Letters | CHID-ARPA Program complaint
CHID-ARPA Program complaint
Editor, Speaker Crystalyne Curley, and the 25th Navajo Nation Council members,
The Chinle Chapter has completed over twenty-three months of hard work (as of to date) to receive new homes for all of our CHID recipients.
The Chinle Chapter has diligently worked hard to ensure that the Chapter met the CHID-ARPA requirements as it was first presented by CHID-ARPA and DCD in February 2023. The Chinle Chapter worked with each of our seventeen recipients; ensuring they met qualifications, conducted multiple site visits and assessments, completing additional financial requirements per new legislations, conducting dozens of mandatory meetings, developing criteria for new homeowners, overall submitting 100% required CHID-ARPA applications and documentation for each of our seventeen recipients, and much more. It was not an easy task, the Chinle Chapter administration went above and beyond to ensure that our process was efficient and professional. I commend my Chapter administration for setting the standard for CHID-ARPA program.
During this two-year timeframe, the Chapter took it upon themselves to ensure success, by assisting those that were affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Each of our recipients were in dire need for a new home, whether it is due to a burnout, homelessness, overcrowding, or unlivable situation, we supported each of our community members need to have a healthy and safe living condition with their families.
We are now ready to cross the finish line and be one of the first chapters to get new homes for our community. Our sites are ready to accept new homes, our families range from young children to elderly members. With a twenty-four-month process, it is an honor to be able to serve our people a new home, a new and safe place of belonging. But, again, we were met with discontent by the Council delegate, Shawna Claw. The Chapter and community members tried to reason with her, even wrote letters in September 2024, but were still met with unprofessional and unacceptable behavior.
During the two year long process, I personally provided monthly updates at each duly called chapter meeting, provided project updates. Not once during this two-year journey has the Chapter received any support or assistance from Shawna Claw. She never attended one coordination meeting with CHID-ARPA or DCD, even prior as a Vice President. During our last CHID-ARPA meeting on December 11, 2024, we were surprised that Ms. Claw was in attendance. At this time, we conducted a project kick off meeting, between the Chinle Chapter, CHID-ARPA department, and their consultant, Ina’ baa’. During the meeting, we reviewed the scope of work, project schedules, and conducted on site assessments to the first thirteen of the seventeen recipients.
After this meeting, there were multiple concerns submitted to the Chinle Chapter in regards to the Council
Delegate’s conduct. At each site, the recipients were met with a rude encounter. Between Shawna Claw and her LDA, Cherilynn Sells, there were statements made to recipients in regards to their properties. The recipients were met with high voices, disruption, and anger from both Shawna Claw and Cherilynn Sells. These reports were also submitted independently, and I recommend each Oversight member review the direct comments made. This type of hostility is not acceptable, especially when we have recipients who are medically bound, elderly, and have children, it is not a good example whatsoever.
It has concluded to be an intimidation tactic, with an abuse of authority, violation of the recipient’s privacy (as many Facebook posts (latest dated 12/10/24 and 12/12/24) were shared online), constantly instigating others to cause disruption between chapter officials and community members, and overall very demeaning to our own Navajo community members at their properties. The attached letters are from our community members, who were brave to share their story of how they feel and how they have pleaded for k’é and pleaded for a working environment.
I bring these concerns to you, the speaker and honorable Council delegates, as Chinle needs support and protection from these insults. I invite each of you to Chinle and hear it from the community members themselves. We’re here to serve our people to the highest standard and Chinle needs your unconditional support.
Dr. Rosanna Jumbo-Fitch
Chinle Chapter Government president
Chinle, Ariz.
History repeats itself
Editor,
If we don’t learn from history, we doom ourselves to repeat it.
Time is undefined by words. It’s an experience that can only be experienced by experience. Even then the perception of the experience is only limited by a self-interested group or an individual’s understanding.
We, as North America’s First Nations and original inhabitants, cannot be defined as “indigent” or Indigenous people for let it be known that the word indigent is to be an angry people. Although we have enough evidence to be of this kind of nature.
We, as members of the First Nations community in North America, we have an experience unlike any other. We are the survivors of a nation that has outdated the United States government and the surrounding governmental communities. For a time, our Nations and communities were great.
Our ancestors built pyramids and castles, which can be seen in Mexico and in the canyons lands of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and so on. Even our developed clan system on the Navajo Nation is liken to the patents of nobility that only belong to the aristocracy of the great houses of Europe.
The experiences we have endured are one of insults, injuries and injustice. At times prudence and suspicion has been our only companion.
