50 Years Ago: Old Guard puts efforts toward getting rid of Nakai supporters

A purge is underway within the Navajo Tribe as the Old Guard — those who support former chairman Paul Jones – has begun a purge in an effort to get rid of the supporters of Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai.

The first to go was Marshall Tome, editor of the Navajo Times, a position he had held for only seven months after the former editor, Chet Macrorie, had turned in his resignation saying that he couldn’t take the pressure from people within the tribe who wanted the use the paper for propaganda purposes.

Ironically, the committee said it was dismissing Tome because of “censorship,” which they meant that the paper was viewed as supporting Nakai and not telling their side of the dispute.

Tome, in his defense, pointed out that the articles printed in the Times about the dispute between Nakai and the Old Guard were reprints of articles that came from outside papers and the Associated Press. The paper also did not take an editorial stand on the issue except to say that both sides should sit down and work out a compromise because the dispute was creating massive chaos within the tribal government.

The paper didn’t write of the purge but instead reprinted an article written by Wade Cavanaugh who covered the Navajo Reservation for the Arizona Republic. The article was also not put on the front page but ran on page three.

By the time that issue was laid out, Tome was not in charge and the masthead didn’t list an editor so what little staff the paper had at that time must have put it together.

“A Navajo tribal secretary has charged that she has been fired by tribal attorney Norman M. Littell as part of a purge of the supporters of Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai,” he wrote.

The person who was fired was Jeni Denetsone, who had been working for the tribe since 1955. She was the wife of Leo Denetsone, who was administrative assistant to Nakai.

This occurred a couple of months after the Navajo Tribal Council had stripped Nakai of the ability to hire and fire, turning over that function to Maurice McCabe.

It turned out that Littell and the Old Guard in the council was gunning for both members of the family. Leo Denetsone said the tribe’s advisory committee told him the week before that he should turn in his resignation because he was “disloyal to the tribe.”

Cavanaugh mentioned the firing of Tome in his story but spent most of the article on the Denetsones. It’s obvious from the story that he did not talk to Tome.

In his letter terminating Jeni Denetsone, Spencer Johnson, a tribal attorney, said there were many reasons why she was being fired, “including your violations of the basic principles of employment, of upholding with integrity the relation of trust and confidence É and of safeguarding such information as you acquired which was of confidential nature.”

That last part was the real reason why she was fired.

Littell was complaining that Nakai was learning of his plans in advance and that this information was going from Jeni Denetsone to her husband and then to Nakai.

Denetsone didn’t deny the allegation.

“I have worked for the legal department for 10 years. When I saw what I thought were irregular actions by Mr. Littell, I felt it was my duty as a Navajo to expose it,” she said.

The anger toward Jeni Denetsone by some members of the Old Guard was hard to believe.

Annie Wauneka, who was head of the advisory committee, made an unsuccessful effort to get Jeni Denetsone’s name removed from the roles of the tribe, an action that was stopped by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which said that tribal membership was not to be played with by factions within the tribe.

Tome wasn’t the only editor of the Navajo Times who would face the wrath of the tribal government over the years and be fired. One of those editors was me.

During the Peter MacDonald years, a total of five editors were fired at one time or another and in 1987, he became so disgusted at the paper, he closed it down for more than three months and all of the editing staff was fired.

But it wasn’t only MacDonald who had problems with Navajo Times editors.

Tom Arviso Jr. had problems during the Hale administration and some almost lost their jobs as part of the dispute between with then president Albert Hale over his dispute the Navajo Nation Council which led eventually to him resigning.

It was only after the council agreed to allow the paper to get out from under the tribe and an independent board was appointed to oversee the running of the paper that attempts to get rid of the paper’s editor for political reasons stopped.

As for the situation 50 years ago, the firing of Tome and the Denetsone would have a major impact on the paper and the tribe as a whole over the next several months as the Old Guard tested the loyalty of a lot of people to determine whether they should stay on as tribal employees.

As for Tome, he would spend the next several years in exile and it wasn’t until MacDonald was elected in 1970 that he would come back to the tribe and although he never was directly in charge of the Times again, his influence would be felt in many ways.

And as MacDonald was leaving office in 1982, he decided to sell the Times to Tome, a decision that was rejected by the tribal courts which ruled that neither MacDonald nor the tribe have the right to sell off one of its assets to any given individual without allowing others in the tribe to make an offer.

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