50 years ago: Times mum on Nakai’s win

It had been a week since the Navajo voters went to the polls and decided to give Raymond Nakai another four years in office.

And after three months of stories about the election dominating the front page of the Navajo Times, this issue’s front page carried not a word. It was as if the election did not occur.

Which was probably a major mistake since the border communities were still carrying stories about the election and how the Navajo voters felt about the outcome — “the worst disaster the Navajos have had since the Long Walk” seemed to be a popular feeling among one segment of the Navajo people.

As for Nakai, he seemed to be keeping a low profile and if he celebrated his victory the week before, it was done with close associates and no one seemed to make a big thing about it. It seemed to some that it was business as usual.

A check of the Times did not reveal any statement that Nakai released on the day the votes were counted and there were questions as to whether Nakai’s challenger, Samuel Billison, even sent him his congratulations and a pledge to work with him to make the tribe better.

In fact, if you look through the history of Navajo elections, these kinds of feelings by the loser were very far-between.

In case you are wondering: The big story the week in the Navajo Times the week after the election was not even about the Navajos — it was about the Hopis.

The Hopi Tribal Council was feeling pressure from Hopi traditionalists to stop leasing Hopi land.

As for letters to the editor, forget about any sense of outrage over the outcome of the election or praise to Nakai for doing a good job.

Instead the Times printed letters like this:

“I am a 15 year old Indian girl and I like to have different kinds of pen-pals, boys and girls, mainly boy (ages 15-20),” wrote one girl from Riverside, Utah.

Another girl started her letter like this: “I’m a 15-year-old Navajo girl and I’d sure like to have a pen-pal. I prefer boys (Indians or Whites), 15-20-years old.”

One can only wonder what was going on within the Navajo teenage population, especially among Navajo girls who were 15 years old that they were begging for pen-pals.

The big news for Christians on the reservation came this week 50 years ago with reports that a new Christian radio station was being built in Tse Bonito.

Going under the name KHAC and located at 1300 on the AM dial, the station would broadcast Christian programming during the daylight hours under the power of 1000 watts.

The emphasis would be on broadcasting to the eastern side of the reservation with hopes that the signal will go as far as Grants and Zuni, said the new head of the station, Laurence Harper.

Construction of the station was expected to be done by January 1967 and the first broadcasts should be on the air by mid-January, he said.

So what could listeners expect?

Good music, said Harper, and drama programming, news, information with an emphasis being placed on education for the Navajo Indians.

One program that was already being promoted was a weekly series commenting on the problem of alcohol abuse with testimonies from people who were addicted and managed to overcome the addiction and lead a productive life.

“It will be commercial,” said Harper, “only for the sake of raising enough revenue to cover the operating costs.”

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