Tso appointed Diné College regent

Posted by Bill Donovan | Mar 28, 2019 | Education |

LOS ANGELES

Diné College | Bernhardt Dotson

New Diné College Board of Regents member Daniel Tso is sworn in by board President Greg Bigman at the Shiprock campus board meeting.

When Daniel Tso was sworn in last January as a member of the Navajo Nation Council, he may have set a record for having the longest comeback in Council history.

Tso, who served on the Council from 1987 to 1995, came back 24 years after stepping down to work for the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry.

In another instance of déja vu, he was sworn in as a member of the board of regents for Diné College after serving as a board member there in the 1980s. The biggest change from then to now? No question, he said: “The workload is much more now.”

Tso served on the Council at a time when members were grappling with operating under a new system of government, converting from the chairmanship-type government to the more modern three-branch government. What he brings to the table now, he said, is institutional memory, something that officials for the Council say is greatly needed as its members tackle many of the same issues today that Council delegates discussed more than a quarter-century ago.

Tso admits that his decision to come back into public life in 2018 began the same way it did back in the 1980s: with members of his chapter and nearby chapters asking him to serve.