After 20 years of litigation, ground broken for new school

 

In 1997, after 20 years of litigation between Utah Navajos and the San Juan County School District, both sides signed off on a consent decree ordering the district to build several new public schools and improve old ones so that Natives living on the reservation would have the same educational opportunities as non-Natives in towns to the north.

On Jan. 14 ground was broken for the last of those schools on a hillside with a spectacular view toward Monument Valley.

In fact, the new school will be named for Monument Valley - but the parents and grandparents who waited so long to see it built insisted that the name be the Navajo word for the area: Tsébii'nidzisgai, "White within the Rock."

Nelson Yellowman, a local Navajo who serves on the mostly white school board, joked that he knows the board fully supports the school because the bilagáanas are working so hard to pronounce its name correctly.

Reached at his Salt Lake City home, Eric Swenson, the attorney who represented two generations of Utah Navajos in the landmark cases, said he was pleased to hear of the groundbreaking.

"I think this is the last of it," he said, although he noted the case remains open to ensure the school district complies fully with the decree.

Swenson said when he filed the suits, first in 1974 and then again in 1994, he was concerned with the long distances Navajos had to travel just to go to school. He didn't realize they would become precedent-setting Indian law.

"The school district argued that it had no legal responsibility to educate Indian kids on the reservation," the attorney recalled. "The court affirmed the right of Indian children to an education. It turned out to be a very important case."

Three high schools were built as a result of the consent decree: Navajo Mountain, Montezuma Creek and Monument Valley.

The district was ordered to continue to operate the elementary school at Mexican Hat and to build new ones at Navajo Mountain and Monument Valley as funds became available.

Elementary-age students in the Monument Valley area currently attend school in Halchita, Utah, about 25 miles away. The new school - whose colors will be purple and gold and whose mascot will be the Cougar Cubs - is set to open in 2011.

"We talked about this earlier through clanship," Yellowman said at the groundbreaking ceremony. "I am of the opinion this will be the closure of the Sinajini case."

Jimmie Sinajini was a young boy on whose behalf the original lawsuit was filed.

Yellowman said the design of the school was influenced by a series of community meetings and it will have culturally appropriate details like an east-facing entrance.

"This is a great, great year," said Navajo Nation Council Delegate Kenneth Maryboy (Mexican Water/Aneth/Red Mesa). "First of all, we got snow so our crops will grow. We're getting a brand spanking new elementary school. And $33 million is coming back down to the Utah Navajos" through the settlement of Pelt v. Utah.

Maryboy urged Utah Navajos not to forget the power of prayer in all the positive developments.

"This is the most important time of year to pray for the kids," he suggested.

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