Friday, March 29, 2024

50 years ago: Wauneka challenges Nakai over motor pool

Navajo Nation Chairman Raymond Nakai continued to be hammered by the “Old Guard” in the Navajo Tribal Council and during the early part of February, 1966, the attack was headed by the only woman on the tribal council, Annie Wauneka.

At the center of the argument was Nakai’s running of the tribal motor pool who presented a report that Wauneka said was “highly biased in favor of the present management.”

She demanded that Nakai’s report be rejected and that the council get an unbiased report on the money being spent on the motor pool.

And that’s exactly what happened a couple of days later when the tribe’s external auditors, Peat, Marwick and Mitchell, presented their report on conditions in the motor pool.

Their report differed sharply from the one that Nakai gave.

The auditors said they were asked to look into conditions at the motor pool after the Government Accounting Office came out with its report saying that the pool had a cumulative loss of $750,000.

The GAO blamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the loss, saying BIA should have been more diligent in its trust responsibilities. Wauneka, however, blamed Nakai.

One of the things that the Peat, Marwick and Mitchell audit came up with was that the supervisors were paid for an “exhorbitant number of overtime hours” to the point where it appeared that the average supervisor worked a 70- to 75-hour week.

The report said that the department was losing about $29,310 a month and these losses would only get worse if something was not done.

The council decided to mull over these accusations and meet later in the month to try to come up with some kind of solution.

But before that happened, Nakai went on the offensive, holding a press conference to tell the Navajo people that it wasn’t him that was causing all of the problems, it was the council.

He pointed out that the council rejected all of his efforts to reorganize the government and to put controls on spending by many of the tribal programs.

He said he was tired of hearing the council members complain and point fingers at his administration.

“I plan to go to the Navajo people with my program,” Nakai said, adding that he planned to shake the hands of as many Navajos as he could and to pledge to them that if they got rid of those on the council who continued to fight against his programs, a lot of these problems could be resolved overnight.

This would prove to be the centerpiece of Nakai’s campaign for re-election which began in March and would include visits to almost every chapter on he reservation.

In other news, the Gallup Police Department promised to do a thorough investigation into the death on Feb. 5 of Bessie Lee Davis, who died at the Gallup Public Health Hospital of burns over 95 percent of her body.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the victim died about 4:30 p.m. after her clothing caught on fire while standing near an open fire behind a butane gas company office located at Sixth and Coal.

The city’s police chief, Manuel Gonzales, said he was unaware of the details on how the victim’s clothes caught on fire.

What he had heard was that employees of the company saw the victim running toward the street with her clothes on fire and one of the employees, identified as Clarence Mower, immediately rushed to her aide and smothered the flames.

And finally, police officials in Gallup announced on Feb. 10 that they had arrested an individual who had broken into the Navajo Arts and Crafts building in Window Rock the week before and had stolen several thousand dollars worth of Navajo jewelry.

Arrested was Henry Lewis, who police discovered had pawned several of the stolen pieces at Gallup pawn shops.

One pawn dealer became suspicious when he discovered a price tag on one of the items with the Window Rock store’s logo on it.

He called Gallup police who were able to track down Lewis by his description.

It wasn’t certain from the news articles on the arrest exactly how many of the stolen items had been recovered.

Since the Gallup police had no jurisdiction over the theft itself, Lewis was charged with possession of stolen property and the case was turned over to the FBI to handle the actual theft charges.


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About The Author

Bill Donovan

Bill Donovan wrote about Navajo Nation government and its people since 1971. He joined Navajo Times in 1976, and retired from full-time reporting in 2018 to move to Torrance, Calif., to be near his kids. He continued to write for the Times until his passing in August 2022.

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