Council gets tongue-lashing from forum

A member of the Navajo Nation Council this week accused fellow delegates of "misbehaving with the people's money."

Leonard Tsosie (Pueblo Pintado/Torreon/Whitehorse Lake) was one of six tribal leaders, past and present, who participated in a panel discussion on Navajo government gridlock that was sponsored Monday by Clear Channel Radio in Gallup.

The remarks of the panelists will be aired over 99.1 FM in Gallup and 107.3 FM in Chinle on Friday, Feb. 26, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Others who participated in the discussion were President Joe Shirley Jr., former presidents Peterson Zah, Albert Hale and Milton Bluehouse, and Jim Zion, a former legal counsel for the judicial branch.

All were critical of the current Navajo Nation governing structure and support reducing the tribal council from 88 to 24 members as a way to reduce the abuses occurring within there.

Representatives of the radio station said they invited speakers who are critical of the gridlock and that they would invite speakers to offer an opposing viewpoint in the future.

Tsosie talked about efforts now underway by the council to overturn the Dec. 15 special election in which more than 60 percent of those voting endorsed the council reduction.

"They don't intend to let go of their power," Tsosie said, adding that the actions are caused by "self-interest and greed."

He said only a handful of delegates - probably five - support the reduction. The other 83 are doing everything they can to get the election voided, he added.

Bluehouse and the others criticized the council for continuing to waive tribal laws to enable raids on tribal cash reserves.

"No one really cares (to follow the law)," Bluehouse said, pointing out that at one time the tribe's emergency reserves were at $200 million. Then it dropped to $91 million and then $43 million and today "we don't have a penny in it" to pay for emergencies.

Bluehouse said that in his travels throughout the reservation, the biggest concern he hears from people is how the council has just wasted all of the tribe's rainy-day account, spending the money on trips to Las Vegas and on slush funds for which there is no oversight or accountability.

The current problems all go back to 1990, when the council got rid of the chairmanship system and opted to take away all power from the chairman and give it to the council, the panelists agreed.

Both Shirley and Hale noted that the government created by the council in 1990 was intended to be temporary, until the Navajo people could choose the form of government they wanted.

Within 18 months, said Shirley, the new government was supposed to come up with suggestions on how the government would be shaped, and then take it to the Navajo people for approval.

"That never happened," he said.

Hale helped devise the laws that were approved by the council in 1990, saying that they were formulated to make sure the abuses of the past would not happen again.

The Government Development Office, which was created in 1990, would look at possible models for the Navajo Nation government and bring these ideas to the council for approval.

"The office did that but when they got to the council, (the delegates) voted them down," Hale said.

He noted that many of the so-called "49ers" - delegates who formed a majority in 1989 and voted to place then-chairman Peter MacDonald on leave - were not re-elected in 1992. Their replacements were not that committed to government reform, he said.

Discussing ways the current council stifles public input, the panelists brought up the case of tribal member Elouise Brown several times.

Brown, a vocal opponent of one of the council's pet projects, the Desert Rock Energy Project, visited the council's Web site and saw that the project was on the agenda for discussion in an upcoming committee meeting. She downloaded the information and went to the meeting intending to see what transpired.

When Brown got there, however, the committee threw her out of the meeting and since then, the council has stopped posting committee-meeting agendas on its Web site.

Shirley said things like this shouldn't happen.

"The rights of the Navajo people are being violated," he said.

Tsosie was also critical of delegates who oppose council reduction but won't admit it publicly. Instead, they allowed Tim Nelson, a private citizen, to file the lawsuit challenging the outcome of the election, he said.

He was also critical of the way some delegates have used their discretionary funds, pointing to articles in the Navajo Times that showed some delegates provided friends and relatives with tens of thousands of dollars.

The funds, Tsosie said, are supposed to help Navajo families pay for things like funeral expenses, and to help Navajo elders who have little or no income get the necessities of life.

"That's what the money was intended for," Tsosie said, adding that because of the abuses that have occurred, he wouldn't be surprised to see that the fund would be abandoned it the future and never reinstated.

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