50 Years Ago: Nakai makes a big announcement

The 1965 Fair edition of the Navajo Times was a big deal. In fact, you could say it was the biggest bargain for readers in the five-year history of the paper.

For 10 cents, readers got 94 pages of material. That was the biggest issue of the paper ever and the meager staff had been working for more than a month preparing articles for it.

But it was even a bigger deal because the paper’s top story – which probably came as a surprise to no one – was Raymond Nakai’s announcement that he was going to run for a second term.

Nakai was, by far, the most popular political figure on the reservation primarily for his efforts to get peyote legalized in Native American Church ceremonies. He had been to Congress several times already and he would go several more times in the future trying to explain to non-Indian members of Congress why peyote was so important to the culture, not only the Navajos but for members of other tribes as well.

It was a very popular position to take among tribal members since estimates at the time were that more than 70 percent of the Navajo adult population had participated in at least one NAC prayer meeting in their life.

Nakai made his announcement in a very modest way, saying that he was answering the call of the people who had been demanding he run for a second term. This was such a popular stance that almost every future tribal chairman or president planning to run for a second term would use the same kind of strategy.

In his announcement, he took after the members of the Old Guard who made it their main purpose to make life miserable for him during his first term.

“There are members of the present tribal council who have allowed themselves to be entangled in a web of deceit,” Nakai said, a takeoff on a phrase that had been made popular by FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover who used the phrase “Masters of deceit” to refer to anyone who took a position different than his own.

“I have no bitterness toward those Indians who cannot do their own thinking,” he said. In later years, however, those in the tribal government under Nakai would characterize him as a bitter man who talked often in private about plans he would undertake to get back at those who would try to hurt his programs.

It was obvious by September 1965 that his approval rating among Navajos, especially the elderly, was so high that no one in their right mind would waste their time and money to run against someone who was already considered a wise and powerful man by many people on the reservation.

“I am now just beginning my fight,” he said in his announcement.

It would be a bigger battle than he thought because he decided just a few weeks before and didn’t tell anyone but key people on his staff that he was also going to take this opportunity to get rid of the Old Guard on the Navajo tribal Council by actively campaigning against them.

“That’s political suicide,” he remembers them saying, pointing out that many of the Old Guard had been on the council for 16 years or more and they had the ear of their community members.

Nakai vowed to his close friends that he would not run if he thought he would be spending most of his time dealing with allegations from the Old Guard that he was destroying the tribe.

This was also an important issue for the Times because ads of one kind or another took up more than 70 percent of the pages. The paper had promoted the idea to big companies doing business on the reservation to take out a full-page ad in the paper to thank their customers for their business during the previous 12 months.

This became so popular that some companies would put in a full-page ad in every month and the one thing the business community could understand was the importance of showing their humility to their Navajo customers.

And the Navajo Times convinced them – somehow – that the Navajo people would appreciate them spending the money to buy a full-page ad instead of a quarter page or a half page. Even to the point where some of these ads only had a small amount of ad copy and the rest white space which means they could have said the same amount by putting in for a smaller ad.

While the paper was prospering financially, there were still major gaps in its coverage and the biggest was in sports.

The paper had a meager sports section made up of press releases it received from various sports organizations on the reservation and the occasional piece by someone connected with a team or a town.

But it had no full-time or part-time sports writers and the readers were beginning to notice.

In a letter to the editor, Sgt. David Gatewood, who professed to be an admirer of the paper, asked the question that a lot of readers were asking: Will you be carrying anything as far as a sports section in the near future?

He pointed out that he, like the paper’s editor, Leslie Goodluck, was a graduate of Ganado Mission High.

“As you very well know, a certain pride still exists for the school from which you graduated so any news is certainly appreciated,” he said.

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