp in 1910. Basha was immediately intrigued with the possibility, checked on distribution requirements, and then called the tribal council that same day.

“Hi, my name is Eddie Basha,” he said, according to the trade magazine Arizona Food Industry Journal. “I’m from Bashas’ Markets and I’d like to be your grocer.”

Today there are Dine Markets in Chinle, Window Rock, Tuba City, Kayenta, Pinion, Crownpoint, N.M., and Dilkon. More than 95 percent of the employees are said to speak Navajo.

Customer tastes and preferences vary slightly from other Arizona grocery stores, reports the trade journal. The markets sell a disproportionate amount of mutton, as well as Folgers coffee and Spam. Large bags of Blue Bird flour – long a staple in Navajo households – also do well. Even though the Dine cluster is far away from the company’s nucleus in the Valley, the stores are apparently doing well enough to avoid being shuttered.

Bashas’ spokeswoman Kristy Nied declined to discuss finances or even indicate whether the stores were a net moneymaker. The company is privately held, so there are no SEC filings to inspect. For now, though, the Dine Markets are staying.

Racism stinks!

2009-06-04T11:16:00.006-06:00

This is a video clip about the Navajo Nation's Human Rights Commission. I agree with their concerns. Why just two weeks ago, a waitor in Page and another in Farmington serve me second after another non-Indian customer even though I was there first. Racism stinks! See video.

Update

2009-06-04T10:04:00.004-06:00

Time to update this site. It's been a looooonnnnnnnggggg vacation. I've cleaned up this site and alot of articles have been removed. I left up some of the more interesting and substantial articles.

The Assimilation of Native Americans

2009-02-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is a good article whose message should resonate in Indian Country, including the Navajo reservation, as a reminder that we hold the power to choose whether we are going to become completely, partially, or not assimilated at all.

Only families can halt the breakdown of Native culture
COMPASS: Other points of view
By RENEE CROW
Anchorage Daily News
Published: February 1st, 2009 07:35 PM
Last Modified: February 1st, 2009 07:35 PM

In the past the American school system and the church could and should be blamed for the loss of our Alaska cultures, but times have changed greatly. Today we are able to make choices about the languages our children are taught in with the variety of bilingual programs offered. We are able to home school our children or choose what high school they attend. There has never been a better or more important time for parents and community members to be an integral part of our children's education and life.

What is killing our Native cultures is not our schools but the breakdown of our families.

When we choose to speak English to our children instead of our own language, we are choosing to allow our language to die.

When we allow our children to watch hours of television or play video games instead of sharing our stories, we allow our culture to die.

When we choose to buy meat at the stores instead of trapping, hunting and fishing with our children, we fail to teach them how.

When we buy Doritos and frozen pizza instead of gathering eggs or berries, we hurt our culture.

When we buy a hat from the store instead of sewing one, we fail to teach our children.

When we go to bingo instead of playing our traditional games with our children, we fail.

While unfortunately prejudice still occurs, the days of Native peoples no longer having a say over their lives is long over. I am not a victim as my grandparents and parents were. No one can tell me that I do not belong or that my Native ways are inferior.

Every day I have choices: choices to stay sober, to not watch hours of TV or not to gamble. I have the choice to love my children and spend important time with them, to oversee their education, to teach them my culture's traditions and values.

We are hurting ourselves if we continue to see ourselves as victims. The truth is that our children need us to be part of their lives, to guide their thoughts and dreams. Our children need us to teach them our language, our culture, our traditions and values. All of these are too precious to trust to others to teach or allow to be taken from us.

It is true that the curriculum doesn't reflect Native ways -- and it shouldn't.

Schools have always been about teaching skills that families don't. In states like Michigan, where hunting is also valued, the schools do not teach how to be a successful hunter. It is taught by the family. When reading, writing and math are taught to our children it does not hurt them but adds to the fullness of their lives, giving them opportunities within their villages as well as outside to succeed.

Presently I cannot tell where my children will choose to live or what occupations they may have, but I want them to have the options to be successful in their choices.

Many teachers would define success not as a college education but as a person who is happy, living healthy, and contributing to their community in a positive way. For the most part, I believe that schools are doing their part to help our children. But when our communities continue to have the highest rates of alcoholism, neglect, sexual assault and suicide, I have to question whether we as families are doing our part. These things that hurt our children happen in homes, not in schools. It is best for our children that we look for solutions rather than pointing fingers.
------
Renee Crow is Aleut, raised on St. Paul Island. Now living in Bethel, she is the mother of four and has taught in the Lower Kuskokwim Region for 15 years.

Congress to decide Navajo-New Mexico water settlement bill

2008-11-19T20:54:00.001-07:00

Navajo water settlement included in lands bill
Indianz.com
Monday, November 17, 2008

A bill to settle the water rights of the Navajo Nation is included in a major water and public lands bill that could be considered by the lame-duck Congress.

The bill resolves the tribe's claims on the San Juan River in New Mexico. It authorizes 600,000 acre-feet of water per year for the tribe as well as a water pipeline in the eastern part of the state.

The water and public lands bill, S.3213, may or may not come up during the session due to a hold by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Advice for Navajo Water Rights Journalists

2008-11-19T20:53:00.005-07:00

This article comes out at a time when the U.S. Congress is considering a law that includes approving the water rights settlement agreement between the Navajo Nation and the State of New Mexico.

A stinking corpse: US deceit and theft of Navajo water right
Written by Brenda Norrell
Monday, 17 November 2008 14:25

Today I received one of the most important documents that I've ever received as a journalist in Indian country. It details the loss of Navajo water rights, the role of non-Indian attorneys and how uninformed non-Indian journalists come to Indian country and follow the mandates of those they believe to be the "good guys." Too often, the "good guys" are actually driven by politics and personal motives.

The document is "Navajo Water Rights: Truths and Betrayals," written in response to an article published in High Country News and Navajo Times, written by Matt Jenkins.

Among the authors of "Navajo Water Rights: Truths and Betrayals," is Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald.Many years ago, in the 1990s, I was a stringer for Associated Press and covered federal courts. During the federal trial of Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald, I realized that the US government would stop at nothing to remove him from office and put him in prison. "Why?" I asked a Navajo businessman, during a court recess in Prescott, Arizona. "Was it about oil and gas, or coal?" No, the Navajo businessman said. "It is about the water."

Now, a decade and a half later, I read and understand the importance of Navajo water to the United States, in this document. Navajo water and the electric power made with it, light up the Southwest cities. While the people of the Southwest light up, water their lawns and golf courses and turn on their water faucets, many Navajos haul their water and read by lantern light.
It is a long and corrupt history of US colonialism and deceit, a history with truths now being revealed like maggots on a rotting corpse. From the formation of the Navajo Tribal Council, as it was called then, to sign energy leases in the early Twentieth Century, to the current day machinations to usurp Navajo water rights and resources, the ploys of the United States government and its agents is a long and nauseating history of deceit, which includes the murderous legacy of the Long Walk.

Read for yourself, "Navajo Water Rights: Truths and Betrayals." Water attorneys will gain a great deal from the analysis of Indian water rights. Hopefully, journalists and editors will discover red flags and avoid condescending and inaccurate articles in the future. As George Orwell said, "In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Thanks to all of you out there devoted to this revolutionary act of truth-telling.

Navajo Water Right: Truths and Betrayals

2008-11-19T20:52:00.009-07:00

Here's some frank advice by past Navajo leaders for our current Navajos leaders on a controversial topic, Navajo water rights. The past Navajo leaders' advice is to remove the influence of attorney Stanley Pollack and Dr. John Leeper from the Navajo government.

NAVAJO WATER RIGHTS: TRUTHS & BETRAYALS

A Spring 2008 Response to Matt Jenkins' article in High Country News and Navajo Times

By: Max Goldtooth, Peter MacDonald, and Ron Milford
Joined by: Milton Bluehouse, Sr., former Navajo Nation President; James Henderson, Jr., former Arizona State Senator; and Wallace Hanley, former Navajo Water Code Administrator

A Navajo family views Glen Canyon Dam, on the Colorado River in Arizona, from the Navajo Reservation side of the River, in this parody of Norman Rockwell's famous, and telling, painting from the 1960s.

[Max Goldtooth is a Biomedical Engineering Technician, medicine man, and community organizer. Peter MacDonald is a semi-retired consultant and former Chairman of the Navajo Nation Council. Ron Milford is a Civil Engineer and community organizer.]

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell.

Featured in the March 17, 2008, issue of High Country News (HCN) and in the April 16
issue of the Navajo Times (the Times) was a Navajo water rights-related article by HCN’s Matt Jenkins titled "Seeking the Water Jackpot."

Letters to the HCN editor by concerned readers, like "Felice," who wrote on 3/23/08, said things such as "I agree that Matt Jenkins did seem to have a bias against the grassroots Dine folks ... ." Felice and like-minded reviewers of HCN and the Times do not know the half of it, which is why we wrote this reply.

Navajos’ Massive Unemployment

Jenkins opens his article by describing the deplorable condition of our infrastructure, including our roads, and our unemployment. He correctly said that unemployment is routinely at about 50%, and it has surged to 67%.

The unemployment rate for Arizona, as we begin writing, is 4%. For the U.S. it is around 4.8%. During America's "Great Depression" of the 1930s, it averaged 17%.

The routine Navajo unemployment rate is therefore 1,150% higher than Arizona's, almost 1,000% higher than the U.S. at large and almost 200% higher than the U.S. average during the Great Depression.

Jenkins' condescending article suggests that Navajos should accept the state of things and the "drinking water" or, more correctly, the faucet water, focus that Navajo Nation water lawyer Stanley Pollack and his Navajo Water Rights Commission are mostly limiting their Arizona/Utah efforts to. The New Mexico settlement has similar and other serious limitations.

Having faucet water, avowedly important, nonetheless remains a minimalist start, e.g., every urban U.S. ghetto has faucet water. Also, economist and Indian law expert, Erik Jensen, has recently observed that "Substantial economic development in Indian Country will not occur without significant infusions of outside apital ... ." Navajo, the largest tribe in North America, requires not a "significant" but an epic infusion of capital—the Navajo Nation is the size of West Virginia. The single major source for this desperately needed, anti-poverty, and pro-employment capital rests in the Navajo Nation's water rights; including sovereign authority over rights, long-denied agricultural rights, and full compensation for waived and lost rights.

Pollack and the Water Commission have failed to even pose the question, “What will the last 30% of Navajos on the Nation, who still lack running water, have when the faucet water arrives?” In the absence of an immense infusion of capital, they’ll have the same 50% unemployment rate that prevails on the Nation now. Plus, without full rights, and the full compensation due for the valuable rights and priority dates waived and lost by Pollack and his Commission, Navajo will still have no sustainable way to maintain its economy or infrastructure like, say, Arizona does. What the Navajo Nation needs is something like the water and related values we already supply to Arizona; which has the fastest growth of any state in the U.S.

CAP, the Page Power Plant, and the Navajo Cost

The Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal is designed to deliver, on average, 1.5 million acre feet of water annually (equivalent to 1.5 million football fields a foot deep) from the Colorado River diversion point at Lake Havasu to the Phoenix and Tucson regions. Without the CAP, which began operations in the '80s, Arizona would have none of today's growth. The CAP canal runs over 330 miles to Phoenix and Tucson. The market value of the CAP water is perhaps $30 billion dollars. But it’s worth more than that because without the water, Arizona would fall into chaos and start to depopulate. The Navajo Nation makes Arizona’s CAP-dependent growth possible. Here's how.

Navajo coal mined on Black Mesa goes by train to the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona. The coal is burned to create steam from Navajo water taken out of the Colorado River at Lake Powell. That steam generates electricity at the plant.

The volume of Navajo water used annually in the plant is about 33,000 acre feet. During the past 30 plus years, the total Navajo water used is about 1,000,000 acre feet. At today’s lease prices, that is over $1 billion worth of water, for which Navajo has never received a penny; though the surrounding states acknowledged the water is part of the Navajos’ share of the Colorado River. Pollack failed to tell the Navajo leaders this or the Page Plant's role in CAP.

Another truth about the Page Plant is that the Navajo Nation does not get the electric power generated at the Plant. The power serves the Southwest. And, almost 1/4 of it is dedicated to pumping Colorado River water (which we have been denied to date) through the CAP canal.

Therefore, some 23.7% of the Page Plant electricity goes southwest through power lines across the Reservation and on to the CAP pumps, starting at Lake Havasu, to push Colorado River water 336 miles up hill to central and southern Arizona.

Thus, resources from a people with widespread poverty are used to fuel America’s leading growth state—Arizona. Social economists refer to this kind of thing as colonialism and even economic racism. Also, half of Glen Canyon Dam, at Page, was placed on Navajo land. The power generated goes elsewhere. We get no continuing payments for the land, and none for our water that generates power at the dam. And, to date, we can only look at Lake Powell.

Jenkins Pre-planned Bias

We are a mixed group politically—Democrat, Republican, and Independent. Although our opinions may often differ, what we have most in common are that we support full Navajo water rights, and we each were directly or indirectly belittled by Jenkins' article—about which the several of us who were interviewed had advance notice of its pre-planned prejudice.

We had received a "heads-up" that Jenkins, Water Commissioner Lena Fowler, her husband and Anglo journalist George Hardeen (a Jenkins connection and contributor to HCN, as well as the media man for the Navajo President), Stanley Pollack, Pollack's operative and Anglo engineer and Nation employee John Leeper, Ph. D., and others supported the idea for the subversive Jenkins article.

We consider Pollack and Leeper as the thoroughly informed deceivers. The others, and most Navajo leaders, are caught up in their deceptions. Jenkins, however, must bear sole responsibility for his acquired role of private propagandist and agent of oppression.

Nonetheless, each of us who was interviewed determined to allow Jenkins to speak with us in the hope that either our heads-up information was incorrect, or the aberrant influence of Pollack et al. on Jenkins would be overcome by the truth. We were mistaken.

Jenkins' Reservation Visit

Jenkins was biased from the beginning. He was uninterested and occasionally rude when we separately suggested he consider sources which expose Pollack's strategies of delay, deception, misinformation, non-information, rights reduction, rights minimization, and sovereignty cutbacks. Below are two typical examples of Jenkins' unfairness.

First, as an enticement to provide him what he was angling for, Jenkins promised us he would definitely send a pre-publication draft of his article so we could comment and note corrections. He never sent us a copy, but tribal government conferees advised us he did send a pre-publication copy to Pollack, Fowler, and Hardeen.

Second, Jenkins bothered to mention such irrelevant trivia as his observation of Fowler's "vaguely sexy set of crow's feet at the corners of her eyes." Yet he did not report on the extensive credibility of the man who originally helped us expose what was happening on the Navajo Nation. What Jenkins condescendingly said was that the man "was a guy named Jack Utter, another bilagaana who is a hydrologist (for the Navajo Nation)." Jenkins continued with, "Utter is animated by the thrill of conspiracy, and he keeps a copy of Paolo Friere's anti-imperialist screed Pedagogy of the Oppressed -which largely draws its inspiration from the British colonization of India - close at hand." That was it.

Jenkins made some gross misrepresentations that go to his own credibility. First, Dr. Utter did not have a copy of the late Paolo Friere's book "close at hand." We know he used to own a copy, but it went missing two years ago. Second, the book does not draw anything "from the British colonization of India," as Jenkins declared. They are not mentioned in Friere's book. Jenkins obviously has not read or researched the book, and falsely represented it. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, used in hundreds of universities throughout America as part of their diversity curricula, focuses on the poverty-stricken population of South America, including the Indians.

We are aware that what upsets people like Pollack, Leeper, and now Jenkins the most is that we and other Navajo grassroots advocates, who see through these deceivers, are not unread, unthinking, uncaring, or uncommitted.

More Than Just "a guy"

Compare, if you will, the following description of Dr. Jack Utter, set down by those of us who know him, with Jenkins' portrayal and determine for yourself if Jenkins concealed from readers cogent information about the man on whose credibility much of the early grassroots argument turned.

Jack Utter, Ph. D., J. D., age 57, has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, including irrigated agriculture. He also has a Master of Science in Watershed Management. His Doctor of Philosophy is in Forest Resource Management, with a specialization in wild river management. He completed his law degree in 2007.

Jack is a widely-known Indian-Country author, educator, and lecturer. Annually, he presents several nationally publicized seminars on Indian law, including water law. Additionally, Jack's wife is Navajo. He has two Navajo step-children, now in college, and he has hundreds of supportive Navajo in-laws throughout the Navajo Nation. His loyalty to his Navajo family, his in-laws, and the Navajo people is unquestionable.

Moreover, in the early 1990s Jack worked as a water rights negotiator for the Yavapai-Prescott Tribe of Arizona, among whom his step-daughters have blood relatives. He served as a member of the Yavapai-Prescott team that successfully took the Tribe's water rights settlement through Congress in 1994.

It is apparent to us that Jenkins, who we made sure had access to all the information presented in this section, purposely withheld it from his readership.

A Small Part of the Pollack Story

Delay. Water law lawyers Monroe Price and Gary Weatherford, as far back as 1976, published the following law review statement. "Often, non-Indians simply postpone the resolution of Indian rights, hoping they will disappear or that courts will not interfere with a developed pattern of resource reliance (by non-Indians)."

Pollack started work for the Navajo Nation in 1985. It took him 20 years to get a single water rights settlement proposal before Congress; and, then, it was only in one of three states in which the Nation is located. Pollack has been here for over 20 years, yet he only began to timely move forward on broader Navajo water rights after grassroots protests in 2000-2001.Unfortunately for the Navajo people, Pollack’s efforts remain two decades behind. His delay could not have been worse; with war, drought, economic downturns, and climate change now on America's and the world's front burners. These troubles were not front-and-center for Pollack's first 15 years. If he were in the U.S. military all this time, and had served America the way he has “served” the Navajos, he would have been court martialed long ago.

