Letters: A thank-you from the queen bee

Thank you to the Navajo Times for sponsoring me to go to Washington, D.C., to represent our great Navajo Nation in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I will be able to look back upon for years to come. It has been my honor to represent the Navajo Times for the past two years. I had a dream to one day go to the Scripps National Spelling Bee when I was a second-grader. The Navajo Times made that hope into a reality for the first time in 2017. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would win two years in a row.

My journey to becoming a champion speller started when I was in Ms. Vernell Begay’s 1st grade class. She believed in my ability to compete and win my very first spelling bee. My second grade teacher, Ms. Elizabeth Sullivan, told me that one day, if I studied hard enough, I would appear on ESPN at the national spelling bee.

Since then, I competed in every class, school, and regional spelling bee that was sponsored. I am beyond thankful that I had this opportunity to show off my word skills.

These competitions helped me to look at words like puzzles that gave clues about where they are from and what they mean and what function they play in everyday language. Words will help me to get everywhere in life. I was proud of my ability to go farther this year. I studied many words that I know will one day bring me closer to my passion in life, which is to work in the medical field.

Maybe one day I will be a nurse, doctor, medical examiner, or a crime scene investigator. Wherever I go in life, I will always have the words that helped to pave my way into my future.

While visiting the various Smithsonian museums, I had an amazing foundation for words to categorize the different species of animals and also for appreciating the treasures of American history up-close and personal.

The things that I heard about before in books were a reality. I had a lot of first-times on this DC trip — plane trips, making international friends, eating rare and exotic foods, making an appearance on ESPN, visiting the Nationals ballpark and National Arboretum, seeing my face on the billboard, and, most importantly, representing my school, my people, and my family on the national stage. Thank you for all these memorable moments. I will never forget how it made me feel — phenomenal.

Thank you for the sponsorship. The Scripps National Spelling Bee made me a spelling machine. The Navajo Times made me the Navajo Nation’s queen bee.

Lastly, I want to thank you for believing in the youth of the Navajo Nation. You are making an investment that will resound through the ages.

Kelly Haven
Window Rock, Ariz.

Tuba City thankful for Diné College

Every day, Diné College directors advocated that the mission of Diné College is to apply the Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhóón principles to advance quality student learning through Nitsáhákees (thinking), Nahatá (planning), Iiná (living), and Sihasin (assurance).

They advocated that in the study of the ancient Diné culture, ancient Diné language, ancient Diné oral history, ancient Diné philosophy, Western philosophy, and technological world, students learn self-identity, self-respect, self-belief, and self-awareness — order, respect, balance, beauty, peace, and harmony — Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhóón principles.

At Tuba City Diné College, students have learned that no minority group in the United States has been treated as poorly as Native Americans have been treated. For example, Native American lands were taken by the federal government, and vast numbers were killed during the drive for westward expansion.

One example is the Long Walk or the Hwééldi. The students at Tuba City Diné College have learned that approximately two-thirds of all Native Americans currently live on or near reservations. Native Americans have substantial unemployment — greater than in some city areas. Today at Tuba City Diné College, Native Americans acquire the education necessary to obtain better, more stable jobs, or transfer to a four-year college. The students are very intelligent. They have learned at Tuba City Diné College that less than 40 percent of Native Americans in America have completed the eighth grade.

The Native Americans’ rate of alcoholism is about eight times higher than the national average. The suicide rate for Native Americans in America is double that of Americans as a whole. Tuba City community appreciates its qualified, experienced, and very intelligent teachers who are dedicated to teach students and make Diné College accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and make it possible to qualify Diné College to be a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Tuba City Diné College teachers, professors, and instructors see education as useful in allocating social roles and fostering change. We thank them. In the year 2003, Diné College constructed the new Tuba City Center Education Building, a 10,000-square-foot facility with eight high-class classrooms. It was founded through a compact between the state of Arizona and Diné College. The building cost $1.5 million and is the first of several facilities master-planned into the 15-acre site, located on Edgewater Boulevard.

The new Tuba City center has entered into a partnership with Coconino Community College to offer distance learning and future global learning at the new facility.

