50 Years Ago: Billison, Nakai duel in local newspapers

Navajo election officials said this week 50 years ago that they were making the final preparations for the tribe’s first nominating session for tribal chairman.

The event was going to be held the first Tuesday in August and it was expected to go smoothly. The purpose of the session was to select the two persons who will go on to run in the general election.

Since there were only two men running for the position — the tribe’s current chairman, Raymond Nakai, and noted education leader Sam Billison — no surprises were expected.
The tribe passed new laws in 1965 that required candidates who were planning to run to announce by March of 1966 so no one else could run.

Previously, the tribe had used a complex system that gave each chapter one vote and the person who got the most votes in each district would win that district. And then the two people who won the most districts would face off in the November general election.

According to interviews done by Navajo Times reporters, the election between Nakai and Billison was a toss up.

A survey of the chapters revealed that Nakai was strong in at least 38 of the 73 chapters. The Times survey gave Nakai 39 chapters to 33 for Billison, but again, those figures were moot since both Nakai and Billison would be going on to the general election on Nov. 15 and 16,
Even Nakai said he was not impressed with his chapter totals since they didn’t give any idea which candidate was ahead in t he popular vote,
As for Billison, because Nakai won some of the chapters by only a couple of votes, Billison said the race was too close to call.

Billson was especially strong among the educated Navajo, according to the Times, while Nakai could claim the support of those who attended the Native American Church because of his strong support for peyote, the plant used by NAC members as part of their ceremonies.

The local media, for the first time, was expected to play a small role in the coming elections.

Nakai had had a story in the Navajo Times almost weekly for the past two months and Billison had seen articles about him appear once or twice in the Gallup Independent.
Nakai had reportedly never trusted the Independent and had said that the paper had misquoted him numerous times. That was not the case with the Times since almost all of the stories the Times had reported had been based on press releases that came from Nakai’s office, and every one had been printed with no changes.

Billison apparently felt more comfortable with the Independent, which put his tirades against Nakai on the front page. He had just begun putting out weekly press statements, which got played up big in the Independent and the Farmington Daily Times.

They also got printed in the Times, but were often cut substantially with the Times saying that the stories they get from Billison had appeared in all of the border newspapers so there was no need to push them in the Navajo paper.

Billison had accused the Navajo Times of being biased against him but the paper denied any wrongdoing saying it treated Billison the same as it did Nakai.

The Associated Press somehow also got in the middle of this controversy, saying that Nakai was one of the hardest persons they had ever interviewed because he treated reporters as a tribal workers, keeping them waiting for hours and then, when the interview was published, accusing the writer of misquoting him.

The big question that both campaigns were trying to answer was, Just how valuable is the print industry to one’s victory on the Navajo Reservation?

With many Navajo elderly unable to speak English and the elderly still being the top voters, both Billison and Nakai said they planned to spend most of their funds on the radio.

In other news, tribal fair officials said they had something special planned for the upcoming tribal fair in September.

Because of the interest by Navajo men in the military, the fair had provided military defense films for viewing and every year they had been great hits.

This year, fair officials planned to show a special film — for the first time, in the Navajo dialect.

It was a story about rockets or, as it is said in the Navajo language, “bigger bullets,” based on the White Sands Missile Range and the Pershing Missile.

Earnest C. Becenti, a foreman with the ammunition maintenance unit at Fort Wingate Army Depot, was tapped to replace the English soundtrack for the film with one in Navajo.
The film would recount the story of the missile as it was flown overland from off-range sites such as Blanding and Green River, Utah and from there to Fort Wingate and the White Sands Missile Range.

Fifty years before the Navajo versions of “Star Wars” and “Finding Nemo” were used to preserve the Navajo language, the use of the Navajo language in this film was to make the film more accessible to Navajo elders, according to tribal fair officials.

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