Minimizing Indian water rights. In early 2002, Pollack persuaded the Navajo Council to endorse a 2001 Arizona Supreme Court case which had a few positive aspects, but which ran contrary to federal Indian law. The Council never read the case, and he never read it to them, but he did say it was "a huge win" for the Navajo Nation. He never told them the case calls for taking "a minimalist approach to," Indian water rights. We have asked various Council delegates since if they endorse minimizing Indian rights. Each answered "no." When told of what Pollack did, they look down and say their hands are tied.

Treaties. The Navajo Nation has two treaties with the United States; 1849 and 1868. None of the 22 Arizona tribes, except Navajo, has a treaty with the U.S. Of the 23 New Mexico tribes, only Navajo, Mescalero, and Ute have treaties. Thus, Southwest treaties are important for the few tribes who have them. But, only a handful of Navajos even know there is an 1849 Navajo-U.S. Treaty. The Treaties were not even mentioned in the original San Juan Settlement that Pollack told the Council to approve. It was not until grassroots people pressed the issue that the Council was told of the 1849 Treaty, and the two Treaties were mentioned in the Settlement.
But, the 1849 Treaty is not used for water rights, and the 1868 Treaty is employed in a primarily token way. Additionally, the Nation received no specific compensation for reduction of its very valuable Treaty rights.

Furthermore, under a 1990s New Mexico court case, language found in the 1849 Navajo Treaty, and copied verbatim in the Mescalero Apache Tribe's 1852 Treaty, was ruled to give the Mescaleros an 1852 water right. The New Mexico courts, relying on the federal "Canons of Construction," found "in favor of the Indians." Thus, Navajo has an exceptional chance of establishing an 1849 water right for some lands in New Mexico. And this could be pressed in negotiations as precedent for certain rights in Arizona. But, Pollack effectively tossed the Treaty out, and garnered no compensation in specific return. And, he did not tell the Navajo Council or
the Water Commission about the Treaty or the favorable New Mexico case. Who would deny a tribe their treaties, their best friend or their worst enemy?

Waiver of the Canons of Construction. The federal "Canons of Construction," or rules of legal interpretation on Indian issues, are over 170 years old and are embodied in the 1849 Navajo-U.S. Treaty; which, again, was effectively tossed out of the San Juan Settlement. As noted, the New Mexico courts have strongly endorsed the Canons. These court-made rules generally require that treaties, agreements, statutes, and executive orders be liberally construed in favor of Indian tribes; and ambiguities be resolved in favor of tribes.

The San Juan Settlement throws out the Canons of Construction. Unfortunately, the Navajo Council never heard of the Canons until after the Canons were discarded in some obscure Settlement language. Only after James Henderson discovered this and complained did the Council first learn there was such a thing as the Canons of Construction. Pollack then had a memo sent to the Council that effectively said to leave things as they are and, "there's no guarantee a court would apply the Canons to a future Settlement issue anyway." But, with the Settlement as written, now there is a guarantee that the Canons will never be applied, since they have been waived. This uncompensated waiver sets an onerous precedent—and is grossly unfair to the other 566 federally recognized tribes—while our leaders fail to act.

"Senior" water rights. Pollack told the Navajo Council and Commission that, in the San Juan Settlement, Navajo has senior water rights. The truth is that the proposed Settlement language subordinates nearly all Navajo water rights by saying the Navajo Nation will not use its rights in a way that interferes with anyone else's. The true meaning of "senior" rights is that when you have them, you can use them before junior rights to the full extent of your own. Pollack should have been honest with the Council on this, and should have obtained just compensation for forfeiting senior rights, if the Council agreed.

Use it or lose it. Pollack and Leeper for years have told the Navajo Council, Water Commission, and citizens at public meetings that "use it or lose it" applies to Indian reserved water rights. That is completely false. Indian reserved rights are not lost by non-use. But, Pollack and Leeper told this to Navajos so the latter will agree to reduced or minimized claims because of a Navajo history of relatively low water use, especially in Arizona and Utah, due to poverty, a lack of infrastructure and capital, and more than a century of mass government discrimination in favor of non-Indian water projects.

Fowler and her fellow Commissioners have also unwittingly spouted this "use-it-or-loseit" theme at many public meetings. That is, until Fowler was supplied last summer with 18 legal citations to the contrary. Two of these were even taken from legal seminars Pollack gave off the Reservation. When speaking to non-Navajo lawyers off the Reservation, he gives a different story because he cannot get away with all the falsehoods he spreads here. Thus, Pollack correctly said the following, off the Reservation. "Indian water rights are reserved. These rights ... are not lost through non-use." (1999. Emphasis added.) "Reserved rights exist regardless of whether water has been used by an Indian Tribe. Reserved rights are not lost by non-use or state doctrines of abandonment or forfeiture." (2000. Emphasis added.)

Additionally, after Pollack was exposed on this issue, Fowler had to acknowledge at a public meeting that reserved rights are, by legal definition, not lost by non-use.

However, when faced with the reality that Pollack and Leeper had caused the Commission to spread serious falsehoods, and rather than bring these two men to task, Fowler chose to save face and help organize the Jenkins article; thus doing a great disservice to our people.

The upper Colorado River waiver. Pollack told the Navajo Council and Water Commission that the waiver of Navajo water rights on the upper Colorado River in 1969for 50 years was valid. It is not. The waiver was achieved through documented deceptions, coercions, and falsehoods presented to an uninformed Council. It is therefore void. He also, for years, told our people that upper Colorado River basin water in Lake Powell could not be used in the Lower Basin. That too is false. Even now, the State of Utah, which had agreed decades ago not to use upper basin water in the lower, is moving ahead to do it anyway. Readers can look for themselves on the Internet for the "Lake Powell Pipeline Project."

Allottee's water rights. The future water rights of the New Mexico Navajo land allottees were folded into the Navajo Nation's. The land allottees had no proper notice and were not given an informed opportunity to be heard, i.e., their constitutional rights of due process were essentially violated. The Navajo Nation does not control water rights appurtenant to the checkerboard allotments in N.M., which are outside the Reservation. Some 3,000 or more allotments, with perhaps 30,000 Navajo owners, are in the San Juan Basin. The checkerboard allottees' rights, on allotments taken from the public domain, are independent of the Navajo
Nation's.

Reduced San Juan Settlement volumes and values. Randomly ask a Navajo Council member how much of the San Juan River Navajo is getting in the proposed Settlement, and they'll say, "Pollack told us 1/2 the River." That volume is incorrect. One half would be roughly 750,000 acre feet, or at least $10 billion worth of rights. The actual rights volume is about 325,000 acre feet. The difference in value between the larger and the smaller figures is roughly $6 billion. What the Council delegates do not understand is that Pollack confined the Navajo Nation to claiming about one half of the roughly one half of the River that was assigned to New Mexico in a non-Indian agreement from the 1940s that the Navajo Nation was never party to. All our ongoing settlements have complications. But, in each, Pollack and Leeper surrender Navajo rights and opportunities they've hidden from our leaders.

In addition, in 1962, the Navajo Nation gave up rights to 110,000 acre feet of San Juan River water that is now pumped under the Continental Divide to the middle Rio Grande River Basin. That volume of rights in the middle Rio Grande, at today's prices, is worth about $3 billion. That is $1.5 billion dollars more than the rough cost of the proposed Settlement. In other words, in light of all this, the Navajos have already more than paid for the Settlement, as well as the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP), in what they have given up. This is a powerful negotiating point that justifies full and fair compensation for what was and is being given up. But, Pollack did not inform the Navajo leadership of these values and the reduced Settlement volumes described. Too, the Jenkins article noted a San Juan Settlement volume of about 325,000 acre feet. The Times published the article. The Times later published a Settlement-related article, declaring the River Settlement volume to be about 600,000 acre feet. That’s near 100% more than HCN or the New Mexico media report, but the Times, like the Council and the Commission, failed to question the discrepancy because the 600,000 plus figure is the on-Reservation muddled story that Pollack and Leeper give.

Water values. Several years ago we reported to the Council that the value of Southwest region water rights was, conservatively, at least $1,000 per acre foot. Pollack told them we were either lying or crazy. Within a year Navajo’s NIIP water was professionally appraised at approximately $15,000 per acre foot. Now, regional surface water values generally fall between $10,000 and $55,000 per acre foot—the latter in Santa Fe. But, unfortunately, only we have challenged Pollack for this proven falsehood.

The Winter's Doctrine. The centennial of the "Winter's Doctrine" of Indian reserved water rights is being celebrated this year, but Pollack essentially waived the doctrine in the San Juan Settlement, and is doing the same in Arizona and Utah while our leaders ignore it.

The Water Rights Commission

Pollack is, in essence, telling the Water Commission and Council that Navajo cannot even claim the greater rights it was expected to for decades. And, he gets deceived Commissioners, like Fowler, to work against their people's rights; while they are rewarded with the power, prestige, travel, and additional advantages that go along with a leadership position.

Fowler and the other Commissioners were unaware the original proposal to create the Commission came from the grassroots group Dine Sovereignty Defense Association, or "DSDA." The idea was derived from Montana's Reserved Rights Commission. DSDA refined their model to serve as a people's commission, separate from Pollack’s manipulation, and urged the Council to pursue it. They did, but Pollack and Leeper, and several Council Delegates (who they had in their pockets), intervened and stole the Commission from the people. Now the Commission's education and decision-making are controlled by and/or filtered through Pollack. They have effectively become his misled pawns, and thus frequent spokespersons for outside interests.

Tribal Patriotism

Jenkins' article mocks us for having feelings of patriotism for our own people. Even in the 1890s, one of the most anti-Indian decades in history, an Interior Department publication recognized that tribal members "owe immediate allegiance to their ... tribes."

We think Sitting Bull, the assassinated Lakota leader, may have said it best for us. "Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked that my skin is red? Because I am (an Indian); ... because I would die for … my people?" Feelings similar to these are behind the irony that American Indians have perpetually had the highest rate of U.S. military service of any ethnic group. Indians protect America because it is their homeland. Peter MacDonald, for example, honorably served as a Navajo Code Talker in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. Milton Bluehouse, too, served honorably in the Army, both stateside and in Europe. Also, James Henderson is an honorably discharged and wounded combat veteran of the Viet Nam war.

This is why Jenkins' referring to Navajos, like ourselves, as "insurgents" is so offensive to us—who are peacefully struggling for our people's rights. All of us have relatives who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Max and Ron have children who served there against real "insurgents." These veterans have done this sacrifice while Pollack, Fowler, and the others childishly support Jenkins' insult to us, our families' veterans, and the veterans of numerous other Navajo patriot families. Despite this disrespect, we will continue with the great respect we have for the service and sacrifice of all our veterans. We also say shame on you to Jenkins and his coschemers. We further ask him and similar interlopers to kindly keep their anti-Navajo propaganda to themselves.

Fabricated Sympathy for Pollack

This was a goal of Jenkins. Ron had written an opinion in the Times in December that, among other things, called for investigations into potential ethics violations by Pollack and other Navajo Nation attorneys who may knowingly join in his subversive efforts.

Also, we are not insensitive to the fate of millions of Jews during the Holocaust, as Jenkins suggested. The opposite is true. One of our group, in fact, counseled with a regional Rabbi after we learned Pollack was Jewish. This was done because we could not understand how Pollack could carry out his oppressive policies against our people. The Holocaust explanations from the Rabbi made our hearts weep, and reminded us of how many of our ancestors, and those of other Southwestern tribes, were treated so inhumanely by first Spain, then Mexico, and finally America in the 19th century. But the Rabbi advised us not to apply any sympathy to Pollack. The Rabbi described a personal disappointment that Pollack was Jewish, because of Pollack's deceptions. And, it was the Rabbi who gave us this quote, “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a great lie than to a small one.”

The Boyden Syndrome

In the late 1940s a lawyer named John Boyden came to the Navajo Nation seeking employment for his Utah law firm. Navajo was full up. Boyden went on to Hopi, where he was hired in 1951. Law professor Charles Wilkinson explains in his 1990s book Fire on the Plateau that Boyden planned to, in effect, take over the Hopi government. He succeeded, by getting "progressive" Hopis to outvote "traditionals," and then pushed development of Black Mesa coal and Hopi acceptance of the Peabody Coal Company lease.

Boyden obtained approval of the lease without truthfully informing the Hopi Council on the lease's value, or that of scarce water resources. He also never disclosed whether he had ties to Peabody. However, he did negotiate a groundwater lease, "on behalf of Hopi," whereby the Tribe would receive from Peabody a "laughable" (Wilkinson’s term) $1.67 for every acre foot (326,000 gallons) of pristine N-Aquifer water used to slurry Peabody's coal through a pipeline from Black Mesa. The pipeline went to a Laughlin, Nevada, power plant roughly 300 miles to
the west.

Boyden, the deceived Hopi Council, and Peabody always vehemently denied that Boyden ever represented Peabody, but rumors (much less strong than Pollack’s identifiable deceptions) persisted. Boyden died in 1980, and his papers went to the University of Utah. Wilkinson and a researcher gained access to those papers in the 1990s. They discovered an entire file on Boyden's secret work for Peabody. Wilkinson's researcher remarked to Wilkinson about the Peabody materials, "I can't even begin to tell you how bad it is." Wilkinson himself, after going over the file, said "it was a sickening, depressing experience."

Hopi and Navajo coal and water was, and is, wanted by the American Southwest and its boosters for a great buildup of this part of the "sun belt." The vast majority of the benefits have not gone to the tribes but to outside interests.

Navajo tribal member and attorney, Sharon Noel, who was a Navajo Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer and later chief of staff for President Kelsey Begaye, recognized a kind of Boyden syndrome at work on Navajo before she was forced out by the Pollack faction. She went public with some of this in the Gallup Independent on July 30, 2002. Noel said about the Navajo DOJ, where Pollack works, "DOJ is more about being obstructionist and placing barriers in front of long-standing problems (such as water rights) than it is about seeking remedies on behalf of the Dine people ... . Somebody is making money off the continued suffering of the people." She went on to say about Navajo water rights, "The more I read the more astounded I became, ... I learned our Colorado River water rights claim is huge." Noel was a casualty of telling the truth.

We are confident, however, that in the coming decades the names Boyden and Pollack will be commonly spoken about in the same breath, along with those in Navajo government who helped Pollack achieve his ill ends, whether they were deceived or not.

Navajo leaders are currently embarrassed about the loss of $4.7 million to a con man they made a deal with for an on-Reservation project. It turns out the man had a three-year gap in employment history. No one bothered to ask about it. After the fraud became apparent, the employment gap was found to exist because the man had been in prison for another fraudulent scheme. Now, Navajo leaders admit “the signs were there.” Unfortunately, the “gaps” in Pollack’s handling of water rights have been dealt with same way; they’ve been ignored. “The signs are there,” too. But not in over 20 years has there been a fully open and honest presentation to the Navajo leadership and people on water rights potentials, the law, treaty rights, Winters rights, sovereign control values, water values, waiver values, etc.

Conclusion

It is important for the Navajo People to know that they have inalienable rights not to have to cower before the states and outside interests, like Pollack effectively causes our leaders to do. Even a high-ranking Navajo lawyer confided to one of our group, some time ago, that dealing with powerful White corporate, state, and federal lawyers and politicians is far too daunting for him, so he turns a blind eye to Pollack.

The Navajo Nation can rid itself of Pollack and Leeper, and withdraw the proposed San Juan Settlement and make corrections. And, it can re-direct the Arizona and Utah settlements away from the current weakened approach. Furthermore, like non-Indian interests, the Navajo Nation can "maximize all rights at all times and at all places," and begin negotiations from there. We can maintain this philosophy of strength while remaining reasonable, logical, and determined to negotiate the best settlements possible for our people. Among other tribes and non-Indian
interests the motto is “Never give up anything without getting something in exchange;” while Navajo gives away $billions in value.

This happens partly because colonialism and racism have multi-generational impacts on affected peoples. There is the observable or disguised despotism of the colonist and racist, and the learned and degrading submission of the oppressed. But we believe these negatives can be overcome.

At the very end of his article, Jenkins quotes Pollack talking about the grassroots people. Pollack says, "You know? They're like, "Well, shit. Why do we have this guy here? I want to be a millionaire."

No, the grassroots patriots for the Navajo Nation only want it to survive, to gain access to full rights, to receive just compensation for waived and lost rights, to have decent infrastructure, and to reduce the devastating unemployment rate at least down to Great Depression levels. This kind of far-better future would be an astounding achievement—one which Pollack and his supporters, like Jenkins, are sabotaging.

Navajo Gaming Story

2008-11-19T20:43:00.004-07:00

This article summarizes some of the Dine Bahane' and the historical Long Walk. It's a good reminder to Navajos considering that the Navajo Nation's first casino has opened this week despite the Navajo people's vote against gaming.

Navajo Stories of Gaming
Arizona Republic
November 16, 2008

According to Navajo legends, the first humans and all creatures came from different worlds below.

Navajos received life skills from the Holy People, who taught them to live in harmony with nature. They were given a designated home, Dine bi Keyah (Navajo Land), surrounded by Four Sacred Mountains.

Wagering plays a noteworthy role in Navajo history and lore. Below are versions of two legends and a key historic moment, all influenced by gambling.

Evil Gambler

Navajo legend tells about one of the ancients, a man named Noqoilpi, who was so skilled at gambling that he was nicknamed "One-Who-Wins-You."

According to "Stories of Traditional Navajo Life and Culture," those who bet against the wizard always lost, and most wound up as slaves hauling rock slabs from a limestone quarry.

One day, Noqoilpi's honest twin brother came to visit. The oppressed people, who knew that a sibling could bring reverse magic, saw an opportunity to overcome the wizard's power. They pressed for the brothers to have a race and gave secret tips to the visitor.

The brothers competed in the "shinny match," where contestants run to a pair of trees and climb to the top. The one who shinnied up first would win his sibling's family, slaves and other possessions.

During the race, Noqoilpi resorted to old tricks, firing a witch missile at his brother, to no avail. Near the finish line, visiting brother was warned by Horned Toad that one tree was strong and the other weak. He raced to climb the sturdy oak while One-Who-Wins-You shinnied up the cane reed tree, which toppled under his weight. The wizard lost, and the liberated people felt no sympathy, calling out for him to be tied to a holy arrow and shot into space.

