Is there racism? Depends whom you ask

By Cindy Yurth
and Jan-Mikael Patterson
Navajo Times

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A sk the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission if there's racial tension in the border towns and they'll plop a fat file in front of you - complaints they've heard while doing a circuit of hearings in towns bordering the reservation.

But if you ask a white resident of Page, Ariz., or Farmington, or Gallup, you might get a different response.

"I haven't really noticed anything outrageous," said Lee Pulaski, editor of the Lake Powell Chronicle in Page. "You hear the occasional comment, but I think it's mostly from people who just moved to town and aren't used to dealing with Native Americans. They don't even realize they're being offensive."

Lifelong Gallup resident and radio personality Sammy Chioda thinks the races mix well in his border town, and always have.

He remembers growing up in a neighborhood of coal mining families where "we had Navajos, we had African Americans, we had Greeks, we had Slavs, we had Italians like my family ... If you ended up at somebody's house for dinner, it wasn't uncommon for there to be four or five ethnic groups around the table."

Chioda remembers, as a child, watching television news footage of race riots in the South and being perplexed.

"I just couldn't relate to it," he said. "I had never seen segregation here. The idea that you couldn't play with a child who was a different color was just beyond my experience. I thought, 'How could this be?'"

Perhaps there wasn't segregation, but some Natives who grew up in Gallup and other border towns recall white children imitating war whoops when they walked by, or calling them "little red Indian."

And there were more subtle things, like being picked last for a sports team.

Overt racist comments may have fallen out of favor in this era of political correctness, but if you want to see some, look no further than the comment section of border town online newspapers, said Raymond Keeswood of Shiprock.

"It's there, but it's more like underground," said Keeswood, noting that the pseudonyms used on Web site comments are like the hood on a Ku Klux Klan member, concealing the racist's identity.



After a Utah newspaper published an article about a broken water line in Navajo Mountain that deprived Diné families of drinking water for several days, for example, one person typed, "So the Indians are out of firewater!"

Farmington has one of the worst reputations for racial tension in the area, and it gained fresh strength when a white police officer fatally shot a Navajo man in a Wal-Mart parking lot in 2006.

But Keeswood's brother, Council Delegate Ervin Keeswood (Tsé Daa' Kaan) believes the community has responded to the incident in a positive manner, including a peaceful protest march and the formation of a Community Relations Commission in Farmington where people can air grievances.

While a third member of the Keeswood clan, Alvin Keeswood, believes "discrimination will never end," most border town Natives the Navajo Times talked to seem to think race relations have improved dramatically in the past few decades.

In Page, where Natives comprise a third of the population and their numbers are growing, LeChee Chapter resident Ivan Gamble sees the town on the edge of the rez rapidly becoming more Navajo.

"When my older sisters went to school, the white kids used to pick on them," he said. "By the time I went to school here, it was the Navajos picking on the white kids."

For centuries, Gamble said, whites expected Natives to assimilate into their society. Today, he said, the tables have turned.

"I see more and more Anglos assimilating into our society," he said, noting that a white valedictorian recently gave her entire commencement speech in Navajo.

"I talk to these old white guys in the coffee shop, and they have Navajo mannerisms," Gamble said. "They don't interrupt you, and they don't stare too much.

"We'll gradually teach them the right way to live," Gamble said of Page's white folks.

Wally Brown, who is part of a class action suit against the Page school district for allegedly segregating its elementary schools, agrees that education is the key.

"I really like Page," he said. "I'm not trying to create animosity. I think of it as educating one another."

But people have to be willing to be educated, he said.

"I have white children come up to me," he said, "but I've never had an adult come up to me and say, 'Tell me about your culture. What is it that makes you Diné?'"

Chioda believes it's the opportunity for such cultural exchange that makes the border town experience uniquely beautiful, in spite of the inevitable culture clashes.

"To me, every culture, every ethnicity brings something to the table," he said. "People bad-mouth Gallup, but to me it's always been a wonderful melting pot. That's the reason I came back here to start my business."

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