50 Years Ago

As 1965 drew to a close, Navajo tribal officials were becoming more and more concerned about the decisions being made by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson to increase the nation’s involvement in fighting in Vietnam.

You could say that the birth of the idea for the Navajo-Gallup Water Pipeline began with a letter that was sent to Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai on December 10, 1965.

There is no historic record on who came up with the idea, but it appears that sometime in early or mid-1960, someone in the Bureau of Indian Affairs got the idea on how to change the future for the Navajo Tribe.

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.

If you asked the high-ranking officials for the Navajo Tribe and the Navajo Tribal Council back in November 1965 what the most important thing going on that month, practically no one would say trying to bring peace between the Old Guard and the tribe’s chairman, Raymond Nakai.