50 years ago: Anderson takes on Blatchford; state schools grow

If you lived on the Navajo Reservation in the late 60s to early 70s, you would recognize the name of Herbert Blatchford Sr.

Wherever he went, he seemed to create controversy and over the years the Navajo Times would have dozens of stories about people accusing him of one thing or another and his fighting back.

In the 1970s, his years as director of the Gallup Indian Center saw him in constant battles with Gallup’s mayor at the time, Emmitt “Frankie” Garcia. These fights were a major reason why the city decided to no longer support the center and as a result, it was closed.

But 50 years ago, Blatchford was in a fight with a member of Congress, U.S. Sen. Clinton Anderson, D-N.M.

Anderson was one of the most powerful members of the senate and he made it quite clear back in 1966 that while he liked most people, he couldn’t stand Blatchford.

Blatchford, meanwhile, thought that he was working in the best interest of the Navajo people or the people of New Mexico in his position as director of the Northwest New Mexico Economic Opportunity Council.

In June of 1966, Anderson told the council’s board of directors that if they wanted his support on future projects, they would have to do something about Blatchford.

What he wanted, of course, was for the council to fire Blatchford, but what they did was cut his salary from $14,000 to $7,000, hoping this would relay the message that they would like him to quit and go bother someone else.

But if there was one thing that Blatchford enjoyed better than anything else was a good political fight because he knew he could overcome any political foe, even one as powerful as Clinton.

So, one day, after he received his salary “adjustment,” he sent a letter to his boss, Dr. William Crook, director of the regional office in Austin, Texas. He told Crook that his salary cut was done in the fury of political “feuds.”

“It has now been chosen to violate the law of the land to once again make the actions and concerns of programs, which were developed, conducted and administered with the maximum feasible participation of residents of areas and members of groups served, totally wrong.”

Say what?

That was another facet of Blatchford’s character.He loved to write letters, especially to tribal leaders, about how he could help them solve their problems, but very few people, if any, would admit that they understood everything he said.

What it all boiled down to was Blatchford would point out that he was a member of the great Navajo Tribe and he was facing accusations from non-Navajos who were trying to keep the Navajo people down.

In his letter to Crook, Blatchford mentioned the attempts of the federal government to exterminate the Indians by terminating their services and more recently to steal tribal water rights.

Now the New Mexico senator was attempting to destroy his program because it provided needed services to the Navajo people. “Some Indians,” he wrote, “have been aware that Indians have no friends in the offices of the senior senator from New Mexico.”

Blatchford ended his letter to his boss by saying: “Being of sound and reasonable judgement, I hold that we cannot afford to play favorites with the hard-earned trust of people of low income,” he said.

“Neither can we afford the luxury of long delays with people whose main concern is getting a meager meal of crumbs to the tables set for young children,” he said.
What the eating habits of young children helped by his program had to do with his salary cut apparently was never explained because this was a battle that would lead Blatchford to leave his job and go to work at the Gallup Indian Center.

In other news from 50 years ago, people were beginning to realize that there were big changes going on within the realm of education within the Navajo Reservation.
It was always a given that most Navajo students would go to BIA boarding schools because it was the BIA who was making sure that Navajo parents sent their children to school.

Most of the children for the first part of the 20th century who went to public schools lived in dormitories financed and run by the BIA, but in the 1950s, states began building public schools on the Navajo Reservation in the bigger communities and the trend was becoming a movement.

Still it probably came as a surprise to a lot of people when the latest attendance figures were released that showed the number of Navajos attending public schools was beginning to surpass the number going to BIA schools. It was only a matter of time.

For the 1966-67 school year, the BIA was projecting a total of 40,256 Navajos attending schools, with 18,954 in federal schools and 16,487 in public schools. There were also1,398 children enrolled in mission schools.

Most of the students going to BIA schools were from smaller and more remote chapters on the reservation, areas too small to have their own public schools. Most of these students could be considered more traditional than their public school counterparts.

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