A Navajo cultural hogan, which is now used as an administrative hogan, also is situated on the south side of the center, and was funded by the American Indian College Fund at a cost of $139,000. In a historic step forward for higher education on the Navajo land, the 20th Navajo Nation Council approved legislation that stabilizes funding for Diné College, the Office of Navajo Scholarship and Financial Assistance. It begins in fiscal year 2006. Diné College will receive $4.2 million in annual funding for 20 years. Scholarship office will receive $1.5 million annually.

We, Tuba City community people, are thankful for our Diné College professors who teach our young people at Tuba City Diné College.

Edward Johnson Little Sr.
Tuba City, Ariz.

Nation lacks the tools for real economy

Does the Navajo Nation have the ingredients to develop and sustain an economy prior to throwing money at developing economic development projects? This question must be understood, and asked, particularly during the current upcoming election, as every candidate is promoting jobs, projects, and economic development.

The basis to any open economy is whether there is: 1) easy access to the marketplace; 2) vibrant existence of information; 3) enough buyers (consumers) and enough sellers (businesses/industry); and 4) many choices of goods and services offered by many sellers. These questions cannot be ignored and should not be allowed for politicians to proclaim, “We’re Navajo, we do things the Navajo way, those things are the bilagáana way, so they don’t apply to us.”

These questions must be asked:

• Do businesses/industry have easy access into the Navajo marketplace? No!
• Do consumers and businesses/industries have access to readily available information of consumer behavior, market trends, economic incentives, or government regulations to help them to decide if Navajo is a good place for their business? No!
• Is there information about the amount of goods and services that supply the Navajo economy’s demand, and is there sufficient amount of consumer demand for what businesses supply? No!
• Does the Navajo economy provide buyers and sellers many choices of products? No!

An open economy must answer “yes” to all four questions. Answering three out of four isn’t good enough, unless Navajo is a closed economy. My point is the Navajo Nation has a deficiency in information, a lack of the most basic infrastructure to any economy — informing consumers, businesses, industry, investors, and government. And that uncertainty becomes even more ingrained when politics is used to select projects, and when there’s a problem, Navajo can be counted on to throw money at that problem.

Economic development projects have been approached by what I’ve come to call “development by appropriation,” from funds approved at political discretion. The Navajo approach to developing an economy runs opposite to the basics of economics, commonly referred to as “running the cart before the horse.”

“Development by appropriation” is disruptive, incalculable and unreliable. Luckily the trust settlement fund was a godsend, as it provided funds for several shopping center projects. But when is the next settlement? Or can our economy afford to wait for the next settlement? That’s the problem with “development by appropriation” — no one knows when the next settlement will come around or when government will have enough money to create a self-sustaining open economy.

In a “development by appropriation” process, politics and their loyal bureaucrats — not the public, and certainly not the market — are the only ones informed of who can access the market, government’s ability to create artificial short-lived market trends, the creation of demand off the backs of fixed-income individual, and limiting business operators to non-Navajo companies that already have an existing monopoly on the Navajo Nation.

On the other hand, other economies have a willingness to offer and share with their consumers and businesses.

There is a strong willingness by Navajo small businesses that the Navajo economy will once and for all allow for them to participate at greater levels than what’s offered to them currently. In addition, there are opportunities presented by private developers contemplating whether the Navajo Nation is the place to invest. These two opportunities have potential for private, not government appropriations, to allow for the economy to grow.

One only has to look at the inevitable closing of the Navajo Generating Station and the Kayenta Mine. New business/industry start-ups at levels to replace the projected lost revenues beyond 2020 have not been properly planned by the current administration.

Listen to what the market will bear, not what the government will do is what an open economy is based upon — but there must exist perfect information. It’s easy for a candidate to say they’re the jobs candidate, but which one is willing to reassert the importance of the market and government’s role in their rightful place?

Who will be tempted and give in to proposing multi-million-dollar physical projects (through appropriations) and dismiss creating once and for all an open economy? And who will right the ship by developing economic information that informs businesses that they will be treated fairly, with competitive incentives and free from politics?

Raymond Nopah
Gallup, N.M.

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