The Long Walk

In September 1861, U.S. soldiers and the Indians around Fort Fauntleroy in New Mexico gathered for a series of horse races. The site, now Fort Wingate, is several miles southeast of the new Firerock Casino.

An account by Martha Quillen describes how Chief Manuelito's horse faltered and veered off the track in the final race because someone had cut the halter. The Navajos demanded a rematch, but the judges, all soldiers, refused.

The ensuing violence was recorded by Capt. Nicholas Holt: "The Navahos, squaws and children ran in all directions and were shot and bayoneted. ... I saw a soldier murdering two little children and a woman; I ran up as quick as I could but could not get there soon enough to prevent him from killing the two innocent children. ... Meanwhile, the colonel had given orders to the officer of the day to have the artillery brought out to open upon the Indians. The sergeant in charge of the mountain howitzers pretended not to understand the order given, for he considered it an unlawful order."

With Kit Carson as a guide, the Army launched a scorched-earth campaign against the Navajos that eventually led to the roundup of about 10,000 Indians, one-third of whom died during the infamous Long Walk to Bosque Redondo.

The Shoe Game

Long ago, animals of the daytime competed against their nocturnal counterparts to determine whether humans should live in a world of darkness or of light.

The game, or ceremony, is known as Keshjee: Team A buries four shoes in sand, one containing a ball made from yucca. Team B uses a cedar stick to select which shoe contains the hidden ball. They take turns hiding and seeking until one team has collected 102 yucca stems used to keep score.

In the animals' wager, Coyote switched sides when it appeared his team was losing. Owl hid the ball beneath his wing and was forever blinded in daylight as a penalty.

Keshjee is still played in early winter, with lessons of teamwork, loyalty and fairness conveyed in dozens of songs.

But the original contest between animals lasted until sunrise, when both sides realized that creatures have no power over the cycles of sun and moon.

Auto Dealerships and Navajos

2008-10-30T14:05:00.010-06:00

They say that the Navajo Nation is about the size of the state of West Virginia. It is wide open dusty land. It is covered by a network of paved roads owned by the state and federal governments. There are also a lot of dirt roads where pave roads fall short.

Now Navajos live in communities. Many Navajos also live in the remote boondocks. All these Navajos need food and goods to live. These food and goods are available primarily in the stores which are located in bigger communities like Chinle, or in the bordertowns, like Gallup. To obtain these food and goods which are necessary to life, Navajos need durable vehicles to get goods. Navajos also need vehicles for other reasons: to heard sheep, to haul water, etc.

Most Navajos who live on the reservation are uneducated. I would not be surprised if the average education of reservation Navajos is less than the high school level. Most Navajos who are educated, i.e. college-educated, have left the reservation (to get educated) and never returned. Thus most reservation Navajos have little education. They do not understand some basic things that other Americans understand such as buying a vehicle. A lot of those who do purchase vehicles also don’t speak English. How do you effectively communicate with this situation?

American entrepreneurs look for opportunity to make money. The automobile industry is no different. They are like sharks. Where there is a profit to be made, they’ll be there. That is the case with auto dealers and Navajos. Auto dealers take advantage of uneducated people like reservation Navajos to make the most profit they can make. That is the reason a lot of auto dealers, such as Ford and Chevy target Navajos. That’s also the reason Bashas and Walmart compete for Navajo business (because Navajos have that need and most Navajos are not educated).

Because Navajos need vehicles for transportation, many uneducated Navajos fall prey to the deceptive tactics of auto dealers and loan companies. As a result, many auto dealers, finance companies, and other businesses cheat a lot of Navajos. That is the reason there is a lot of ads for vehicles, predatory loans, a lot of which results in repossessions.

Because of this situation, it is important that Navajos understand the car buying process. The article below shows how to avoid some of the most common tricks used by the auto dealers. I thinks it's important issue. It is important that we understand how vehicle-purchasing works so we won't be cheated out. It is important that we understand what “financing means", or what “dealer invoice price” is, or how “zero down” affects you. If you know of uneducated Navajos who want to purchase a vehicle, help them understand these terms.

7 ways dealers make you pay extra
Winning strategies for playing the car-buying game to win.
ConsumerReport.org
October 30, 2008

Your goal is to get the best car at the best price. The dealers goal should be to help you do this, but too often its simply to make as much profit as they can. As a smart shopper, you need to know the common strategies that dealerships use to pad their bottom line--from tricky negotiating tactics to trying to sell you unnecessary extras--and how to avoid playing their game. Consumer Reports auto-test staff, which buys more than 50 vehicles a year, has had hundreds of dealership experiences. Following are some of the most common things you could encounter and CRs advice on how to avoid falling prey to them.

1. Mixing negotiations. Salespeople like to combine the vehicle price, trade-in, and/or financing negotiation, often asking you what you can afford to pay per month. This gives them more latitude to provide a favorable figure in one area while inflating figures in other areas. In the end, this could cost you more overall.

Avoid this trap by negotiating one thing at a time, starting with the price of the car. Approach this as if you were paying cash, with no trade-in. To get the best deal, you should go in with a starting price thats based not on the vehicles sticker price but on how much the dealer paid for it. The dealer invoice price is commonly available on Web sites and in pricing guides, but that isnt necessarily what the dealer paid. Behind-the-scenes bonuses, such as dealer incentives and holdbacks, give the dealer more profit margin--sometimes thousands of dollars--which gives you more room to haggle. To help, Consumer Reports New Car Price Reports (available via ConsumerReports.org) includes the CR Bottom Line Price, which is the dealer invoice minus any incentives, holdbacks, or rebates. A reasonable starting price is 4 to 8 percent over the CR Bottom Line Price, depending on how much demand there is for the model.

Make it clear to the salesperson that you want the lowest possible markup over your starting price, and that youll visit other dealerships selling the same vehicle and will buy from the one with the best price.

Once youve settled on a price, discuss financing and any trade-in separately. This makes it easier to get the best deal at every step of the transaction.

2. 0 down, 0 interest, 0 payments for one year. This may sound good, but there are downsides that can cost you money. After the first year, you still owe all the monthly payments youve delayed, often at a higher-than-necessary interest rate. In short, you end up owing much more than the sticker price on a vehicle that is now a used car.

Consider this kind of deal carefully. No down payment, for instance, means youll have to finance more, which makes the monthly payments higher and increases the amount you pay in interest over the life of the loan. Be sure you know what the interest rate will be after the first year, and compare with rates that are currently available. Keep in mind that many buyers dont qualify for zero-percent loans and other low rates. Knowing the current rates can also help you avoid being talked into a rate thats higher than what you could get elsewhere.

3. The leasing game. Many leasing customers assume that the monthly payment the salesperson quotes is a nonnegotiable figure. Thats not true. The figure is often based on a vehicles sticker price with no discount, and can be negotiated just as if you were buying the car. In fact, to keep the transaction simple, you can negotiate the vehicle price before mentioning that you want to lease.

Other negotiable lease items include the down payment, annual mileage limit, and purchase-option price. Just as when buying, you can have dealers compete against each other, giving your business to the one that offers you the best deal.

4. Financing and your credit score. Dealers like to arrange the financing for your vehicle because it gives them another source of profit. But the interest rate they offer may be higher than you could get elsewhere. Dont make financing a purchase-time decision. Before visiting the dealership, make sure you know how youll pay for the vehicle. Call ahead to find out what the dealers rate is, and compare it with what you could get from banks, credit unions, or other lending institutions. If you are preapproved for a loan, you can keep the financial arrangements out of the negotiations.

Remember that your credit score will affect what interest rate youre offered, so its good to know it in advance. Ideally, check your credit score a couple months before buying the car so that you have time to correct any errors in your report.

Knowing your credit score can also protect you if a disreputable dealer tries to give you a higher interest rate than you deserve. Any score over 700 should ensure you the lowest rates. A report with a credit score costs $15 or less at each of the major credit bureaus: Equifax, www.equifax.com, 800-685-1111; Experian, www.experian.com, 888-397-3742; and TransUnion, www.transunion.com, 800-888-4213.

5. Loading on the options. Salespeople will sometimes try to make up for a low price on a vehicle by talking you into a lot of optional equipment. Do your homework, so you know what options you want and which you can live without. Many options are available separately, but others can only be bought as part of a package. Consider these carefully. Option packages can make you pay for features you dont need to get a few you want. Its best to choose a vehicle trim level that gives you most of the options you want, then add other options separately. If a model doesnt have the features at the price you want, consider another.

Remember that you can negotiate the price of options. Various Web sites and Consumer Reports New Car Price Reports give you dealer invoice price for all available options.

6. Extras you dont need. Another profit source for dealers is extras such as rustproofing, fabric protection, paint sealant, and etching your Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on windows to deter thieves. Sometimes, these types of charges will simply appear on your bill of sale without anyone having mentioned them to you. Dont waste your money. What could cost the dealer about $90 can cost you $1,000 or more.

Vehicle bodies are already treated to protect against rust. Upholstery is typically treated at the factory, or you can do it yourself with a can of spray-on fabric protectant. Paint sealants and waxes are available for under $15 at any auto-parts store or supermarket. Some states do require dealers to offer VIN etching, but none require that you buy it from them. If you want VIN etching, you can do it yourself with a $25 kit.

Dealer prep fees--such as checking tire pressure--should be included in the purchase price, not listed as extras. If these items are on your bill of sale, refuse to pay for them.

7. The question of extended warranties. At some point in the buying process, the dealerships financing manager will try to sell you an extended warranty, which can cost hundreds of dollars. Consumer Reports does not recommend buying an extended warranty unless you plan on keeping a trouble-prone vehicle for an extended time after the original warranty runs out. Most manufacturer warranties are sufficient, with bumper-to-bumper coverage of at least three years or 36,000 miles and powertrain coverage thats often longer. If you want an extended warranty, ones offered by the auto manufacturer are typically better than those offered by third-party companies.

Some disreputable dealers may tell you that you must buy an extended warranty because the bank requires it. In fact, lenders typically dont require it, and making you pay for one under these pretenses is illegal in some states.

Is economic development right for Navajos?

2008-10-21T23:42:00.008-06:00

I would like to hear more from Mr. Williams. He brings out some excellent points that economic development-minded Navajos need to consider. If Navajos do become engulfed in economic development, then would the American government be relieved of its trust responsibility to the Indians? Mr. Williams states that we should be wary of economic development. This is just like the issue with AHCCCS. Why should we have to be eligible for government health care when Indians should automatically have health care as a treaty right? The saying goes, "money is the root of all evil". Maybe we should remember our ancestor's warnings about greed and selfishness and take a real good look at ourselves. Maybe we should give economic development a second thought.

Money helped create some of the worst monsters
Navajo Times
Letter to the Editor
Oct. 16, 2008

This letter is in response to Milton Bluehouse Sr. Based on your letter ("New economic development leaders needed," Oct. 9, 2008), economic development is your proposal for how to eradicate current conditions of "social deterioration."

Your prescription is widely shared by Navajo Nation government officials and the Navajo people at large so this letter is also addressed to them.

For most, it seems that inept/uneducated leaders and unnecessary "red-tape" are all that stand in the way of guaranteed wealth. That by "opening up" and "streamlining" our leaders can be helpful in recruiting businesses and U.S. contracts.

And that if our leaders were more effective toward these ends, that businesses could finally "take off" and many of our ills would be eliminated.

In essence, many suggest that money can cure our problems. Wittingly or not, these views are founded on the philosophy of market fundamentalism.

Free market economists will insist that money is the key to human development, that human ambition and desire of profit has lead to all that has been gained by "modern" society. They will also insist that economic development is fully reliant on the establishment of a market that is open and free.

I have two basic problems with these assumptions. Firstly, discourse matters. The suggestion that a lack of money is at the root of our problems with "social deterioration" surrenders prematurely to the United States interest of wiping its slate clean.

By not mentioning this history we are unwittingly relieving the United States of its oppressive history and most importantly, how its past policies continue to harm us today. Any time that we discuss our social problems, the United States' history of genocide must be identified at the outset.

Secondly, a wide variety of scholarship exists on how "economic development" fails miserably to deliver on its promises. Based on my examination of this scholarship, I overwhelmingly concur.

While conducting research on these issues, I came across an article written by Dr. Lloyd Lee titled "The Future of Navajo Nationalism." In it, Lee identifies some of the problems that "economic development" creates.

According to Dr. Lee, "Some believe money will alleviate oppression and misery, but money, greed and materialism have not relieved the problems in Navajo society and, in many cases, it has enhanced the problems."

Recently, the Navajo Times found that the incomes of various council delegates were well over $50,000 per year. Does anyone truthfully believe that a decent income has adequately addressed the wide range of problems exhibited by some of these individuals?

In this context, money has aided in the creation of some of the worst monsters that the Navajo Nation has ever faced. Yet another example of presents itself in the impending desecration of Doko'oosliid and the Desert Rock power plant.

These examples of desecration are going to occur as a result of the very same "economic development" logic.

In the opinion of the United States and the Navajo Nation government, job creation and capital accumulation are much more important than our culture and traditions.

We can also look at what "economic development" has produced in the United States at large. The current economic crisis provides an obvious example of what greed leads to. We can also examine the immense failures created by IMF and World Bank policies that were "intended" to help needy nations but in reality amounted to little more than United States profiteering.

As we pursue paths toward "economic development" and the honorable goal of improving the overall livelihood of our people, we need to keep a wary eye trained on the dangers of greed and selfishness that seem to go hand in hand with strategies that make unquestioned use of market fundamentalism.

Simply "opening" us up to whatever the United States and business interests want will inevitably lead to unexpected problems.

When it is politically expedient, politicians argue for the infusion of Navajo perspectives, such as language and traditional teachings. But when it comes to economic concerns we are too often too willing to simply gulp down what the United States is feeding us.

Our ancestors warned us about greed, so we need to listen to their voices, especially when it isn't politically expedient. We already have leaders that do not question the underlying assumptions of "economic development."

With all due respect, we need leaders who will also question where this exclusive focus on money is leading us. We all need subsistence and I detest tar-paper shacks just as much as anyone else, but if their alleviation leads some to think that swimming pools and helicopter pads are a prerequisite, then we must be on the wrong path.

As a nation, the task is to address these situations while maintaining possession of our souls.

Jeremy Williams
Tse Bonito, N.M.

Navajo Culture And Leadership

2008-09-26T23:01:00.008-06:00

These are some pretty good comments by Mr. Hanley. His letter reminds me of a post I entered back in 2007 entitled Braindrain on the Navajo Reservation. Mr. Hanley's shares similar ideas as myself that the qualifications of the Navajo leadership need to be raised. They need to be required to be very educated both in Navajo and in American academics. As I said before,

I think that those in power in the Navajo government do not want to relinquish their power to educated Navajos who cannot speak Navajo and have no understanding of their culture. For those who become educated in the Bilagana institutions with professional degrees and licenses, these people are still considered to be uneducated because they still need education in Navajo culture and language. I think that’s one thing that our People fear: For educated fools who don’t know their culture and language to lead them.

Therefore, I stress these educated Naat'aanii's that Mr. Hanley refers to to learn all the Navajo language and culture they can learn. They are going to need it if they want to assume the leadership roles on the Navajo reservation.

Revise minimum qualifications for leaders
Navajo Times
Letter to the Editor
September 25, 2008

Recently I had an opportunity to listen to a group of young Navajo professionals employed and living in off-reservation communities. One of the issues we debated was why they weren't working for their tribe's government.

They feel that unless our leaders revise the minimum qualifications for council delegates, the president, vice president and the speaker, growth and development needs for Navajo people may never be addressed. This seems to be the main reason they seek employment elsewhere.

These young professionals are encouraged by the announcement that some level of reform is to start, but to them talk is cheap. They argue true reform will not occur unless we start electing people into office that are qualified and adequately trained.

Reform has been in discussion for years. "You must have the brain power behind any idea to make it work, the level of discussion between the president and the speaker is lacking this main point..."

Their outlook is the tribal government system should be a reflection of the people inside the system, and unless you change the leadership inside that system, the system never changes.

As well, they believe council delegates and tribal leaders must possess "academic qualifications" that would enable them to discuss developmental issues at the grassroots level and with outside corporate and government entities.

Several stressed the necessity that Dineh nation leaders must have a minimum of a bachelor's degree while qualification for the president, vice president and speaker should be set at a master's and higher levels.

In addition, leadership experience as an executive of a large organization both on and off the reservation (emphasis on high-level executive experience) should be a requirement.

They rationalized the current practice where every candidate is conversant in Navajo is eligible to stand as a leader was detrimental to Navajo's development as some fail to effectively represent the nation due to low levels of organizational leadership and executive management skills.

In its place, for starters, they demand, in addition to being fluent in both Navajo and English, elected leaders should be technologically literate and able to write and comprehend written language at a much higher level.

I agree with our young leaders. We must urge Navajo voters to revise the set minimum qualifications for chapter officials, council delegates, the speaker and the president and vice president.

Given the state of affairs under today's leadership, there is definitely a need to entice more well trained and experienced Navajo leaders to run the affairs of the nation. It is not that they are not available, we need to do a better job recruiting them to come work for the nation and place them in a more challenging and professional set-up.

Even with the condition our nation is in, these young Navajo leaders still feel optimistic that we have an opportunity to set the tone for Indian country development provided we ensure that leadership is enshrined in people with the necessary qualifications. As one put it, "Our No. 1 priority is a leadership change so we can get back to taking care of the people's business."

As suggested by our young leaders, the reform discussion between the president and speaker might appear as a good beginning, the main ingredient that is missing in my view is how we will attract more highly qualified Navajo leaders to take on roles of leadership in this critical effort facing our nation.

Unfortunately, the events we have seen so far are an excuse for someone who cannot get it done.

Wallace Hanley
Window Rock, Ariz.

