50 years ago: Controversy continues beyond Nakai’s election

 

 

By the end of November 1966, most Navajos were probably sick and tired of reading election news and they were probably especially glad that the race between Raymond Nakai and Sam Billison for the chairmanship of the tribe was once and all history.

But was it?

Billison supporters were still upset that Nakai had, in their opinion, stolen the election from their candidate. Billison himself apparently did not want the matter to end because just two weeks after losing, he decided to hold one last rally and invited more than a thousand of his supporters to attend.

It was called a “fellowship” rally and was held in Kinlichee and from the advance information given about the event, it was supposed to be an opportunity for Billison and his running mate, former tribal chairman Paul Jones, to say thank you for all the work their supporters did on behalf of the campaign.

If that was the purpose, it probably didn’t come across that way to readers of the Navajo Times which ran a long one-page story basically telling of Billison’s concerns about the future of the tribe.
Billison was still complaining about what he saw as attempts by the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, to take over control of the tribal government. Udall had stated several times in the preceding months that he had no such plans and even if he did, he knew that it would not succeed.

Billison pointed to statements made by Udall in the past that he would “break up” the tribal government if the stalemate between the members of the Old Guard and Nakai was not settled.

It seemed that everyone agreed that the infighting that occurred during the first four years of Nakai’s term did not help anyone. Meanwhile, Billison seemed to be preaching that the federal government would come in and strip Nakai and the Navajo Tribal Council of all of its power.

The Times article on the rally said Billison predicted that Congress would not go along with Udall taking over the tribal government but he said he was going to be constantly watching Udall in 1967 and urged all tribal members to do the same.

In other election news, Melvin Wise, the vital statistician for the Navajo Area BIA, reported that 6.1 percent fewer Navajos voted in 1966 than they did in 1963 for chairmanship.

When asked why he thought this occurred, Wise said the primary reason was probably because the tribe changed its voting laws and “obviously this was not understood by all eligible voters.”

For example, unlike in 1963 when voting places were set up in major cities like Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Albuquerque, for Navajos to vote, none were set up in 1966, primarily because no one asked for them to be set up.

The interesting thing about all of this is that on the same front page where Wise was reporting fewer Navajos voted, appeared a story about the tribal council calling for an investigation of the election because “of complaints received from people who said they were not allowed to vote.”

The Advisory Committee of the Council voted 9-6 to direct the tribe’s Legal Department to conduct the investigation.

The resolution said “many complaints” had been made, but when the Times asked for a number of how many was many, they were unable to get an answer.

In other news, there had been reports throughout 1966 by officials for the BIA that bootlegging on the Navajo Reservation was becoming a problem and there was talk that federal officials may decide to take action in 1967 to try to curb it.

No one seemed to know just how many bootleggers there were on the reservation, how big their operations were or where they were located.
A federal report issued in 1965 indicated that every chapter on the reservation had at least one bootlegger and the major chapters — Tuba City, Shiprock, Chinle, Fort Defiance, and Crownpoint — probably had several.

Another major question that had no answer was where the bootleggers were getting their products because if it was as big as some people believed, the liquor had to be coming from legitimate liquor dealers in one or more of the border towns surrounding the reservation.

This issue came up at one of Billison’s rallies and he said the problem was not on the reservation. To cut down on sales by bootleggers, all one had to do was tighten the restriction on liquor sales in the border communities.

He said it was obvious that some liquor dealers in the border communities were making a big profit off of sales to bootleggers and he thought the simplest solution was to limit how much beer and alcohol a liquor dealer could sell to someone.

The problem with that was that limiting liquor sales would cause problems to people who were planning to hold parties, but Billison said it should be obvious to any dealer that someone who purchased 100 bottles of beer every weekend is a bootlegger and not someone who just likes to have parties.

One suggestion was to have periodic roadblocks set up on the roads leading into the reservation so that officers could check vehicles to make sure that they were not transporting large quantities of beer and Garden Deluxe for sale on the reservation.

The problem with that, however, according to tribal police officials, was that there are too many roads that lead into the reservation and the police department lacked the manpower to cover all of the roads.

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