50 Years Ago: Name-calling sinks to new lows

The campaign for tribal chairman was getting very bitter with both candidates accusing the other of cheating and worse, as name calling had become a major part of both the campaigns for Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai and his challenger, Sam Billison.

The Navajo Times, in covering the race, said this may be the dirtiest campaign of any in the tribe’s history with neither candidate seemingly concerned about any limits on what they could call their opponent.

Nakai had campaigned calling Billison a fraud and had questioned his ability to lead the tribe because of a lack of understanding of the issues. He’s “not fit to be chairman,” said Nakai, pointing to Billison’s failure to get enough support in the past to win the chairmanship.

Nakai had, on numerous occasions, questioned Billison’s abilities as an educator, saying he had overblown his credentials and had lost touch with most of the people on the reservation who made their living by ranching or farming.

Billison, on the other hand, had accused Nakai of profiteering from selling cards to set up various organizations such as the Navajo Rights Association, the Voice of the Navajo and the Dineh Rights Association.

According to Billison, each of these organizations required members to pay annual dues of $5 and the organizations had never told their members what the money had been used for.

The implication in his speeches was that somehow these funds were going to Nakai to supplement his annual salary of $20,000.

To help in his efforts to win the election, Billison this week 50 years ago pulled a surprise move.

To the surprise of many people, he named as his running mate Paul Jones, the former chairman of the tribe until Nakai was elected four years prior.

Jones was extremely popular with certain segments of the Navajo population — the ranchers and the farmers as well as Navajo veterans — and the move was praised by many of the Old Guard such as Annie Wauneka as a move to restore harmony to the tribal government after four years of backstabbing and factionalism.

Jones, in his first speech as a candidate for vice chairman, pointed out that during his eight years in office, the Navajo Tribe was praised for its progressive attitude, but once Nakai took over, he said, all progress stopped.

Of course, what Jones didn’t explain to the Navajo people, said a writer for the Navajo Times, was that the main reason why progress had not been made was because of the refusal of the Old Guard on the Navajo Tribal Council to back any of the proposals put forth by Nakai during the previous three years.

But the big news this week came from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

BIA officials said they were working with officials for the Fairchild Semiconductor Company to provide on-the-job training for as many as 1,481 Navajos.

That would be the biggest training program in the history of the Navajo Tribe. The company would be receiving a $700,000 federal grant to pay most of the cost of the training program.

Fairchild already had 360 Navajos employed at its plant in Shiprock, and with the war in Vietnam heating up, Fairchild officials said the demand for semi-conductors was expected to go sky high in the next few years.

The company released a press statement saying they found that a large majority of the Navajo people had the ability to do the intricate work necessary to make semi-conductors.

They also predicted that if demand kept increasing as it had been during the past year, one out of 10 adult Navajos would one day be working at Fairchild or other plants on the reservation.
The Navajo Tribe apparently felt the same way because negotiations were ongoing to build a new $1.5 million plant in Shiprock to accommodate all of the new hires.

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