Keeping Navajo culture alive

2008-09-23T07:25:00.004-06:00

This is a interesting write-up, an overview of the Navajo ceremonies. It shows the need for young Navajos to relearn and carry on the Navajo tradition. This is a difficult task for the Nation when most of its young people go into the bordertowns for education and employment. One topic mentioned by the article that I don't agree with is the commercialization of sandpaintings. Navajos need to remember that we cannot commercialize our ceremonies. Our elders say that if we commercialize our ceremonies, then there are disasterous consequences.

Navajo Healers, Sand Paintings Keep Tribal Traditions Alive
By Lauren Monsen
News Blaze
September 20, 2008

As the second-largest Native American tribe of North America, the Navajo people of the southwestern United States are inheritors of a rich cultural legacy centered on oral traditions and customs passed down for hundreds of years. The tribe's spiritual beliefs, collectively known as the Navajo Way, emphasize the importance of preserving and restoring balance and harmony with nature.

According to Robert Johnson, a cultural specialist at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona, sacred ceremonies performed by tribal healers are essential in perpetuating the Navajo Way. These ceremonies can be performed for a variety of reasons - either to improve the physical or mental health of an ailing patient, or to mark significant milestones in a person's life - but two things remain constant: the rhythmic prayer-chants and the creation of geometrically precise sand paintings that are usually featured in Navajo rites.

Although the Navajo Reservation - a semi-autonomous tribal homeland occupying northeastern Arizona, the southeast portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico - has a population of about 300,000, only a handful of its residents have been trained as medicine men or medicine women. "The number of medicine people has declined dramatically in recent years," Johnson told America.gov. "It's a concern."

To help reverse that decline, tribal elders created an apprenticeship program in 2002, aimed at recruiting more young Navajos to learn the ceremonies performed by traditional healers. Mastering the tribe's complex rites is a lifelong process, Johnson said. Although some of the program's apprentices have now become full-fledged medicine people, "many youngsters are moving away from the reservation to pursue jobs and college degrees," Johnson said. "They move to cities and border towns to achieve the American dream" of career success and home ownership.

ANCIENT CEREMONIES OF THE NAVAJO WAY

Navajo medicine people (hataa'lii in the Navajo language) serve not only as healers but as historians with extensive knowledge of tribal traditions and mythology. A shortage of healers has led to the extinction of some of the more obscure ceremonies, said Johnson, "but there are still enough medicine people on the reservation to perform the four major ceremonies" that form the backbone of the Navajo Way, as well as the Blessing Way ceremony that concludes each ritual.

Those four ceremonies are the Mountaintop Way and the Grandfathers' Ceremony (nine-day events performed in winter), the Enemy Way (a four-day or two-day event performed in summer), and finally, the Lightning Way or Big Wind Way (a five-day or two-day event performed year-round). Sand paintings are used in the winter ceremonies and in the year-round ceremonies, but not in the Enemy Way, Johnson explained.

All four rituals are designed to address various disorders or imbalances, although the Enemy Way has a more specialized function. An ancient rite once used to bless warriors returning from battle, it is now performed to help Navajo soldiers returning from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, particularly in cases of post-traumatic stress. It is also used, more generally, to ward off any contamination resulting from contact with hostile outsiders.

"When a person gets sick, a diagnostician decides which ceremony is appropriate," Johnson said. Sometimes the diagnostician is the healer who will perform the ceremony, but not always. Although many Navajos seek the assistance of their tribe's medicine people, others prefer modern-day hospitals on the reservation, and some combine both Navajo and Western methods to promote health and well-being.

Elaborate sand paintings, which often accompany traditional rites, reflect the Navajo Way's emphasis on balance and harmony. The images - made from colored sand - will vary according to which ceremony is performed, but certain patterns appear with great frequency. Four symmetrical elements symbolize the four directions (north, south, east and west), and sacred figures (known as the Holy People in Navajo mythology) are invoked to confer blessings. (Circular heads denote male deities, and square heads denote females.) Emblems such as plants or animals underscore the Navajos' close relationship with the natural world.

HOW THE PAST RENEWS THE PRESENT

Because of their elevated role, sand paintings are closely guarded against defilement, so they are immediately destroyed as soon as a Navajo ceremony is completed. However, tribal artists can make a living by creating permanent versions of these sand paintings; the artists will deliberately alter one essential detail so that sacred Navajo imagery is never fully revealed to an outsider's gaze. These modified sand paintings have become highly desirable collectors' items, often selling for hundreds of dollars in galleries and museum gift shops.

Just as sand paintings are considered sacrosanct, so too are other aspects of Navajo rituals. Before a healing ceremony takes place, the patient must undergo a purifying sweat bath designed to rid the body of toxins. "You have to cleanse yourself first," said Johnson. "The process usually takes half a day."

Other Navajo rites, signifying major life events, are mostly joyful occasions. For example, "a Blessing Way is performed for expectant mothers when they're about eight months along, to protect them during childbirth and ensure the baby's safe delivery," Johnson said. Early childhood is also celebrated: Navajo healers typically perform a baby's "First Laugh" ceremony, followed by a "First Footprint" ceremony when the child starts walking. Puberty ceremonies - different ones for boys and girls - take place when youngsters are 12 or 13 years old.

"Between the ages of 16 and 18, young Navajos have a coming-of-age ceremony that marks the passage into adulthood," Johnson said. When couples marry, he added, the traditional Navajo wedding ceremony is performed by a person of high status in the bride's family.

The Navajo Way recognizes four stages of life: childhood, adolescence, early to mid-adulthood and old age. Death rites do not exist in Navajo culture, but the Navajo conception of the afterlife is fairly similar to that of other faiths and societies. According to Eunice Kahn, archivist at the Navajo Nation Museum, "we believe that our spirits will eventually join those of our ancestors."

As the heirs to a unique culture, today's Navajos are coping with the demands of the modern world while also striving to maintain their cherished traditions. "During the week, many people work in border towns" near the reservation, Johnson said. "On weekends, they return to the reservation and immerse themselves in tribal culture." For tribe members, practicing the Navajo Way reinforces their sense of identity - and perpetuates a spiritual code that not only sustained their forebears, but promises to guide future generations as well.

For more information about Native American culture, see "American Indian History, Culture ( http://www.america.gov/st/diversity-english/2007/December/20071220085040IHecuoR0.4121363.html )."

Source: U.S. Department of State

Help protect Navajo intellectual property

2008-07-07T14:09:00.007-06:00

Photo by S.J. Wilson/NHO
Shearing demonstrations by Leon Tsosie, weaving by Rita Perry, wool washing by Rebecca Allen, and carding and spining by Evelyn Simonson were among many featured demonstrations at the event. Pictured is Rachael Allen (right) demonstrating vegetable dying of the wool as Jessa Fisher from Flagstaff inspects a drying hank of yarn.

Pretty neat article that emphasizes how Navajo cultural knowledge is something that cannot be sold and must be protected. It is "intellectual property" meaning that there are rights to knowledge and cultural information. Former Chief Justice Robert Yazzie highlights some of the federal laws that protect Native Cultures. He urges Navajos to protect their cultural knowledge.

Protecting the integrity of Diné traditions
S.J. Wilson
Navajo-Hopi Observer
Tuesday, July 01, 2008

TUBA CITY, Ariz. - Previous to European contact, Native Americans had no notion of the abstract concept of intellectual property - songs and prayers for example - said Robert Yazzie, who served as the Chief Justice of the Navajo Nation from 1992 to 2003.

Yazzie spoke about the importance of protecting Navajo traditions and culture on June 21 as part of Diné bé iiná's Sheep is Life event at Greyhills Academy High School.

"Traditionally, our medicine people said that our songs and prayers are not for sale," Yazzie continued. "They were created for the benefit of people - they made no distinction here about what people. They said the 'five-fingered' people."

Photo by S.J. Wilson/NHO
Colleen Biakeddy discusses the benefits of wool skirting to the value of a fleece

Yazzie pointed out that a people's economic orientation affects a member's notion of property.

The traditional orientation, Yazzie said, includes a pastoral or agricultural background, a centric community and limited notions of private property. There is a free flow of information, art, technology and narratives. Traditional people view knowledge as something they must pass on to preserve the community or tribe's way of life, and there is a set procedure for the transfer of that knowledge.

In direct opposition, modern economics lead to a capitalistic viewpoint, Yazzie continued. This view is individual-oriented, with an expansive notion of private property and increasing domains of abstract property. There are emerging claims over "cultural" identities, such as Katsina dolls, and money is the only requirement for access to knowledge.

Yazzie touched on three areas where the federal government has established protection for cultural properties.

"The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) addressed prior concerns of researchers collecting funerary objects without permission, including funerary objects and other sacred objects," Yazzie said. "Museums must document objects and notify relevant tribes about human remains and funerary objects.

"The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) of 1978 protects Native American spiritual elements such as sacred sites and religious objects," Yazzie continued. "The only intent I can perceive is to protect the American Indian from dying off. But specific protection for the songs and prayers are not in there."

Yazzie moved on to the United Nation's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - passed in September 2007. The Declaration is not legally binding under international law; however, it sets important standards for the treatment of the world's Indigenous people, numbered at 370 million.

"Article 11 of the Declaration was developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs," Yazzie said.

Of the U.S. Supreme Court, Yazzie said that there are some fine, intelligent people sitting at the bar there.

"But the weather can be cold, and the weather can be hot," Yazzie continued. "The last few years, the Court has been very cold regarding Indian issues. With the passage of the Declaration, I hear the United States saying, 'we take care of our people,' - it is something that has that potential."

Yazzie presented examples where Native American tribes attempted to protect intellectual property - including the use of H.R. Voth photographs of Hopi sacred ceremonies and the use of the Zia sun symbol on the New Mexico state flag.

Then-Chairman Vernon Masayesva sought a moratorium on the use of Voth's pictures in 1994 - an effort that failed, but was successful in creating more sensitivity for intellectual properties, Yazzie said.

In 1925, Dr. Harry Mera of Santa Fe entered a contest for the New Mexico state flag design held by the Daughters of the American Revolution, suggesting the sun symbol he'd seen on a Zia ceremonial pot in his city's Museum of Fine Arts. The state legislature approved his suggestion. The Zia Pueblo claimed that the pot had been stolen - because it was marked with the sun symbol, it was clearly a ceremonial pot and as such, would not have been allowed to leave the pueblo.

Zia Pueblo sought $1 million for each year the state displayed it on the flag, demanding $76 million in all. Representatives of the tribe acknowledged that they did not expect to collect - the attempt had been symbolic, and what the Zia really sought was respect and an apology.

Yazzie concluded that the aforementioned acts have provided limited protection for historic indigenous culture and tradition.

Another issue is the potential for in-fighting between tribes regarding who actually owns certain properties - case in point, the making of Katsina dolls by Navajo people.

"This may dramatically alter how spiritual knowledge is transferred internally," Yazzie said.

Again citing the United Nations' declaration, Yazzie touched on the idea of biopiracy - and an odd result of the passage of intellectual property law. Private companies have taken and sometimes altered genetic materials such as plants and seeds and have claimed them as their intellectual property. This practice is a threat to the survival and food security of Indigenous peoples.

"Article 24 of the Declaration states that Indigenous people have all rights to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of the vital medicinal plants, animals and materials," Yazzie said.

"What do we do to distinguish western concepts of property from those of the traditional Navajo?" Yazzie said. "We can identify conceptual differences - 'everything on the rez is ours,' but I know that once we say that, it will be challenged. But we must take the step to assert our power. We must promulgate comprehensive Navajo Nation legislation with clear intent. We have a treaty, and are recognized as a sovereign nation by a point of law. We must declare our right to regulate and protect our own traditional knowledge and cultural resources. We must assert protective measures toward collective traditional knowledge of cultural heritage - in other words, our beliefs, practices, arts and crafts, stories and our traditional land."

The Nation has taken steps to do just this, Yazzie pointed out - including statutory recognition and adoption of Navajo customary regulations. The Navajo tribe has joined other tribes in establishing protocols for research and publication, and must enforce sanctions for violations according to established Navajo laws.

"Education is needed," Yazzie said. "When we talk to the elders [on the topic of intellectual properties], they know what we are talking about. This must be explained to younger generations."

Roy Kady, with Diné bé iiná, said that the selling of songs, stories and other intellectual property by some is a matter of economics.

"A lot of people are poor," Kady said. "The only way they can make money is selling their knowledge."

"Anytime intellectual property is discussed, it's the wealthy that benefit," Yazzie replied. "This brings the question, 'What about poor people?' I'm saying there are things that are unprotected. There are some things that the Navajo People should decide as a whole [as to whether it should be sold, not just an individual]."

There are things that should be preserved for future generations - like weaving, Yazzie said, and explained that his mother never depended on food stamps or welfare.

"She would take a rug to the trading post and we went back home wearing black tennis shoes, Wranglers, a Wrangler shirt. Yazzie summarized the spirit of Navajo weavers and indeed, all artisans.

"I can feed my kids with what I do - this is not the end of the story, this is my identity, this is what I will pass on. I have a plan, have a prayer, I have a song. Many Americans don't have that."

Adelzadeh a model for Navajo youth

2008-06-20T09:58:00.007-06:00

Inderkum High School sophomore Kristina Adelzadeh

Another interesting story about a young Totsohnii woman reconnecting with her roots. She says relearning your identity is important. I've heard about this ancestor she mentions, "Horn Woman".

Native Currents
Indian Country Today
June 20, 2008
By: Kristina Adelzadeh

Weaving my Navajo history

I take pride in my Navajo culture, and I choose to rediscover the fading footprints of generations before me. A big part of reconnecting with my heritage is listening to family members share stories from the past. My Navajo grandmother, Susie Yazzie, has told me how hard it was to live on the reservation when she was young. Every morning she had to go out with her brother, and eventually by herself, to herd sheep. She did not attend the first grade until she was the age of 14.

I was 7 years old when I started to learn the importance of my culture. My grandmother decided to teach me how to weave. I felt honored weaving the wool string in and out of the loom. I felt empowered because weaving was a tradition that was passed down by generations of Navajo women. The first of these women was called Spider Woman. She is said to have taught the Navajo people how to weave rugs. This tradition was passed down to me through my great-great-grandmother, Addie Kayonnie Begay; my great-aunt, Alice Sangster; and my grandmother. Before I learned to weave, I did not feel like a Native American.

Today, I am proud that I have this connection through my Ttsohnii (Big Water) clan. However, our family tradition could have easily been broken due to events beyond our control.

My great-grandfather, Knox Yazzie, married my great-grandmother, Opal Begay; together, they had five children, including my grandmother. In December of 1944, he had to enlist to fight for the United States in World War II. When he returned, the only job that he could get was working on the railroad. My great-grandmother died of tuberculosis in 1947. Because he had to travel all the time, my great-grandfather could not support five children without his wife. So he divided his children among his wife's sisters. My grandmother went to live with her aunt.

As my grandmother grew older, she had to choose between staying on the reservation and attending boarding school. Following her dreams, she chose education rather than continuing a life herding sheep. She went to boarding school in Riverside, Calif. Then she went to work in Albuquerque, N.M., and Oakland, Calif. She eventually got married and had my mother. However, my grandmother never taught my mother to weave, because she was so busy working and because she had not yet mastered the art of weaving herself.

Although my grandmother left the reservation as a young woman, she still carried her Navajo traditions with her. Later in life, she reconnected with her family back in Arizona. There, she relearned the art of weaving from her aunt Alice. That is how she was able to teach me when I was a young girl.

Today, she continues to talk to me about the Navajo ways, ceremonies and blessings, including the walk of beauty, when a girl becomes a young lady. She talks about the sacred animals and why we should avoid some of them, such as snakes and lizards. My grandmother also tells me about the ''Horn Lady,'' our Hopi ancestor who wore her hair in twin buns that looked like horns. My grandmother might think that all she is doing is reminiscing about her past and that I am not listening well, but hearing what my grandmother has to say has helped to reconnect me with my heritage.

Wars, diseases and the establishment of boarding schools forced my ancestors to make difficult choices. These events divided our families and nearly broke the circle of our tradition. Faced with limited opportunities, my grandmother made decisions that had big impacts on my future. If my grandmother had never returned to Arizona, then I probably would have never learned the Navajo art of weaving. An important part of my circle would have been broken. But she did reconnect with that tradition, and then she chose to pass it on to me.

We can all choose to discover what has happened in our families' past. If we take time to acknowledge these histories, it will help us to learn and understand more about ourselves. It will also give us a sense of what all Native Americans have experienced. Through this knowledge, we can proudly respect and maintain our cultural identities.

Learning how to weave has helped to reconstruct the breaks in my family's history. All Native Americans share a history of being separated from our lands, families and traditions; however, we have the power to reconnect missing parts of the circle. We are all like strands of wool, but we are all not necessarily woven. If we rediscover how history connects us, then we can weave ourselves into a beautiful pattern, just like a Navajo rug.

Kristina L. Adelzadeh is a member of the Totsohnii (Big Water) clan of the Navajo Nation. She was a grade 10 student at Inderkum High School in Sacramento when she entered the second annual Reconnecting the Circle National High School Essay Contest. She was among 10 students awarded a $2,500 prize.

Yellowhair-Gilbert a model for Navajo youth

2008-05-27T16:59:00.012-06:00

Highland High senior Charity Yellowhair-Gilbert, 17

Wow. Here is a story about a Navajo teenager who became proficient in the Navajo language through online courses. Even having the most Bilagana education does not compare to knowing your language. She is a model for the Navajo youth today as well as those who are off the reservation where the Navajo language is less spoken. Nizhoni!

Student learns her roots
Highland High senior is studying Navajo at SLCC and on a state-funded Web site
By Ben Fulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
May 27, 2008

Growing up on the Navajo Nation reservation in Kayenta, Ariz., Charity Yellowhair-Gilbert was embarrassed and frustrated: She understood the Navajo language as she listened to her mother and grandmother talk, but couldn't speak it herself.

