50 Years Ago: Council passes resolution trying to remove BIA from federal control

Long before there was any controversy about pro and college teams using racial Indian names as mascots, the Navajo Times kind of brought up that issue on its front page when it printed an article promoting the upcoming Navajo Invitational Tournament.

“In the colorful world of basketball,” the article stated, “Palefaces often show a fondness for labels like Braves, Utes and Chiefs.”

But apparently that was not the case for amateur basketball teams from various Indian tribes coming to compete on the Navajo Reservation.

“There are 22 teams entered with names like the Raiders, the Merchants, the Insurancemen and – God save the memory of Chief Crazy Horse – the Cowboys,” the article stated.

But on to more serious news.

The Navajo Tribal Council met in its winter session and passed probably one of its most controversial resolutions of all times.

The resolution called for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Stewart Udall, then secretary of the Interior, to stop meddling in the affairs of the Navajo Tribe and turn over full control of the tribe’s money to the tribal council.

The resolution, which was approved by a vote of 36-22, indirectly attacked the tribe’s chairman at the time, Raymond Nakai, because he was the one who supported the decisions of Udall and the BIA to take control of the tribal funds away from the council.

The Navajo Times thought this resolution was so important that, for the first time, they printed the entire resolution in the paper and urged tribal members to read it carefully.

The headline said it all: “History in the Making – Resolution Passed by Navajo Tribal Council Could Benefit All Tribes.” It took up two full pages in the Times.

The basis of the resolution came from a report that had just been issued by the U.S. General Accounting Office that sharply criticized the BIA and the Interior Department on various irregularities that occurred in the appropriation of funds to the Navajo Tribe the year before.

“Members of the Navajo Tribal Council and responsible officers in the tribal organization are shocked by the evidence of mismanagement on the part of the Secretary of the Interior, the Solicitor and the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” the resolution stated.

In accusations that sounded like the events that were to happen in 1989 when the council put then chairman Peter MacDonald on suspension, the resolution condemned actions that had been undertaken by federal officials in recent weeks to bring chaos to the reservation.

The resolution accused Udall and his subordinates for condoning and encouraging tribal members to march into the council chambers “where threats of violence were made to members of the council.”

According to the resolution, this was done in the presence of BIA officials who did nothing to try and restore the peace.

In fact, the BIA permitted Nakai to arm tribal rangers as part of his efforts to create an “elite guard” whose sole purpose seemed to be to protect Nakai and intimidate members of the council who he considered to be his enemies.

The resolution basically blamed Udall and the BIA for anything and everything that had gone wrong with the tribe for the past two years even things that would seem to have very little importance.

For example, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority had decided to purchase two new generators for its substations and because this was going to cost a lot of money, it had to be approved by the BIA.

Well, like everything that had to be approved by the BIA, there were delays as the request went from one BIA office to another. The delays stalled the purchase of the items for several months and as a result, said the resolution, NTUA wound up having to pay an extra 15 percent for the generators.

The resolution indicates that this was part of a conspiracy by either the BIA or the Interior Department or maybe both to undermine the tribe and to create “confusion within the utility.”

What the resolution wanted was for the BIA to be taken out of the Interior department and made an independent agency with its own board of directors and no direct ties to the federal government.

If that happened, the BIA would be able to operate without the interference of Udall and others in the federal government who wanted to destroy the ability of the Navajo Council to effectively pass laws that would help the Navajo people.

Of course, Nakai bitterly opposed everything that was said or implied in the resolution, calling it a “waste of paper and time.”

The Interior Department and the BIA totally ignored the resolution for weeks and then sent a short reply back to the council saying it was not feasible.

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