50 Years Ago: Council votes 61-0 to allow construction of manufacturing plant near Shiprock

Something happened on January 8, 1965 that had not happened once during the two years Raymond Nakai had been chairman of the tribe – the Navajo tribal Council voted unanimously on a resolution.

And what a resolution.

The council voted 61-0 to allow its advisory committee to negotiate with the BVD company to build a large manufacturing plant on the Navajo Reservation.

Faced with an unemployment rate of more than 60 percent, tribal officials had been trying to come up with a strategy that would create jobs on the reservation. Their solution – go after companies that needed a lot of employees who could be trained to produce a product with the tribe providing the funds to train the employee through various federal work training programs.

BVD was looking for a site for its apparel plant that would employ 800 men and women.

With the average Navajo family at that time having five to six members Ned Hatathali said this would provide support for some 4,500 Navajos.

The plant’s annual payroll would be in excess of $2 million.

There was one problem, however — water.

The plant would require one million gallons of water from the San Juan River on a daily basis and another million gallons would be required for the hundreds of homes that would be needed to house the plant’s employees.

Maurice McCabe, the tribe’s director of administration, said the best place to put the plant was in Shiprock because of its proximity to water from the San Juan River.

The tribe would have to come up with the $5 million to $10 million it would cost to build the plant but McCabe this would provide a better return to the tribe than ‘having the money lie in the U.S. Treasury drawing 4 percent.”

This marks the start of what would become an almost annual event on the Navajo Reservation – reports of negotiations going on between the tribe and a major company that wanted to come onto the reservation.

While most of these proposals would end up with little to show for them, a few would be approved leading to companies like Fairchild and General Dynamics actually setting up operations in Shiprock and Fort Defiance.

As 1965 began, people in Ramah found themselves on a mission – to save their high school.

In a report released in December 1964, the New Mexico Department of Education had come out with plans to shut down the high school in the community because it did not have enough students.

The school only had 43 students in its senior class at a time when state law required that each class had to have a minimum of 50 students.

Dr. George Young, superintendent of schools for McKinley County, immediately protested the plans and organized resident of the Ramah area to file their own protests.

Speaking for the Ramah community, Robert Jerry Johnston, said the state didn’t realize the consequences of closing down the school.

First off, it would require Ramah students to travel 114 miles on a bus to go to school, requiring them to get up at 6 a.m. and not getting home until after 5 p.m.

‘We have practically no juvenile delinquency. The drop-out rate is almost negligible,” Johnson said. ‘We want our school the way it is.”

He came up with a solution would convince state officials to change the plans – have students from the Fence Lake area go to Ramah schools instead of school in Zuni.

And finally Kee McCabe died on January 19, 1965.

McCabe, 77, was one of the first Navajos to receive a formal education.

Born in 1888 in Kinlichee, McCabe went to school at the Santa Fe Indian school and the Indian school in Grand Junction, Co. He was the great uncle of Maurice McCabe.

A two-term member of the Navajo Tribal Council, McCabe was instrumental in the formation of the Kinlichee Chapter, after having been active in community affairs there for decades.