Twelve years and countless hours of study later, the 17-year-old Highland High School student has made her grandmother proud - she can converse in her native tongue. Mastering Navajo wasn't easy, Yellowhair-Gilbert said. It is loaded with verbs, heavy on tones that move up and down, and spoken from deep inside the chest. A combination of classes at Salt Lake Community College and lessons downloaded from a Navajo language Web site developed by Utah Electronic High Schools, a state-funded program, made the effort worthwhile.

"It's important to me, because I want people to know who I am," Yellowhair-Gilbert said. "I want people to know who the Navajos are, and not see us pushed to the side."

With more than 150,000 speakers in the Four Corners region of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, and renowned as the language used in military code during World War II, few believe Navajo will die out anytime soon.

The Navajo Nation isn't about to leave that to chance, however. Signs of decline are worrisome, said San Juan School District bilingual education director Clayton Long, who trains teachers in Navajo instruction from Blanding. Almost all Navajo students entering kindergarten in the Four Corners area cannot speak the language, even if they understand portions of it, he said. Many older Navajos proficient in speaking lack reading and writing literacy.

One effort to preserve what Navajos call the language of ''The Holy People'' - Mother Earth, Father Sky and other deities of nature - rests in the nation's various scholarship programs requiring language classes for applicants. But with 2000 U.S. Census data showing that 30 to 40 percent of the Navajo population now live off the reservation, online instruction is critical.

Utah Electronic High Schools developed the first known online Navajo classes at state expense in 2003, available only to Utah students. But after being licensed recently by Salt Lake City's American Academy, UEHS's online Navajo language courses are now available to students outside Utah. The full cost for two courses is $600, but Navajo students can apply to local community chapters of the nation for financial assistance, said Rebekah Richards, senior vice president of academic affairs and school principal for American Academy, a private school.

Better access to online instruction has resulted in more applications to the nation's scholarship programs, in particular the Chief Manuelito Scholarship for high school graduates, which provides $7,000 per academic year, said Rose Graham, director of scholarship and financial assistance programs for the Navajo Nation.

The online program has been a boon to Navajo students in Arizona, where English-only statutes make it difficult for Navajos to learn their language in public schools.

"It certainly helps us," Graham said. "Even students who have schools teaching Navajo can use it to catch up on course work, or go through an independent study group."

As a Utah student, Yellowhair-Gilbert was able to download course work as needed for free from UEHS's original online Navajo course to download course work as needed free of cost. As a Navajo, she's grateful the same course work is now available to those outside Utah. Once her final high school transcripts are in hand, she plans to apply for the Chief Manuelito Scholarship, and hopes other Navajos will do the same in the future.

"It would be impossible for me not to study my language," she said. "But it's good some people care enough to accommodate those of us who live in the city."

Naalyehi Bahoghan

2008-04-30T13:35:00.008-06:00

Bashas' in Dilcon

Naalyehi Bahoghan (House of Goods) is where Navajos go to buy goods (groceries, supplies, etc.). So far, the Bashas supermarket chain has monopolized the Navajo Nation since the 1980's. Will corporate America ever take over the Navajo Nation? In a way, it already has with gas stations and fast food chains like Cheveron, Burger King, McDonalds, and Subways.

YouTube Videos on Language preservation

2008-04-22T23:42:00.006-06:00

These are some pretty interesting videos from YouTube on Navajo language loss and preservation. It seems that people who make these videos represent a majority of the Navajo youth that rarely speak the Navajo language today. These videos exemplify the struggles to preserve the language to speak Dine Bizaad.

Television promotes culture loss

2008-04-17T10:40:00.001-06:00

This article lists some of the effects of television. For the most part, tv encourages a sedentary lifestyle, sex, drugs, and violence too. But the biggest effect for Navajos is television makes you lose your Navajo language. It makes you want to only speak Bilagana bizaad. Maybe we should think twice about being couch potatoes.

Television and the family
By the TCRHCC Wellness Committee
Special to the Observer
Navajo-Hopi Observer
April 15, 2008

The week of April 21-27 is this year's Turn Off the TV week. Read below to see how important it is to set limits on TV watching for you and your family.

On average, people living in the US watch more than four hours of TV a day, or two full months of TV a year. But how does all this time in front of the television affect us and our society? There is a lot of evidence showing that watching too much television can be unhealthy. Watching too much TV can cut into family time, encourage violence, and lead to unhealthy lifestyles and obesity.

How TV affects your child

There are many ways that watching TV affects your child's life. When your child sits down to watch TV, consider the following:

Screen Time (includes computer Screen time)

Children in the US watch about 4 hours of TV every day. Watching movies on tape and playing video games only adds to time spent in front of the TV screen. It may be tempting to use television, movies, and video games to keep your child busy, but your child needs to spend as much time growing and learning as possible. Playing, reading, and spending time with friends and family are much healthier activities than sitting in front of a TV screen.

Nutrition

On TV, children see many commercials for unhealthy foods, such as candy, snacks, sugary cereals, high fat foods and drinks. These are usually played during children's programs. One study showed that 202 commercials for junk foods were played during just one morning of Saturday cartoons. Commercials almost never give information about the foods children should eat to keep healthy.

Research shows that the more television children watch, the more likely they are to snack between meals, eat foods shown on TV, and try to get their parents to buy unhealthy foods.

Children and families who watch TV during meals are more likely to eat salty, fatty, and sugary foods and more total calories during those meals. This greatly increases the risk of being overweight.

Exercise

Studies show that children who have more than 2 hours of "screen time" per day are at a much greater risk of being overweight. Why - because you burn less calories watching TV than any other time when you are awake. Some researchers say that people burn less calories watching TV than they do sleeping.

Most Americans (including children) do not get enough physical exercise. They do not spend as much time running, jumping, and getting the exercise they need. We spend most of our free time watching television, which promotes obesity and its related illnesses such as diabetes. Turning off the TV is a great way to improve your family's health. Cutting back on television is a great way to find the time to play outside, or take a walk.

Because children are influenced by what their parents do, it is important that whatever effort you make to change your habits, that you do it as a family. This way, turning off the TV becomes a great family effort, a way to bond and spend time together. Use your time to exercise as a family or prepare healthy meals with the children as assistants.

Violence

If your child watches 3 to 4 hours of noneducational TV per day, he will have seen about 8,000 murders on TV by the time he finishes grade school. 90 percent of children have seen violence on TV that made them feel "scared" or "upset." Children who see violence on television may not understand that real violence hurts and kills people. Even if the "good guys" use violence, children may think that it is okay to use force.

Many television programs do not show the real life consequences of violence. The number of violent acts seen on TV by children greatly increases the chance that the child will be violent or aggressive when they grow up. It is best not to let your child watch violent programs and violent cartoons.

Sex

Television exposes children to adult behaviors, like sex. But TV shows that contain sexual activity often do not show the risks and results of that activity. These include teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. On TV, sexual activity is often shown as fun, exciting and without any risks. Your child may copy what he or she sees on TV in order to feel more grown up or because of peer pressure.

Alcohol, tobacco and other drugs

Young people today are surrounded by TV and magazine messages that say drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes or cigars are normal activities. These messages don't say that alcohol and tobacco harm people and may lead to death. Beer and wine are some of the most advertised products on television. TV programs and commercials often show people who drink and smoke as healthy, energetic, and successful. They almost never show the harmful results - such as lung cancer, liver failure, drunk driving and deadly accidents. It is up to you to teach your child the truth about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

Commercials and their influence

The average child sees more than 20,000 commercials each year. Ads may try to convince your child that having a certain toy or eating a certain food will make him happy or popular. You can help your children understand how ads use pictures, music, and sound to entertain and influence choices - even bad choices. Kids need to know that ads try to convince people to buy things they may not need or cannot afford.

A word about TV for toddlers

Children of all ages are constantly learning new things. The first 2 years of life are especially important in the growth and development of your child's brain. During this time, children need good, positive interaction with other children and adults. Too much TV can negatively affect early brain development. This is especially true at younger ages, when learning to talk and play with others is so important.

Until more research is done about the effects of TV on very young children, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not recommend television for children age 2 or younger. For older children, the Academy recommends no more than 1 to 2 hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs.

Business on the Navajo Nation

2008-04-17T10:39:00.006-06:00

This article is from the Economist. It's a magazine for American entrepreneurs discussing economics, politics, and related topics. This article focuses on the Navajo Nation. It talks about some of the barriers that Navajo entrepreneurs face when trying to start a business within the reservation. It is a very interesting viewpoint. A viewpoint that places importance on material wealth (capitalism). In the Navajo perspective, material wealth is just as important as non-material wealth. So we really have to think about these ideas. In any case, this is an article about the Navajo from the outside. It's a good read!

Capitalism's last frontier
Apr 3rd 2008 | WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA
From The Economist print edition

America's biggest Indian reservation tries to stimulate private enterprise

JUST outside the south-east border of the Navajo Nation, along highway 264 in New Mexico, there is a string of shops. It is not much—a bank, a couple of fast-food outlets, a petrol station and a garage. Compared with what lies across the border, though, it feels like a boom town. Cross into the Navajo reservation and the shops abruptly disappear, to be replaced by a scruffy trailer park. As Mike Nelson, a Navajo entrepreneur, puts it: “This is the last frontier for free enterprise in America.”

When Americans talk about Indian businesses, they generally mean casinos. Since 1988, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban gambling on Indian lands, a few, mostly coastal, tribes have become stupendously rich. But most big Indian reservations are in the interior, miles from potential punters. More than twice the size of Massachusetts, and with a growing population of about 200,000, the Navajo Nation is the biggest of the lot—and the most in need of private enterprise.

There are only about 400 businesses in the Navajo Nation. With a few exceptions, such as a coal mine, they are tiny. The official unemployment rate is about 50%, and the median income is less than half the American average. What little money is generated in the reservation tends to leak out. Three times a month—when the welfare cheques arrive, and when government workers are paid—Navajos stream out of the reservation to stock up on groceries, car parts and alcohol in border towns. The local joke goes that the tribe's biggest export is dollars.

The reservation has produced plenty of entrepreneurs. Navajo silversmiths and weavers are justly famous. But the tribe's division of economic development lists more Navajo-run outfits off the reservation than on it. One of these is the garage on highway 264. Its owner, Donald Dodge, did not want to leave the Navajo Nation. He did so because he could not afford to wait years to obtain a business licence.

Anybody who wants to set up shop in the reservation must conduct an archaeological survey, obtain a letter of support from the tribe's president and jump through up to a dozen other hoops. These regulations, put in place to protect Indians from white traders, now bind native entrepreneurs large and small. Timothy Halwood recently obtained a permit to take small groups of tourists into the Canyon de Chelly. The process took two years.

Another problem is land. Like other reservations, most of the Navajo Nation is held in trust by the federal government. Because Navajos do not own their land, they cannot use it as collateral to finance a business. To make matters worse, almost 8,000 people claim grazing rights over land that often extends into towns. These rights have no paper value and so cannot normally be sold to developers. The result is a paradox: a vast, underpopulated area where it is hard to find a commercial site.

A third problem is politics. The Navajo Nation has an 88-member legislature and 110 local chapters. “It's a lot of chiefs,” says Joe Shirley, the Navajo president. This is a big reason the Navajos have been slow to get into the casino business. Plans to do so were approved in 2001, but feuds over how to divide the spoils between tribal and local governments led to delays. The Navajos' first casino is expected to open this autumn, some 150 miles from the nearest big city, in a market that has been saturated by smaller, nimbler tribes.

The dysfunctional politics of the Navajo Nation does have one good effect: it forces the tribe to concentrate on private enterprise. In other reservations almost all businesses are run by the tribe, either directly or through a corporation. Although such firms can be profitable, they are as susceptible to political meddling as any nationalised industry is (see article).

Under Mr Shirley, the first president to serve two consecutive terms since the 1970s, the Navajo government is steadily hacking away at the red tape. In 2006 it took control of business-site leases from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a result, it now takes a year or two to obtain a lease—down from as many as five years in the 1990s. Alan Begay, who is in charge of economic development, reckons it will eventually be possible to grant a business lease in about a month.

Some of the Navajo Nation's local governments are going further. Since 2002 the town of Kayenta, near Monument Valley, has levied a 5% sales tax and spent much of the proceeds on housing and infrastructure. The town has a land-use plan and a long-term strategy for attracting businesses. All of which would be taken for granted outside Indian country, although it seems radical here. But nothing happens very fast in Navajo country. Ask a bureaucrat how he intends to remove one of the many obstacles to business, and the first answer is usually “slowly”.

Water rights in the southwest

2008-03-19T15:57:00.009-06:00

This is a long article, but it gives a good update and overview of the status of the Navajo Nation’s involvement in the fight for water rights in the southwest. As I stated before, we Navajos need to be very critical about such an important issue facing us and our children. We need to be educated and make informed decisions.

Seeking the Water Jackpot
High Country News
FEATURE ARTICLE - March 17, 2008 by Matt Jenkins

For almost a century, the Navajo Tribe has been left out of the Colorado River water game. Now, they’re ready to play their hand.
GALLUP, NEW MEXICO

In early February, a series of fierce storms racked the Navajo Nation, which sprawls across more than 27,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. At dawn, the highways were burnished to an icy sheen that sent cars pinballing into ditches. As each day warmed, the misery took on a new quality: The dirt roads that crisscross the reservation melted into hash glish di’tsidi liba’, a goopy gray gumbo that sucked pickup trucks into a death grip. By late afternoon, on the cusp of the next storm, many Navajos, still stuck up to their axles in mud, were simultaneously sandblasted with wind-driven grit.

The tribe’s woes don’t end with the weather. Half the Navajos on the reservation are unemployed, and that number may actually be as high as 67 percent - no one can say for sure. More than 70 percent of those who do have jobs work for government agencies. The closure of a coal mine later this year, on top of another mine shutdown two years ago, will likely reduce tribal revenues by a third. Per capita income on the reservation is a little more than $8,000 a year.

Navajos often speak of the cosmic geography of the Four Sacred Mountains, which mark the boundaries of their ancestral homeland. But the lives of many people here are shaped by a more pragmatic geography, centered on a coin-op water dispenser in a muddy turnaround behind a city maintenance building in downtown Gallup, N.M. A water pipe with a piece of yellow fire hose hanging off the end sticks out the back of the building. Navajos load water tanks and blue plastic 55-gallon drums into the beds of their pickups and come here for drinking water. On weekends, the line can stretch around the block.

But on a bitter-cold Friday afternoon, the whole operation was seriously dorked. Ernest Leslie, who had driven 22 miles from Tohatchi, couldn’t get any water because a quarter was jammed in the coin slot. He tried to coax another coin into the machine with the tip of his pocketknife, but it popped back out like a bad joke and landed in the mud at his feet. "Huh," Leslie said. He looked down at the quarter. "Sometimes we have problems like this."

Even as the Southwest’s cities have flourished with water from the Colorado River, the Navajo Tribe has stood on the sidelines, holding an empty bucket - and waiting. For decades, it seems, the tribe has been just one good plan away from prosperity. Now, however, the Navajo Nation is beginning to assert its right to claim water from the river. Many Navajos feel that the tribe could soon transform water from something that eats up their quarters at 50 gallons a pop to a virtual jackpot. But as tantalizing as the prospect of river water is, it is also opening painful rifts on the reservation.

The capital of the Navajo Nation is a town called Window Rock, on the eastern edge of the reservation in Arizona. It is a slow-paced place with a couple of gas stations, a supermarket, and a clutch of mom-and-pop storefronts that serve up squash soup and roast mutton.

Lena Fowler lives on the other side of the reservation, but came to town in February for a tribal council meeting. A member of the tribe’s water rights commission, she has a cool intensity and a vaguely sexy set of crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. Fowler began by explaining how the language of white-dominated water law, saddled with abstruse notions like "qui prior est in tempore, potior est in jure" - Latin for "first in time, first in right" - often defies translation into Navajo. Then she conceded that water may, in fact, be a language unto itself.

"And when you speak water," she said, "people get real emotional.

"For us, for most of our Navajo people, they wake up in the morning (and) they go out and they pray. And once they’re done," she said, "they turn around and have to figure out how much water they have: Is it safe to drink the water at the windmill? Or do I have to go buy Clorox to treat it with? That’s where we are today."

The Navajo Nation sits almost exactly in the center of the 244,000-square-mile Colorado River Basin, and it occupies fully one-tenth of the basin’s area. Yet when the seven Colorado River states met to divide the river’s water between themselves in 1922, they neglected to invite either the Navajo or any of the other Indian tribes with reservations in the basin.

"Agreements were being made before we even knew how to speak English," Fowler said. Indians weren’t recognized as United States citizens until two years after the Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922. It wasn’t until almost three decades after the Indian Citizenship Act was passed that Navajos were finally allowed to vote.

When they excluded tribes from the Compact negotiations, however, the seven states disregarded an important fact. In 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court had - paradoxically - dealt Indians a powerful trump card. In what is known as the Winters decision, the court granted Indian tribes the right to retroactively claim water sufficient to create what would later be termed a "permanent homeland."

Water rights are ranked by chronological priority, and the priority date of a tribal claim is tied to the year that a particular tribe’s reservation was established. In the Navajos’ case, that was 1868. If the Navajos received so-called Winters rights, their water rights during times of drought would take priority over those of the West’s more recently established urban centers.

Qui prior est in tempore, as the saying goes, potior est in jure.

The seven states’ negotiators acknowledged the Indians’ dormant power in one small way: They added the "wild Indian article" to the water Compact. The article - whose name came from then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the facilitator of the negotiations - reads: "Nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes."

With those 20 words, the negotiators punted all their gnarly Indian problems sometime into the future. "The states have basically ignored that there are Native claims to the river," Fowler said. In the 86 years since the Compact was signed, the downstream cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas have boomed, while the Navajo have been left parked in a dusty time warp high on the Colorado Plateau.

"Even today, it’s like there’s a curtain," she said. "(The seven states) are over there, making decisions, knowing full well that we’re here. They can see our silhouette."

Hoover’s wild Indian clause put off the Indian water rights question for as long as possible. But the costs of that delay, compounded over time, are now coming due. The Navajo Nation is moving to claim its water rights in New Mexico, and may soon do so in Arizona and Utah as well.

