50 Years Ago: BIA prepares to step in
Documents that were released just before Christmas of 1964 indicated that if the Navajo Tribal Council hadn’t taken steps to deal with the tribe’s growing financial crisis, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was prepared to step in and do something.
Two weeks before Christmas, the Council voted to take away the authority of then-Chairman Raymond Nakai in financial and personnel matters and give them to the tribe’s executive secretary, Maurice McCabe.
It turns out that Interior Department officials had been meeting before this to try to determine what the federal government could do to get the tribal management back in line.
Much of the blame for the tribe’s current condition is being blamed on internal politics and the fact that ever since Nakai took office, he has been in a constant fight with supporters of the former chairman, Paul Jones, over control of the government.
And since this faction has control over the Council, Nakai’s attempt to make change has been stymied.
Because of this and Nakai’s fight with Norman Littell, an attorney appointed by Jones’ supporters, a lot of his time has been taken up as well as that of other tribal officials. At the same time, several key positions that oversaw the tribe’s financial situation have gone unfilled.
Glenn Landbloom, general superintendent of the Navajo Agency for the BIA, had been given instructions to do whatever was necessary to get the tribe’s financial situation in order.
He took his first steps toward that end in mid-November after the Interior Department had given approval for the tribe’s budget for the current year. Although the budget was approved, the tribe was told that certain improvements would have to be made in the handling of accounts or the tribe would have its next budget rejected.
Landbloom said he was not interested in getting in the middle of the fight between Nakai and the Council but something must be done or the BIA would have to take steps it has taken only a handful of times with other tribes — appointing someone to oversee the operation of the tribal government.
There were also reports in outside media this week that members of Congress, especially from Arizona and New Mexico, had begun making their concerns known to the Interior Department and were putting pressure on the BIA to come up with some solution to this problem.
Since no one in the tribe or the federal government wanted to see the tribe’s operation taken over by someone outside the tribe, the options before the Interior Department were down to two: Let the Council make whatever decisions it wanted to correct the situation or turn over the authority to Nakai.
The decision by the Council to step up and address the problems has given many in the federal government hopes that the tribe itself can correct the problems but for the next few months, the BIA would be watching the situation very closely.
There was some good news, at least for the Hopis.
Ely Taylor, a 10-year-old Hopi boy who had been seriously burned in a fire two months ago, was released from the hospital in time to spend Christmas with his parents, two sisters and a brother who survived a fire that destroyed the family home.
Four of his other brothers died in the fire which was later found to have been caused by a jug of gasoline that was ignited by sparks from a gas iron and exploded. The other children, ages four to 14, died from their burns.
On the Navajo Reservation, families appeared ready to forget all the internal problems going on within the tribe and just enjoy the Christmas holidays.
According to the Navajo Times, more than 20 trading post operators were preparing to host Christmas parties for their customers on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
This had been a cherished custom on the reservation for the past several decades. Traders would show their appreciation for the business Navajo families had given to them during the previous year by hosting a banquet that would go on throughout the day with families coming in from all over the area to celebrate the occasion.
This was still a time when trading posts, especially those that were located in remote parts of the reservation, were the primary source for many Navajo families for their basic food needs.
Nakai had already announced plans to bring in major supermarkets to the reservation and by the time he left office Fed Mart and other stores opened during the Nakai administration would change the way Navajos would do their shopping.
These would be the another reason why in the late 1960s and early 1970s more than half of the trading posts on the reservation would go under or would convert from a trading operation to a more modern cash-only convenience store.
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