50 Years Ago: VISTA sets new rules; BIA vacates Gallup

There was a distinct fear by Navajo tribal officials that the rape in early 1965 of a 19-year-old VISTA volunteer who was living in a hogan on the Navajo Reservation would seriously affect the operations of the program not only on the Navajo reservation but in the other reservations in the state as well.

But not only had national officials for the program issued statements that none of the VISTA volunteers would be removed from the reservation except for the volunteer who was raped, but program officials announced that they planned to expand the program on New Mexico reservation.

Velma Linford, who oversaw the national VISTA program for the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, called the Navajo incident “unfortunate,” but said “It should not be a vital influence on the VISTA programs.”

The program would assign several more volunteers to the Navajo Reservation in 1966 and even allowed them to stay in hogans if they requested it to get a better understanding of how people on the reservation lived.

But the program would prohibit female volunteers from living in the hogans alone, requiring that at least two women agree to stay in the hogan together to provide better protection.

Also, program officials on the reservation would be required to check out the hogan to make sure it had secure locks. The hogan had to be located within at least a quarter of a mile from other residences so that if there were an emergency, there would be places nearby where phone calls could be made.

Anyone — both men and women — who decided to locate on a reservation or pueblo would be required to take a one-day safety seminar, she said, and local law enforcement officers would be informed of their decision so that regular patrols could be set up to monitor their well being.

Linford stressed that the Navajo incident was the only time the program had had any problems of that kind on an Indian reservation although there had been several cases of volunteers — both men and women — being attacked after they were assigned to programs located in city ghettos.

She said there were a lot of requests from young people joining the program to be assigned to work on an Indian reservation because they had heard of the poverty conditions on most reservations and how much they compared to third world countries in Africa and South America.

The volunteers only received their subsistence and allowance. If they wanted to rent a vacant hogan, funds would be provided by the program to help pay for the weekly or monthly cost.

She said each individual volunteer also had $50 a month set aside for him or her for when they left the program.

In other news, officials for the Bureau of Indian Affairs were making plans to move some of the area programs for the Navajo tribe closer to the tribal government, while other programs were paradoxically being relocated from Gallup to Albuquerque.

Most of the offices that controlled programs on the Navajo reservation were located in Gallup.

With almost 100,000 Navajos (as compared to more than 300,000 in 2015), the BIA had been talking about making the change for several years but kept postponing any decision because of the number of BIA employees who would be required to relocate.

One study indicated that as many as 124 of the 309 BIA employees who worked on Navajo programs would have to be transferred, which would be a major problem for the BIA since the federal government would not only have to pay for their relocation costs but would also be required to help find new homes for the employees to live in — a daunting task given the lack of houses available in the Window Rock area.

The plans under consideration would require the transfer of at least 24 employees after the Christmas holidays to the new Albuquerque headquarters. During the following 12 to 18 months, another 116 would be transferred to Albuquerque. The plans were to move the area director’s office, a well as his immediate staff, to Window Rock BIA offices right across from the Navajo Tribal Council Chambers.

An Interior Department press release said that the new office in Window Rock would serve a reservation the size of the state of West Virginia. At the time, one out of every five Indians who lived on a reservation in the United States lived on the Navajo Reservation.

Navajo tribal officials were reportedly very happy to hear that Window Rock would henceforth be known as the headquarters for the Navajo area office.

Those who weren’t happy to hear the news were city officials for Gallup.

Gallup Mayor Edward Mu–oz said he and other city officials had not had time to analyze the effect on the Gallup economy.

The move would include wives and children as well and this could mean a reduction in the city’s population of more than 400 people. That would have a major impact, he said.

And there was something that was left unsaid but was in the back of a lot of people’s minds after they heard of the announcement.

While it was one thing for BIA employees to live in Gallup and travel to Window Rock if they had to, it was another thing for families to live in Window Rock and have to travel to Gallup to get their groceries and other supplies.

The reason is that with the offices in Gallup, BIA workers could travel over U.S. 666 and State Highway 264 in the morning or afternoon hours, where traveling on those two-lane highways was relatively safe.

But living in Window Rock would require families to travel to Gallup at night or on the weekends to do their shopping or go to see movies. That was something a lot of people did not like to do because of the high number of drunk drivers on the road during those times.

But this was not a reason for someone to declare that they wouldn’t move so in the end almost everyone who was required to move, did so.

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