Indian tribes can sue for water rights - or they can negotiate settlements with individual states, and then take them to Congress for approval. That’s the path that the Navajo Nation has taken in New Mexico. In 2004, the tribe and the state announced a settlement agreement that would award the Navajo 326,000 acre-feet of water from the San Juan River, a major tributary of the Colorado. (An acre-foot is enough for about two families in Phoenix or Las Vegas for a year.) The settlement also authorizes more than $800 million in federal and state money to build a pipeline that will take the water to the east side of the reservation and to the city of Gallup. The Navajo Nation is now seeking congressional approval of the deal, the tribe’s first step toward asserting its rightful claims on the Colorado.

"We have learned the language. We have learned the laws. We learned the court system," Fowler said. "Now we’re saying, ’Hey! We’re back. We’re here to reclaim our water rights.’ "

In Window Rock, the tribal government operates out of a cluster of rustic-looking buildings a stone’s throw from the towering sandstone arch after which the town is named. There’s a BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS sign next to the stone-and-timber hogan where the tribal council meets.

Stanley Pollack, an assistant attorney general for the Navajo Nation’s Department of Justice, works out of an unprepossessing, barracks-style building nearby. Pollack exhibits definite left-leaning sensibilities, but he also observes the staid rituals of water lawyering. He keeps a turquoise bolo tie and a gray tweed jacket ready for tribal council briefings. He is also a bilagaana - a white - and, as a result, occupies a very complicated place in the Navajo water cosmology.

Pollack, who is 54, arrived here in 1985. Four years later, he suddenly found himself preparing legal briefs for the prosecution of the tribal chairman, Peter MacDonald, on corruption charges that would eventually land MacDonald in federal prison. It was a turbulent time: At one point, MacDonald’s supporters rioted in Window Rock and tribal police shot two of them dead.

Pollack is reticent about the experience, but it was obviously a bracing one for him. He worked around the clock, protected by bodyguards from the American Indian Movement, better known for its 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation. At night as they stood watch outside, the guards warmed themselves by setting fires in empty oil drums. Whenever Pollack took a break, he says, "I’d go out and talk to them and look at the stars. It was really cool."

Compared to the MacDonald drama, you’d think the process of defending the tribal water rights, which now absorbs all of Pollack’s time, would be a pretty humdrum affair. But it’s not. He’s had rocks thrown through his office window, and been called the Navajos’ Number One Enemy. And, in 2001, a flier appeared in chapter houses - the reservation’s equivalent of town halls - with Pollack’s likeness X-ed out and "Osama bin Pollack" written underneath.

Pollack keeps a lot of this stuff in a ring-bound binder in his office. One flier calls him - with more vehemence than orthographical precision - a "water rights sabbotager" and "one of the lawyer oppressors of the Navajo people who’s helped cheat us out of hundreds of millions of water rights that is rightfully ours." Another reads: "Pollack infiltrated our government and has us on the path to a form of water rights holocaust."

After I read that one aloud, Pollack - who is Jewish - looked a little chagrined and said, "Oh yeah, genocide."

Pollack would really rather not talk about any of this. "It was just 100 percent libelous crap," he says. "Just totally reckless." But the homegrown opposition he has faced attests to the depth of emotion that water inspires - and to local unhappiness with Pollack’s role as a compromiser and, to a large extent, a realist.

One wall of Pollack’s office is lined with mean-looking filing cabinets, and the rest of the room is filled with steel bookshelves packed with court documents and all manner of hydrologic divination. It is from this mass of paper that Pollack is slowly assembling a Colorado River claim.

A year and a half ago, as the water settlement with New Mexico was working its way toward Congress, Pollack put the federal government and the seven states on notice that the tribe could also justifiably use 336,856 acre-feet in Arizona. When we talked, Pollack indicated that the tribe might claim 80,000 to 100,000 acre-feet in Utah, as well. If you throw in the water from tributaries, that would put the total size of the Navajo Colorado River water right at somewhere around 800,000 acre-feet.

That is a lot of water - one-and-a-half times more than Las Vegas has rights to. And, because much of the Navajo water would have an 1868 priority date, several big, powerful water users would be booted to the back of the line behind the tribe during a drought. The city of Las Vegas and the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, whose massive canal supplies water to Phoenix and Tucson, already have the worst water-rights priorities on the river. With the Navajo ahead of them in the hierarchy, they’d face an even more serious risk of being cut off.

Pollack has been steadily making it harder for the seven states to continue ignoring the tribe. In 2003, the Navajo Nation filed a lawsuit against the states and the U.S. secretary of the Interior to prevent any further water allocations until the Navajo claims are resolved. Pollack and a team of Navajo negotiators have been in ongoing talks with representatives from Arizona, Las Vegas and Southern California over that lawsuit.

But Arizona, in particular, has been pushing back. Because the CAP is so vulnerable to water shortage, the state has been pressuring the Navajo Nation to reduce the size of its water claims. Last fall, the director of the state’s water-resources department appeared before Congress to testify against the Navajo-New Mexico settlement, saying it shouldn’t be approved unless the tribe also settles its claims with Arizona.

"Arizona’s playing the leverage game," Pollack said - seeking to get a deal that the tribe might not otherwise make "on the assumption that because Navajo wants this New Mexico settlement, they’ll make concessions to benefit Arizona."
The Navajo Nation’s decision to seek water through a settlement, rather than by going to court, reflects a broader trend in Indian Country. Over the past decade and a half, tribes have increasingly turned to settlements, in part because the U.S. Supreme Court has become increasingly hostile to Indian rights. Still, the Navajo are keeping their options open. Last summer, Navajo President Joe Shirley traveled to Washington, D.C., to warn Congress that "if the (New Mexico) settlement were to fail, and the Navajo Nation were forced to pursue the litigation of its claims, the United States would still be exposed to horrific liabilities even if the Navajo Nation were to obtain only modest water rights."

Back on the reservation, however, Pollack was being dogged by critics who accused him of selling out the tribe. Some insisted that the Navajo Nation should settle for nothing less than every last drop of water in the Colorado River.

Peter MacDonald was released from prison and returned to the reservation in 2001. Many Navajos see him as a folk hero, a sort of leader-in-exile, and he seems to be constantly on the road. When we talked by phone, he was headed to Phoenix for the dedication of a Navajo veterans’ memorial there.

In the late 1970s, when MacDonald was tribal chairman, he commissioned a study that, he hoped, would form the backbone of a Navajo water claim. Water-rights studies tend to be pretty tedious things, but this one conjured up a vision that was positively messianic.

Rather than focus on the 18-million-acre Navajo reservation to determine what water the tribe might claim, MacDonald directed his engineers to consider the entirety of what he calls "the Navajo holy land": An area roughly twice the size of the reservation itself that lies between the Four Sacred Mountains, which stretch from Flagstaff, Ariz., to the San Luis Valley in Colorado. That territory includes not only the Colorado River and two of its main tributaries - the San Juan and Little Colorado - but the Rio Grande as well.

"Navajos were there even before the states were created," MacDonald said. "So by the Winters Doctrine, Navajo has first and primary right to all that water within the Four Sacred Mountains." (He neglected to mention that the area also includes the ancestral territory of the Hopi, Utes, Zuni, Jicarilla Apache and the 19 Indian pueblos on the Rio Grande.)

MacDonald’s engineers began figuring out exactly how much water the tribe could claim, by calculating its "practicably irrigable acreage," or PIA. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court had endorsed PIA as a way to determine the size of water-rights claims made under the Winters Doctrine. A PIA determination evaluates how much of a tribe’s land can be "practicably" - meaning economically - irrigated, and then uses a formula to derive a total water right for the reservation.

There can be a big difference between what’s irrigable and what’s practicably irrigable, but the engineers didn’t get too hung up on observing that distinction. They ultimately determined that, as MacDonald put it, "Navajo has claim to every drop of the water that’s presently being used by New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming." As he said this, I suddenly had a vision of the world turning upside down: the bilagaanas forced to drive to the watering point with 55-gallon drums in the backs of their Volvos and Range Rovers, a roll of quarters in their pockets to fill up their backyard swimming pools and keep their lawns lush.

On a roll, MacDonald instructed the engineers to draw up plans for a Navajo version of the Central Arizona Project. But for all the talk about creating an irrigated agrarian utopia in the desert, the real idea, he allowed, was this: For decades, all the thirsty cities downstream had been using water - Navajo water - for free. Once the tribe won its water-rights claim, the cities could keep using the water - but only if they finally started paying the Indians for the use of what was rightfully theirs.

"We were ready to go to court" to win that water, MacDonald said. But the dream faded with his own arraignment, and the blueprints for the project apparently vanished into thin air. And now that he was out of prison, all this business about a settlement with New Mexico was pissing him off. "It’s like you had a hundred head of sheep, and somebody stole them from you," MacDonald said. "Finally, you find your sheep in somebody else’s corral. So you go and say, ’Hey, these are my sheep! Look at the brands, look at the earmarks: They’re all mine.’ And the guy who stole them says, ’Let’s have a settlement here. I’ll give you three of these sheep back.’ "
But even though the blueprints for an Indian CAP have gone missing, the idea still casts an enthralling spell over more than a few Navajos.

The rumors first came roaring up eight years ago with the appearance of a mimeographed pamphlet, an open letter entitled "Lawyers, Water Rights, Betrayals and the Fate of the Navajo Nation." It was written in the name of a group called the Dine Sovereignty Defense Association, or DSDA. (Dine is the Navajo word for Navajo, and the group’s acronym is pronounced "DEZ-duh.") Thanks to the fury of its leafleting campaign, I came to think of DSDA as a sort of Irish Republican Army, minus the bombs and kneecapping.

The letter, which did not mention Pollack by name, alleged that "one or more of the Nation’s lawyers are secretly working for outsiders." The water rights issue "amounts to a national emergency for the Navajo people," it said. It asserted - with a phrase that recurred like the come-on in a Nigerian Internet scam - that a Navajo water claim "has a potential value of 100s of $millions and more."

The author of the letter was a guy named Jack Utter, another bilagaana who is a hydrologist for the Navajo Nation’s Water Resources Department in Fort Defiance, a couple miles north of Window Rock. Utter works out of a cramped office in the back of a mobile unit parked behind the water resources building - a forbidding spot that feels a little like Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. Utter is animated by the thrill of conspiracy, and he keeps a copy of Paulo Freire’s anti-imperialist screed Pedagogy of the Oppressed - which largely draws its inspiration from the British colonization of India - close at hand.

In the years since he wrote the letter, Utter has become circumspect to the point of silence, but his theme of colonial victimization resonates deeply on the reservation. During the 1960s and 1970s - call it the high era of Western natural resources treachery - the tribe was cheated in a massive royalty deal with a company called Peabody Coal. Indian Country has also long grappled with the federal government’s failure to honor its trust responsibility to the tribes. Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet Indian woman, has doggedly fought for years to prove that the federal government mismanaged as much as $176 billion in oil-and-gas royalties owed to Indians across the country.

But there was an added dimension here. Navajo grassroots groups like DSDA were also fighting against what they saw as a breach of trust at home. In 2003, Norman Brown, who was then president of a group called Dine Nationalists, told me that "when we talk about breach of trust, we talk about breach of trust within our own tribal organizations" - by which he meant the tribal government.

Not long after the Lawyers-and-Betrayal letter appeared in 2000, DSDA - as part of a broader grassroots coalition called Dine Bidziil, or Navajo Strength - called for major reform in the Navajo government. The groups weren’t going after anyone with AK-47s, but they did seem to constitute a genuine insurgency.

Much of their wrath focused on the tribal council, but DSDA also targeted four white lawyers, including Pollack. The group placed an ad in the Navajo Times that called the tribal government "a colonial government that is run by WHITE POWER" - this one did mention Pollack by name - and bumper stickers began to appear that read "Four Lawyers Out / Dine Freedom In."

People on both sides of the fight reported having their tires slashed and the lug nuts on their wheels loosened. There was an allegation that someone had slipped poisoned cough drops into a tribal council member’s desk drawer. There were dark rumors that the ’adlaaniis - the notorious Navajo drunks - had been recruited into the fight. Several people made mention of witchcraft and "evil way" ceremonies secretively held in the remotest reaches of the reservation.
Finally, when the votes were counted in the 2000 tribal election, more than half of the council’s 88 delegates were unseated. Pollack survived: After weathering subpoenas to appear before two tribal council subcommittees, he was exonerated from the charges in the Lawyers-and-Betrayals letter. The three other white lawyers left, however. Then DSDA and Dine Bidziil melted back into the shadows.

The annual tribal fair, held each September in Window Rock, is one of the few times when Navajos from across the reservation come together in one place. Last year, some of the old DSDA hands ran into each other there and shared concerns that their government had again grown complacent. Not long afterward, a tribal member named Ron Milford resurrected the fight with a letter to the Navajo Times that insisted, "We must maximize Navajo water rights now."

A low-level war in the local newspapers followed, and I’m pretty sure Lena Fowler rolled her eyes when I happened to mention it. "They give an open mic to people like Ron Milford, and somehow he becomes credible enough for you to interview him," she said. "I’m tired of these one-sided stories where it’s all about" - she switched to the Navajo word for "rumor" and repeated it like an incantation - "jini, jini, jini."

On a sloppy, miserable day, I went looking for Milford. He was in Tuba City, three hours from Window Rock, on the reservation’s west side. I had just reached the ramshackle houses on the edge of town when another storm hit, and the world went leezh lichii go’ bilni’yol - a bloody maelstrom of red dust.

Half an hour later, I sat with Milford and another DSDA organizer named Max Goldtooth at a table in the back of a restaurant called The Hogan. Outside, the weather had turned again. Now it was chiil bilni’yol: blowing snow like a mother. Forty minutes into our conversation, all the lights went out.

The three of us sat huddled in the back of the restaurant as the storm raged outside. "Our starting point should be 5 million acre-feet of water," Milford said. That was considerably less than Peter MacDonald’s idea of a winning number, but it was still more water than the entire state of California is entitled to, and nearly twice as much as Arizona gets.

As Milford and Goldtooth talked, I could appreciate their resentment about water getting sucked away to fuel prosperity everywhere but on the Navajo Nation. Fifty-five miles north of us was the Navajo Generating Station, which burns Navajo coal and provides royalties for the tribe. But, Milford said, "All that power goes right to those big pumps (on the Colorado River) that pump water into the canals" - the Central Arizona Project’s mainline - "and down to Phoenix and Tucson."

The tribe’s quest to build its economy has been fitful, at best. Last year, the tribal council approved the Navajo Nation’s first casino and began negotiating a $100 million loan from JPMorgan Chase to finance the project. But the deal became controversial when the bank asked the tribe to pledge $125 million worth of its assets as collateral.

"They have money here if they assert their water rights," Goldtooth said. "There’s money flowing all around us. We’re sittin’ on a national treasure here."

When he said that, I could pretty well imagine the sound of a slot machine pumping out streams of quarters.

"If we had receipts from leasing water and stuff like that, we would be investing in our infrastructure," Milford continued. "We could pump a lot of money into different things."

But instead, they watched as more and more of the river’s water rolled away downstream. Just last year, the seven Colorado River states negotiated a new round of drought-protection agreements for themselves. "Now that global warming and everything has spanked them in the butt, they’re over here divvying up what’s left," Milford said. "I bet they’re just smiling from ear to ear because Navajo is not gonna file this big ol’ claim for the water that we said we were entitled to."

Milford had, however, thought his way forward through the bitter paradoxes of the situation to a position of strategic advantage. Water demand from the seven states has been growing steadily since 1922. If the Navajo ever did get the water, that mounting demand would make it even more valuable for the tribe.
There was a certain Red Power strain to Milford’s argument, but he was also starting to sound an awful lot like a water broker. In fact, by this point he had thought his way pretty well into a supply-and-demand graph. "Two factors will raise the price of that water," Milford said: "Global warming. And drought."

His eyes lit up, and the slot machine in my head went nuts.

But after we paid for the meal, we went outside to discover that the world had turned to ice. Neither Milford nor Goldtooth had an ice-scraper in his truck, and Goldtooth snapped his I.D. card in half trying to scrape the frozen spackle off his windshield.

There is an aphorism that occasionally bobs up in water circles and goes like this: The Navajos would rather have 100 percent of nothing than 50 percent of something.

It is an uncomfortable thing to hear, but it may hold some truth.

Back in the 1980s, after Peter MacDonald’s engineers drew up the plans for an Indian Central Arizona Project, he spent several years trying to persuade the federal government to fund it. The Bureau of Reclamation repeatedly lowballed the cost estimate and, finally, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. - who is now co-sponsoring the Navajo-New Mexico settlement legislation - asked MacDonald to accept the lowball figure. MacDonald refused: "I said, ’If that’s the case, we may have to do it ourselves.’ "

That was roughly two decades ago, before MacDonald’s trip to prison and everything that followed. When MacDonald and I talked in February, I asked how him how, exactly, he had planned to finance the project without federal help.

He answered that the tribe could take the seven Colorado River states to court for illegally using Navajo water. The tribe, he said, would fine the states - "we’ll charge them maybe 1 or 2 or 3 cents a gallon and add (that) all up." It wouldn’t matter if it took 20 or even 30 years to resolve the case, he said: The Navajo Nation could request that the court require the states to put money in escrow until it was decided. MacDonald had deployed the strategy once already, when he sued Peabody Coal for lost royalties, and the tribe wound up with about a billion dollars.

Yet that strategy was not a sure-fire thing, and Lena Fowler’s words echoed inside my head: "Some Navajos out there say, ’This is 100 percent ours,’ " she’d said. "Let’s say we claim all of that 100 percent. Now where are we going to get the money to put our water to use?" - to build the pipelines it would take to actually get water to people’s homes.

"That’s what a settlement does," Fowler said. "When you negotiate, that’s what you’re negotiating for."