Being the largest population in North America at a time our numbers were harshly reduced by the world’s most modern and largest genocide in existence. The Jewish population experienced 6 million people during World War II however in the United States from the time of the arrival of the first European settlers to the 1830 Indian Removal Act that took more than 180 million Native Americans, the boarding school era, to even in the recent discovery of the sterilization of our Native women in the 1970s our people have endured the test of time.
How we collectively have discovered the injustice of what a large population can do to a minority population. Our experiences should have taught us the importance of how a minority demographic can impose its beliefs and values against a small minority group.
But it appears we have not understood the fundamental principles of those experiences. In recent times on the Navajo Nation, we have passed laws against a smaller group of people when it was our time to show the wisdom of our experiences. I am referring to Navajo Nation Legislation CYJ-34-24.
When we practice oppression enforce by law, we create a procedure called precedence. It means once it’s done by law it can be used as evidence that the process of oppressing another small minority group because it was practiced before.
This is where it can cause more trouble in the future. Let me explain if our cattle growers or sheep owners become a minority group and the tribe at any given time says, “Well, we need land for houses or businesses. We will pass laws to restrict land and sheep units to reduce the grazing permittees by reallocating the land for progress and called it eminent domain then just take the land from the people.”
Think on this we have laws in place to protect our government but not its constituents’ leases.
I pray and hope this has shown you the importance of the amendment of Legislation CYJ-34-24.
Neal Riggs
Leupp, Ariz.
Repairing damage
Editor,
Now that I have achieved more than three-fourths of a century living in my state of Arizona, I felt it was about time I educated most of you on the plight of Navajos residing in the Navajo Nation. It began on Nov. 4, 1948, when I was born in Ganado, Arizona, having traveled with my mother two days prior from our home in Sawmill, Arizona, because she thought she would deliver me with an impending snowstorm approaching. This started my journey with living with Navajos because my father worked for the U.S. Navajo service as a lumberman managing the sawmill at Sawmill. Recently, it was torn down because the mill contained asbestos which probably contributed to his heart condition, and the reason we had to move to Phoenix when I was in third grade. Sadly, he died at age 59, leaving my 45-year-old mother with five children. We had spent my second grade living in Flagstaff as my mother completed her teaching degree because my father knew he was very ill and she would have to support us, which she did teaching at Kaibab in the Scottsdale district.
Last week I revisited Sawmill, Ft. Defiance, Window Rock, and Ganado to refresh my memories and see what had changed. In 76 years, there have been improvements with prefabricated homes, new hospitals, and new police and justice buildings. Recently the federal government has awarded $2 billion dollars for removing Indigenous individuals from the reservation, placing them in Caucasian-run schools, trying to erase their native languages, and indoctrinating them into a “white” society. This damage has been felt for generations, and tribes, where their children were uprooted from their natural habitat, will remain as a reminder of how one governmental authority abused its power over people who had not done any harm to anyone. (Custer however should never have tried to fight with the Indians).
The purpose of this letter is to try and move forward to repair the damage that was done in the past, and I challenge those of you in the housing, construction, technologies, education, and transportation industries to lend your support in providing needed help to the Navajo Nation with products and services which will help a community which will be enriched with resources so long overlooked and not up-to-date. Give them the tools and knowledge necessary to enhance the lives of people who are drowning in alcohol, and substance abuse and committing suicide because they have little hope of getting out of poverty.
(In) a letter, I sent to Dr. Buu Nygren, the current president of the Navajo Nation with some of my ideas and concerns because I care deeply for my fellow Navajos and want them to lead more productive and fulfilling lives. It is hoped this letter will encourage those in our community to contribute whatever knowledge and resources you have to make a difference in their lives. I know they would all be truly grateful as would I.
Ferris Sydney Whitfield
Sun City, Ariz.
Dynamics have changed
Editor,
What if CAP (Central Arizona Project) was an imposed legislation on the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation?
Can the consolidation of water rights be rounded up by tribe or by population and demand?
What if the current water settlement is a violation of human rights?
This act to sell our rights would be the fundamental violation of the ability to self-preserve, and our self-determined nation’s ability to preserve “its” and/or our tribal constituents that participate in the vital governmental constituency that oversees the function of our sovereign government.
Our current function is that of a republic, where one elected official makes decisions based on the best interest of the represented people who by a majority vote, vote the official to their official office, with one day of democracy (aka voting day), as the United States voting process practices.
Sovereignty is the concept of a state or governing body having full control and authority over its territory and governing affairs without any external interference.
It includes the power to make and enforce laws, control economic resources, and conduct foreign relations.
