50 Years Ago: Rumors spread about removal of BIA superintendent and bootlegging

There have been reports in the media this week that Glenn Landbloom may not be in his job much longer.

Landbloom has been superintendent of the Navajo Agency for the past seven years and has come under fire numerous times over the past two years as the members of the Old Guard in the Navajo Tribal fought the tribeus chairman, Raymond Nakai, over almost everything that he wanted to do.

To understand Landbloomus role in all of this, you have to understand that the Bureau of Indian Affairs controlled practically every aspect of life on the reservation in the 1960s.

The BIA had a representative at every council session and at many of the committee meetings and the council had to get BIA approval for practically every decision that they made.

The BIA superintendent even had his office across the street from the council chambers and down the hall from the chairmanus office. So if needed, he could be consulted at a momentus notice if tribal officials wanted information.

It wasnut until the 1970s after the election of Peter MacDonald to the chairmanship that the tribal government began asserting its sovereignty to make its own decisions. But even then, in the early years of MacDonaldus chairmanship, the BIA expressed concerns about the way the tribe was spending its money and threatened not to approve the annual budget, which would have created massive problems in the running of the government.

The Navajo people can thank a Republican for helping to change all of that. The President of the united States, Richard Nixon, was the one who supported turning over the running of the tribes to the tribal government, and he was the one who started the 638 program that allowed Indian tribes to take over BIA programs on their reservation.

By 1965, Landbloom had been in the BIA for 25 years and admitted he was thinking of retiring, or at least going to a job in the BIA that wasnut so stressful.

Much of his problems in 1964 and 1965 centered around a constant battle with the tribeus general counsel, Norman Littell, who considered Landbloom to be an ally of Nakai, and thereby his enemy.

The two clashed on numerous occasions over proposals that Litttell wanted the government to approve for mineral deals and for water issues, all of which the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart udall, sat on for months because of concerns about whether the Navajos were getting a good deal.

Littell attacked udall, and Landbloom got caught in the middle. He would often caution members of the tribal council to not be hasty in agreeing to proposals presented to them by off-reservation mineral companies.

Speaking of Landbloom, one of the things he was working on in the fall of 1965 was a crackdown on bootlegging on the Navajo reservation.

Every community on the reservation, he said, no matter how small, had at least one bootlegger who was making a living – in some cases, a very nice living – supplying liquor to members of the tribe at prices sometimes two to three times higher than what would be paid at a retail store off the reservation.

Landbloom said that while bootlegging was illegal on the reservation, only a few arrests were made every year, and even those who were arrested usually got a slap on the wrist from tribal judges and would be back in business in a day or less.

He had been trying to use the BIA law enforcement officers to help crack down on bootleggers in the past but this usually went nowhere because everyone knew who worked for BIA law enforcement and would simply refuse to sell to them.

The BIA had, at times, used confidential informants, but the problem was that making a federal arrest for bootlegging usually went nowhere because federal authorities, except in really major cases, didnut want to spend the time and money to prosecute bootleggers who would probably only get probation.

Landbloom wanted to try and take a different approach in 1966 – instead of going after the bootleggers, go after the people who purchased from them. He pointed out that possession of liquor on the reservation was a crime, and if the tribal police would start staking out the residences of the bootleggers, they would have no problem making a lot of arrests of the bootleggerus customers as they head home with their purchases.

The people who would be arrested would only spend a few hours or, at worst, a night in jail, but it would discourage them from going to bootleggers, he thought.

The proposal never took off for a number of reasons, but the primary one was that there was a feeling by some in the tribal government that bootleggers were serving a purpose and may even be saving lives.

The reason for this was the large number of Navajos who were dying annually on State Highway 264 and on u.S. Highway 666 from drunk drivers who went to the border towns to drink and then headed home highly intoxicated.

By providing these individuals with a source closer to home – even though it was illegal – the bootleggers were giving them an opportunity to buy the liquor and drink it at home where they would not be a threat on the reservation roads.

This was one of the main reasons why Nakai didnut put up much opposition to the package liquor stores operating on the outskirts of the reservation, like the Navajo Inn, which was located on State Highway 264 less than a mile from the state line.

For political reasons, he had to publicly support getting tough on bootleggers, but whether it was because of him or some other reason, the Navajo Tribal Police Department never made catching bootleggers a priority during his eight years in office.

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