In 2002, MacDonald’s daughter, Hope MacDonald Lone Tree, was elected to the Navajo tribal council. Since then, she has shouldered her father’s cause. Still, I couldn’t help but think that the pair was marching their tribe down a cruel, hard trail: Toward a vision of water in the distance, without a pipe in sight.

When Pollack and I talked in Window Rock, he had just returned from another negotiating session with water bosses from Arizona, Las Vegas and Southern California. "Nobody seemed to be happy," he said. "And when nobody’s happy, it’s usually a good sign. It means you’re coming to ’yes.’ "

But Pollack had also been thinking about the opposition he faces on the reservation. "People hear ’Winters,’ " he said, "and (they) say: ’Well, Winters stands for the proposition that the tribes get all the water.’ That’s not what Winters says. It says that water was reserved to create a permanent homeland for tribes."

We talked about how the idea of practicably irrigable acreage lay at the heart of the whopping claims that Peter MacDonald and Ron Milford were calling for. "PIA has been sort of guiding doctrine in terms of trying to put together the basics for (previous Indian) claims," Pollack said. "But PIA isn’t necessarily always consistent with a permanent homeland."

In fact, PIA looked more and more like an anachronism, a perverse insistence on turning Indians into farmers at exactly the same time that, in much of the West, agriculture is losing ground to cities. Relying on the principle to claim water - even if that water might ultimately be leased to cities downstream - seemed a problematic tactic.

That irony appeared to have been lost on Milford when we’d met at The Hogan, where he had conjured up the same sort of agro-utopian vision that Peter MacDonald had. In the 1960s, the Navajo had won Congressional approval of a big irrigation project near Farmington, N.M. Despite having been heavily subsidized by the federal government, the project only managed to squeak out a profit during the past couple of years. Maybe. Nobody could say that for sure, either. Still, Milford felt the project could be cloned all over the reservation. "There’s a lot of open space out here," he’d said. "Down toward Leupp and all of that area? There’s tons of flat property down there, you know? You can imagine fields running clear down to Winslow."

But I had talked with white farmers along the San Juan River who were losing money and had to work in the local oil-and-gas supply business to make ends meet. It was a little weird to hear Milford argue that his people’s water claim should be calculated according to a standard that would give them enough water to farm their huge reservation. It struck me as an insistence on the Navajos’ right to go broke.

Pollack suggested one practical alternative to PIA. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, the "salmon tribes" such as the Nez Perce and the Yakama have used their treaties to argue for water rights sufficient to protect the salmon runs on which they’d long depended. "What we’ve said is, ’Look at the fishing cases. Look at what the courts have done there. They’ve said the real key isn’t PIA. The real key is the water necessary to create the permanent homeland.’ "

In Navajo’s case, Pollack said, mining was a far more realistic moneymaker than agriculture. But, he added, there was a more pressing issue. "In a settlement, you have to put the rhetoric aside and figure out what your goals and objectives are," he said. "And if your goal and objective is to get drinking water to people, claiming millions and millions of acre-feet of water doesn’t get drinking water to the hogans."

Pollack regularly works extremely long hours, a habit that I couldn’t help but think was a carryover from his days on the Peter MacDonald case. He keeps one of the "Four Lawyers Out" bumper stickers pinned up in his office, like a trophy. And it was clear that, despite Pollack’s reluctance to talk about the attacks he’d weathered, they were something that was never far from his mind.

As I gathered my things to go, Pollack shifted into closing-arguments mode. "These are people that have had a lot stolen from them. And they’ve come up on the short end of the stick all the time," he said. MacDonald and his followers were, he conceded, hawking a pretty alluring vision. "It’s this casino mentality of getting free money. If somebody comes along and says, ’Water is your casino’ ... you know: ’Your water’s worth billions of dollars, and if you just get rid of Pollack, you, too, can be a millionaire!’

"You know? They’re like, ’Well, shit. Why do we have this guy here? I want to be a millionaire.’ "

Matt Jenkins is a contributing editor of High Country News. Leigh T. Jimmie is a freelance photographer in Sanders, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation.

This article was made possible with support from the William C. Kenney Watershed Protection Foundation and the Jay Kenney Foundation.

Assimilation today

2008-03-05T13:33:00.001-07:00

This is a pretty good article that brings out the reality of Indian assimilation today. Today, it is apparent that most of us no longer speak our Indian language. The writer makes a point: “What will happen to Indian people if all our languages die out? Will Congress, the president, the religious leaders and the big business people still say we are Indians? Or will we be just brown white people?” That time is now, that we are just a bunch of brown white people. It seems like the majority of our own Navajo people don’t care and would just rather join the rat race of work, work, work, school, school, school. There appears to be very little being done for our traditional cultures. Rather, we are just living in impoverished communities ridden with alcohol problems and violence. I don’t think this is living in harmony. My two cents.

Assimilation in Indian country
Indian Country Today
By Dean Chavers
March 5, 2005

From the earliest days of U.S. colonial history, the announced goal of government, entrepreneurs and religious leaders has been the salvation of the savages. Their goal has been to ''save'' the savage Indians by making them over into white people.

The colony at Jamestown was founded to bring religion to the Natives. Never mind that they already had religion. It wasn't good enough for the English saviors. The colony at Plymouth Rock was founded on the same premise. The salvation of the savages was written into both charters. Never mind that what they really wanted was gold and riches. Becoming rich was not legit; saving heathens and sending them to heaven was.

When that happens, there will be no more ''Indian problem.'' Indians will just be brown white people. Captain Pratt, the founder of the famous Carlisle Indian School, had as his famous motto, ''Kill the Indian and save the man.''

But a long line of non-Indian people, including President Grant, President Lincoln, all the Secretaries of the Interior before 1950 and all the BIA commissioners until recently, have wanted the assimilation of Indians. Only Indians have wanted to preserve their culture.

After the passage of the ordinance banning the practice of Indian religions in 1883, Native culture and religion went underground. Sitting Bull, Manuelito, Cochise, Geronimo and hundreds of other Indian leaders had to be careful of their actions. For his participation in the Ghost Dance, the Indian police and the Army assassinated Sitting Bull.

That was a plain warning to other Indian leaders all over the United States. Despite the tight restrictions on travel by Indians, there was a lot of contact between reservations. Fifteen Lakota leaders had traveled all the way from South Dakota to Nevada to meet and talk with Wovoka, the originator of the Ghost Dance.

Indian kids got the crap beaten out of them if they talked in their Native languages in school. They and their parents were jailed if they got caught practicing the peyote religion, the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance and other Native religions.

And the movement for assimilation may be winning. According to two books published by Northern Arizona University, only 30 of the 350 Native languages are alive and being spoken. These 30 are in danger of being lost within one or two generations. It is ironic that many of my friends who are pushing language preservation speak only English at home with their children.

There are cases today of Navajo kids who can barely speak to their grandparents. The grandparents are fluent in Navajo but know little English. The parents don't want their children to speak Navajo because they don't want them to have to go through what they went through in the boarding schools or the public schools. So the children speak only English, and understand only a few words of Navajo.

I can't begin to say how many Indian young people I have met who say they can understand a little bit of Apache or Navajo or Lakota, but can't speak it.

The assimilation of Indians was the official policy of the United States from 1867 until 1991. The leading Protestant denominations met in Philadelphia and developed the policy.

President Grant accepted it wholly. Put Indians on reservations, capture their children and hold them hostage in boarding schools, and teach them in English only. Make farmers and housewives out of the parents, forbid them to travel off the reservation, give them just enough rations to live on and keep the Indian police and the Army handy to keep them in line.

Oh, by the way, kill off those 50 million buffalo so they won't have any animals to hunt. By 1888, the buffalo were almost gone.

Despite the century and a quarter of oppression, Indian people are still proud to practice their religions, speak their languages and practice their customs. Indian people say that without their language, life would not be worth living.

More and more language preservation programs are appearing in Indian country. They include Blackfeet, Lakota, Mohawk, Washoe, Umon Hon (Omaha), Seneca and Navajo. There is now even a National Alliance to Save Native Languages, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. And, of course, the bilingual education movement in Indian country is largely about preserving Native languages.

Congress passed the Native American Languages Act, largely the work of my mentor Patricia Locke (Flying Earth), in 1990. This act reversed the former suppressive policy of assimilation, but many people still believe assimilation is the right thing to do. Teachers are still punishing Indian students for speaking their languages.

Locke did more than just about anyone to maintain Native languages. When no one else was talking about it, in the 1960s and early '70s, she launched what would become the Native American Languages Institute. That organization is still going strong today, and is located in Santa Fe, N.M.

Old ways die hard. In 1977, I wrote a proposal for Humboldt State that would have established the first Native bilingual teacher education program. OBEMLA kicked the proposal back. They said it was aimed at language restoration, not preservation, and was not eligible.

In the meantime, they changed the rules, and the next year they accepted the proposal and funded it for three years. My good friend Tom Parsons, who ran the Center for Community Development at HSU for a quarter of a century, ran the program for the next six years in conjunction with the School of Education.

My question is: Will language restoration or preservation programs work? In a study I did for the Jicarilla Apache Nation 10 years ago, we found that 65 percent of people over the age of 50 were fluent in Apache. In the age group 30 - 50, however, the percentage dropped to 20 percent. Those under 30 had only 1.8 percent fluent in Apache. Those were two kids being raised by a grandmother.

In another study I did on Navajo 20 years ago, more than 70 percent of parents said they wanted their children educated in English only. They refused to speak Navajo at home because they did not want their children to suffer the way they had suffered.

The big question is: What will happen to Indian people if all our languages die out? Will Congress, the president, the religious leaders and the big business people still say we are Indians? Or will we be just brown white people?

Dr. Dean Chavers is the director of Catching the Dream (formerly the Native American Scholarship Fund), a scholarship and school improvement program in Albuquerque, N.M. Mellen Press published his book ''Modern American Indian Leaders'' in June 2007. His address is ctd4deanchavers@aol.com. He welcomes your comments and welcomes Native students to apply for college scholarships. Catching the Dream recently published his three books: the ''National Indian Grant Directory'' (two volumes) and ''Reading for College.''

Requiring Navajos to be English-proficient

2008-03-04T11:54:00.009-07:00

Photo from Gallup Independent

Is it discrimination to require Navajos to be proficient in English? Well here there is a state law going into effect next year that requires four hours of English teaching to non-proficient English speakers in state public schools. This could be good considering that the majority of the Navajo population seeks to be as Bilagana as it could get. The majority of the Navajo population do not make efforts to relearn the Navajo language which goes with the culture. When you enter a public school on the reservation, particularly high schools, you just see a lot of focus on non-academics such as gangs, basketball, teenage relationships and the like. The majority of these youths are not being educated properly and as a result, a lot of our Navajos who do decide to go to college drop out because our local public schools fail to adequately educate them in American academics. This is apparent in the college drop out rates of Navajos across the country. If Navajo language and culture are not prioritized by the Navajo majority then maybe this move by the state government is good for us. But if Navajo language and culture were esteemed by the majority, then maybe things would be different.

Language discrimination
English proficiency not a black & white issue in Indian Country
By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

GANADO — An Arizona state mandate going into effect next school year will require all public schools to teach four hours of English a day to students who are not proficient in English — a requirement that could have far-reaching effects for schools on Navajo.

In the Ganado Unified School District alone, 886 out of approximately 1,800 pupils are deemed to be English-language learners.

GUSD Superintendent Deborah Jackson-Dennison said that if the mandate goes into effect, it may take students deemed to be ELL five to six years to get their high school diploma, instead of the normal four, because they will be spending the majority of their time in English class.

The Legislature voted for the mandate in 2005, with support from Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, as a response to a 1992 lawsuit dealing with funding for English instruction. There are approximately 135,000 students classified as English-language learners in the state.

Jackson-Dennison said that students will become frustrated if the mandate is implemented at the district.

“Our drop-out rate is going to increase. Our attendance is going to decrease. Our overall graduation rate is going to decrease. We’ll never meet AYP (adequate yearly progress),” she said.

“English only should not be applied to Navajo children,” Jackson-Dennison said. “The model they are saying we have to use will hurt us more than help us.”

She added, “It’s more deep-rooted than just putting this mandate in place and either complying or not complying. It’s the very essence of discrimination and lack of understanding, ignorance toward Native American people.”

Jackson-Dennison is responding to the mandates in three ways. First, the district will begin a “Response to Intervention” program where the district will hold individualized meetings with parents of students designated as ELL and work to exit them out of the ELL label.

Second, she will be proposing to the school board that the district begin a Navajo immersion program in kindergarten so that “when kindergarten children get to the high school level, they’ll no longer be ELL. They’ll know Navajo and English.”

She asserts that based on her experience students that have gone through Navajo immersion schools or programs outscore their peers on English tests when they get to secondary schools. However, the state and Horne don’t recognize that model, she said.

“They want us to follow their model of English-only, which has never worked ever since formal education has been introduced to Indian people across the country,” Dennison-Jackson said.

The final and perhaps most important step that Jackson-Dennison is taking is advocating for the U.S. Congress to strengthen the Native American Languages Act so that states cannot apply English-only to Native American tribes.

She will be going before local chapters, the school board, the Navajo Nation’s Education Committee, and the National Indian Education Association seeking supporting documents for the effort to strengthen NALA. Other superintendents with the state’s Impact Aid Association will also bring resolutions before their school boards.

“What it would do is no other state in the country will be able to apply English-only to Native American children,” she said.

Jackson-Dennison, who is Navajo, noted that Arizona has one of the largest Native American populations in the country, “yet we’re saying English-only.”

Even while a monument to the Navajo Code Talkers was dedicated on the Arizona State Capitol grounds last week, the schools on Navajo are struggling with how they are going to implement the English language mandates.

“They’re honoring the Navajo Code Talkers and at the same time saying Navajo language is not as important as English. Yet without the Navajo language, without the Code Talkers, they would not even be here today,” she said.

Navajo council proceedings need more exposure

2008-03-04T09:15:00.009-07:00

Here’s one where the Navajo Nation is praised for a tribal law that allows access to tribal documents. The Navajo Nation and the Cherokee Nation both have adopted policies that allow the public to obtain tribal public records such as court opinions. For the Navajo Nation, the law is the Navajo Nation Privacy and Access to Information Act, 2 N.N.C. §81 (1999). Under this tribal law, documents fall under “protected”, “unprotected”, and “semi-protected” categories. The tribal government is required to release records that are not protected and they are such things as laws, inter-office memos, court opinions, and meeting minutes. Certain individual information such as names, gender, job titles, job description, business addresses, dates of employment, education, and former employment must also be released. Generally, a member of the public can only obtain protected records of another person if that other person authorizes the release of the record, or by court order. Generally, protected records contain personal information such as social security numbers, addresses, financial information, medical information, and home addresses.

Although the Navajo Nation is being praised for its open-record policy, Navajo council proceedings need more exposure so that we know how our representatives vote on certain issues. Right now, the Navajo public is mostly kept in the dark. Knowing where our council reps stand should be a major factor in deciding whether or not to vote for any certain candidate. Only until there is more council proceedings exposure will the public know if their representatives really represent the community interest. Right now the only record made public is the newspapers, but the newspaper does not cover how all the council delegates vote. We need something like C-SPAN to publicize the Navajo political record. Despite the applaud Navajos are getting for its public information laws, there are still improvements to be made in the Navajo political system.

Tribes scrutinized for secret actions
As casino profits rise, so do demands for open government
Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 2, 2008

SAN CARLOS - Late last year, word spread through Apache lands like the high-desert wind: Members of the tribal council had given themselves pay raises of 30 percent and were driving around in new Humvees and other luxury vehicles bought with tribal funds.

A recall campaign started up, fueled by more rumors of dubious spending.

Beverly Russell, a founder of the opposition movement known as People First, says fancy cars featuring satellite radios and hydraulic lifts were authorized in secret

Efforts to document the expenses proved futile, however, because the community 100 miles east of Phoenix has no public-records law, said Russell, a former aide to Vice Chairman David Reede.

"We are totally at the mercy of the tribal council," Russell said. Her requests for documents were ignored. "Whatever they decide is not open, they just don't release it. . . . There is no policy for anything here. It is very shocking."

The predicament is not unique in Indian country. Among America's 561 federally recognized tribes, few have laws that ensure their members can find out about their elected leaders' business.

In many cases, the result is a strong distrust of tribal government spawned by actions that some members consider abuses of power.

In North Carolina, for example, the editor of the Eastern Cherokee band's newspaper, The One Feather, was dismissed from his job in October after writing a column critical of the tribe's failure to disclose campaign contributions to federal candidates. In Florida, police with the Seminole Tribe withheld a homicide report last year after a suspect was shot by an officer. Nationwide, efforts to obtain information on casino profits and spending have been thwarted.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said it seems incongruous that U.S. foreign policy promotes open democracies worldwide while hundreds of sovereign governments within America are able to operate in secrecy.

Dalglish wonders how tribal members can hold their leaders accountable or make informed decisions when they vote.

"Isn't it just remarkably ironic? It's a very autocratic system. And only those within the inner circle have a right to a voice," she said. "If I were a member of one of the tribes, I'd be continually frustrated."

Lack of transparency

Helen Padilla, director of the American Indian Law Center in New Mexico and a member of Isleta Pueblo, said tribes have a right to establish their own rules for access to records and are not subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act or state sunshine laws. Each Indian nation is unique and is governed according to traditional values, she said.

"Many tribes do not even have their laws codified," Padilla said. "You're talking about the whole concept of a free and open system when that may not be what the tribal government chooses."

Padilla acknowledged that a lack of transparency often leads to distrust and division. "It happens all over Indian country, with tribal members alleging that corruption is occurring."

The concern has been magnified in the past decade with the spread of lucrative casinos on Indian reservations. Because each tribe's gaming revenues are secret, tribal members often are not told how much money is being taken in, where it is spent or whether they're getting a fair share.

That issue led to a schism last year in the small San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe of northern Arizona. Leaders voted themselves pay raises and refused to release budget information. A recall effort resulted in the formation of dueling governments, each of which claims the other was elected unlawfully.

Lee Choe, considered acting president by one faction, said his people were torn apart by secrecy and greed. "I think it's the money, the gaming money that's coming in," he explained.

