50 Years Ago: The Old Guard takes a chance on the Times

Annie Wauneka, one of the most powerful political leaders on the Navajo Reservation in 1966, issued a statement exclusively to the Navajo Times in mid-January regarding her feeling that the tribal court system needed to be strengthen to ferret out what she saw was massive corruption within the tribal government,

This was viewed as a turning point for the Navajo Times because it was the first time that anyone in the “Old Guard” had gone to the Navajo Times to outline their position on anything. In the past, the Navajo Times had managed to publish statements in the paper from Old Guard members when they spoke to outside media.

The Old Guard members had believed that the Navajo Times management was under the control of the chairman’s office and refused to talk to the paper, saying anything they said to the Navajo Times would be distorted to make them look bad and Chairman Raymond Nakai look good.

Wauneka was very critical of the Navajo Times, refusing to even be quoted by the paper but as 1966 played out, it became apparent that some in the Old Guard felt they were losing the support of the Navajo people and they began reaching out to the Navajo Times in an effort to try and turn the Navajo people back to their corner.

But this didn’t mean that Wauneka totally trusted the Navajo Times. She still refused to be interviewed but she gave the statement to the Navajo Times as an exclusive as long as they agreed to print it in full without any editing.

And officials at the Navajo Times agreed.

As 1965 ended, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a lawsuit filed by the tribe’s general counsel, Norman Littell, who wanted the court to stop Nakai from interfering with his work for the tribe. The court members, however, rejected the suit, saying they did not plan to interject themselves in the internal operation of the tribal government.

Fine and good, said Wauneka, but this pointed out the need for a strong and independent tribal court system that could take up these kinds of issues and render a fair and just decision.

That wasn’t happening on the reservation, Wauneka said, because the chairman of the tribe controlled the courts and could use his influence to get the courts to rule any way he wanted them to.

“The Navajo judges have acted with a high degree of competence and have earned our respect but now that the Navajo Reservation is passing into an era of complex industrial and business developments. Our courts must be equal to the situation,” she stated.

“If we have an arbitrary or corrupt chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council, and I believe both facts are true at present, he must be held accountable in our own courts for his violation of Navajo law,” she stated.

What Wauneka wanted basically was a total revamping of the Navajo tribal court system and the creation of a three-branch system, something that wouldn’t become a reality for more than 25 years.

In other news this week in Arizona, the Navajo Times reported that the state’s governor, Sam Goddard, was creating an advisory committee on alcoholism and he was naming Navajo Tribal Council Delegate Guy Gorman as one of the 35 members.

Gorman had been working for the past five years as chairman of the Navajo Tribal Commission on Alcoholism to find some way to alleviate the problem of alcohol abuse among tribal members.

And he had to admit that during those five years, the problem of alcohol abuse among tribal members, especially those who visited border communities like Gallup, Farmington, Holbrook and Winslow, was getting worst, not better.

In reports to the Navajo Tribal Council in 1964, Gorman said the problem was getting worst on the reservation with almost every community having at least one bootlegger and some, like Shiprock and Tuba City, having a dozen or more.

Still, the idea of making liquor sales legal on the reservation, would not work either, Gorman said, in part because elder Navajos would not stand for it and it was the elder Navajos who controlled the elections on the reservation.

So what was the solution?

The tribal commission had not come up with a program to address that problem but Gov. Goddard said in his announcement of his committee that his new group would because of increased pressure by citizens of the state to do something about it.

“There has been a growing awareness in Arizona that alcoholism is one of our society’s major medial-social problems,” he said, adding that the creation of the state commission was the first step by state officials to “find solutions.”

The fact that alcohol abuse among certain segments of the state’s population continues to be a serious problem today should indicate just how successful that commission was.

In its editorial that week in 1966, the Navajo Times tackled an issue that is still debated on the reservation every few years – should the tribe adopt a constitution?

And the position of the Navajo Times was – maybe yes, maybe no.

“While we hear that a constitution for the Navajo Tribe would give greater control of the tribal government back to the people, we should stop and think that it is also going to give even greater power to the secretary of the Interior,” the paper’s acting editor, Leslie Goodluck, wrote.

That’s the same argument that has been brought forth every time the idea of a tribal constitution has come up.

---