50 Years Ago: Times folds as enterprise, back in control of tribal officials

The Navajo Times reported this week that efforts were being made to make the paper independent from the tribe to enable the paper to print the news without worrying about political consequences.

The first two editors of the paper, Chet Macrorie and Marshall Tome, had both left, saying that the hardest part of their job was withstanding pressure from members of the council and the chairman’s office to not publish anything that would hurt Navajo politicians.

While no tribal officials were allowed to see articles before they were published or allowed to see the paper’s layouts, both editors reported being threatened with firing after articles appeared that were critical of various politicians.

The situation was so bad at times, said Tome, that it influenced what the paper would print on a subject and, in many cases, a decision was made that the paper itself would not cover a story and instead the paper would reprint articles from off-reservation papers which had a great deal more credibility with its readers than articles written by Tome or the other writers.

Leslie Goodluck, who replaced Tome as managing editor, was lobbying members of the council, saying that if they wanted the Navajo Times to have a voice that was credible to its readers, the council would have to allow it to become a tribal enterprise with a board to oversee it.

She pointed out that the council would be allowed to appoint most of the members of the board so the council would continue to have some say in how the paper was run.

The effort would ultimately proven to be successful because in September 1965, to the astonishment of a lot of tribal members, the council allowed the paper to become an enterprise, in part, because Goodluck promised that if the paper was independent, it would be able to put practices in place that would save the paper money and therefore would not be a financial burden on the tribe.

The measure easily passed in the council with most council delegates actually believing the paper would be able to be self-sustaining if it didn’t have to comply with tribal personnel rules.

The paper would last just more than two years when paper officials had to go back to the tribe and admit that the paper was in danger of folding because it didn’t have enough income to pay for the newsprint that was needed to put out the paper.

At that time, the paper would go back under the tribe’s economic development division and would once again have credibility problems until some 40 years later it would become independent again and this time would be able to sustain itself on the revenue the paper generated.

In other news, Norman Littell, the controversial general counsel for the Navajo tribe, says he is overworked.

Making a huge salary of $35,000 a year to handle the tribe’s legal affairs, Littell has made a request to the Navajo Tribal Council for funds to let him reorganize the tribe’s legal department, which may include expanding it.

Littell told tribal officials that because of the dispute between him and Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai, the day-to-day legal affairs of the tribe have piled up.

“There is an accumulation of legal work that is staggering,” he said.

Nakai, who for once was in agreement with Littell, said his office had been receiving complaints for more than a year that a number of their projects had been placed on hold while waiting for the tribal attorneys to sign off on it.

Littell said there were only two tribal attorneys working in the legal departments, which was ridiculous since the tribe “had one of the largest legal businesses in the west.”

Bureau of Indian Affair officials are predicting that members of the Navajo Tribe will make millions of dollars this year by picking pinons.

“We’re expecting a record pinon nut harvest this year,” one Food and Drug administrator said in a press release this week. Officials for the United Indian Trader’s Association agreed, saying they were expecting that more Navajo families than ever will be spending time this year going around gathering the nut for sale.

Although there are some stores in border communities who will be buying pinons from Navajos, better than 90 percent of the purchases will be by traders on the reservation as a way for tribal members to earn income.

So many pinons will be gathered that the Food and Drug Administration has sent a representative from Washington, D. C. to talk to reservation traders on getting them processed.

Current federal laws restrict where the pinons can be sent for processing but because there are expected to be so much this year, the FDA has relaxed its restriction and plans to allow the traders to send the pinons to wherever they want to get them cleaned.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that that traders expect to get so many pinons that they think the market will require them to lower the price which means that they will be offering lower amounts to Navajo families as well.

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