In general, Native American nations do not prohibit the release of records, and many divulge budgetary documents, said John Lewis, executive director at the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona.

Disclosure, however, is often an arbitrary decision left to the whim of those in power, Dalglish said. The result is that leaders may withhold everything, from council minutes to spending invoices.
Inclined toward secrecy
Experts on Native American law are able to point to two tribes, the Navajo Nation and the Western Band of Cherokees, with clear and effective freedom-of-information laws.

The Navajo Nation's Privacy and Access to Information code makes public most records of America's largest Indian tribe, as long as privacy is not violated.

George Hardeen, a spokesman for President Joe Shirley Jr., said the law rarely gets used because Navajo government is so open. "If somebody wants something, we'll give it to them," Hardeen said.

The Western Cherokees established their law in 2001 under Principal Chief Chad Smith, who co-wrote the measure.

"In my opinion, that's doing it right," said Bryan Pollard, editor at the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper in Tahlequah, Okla. "By informing people, your leadership makes them active participants in their culture and government."

Pollard said an inclination toward secrecy is understandable among indigenous people. "They've suffered so much oppression. They've become very defensive," he said. "But, in some tribes, it's reached unhealthy levels."

Ronnie Washines, editor of the Yakama Nation Review in the Pacific Northwest, said there is an "understanding" within his tribe that government records are open to members, but it doesn't always pan out. Washines said he wanted to do a story on casino revenues some years ago, only to be turned down based on "technical disqualification."

Washines said he was never given a legitimate reason records were kept secret.

Calling for accountability

Mark Trahant, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalist who has covered Indian communities nationwide, said the truth usually leaks out even though tribal leaders attempt to create walls of secrecy.

He added that many tribal governments lack the money and sophistication to enact or follow a public-records law, but informal systems often work because openness is innate to most indigenous cultures. His Shoshone Bannock tribe in Idaho requires at least one meeting a year where members can confront leaders with questions.

Frank Pommersheim, a professor of Indian law at the University of North Dakota, said he does not know of a single Plains tribe with a public-records law. However, he sees an evolutionary process under way and believes Indian governments inevitably will become more open because tribes are gaining sophistication and members are demanding accountability.

"I think that issue is likely to come to the fore," he said.

Pommersheim said casinos and financial accountability are a major factor but emphasized that money can spawn dishonesty or suspicion in any group, no matter the ethnic background. "I don't regard any of these issues as unique to Indian country," he added. "I think that is a bit dangerous."

At the San Carlos Reservation, the issue of openness came to the fore at a public meeting in November, when Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr. was asked to explain and provide records for the pay hikes and expenses. Russell, whose group is leading a recall campaign against Nosie and most council members, said he failed to respond.

Vice Chairman Reede said the expenses were approved in his absence during a closed-door meeting. Afterward, Reede assigned his vehicle and $18,000 pay raise to community projects rather than personal use. That led to another closed meeting, Reede said, where the council abolished his office budget and eliminated his staff.

Nosie did not respond to interview requests. In a letter answering Russell's request for documents, the chairman acknowledged that Apaches have "an unquestionable right to understand (and) evaluate the conduct of (their) government."

However, he argued, specific financial information is exempt, and council discussions of such matters are confidential.

While each Native American tribe has a unique culture and tradition, Reede said, a mentality of secrecy seems widespread.

"I think you will see that all tribes have the same ongoing issue," he said.

"We are struggling with political independence, self-rule, self-determination and to create economic development," he added, but cloaking government in secrecy will only hinder progress.

Alcohol nation

2007-12-27T09:56:00.000-07:00

Alcohol is fun and exciting especially during times like New Years. It gives us pleasure and excitement. We like to “party” with our friends to socialize, to relieve stress, and so on. The city and bordertown bars like The Class Act, Midnight Rodeo, and the water tanks on the reservation are the places to get drunk.

But this letter shows the other side of alcohol; the side that takes away parents, siblings, and children. That side involves trauma, death and dehumanization. It’s a side that party-goers tend to think does not apply to them. It’s a side that we all ignore because we don’t want to hear it.

We as a Navajo People need to re-evaluate what kind of society we have created to allow bootleggers to roam free and kill people while we just shrug our shoulders and turn the other way with apathy. Just the other day, I read a young Navajo's website describing where they were from: “i live in dennehotso where drunks run free and bootleggers aren't hard to find. it's a small place.” Is that how we have come to view our own society? Is that what we think of ourselves? Or do we just close our eyes and ears and try to ignore the problem? We only hear the cries of People when one of our relatives is taken away. That is the Navajo society that we live in today.

There are people who try to address this problem. The Navajo Nation President and his wife try to raise alcohol awareness through MADD. The Judicial Branch is struggling with a case that make bordertown liquor stores liable for selling alcohol to Navajos who kill other people in reservation auto accidents. Arizona was also involved in a sting to bust bordertown liquor stores that sell to Navajo bootleggers. Now that we have the first ever Native American female U.S. Attorney representing Arizona, maybe we can convince her to address this problem (like the letter to the editor says "write your letters"). Several years ago, the FBI and Navajo Nation joined forces in Operation Bootleg Sting that put ‘Juicy Lucy’ of Chinle, the most popular bootlegger on the Navajo reservation, behind a different type of bars other than the one she was use to. So there are people who are trying to address the problem. But these are mostly individuals, agencies and governments. We need the People's support.

Most importantly, we who partake in and enjoy the fun, excitement, and pleasure of liquor need to re-evaluate our own lives. We need to help ourselves and take control of our own lives so that we become independent from alcohol. We have to do it, not the U.S. Attorneys, not the First Ladies, but us.

Bootleggers are hurting our families
Navajo-Hopi Observer
12/5/2007 5:20:00 PM

To the editor:

My family and I are writing this letter in hopes of exposing the bootleggers of White Valley. White Valley is between Pinon and Hardrock in Navajo County.

I am sure that our family is not the only one with a story like ours. In our family we lost a nephew two years ago and most recently our brother in an auto accident. Both were related to alcohol. Another brother is now in jail possibly facing some prison time. Another brother went to prison, which was also related to alcohol. There has also been a lot of domestic violence involved-verbally, physically, emotionally and mentally. The list is endless.

My family has suffered long enough. We are drained emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially. We believe all this is the result of the bootleggers selling wine.

A life is the most precious thing in this world. Money, tears and prayers cannot bring someone back once they are gone.

Bootleggers have no guilt, sympathy or remorse for the chaos they have unleashed on families by selling wine. They have torn so many families apart.

In doing some research I found out that the most these bootleggers get is one-year probation for selling alcohol on the reservation. It seems all the bootleggers get is a slap on the wrist, which we think is not enough. What about all the lives they have taken? Punishment should be more severe for these bootleggers so that they will think twice before deciding to bring alcohol onto to the reservation.

I know some people feel that it is the person's own fault if they choose to drink alcohol and if they commit crimes or lose their lives. We as the Dineh should come together and help our people instead of criticizing them as drunks or druggies. We need to open treatment centers and try to help our people.

Most people do not go off the reservation to buy alcohol. They go to the bootleggers. If we do something about the bootleggers maybe our loved ones will have a better chance at sobriety.

We feel that by allowing these bootleggers to continue selling we are enabling them and choosing not to come forward and let our concerns be heard. We are killing our own people.

I know families are afraid to come forward due to retaliation, but if we choose to stay quiet how many more mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are we going to allow to die.

If you want to voice your concerns please write your letters to the U.S. Attorney, Navajo Nation President, ATF and your local police department.

Jolene Yazzie
Jackie Fowler
Joanne Howard
Dennebito

(Read related story: "Legalizing Alcohol on Navajo weakens the Nation")

Native Medicine Story

2007-12-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Interesting story, a bit romanticized at first, but tries to inform about native medicine.

Healing hands
Well-known local medicine man shares his story of Navajo culture
The Daily Times
Dec. 09, 2007
By Alysa Landry

FARMINGTON — It starts with the sprinkling of corn pollen. The yellow powder slips between Francis Mitchell's fingers as he stretches over a makeshift altar in a small bedroom in his Farmington home. Feathers, crystals and arrowheads are precisely set on the carpet.

Mitchell, a Navajo medicine man, sits cross-legged in the corner, a yellow bandana tied around his head and turquoise bracelets circling his wrists. A patient and his son — travelers from the Jicarilla Apache tribe — perch on sheepskins nearby. They are victims of a curse or evil spell.

"I'm going to say a prayer and make an offering," Mitchell says. "I'm going to ask the deity to take the bad thing away."

Tendrils of smoke rise from a nest of smoldering incense, and Mitchell fans the sweet odor with an eagle feather. The extraction ceremony will take about two hours, he says. Tthen he will dismiss his visitors with a protection prayer.

"The extraction ceremony is performed when someone is approached by a sorcerer or someone who has

done something evil," Mitchell says. "Someone has put a spell on another because of prejudice or jealousy."
Before the curse can be extracted, Mitchell must determine how it is affecting his patient. He gazes into a crystal, then separates a cluster of bluebird and turkey feathers. He sprinkles pollen into a glass of water and studies the pattern formed by the particles.

The minutes tick by.

"I feel it is a woman," he says finally. The man nods.

"I feel you can't trust females," Mitchell says, "that a female has done you wrong." The man nods again.

"You have a rash on your legs, and headaches," Mitchell says. "You have pain in your back, and you've been told not to lift anything heavy."

An evil spell has caused the physical ailments, and the curse must be extracted.

Mitchell dabs pollen on his patient's knees, shoulders, back, forehead and tongue. He puts bundles of arrowheads and feathers into his patient's hands and instructs him to press them against his body.

The ceremony is a complex combination of song, prayer, tobacco and herbs. It begins with a nasal chant, punctuated with the grating rattle of a dried gourd. As he sings, Mitchell sways gently on his cushion, occasionally rearranging feathers on the carpet in front of him.

It is in the feathers, he says, that he can see the past. He sees his patient's weaknesses and the bad luck wished on him. Finally, he knows the location of the curse, he says. It's in his patient's back.

Extraction, in this case, means Mitchell will suck the curse from his patient's body.

"Don't tense up on me," he says, then grasps his patient's skin in his teeth. A thin groan escapes the patient's lips and his fingers claw the carpet.

The seconds crawl by, then Mitchell spits a rattle snake tooth into a paper towel.

The curse is lifted.

Not a typical job

Mitchell, 63, doesn't carry business cards. He doesn't have an office, and he doesn't work 9 to 5.

He awoke early the day of the extraction ceremony and went outside to say his morning prayers. Then he drove to Shiprock to pray for a young woman injured in a car accident.

By 10 a.m., he is back home to perform the extraction.

"You're available when people need you," he said. "You don't dictate the setting or the time."

Mitchell carries traditional robes and headresses, but today he works in a pair of slacks and a turtleneck shirt. His cropped gray hair pokes from under the bandana, and sweat glistens on his forehead and cheeks.

"We don't have to be in traditional dress — the loin cloth and moccasins," he said, "but we can."

A ceremony begins when a patient seeks a medicine man. Patients seeking medicine men also seek a legend. In Navajo, legend is a way of life.

"Navajo really live for these ceremonies," he said. "It is their teaching, their way of life. It's what they have and what they pass on."

Like physicians, medicine men begin by diagnosing their patients. And like physicians, medicine men refer patients to specialists who have earned reputations for performing a handful of the 36 ceremonies.

Diagnosticians are trained in crystal gazing, hand trembling, charcoal gazing or star gazing, said Johnson Dennison, native medicine coordinator at Chinle, Ariz., Hospital on the Navajo Nation. A fifth diagnostic ceremony, listening, is extinct. Listeners, Dennison said, went to remote areas and heard answers in the sounds of nature.

"Only gifted people can do diagnostics," he said. "They have to be able to visualize the problem."

Diagnosticians refer patients to medicine men, who perform healing way ceremonies — blessings to cure mental or physical ailments. Healing ceremonies range in length from the two-hour extraction to the nine-day Ye'ii-Bi-Chei, or Night Way.

The complicated Ye'ii-Bi-Chei takes months to plan, Dennison said. Medicine men perform the ceremony to heal patients experiencing problems with vision, hearing or the mind, and it is performed only during autumn or early winter.

Healing way ceremonies are as varied as patients' afflictions, Dennison said. The shooting arrow way combats injuries caused by lightning strikes or electrical shock; the Navajo wind way heals infirmities caused by natural disasters; and the life way is performed for accident victims.

Healing is the most common reason people seek medicine men, but the native practitioners also perform blessing way ceremonies and protection prayers.

The blessing way is a positive ceremony, a prayer for good fortune, Mitchell said. He performs the blessing way prayer on homes or vehicles to ensure safety and the best of feelings within the walls. Navajo receive the blessing way ceremony every four years or during special occasions, such as a girl's passage into womanhood.

Protection ceremonies, including extraction, are used to ward off evil spirits, Mitchell said.

"As Navajo, we believe in witchcraft," he said. "We believe in skin walkers and werewolves. People do voodoo and put spells on one another. You need a protection prayer when your neighbor is wishing bad things on you."

Medicine men also perform protection prayers when a person's path is crossed by a coyote — the Navajo version of a black cat, Dennison said. Navajo receive the ceremony every year.

"It's like a seat belt," he said. "It's for anyone who wants to be protected from harm."

Medicine men are forbidden from advertising their services, and most don't set prices on their services, Mitchell said.

He has received cash payments in exchange for ceremonies, but he also has received livestock and land.

"Payment is vague," he said. "I make my living from what comes from the heart."

Medicine men study as apprentices for several years before going on their own, Mitchell said. They learn hundreds of songs, prayers and procedures from a mentor, and they are recognized by tribal elders as medical practitioners.

Medicine men don't earn diplomas or certificates, and they rely on word of mouth to build clientele.

"I don't carry business cards," Mitchell said. "I don't have a neon sign outside my house flashing medicine man, medicine man, medicine man.'"

Nontraditional beginnings

Mitchell's career as a medicine man began after 21 years of darkness.

Born in Fort Wingate, Mitchell left the reservation at age 3 when his mother died and his father sent him to live with an Anglo family in Ohio. It took him more than two decades to return.

By then, the Navajo Nation was like a foreign country, he said.

"I did not grow up with this," he said. "I grew up with an adopted father who was a Christian minister. He used to say Navajo was the devil's way. I didn't have any contact with ceremonial things."

Mitchell graduated from high school in Marion, Ohio, and served in the Marines in Vietnam. He returned to the reservation in 1969 at age 25 to remember his Navajo heritage.

The war was hard to forget, however. Mitchell was drunk for two months straight before reuniting with his maternal grandfather, a medicine man.

"From the day I found him, I began studying," Mitchell said. "Wherever he performed, I was there with him to drive him back and forth. That made me a part of the ceremonies."

Mitchell's grandfather, Tabaha, never had an English name. He practiced the same medicine passed down from his grandfather, Mitchell said.

The traditional songs struck a familiar chord, and Mitchell found similarities between Navajo culture and the Christianity he embraced as a child in Ohio.

"They're both about reaching a supreme being," he said. "Navajo ceremonies are just another way of understanding the deity."

Like many prayers, ceremonial songs must be repeated verbatim, Mitchell said. A medicine man who changes the words or forgets them runs the risk of cursing the individual or structure he is trying to bless.

"You can't sing the songs unless you're doing a ceremony," he said. "You can learn the songs and words, but it takes something bigger to give you the power to perform a ceremony."

Mitchell simultaneously studied Navajo medicine and earned a bachelor's degree in early childhood education from Kansas University. He took a teaching job at Navajo Mission Academy in Farmington in 1980, but continued practicing traditional medicine on the side.

Determined to make a career out of medicine, Mitchell resigned from the school in 1992.

He joined the International Association of Shamanic Practitioners and built a reputation that spans the globe. Mitchell sees patients from across the country, Europe and Australia. Patients often bring souvenirs from their homes, and Mitchell uses them to liven up the walls of the medicine room in his home.

"I don't get rich from these payments," he said, "but this is where I belong."

Relationship with modern medicine

Some patients seek a medicine man at the first sign of an illness. Others go to a modern hospital.

Ninety percent of patients treated in Chinle are Navajo, Dennison said, and the diagnoses from medicine men and modern doctors can be incongruous.

"In the hospital they get one treatment, but back home in their communities they have another diagnosis," he said. "There is no cancer or diabetes in Navajo culture, but you can be diagnosed with it in the hospital. It's foreign, and it's confusing."

The Chinle Hospital opened an office of native medicine in 2000, and many other hospitals on American Indian reservations followed suit. Prior to that, culture determined the cure, Dennison said.

"Many patients don't understand western medicine, so they don't understand the treatment," he said. "If the doctors and medicine men respect each other and make interpretations for their patients, there is a collaboration."

San Juan Regional Medical Center provides meditation rooms for medicine men to work with patients, public relations coordinator Dennis Mathis said. The four rooms in the hospital's East Tower are available for patients who want traditional ceremonies in conjunction with their medical treatment.

"We don't have medicine men on staff, but we do honor a patient's request for traditional ceremonies," Mathis said. "We built the meditation rooms for the purpose of allowing these kinds of blessings."

The hospital also invites medicine men to perform blessing way ceremonies on new facilities, Mathis said.

Mitchell learned western medicine decades before he picked up a pouch of corn pollen. He spoke fluent English long before he learned the Navajo language. He credits this sequence to his success as a medicine man in Farmington.

"The tradition of a medicine man is the complete opposite of what my adopted parents taught me," he says. "It gives me a unique advantage in this profession because I've been in both worlds."

Doctors and medicine men work side by side in many reservation hospitals, Mitchell said, but the gap between traditional and modern medicine is small compared to the gap between cultures.

Medicine men gave up their traditional title, Hataalii, in favor of the English phrase, he said. The significance of the Navajo word was lost in the translation.

"Medicine man' doesn't include the women that practice," he said. "Hataalii doesn't mean medicine. From our side it's the singer.'"

Alysa Landry: alandry@daily-times.com