Sovereignty is a fundamental principle in international law, ensuring that each state is recognized as its own ultimate authority.
In the context of Indigenous tribes, sovereignty refers to the right of these communities to govern themselves, make decisions about their internal affairs, and maintain their cultural practices and traditions.
Tribal sovereignty is acknowledged in various treaties and legal agreements, allowing tribes to govern their lands and resources with a degree of autonomy from national governments.
In the past, Navajo tribal members have raised their voices in unison to appeal the act of extracting resources from Mother Earth, and all of her rich resources.
Unfortunately, in this past presentation of the sale of water rights, we have been presented with a vague proposal for future development with the water belonging to, in, and on the Navajo Nation.
In 1922, the development of the tribal Council and leadership was assembled for the purposes of selling royalties and rights to their petroleum reserves, and minerals in the offices of the Department of the Interior.
During this time, the majority of Navajo lived on the Navajo Nation. However, today the dynamics have changed.
The Navajo Nation Council was assembled as a legislative body to represent the people.
Unfortunately, today the majority of our Navajo constituents live off the Navajo Nation and are not represented, but they hold the title of the majority of the constituency in the membership rolls of the Navajo Nation.
Fundamentally by means of precedence anytime the sale of an asset that goes into a generational sale like the water rights. Must include the majority as well as the minority.
This recent attempt to sell our water rights, may, by definition of sovereignty, violate Navajo Nation sovereignty and violate our ability to be a self-determined nation, furthermore because of the lack of water on the Navajo Nation to its minority constituency.
The sale of water may also be a human rights violation defined by the UN Charter of 1948.
And a possible violation of the Treaty of 1868, article five, when the topic discussed farming and the right to a square footage of land. The language of farming includes watering his or her land.
Indicating that the function of a farm would require access to water.
In Article 10 of the Treaty of 1868, it says there will be no concessions, pertaining to a person’s land.
This statement is taken from the Treaty of 1868: “and no cession by the tribe shall be understood or construed in such manner as to deprive, without his consent, any individual member of the tribe of his rights to any tract of land selected by him as provided in Article 5 of this treaty.”
In reality, the majority of the Navajo are living off the Navajo Nation. Who by the majority are not welcomed at their family homestead because of family disagreements, the displaced Navajo living off the Navajo Nation could also be a violation of the Treaty of 1868, in regard to the government, ignoring the majority of its represented constituents.
Our sovereignty on the Navajo Nation was confirmed in the 1908 ruling by the Supreme Court in the case involving the Winters Doctrine and was reaffirmed in the Supreme Court in the year 1971.
And could be a violation of the 9th amendment of the U.S. Constitution which imposes a government over U.S. citizens, which is the Navajo Nation over its Navajo United States citizens, since Native Americans became citizens on June 2, 1924.
The majority of constituents would have to cast their vote to agree with any water rights but looking at the whole of the Navajo people. In respect to the majority. Let’s do the math. Roughly, there are 500,000 Navajos. Let’s divide that by the possible 180,000 Navajo living on the Navajo Nation to get to our percentages.
Fundamentally, it appears that the minority has only sold 36% of the represented water rights, and the majority of the remaining 64% need to be presented with the key facts of the sale of the water rights.
To propose, agree upon, and transact for the remainder of all past and present water rights that have been sold.
Neal Riggs
Leupp, Ariz.
$20 doesn’t ‘help’
Editor,
After reading the recent issue of the Navajo Times newspaper dated Dec. 26, 2024, I thought of making a comment regarding the food prices on the Navajo Reservation. Food prices are high at area convenience stores.
It comes down to making a choice, are you going to buy groceries or buy fuel for your vehicle? Are you going to spend money on other things while you go hungry?
If you have livestock you have to have hay and water available and that gets expensive. How are we going to survive in the future the way the economy is going?
Our voting system is out of order. The chapter level is not helping the Navajo people.
I applied for agriculture assistance through the Coconino County Agricultural Department but all I got was $20 deposit into my savings account. A bale of hay costs $16 to $20 a bale, so $20 won’t help.
I also applied for agricultural assistance through the Navajo Tribal Agricultural Program, but I received nothing to this day. I applied last year. I have all my grazing permit papers legally.
Every election day, we vote for people who say they will help us but nothing comes of it.
Larry Smith
Gray Mountain, Ariz.
Leaking oil
Editor,
The year is 1791, in the southwest corner of the future state of Ohio, a coalition of Northwest territory tribes annihilate one fourth of the U.S. Army. Yet, within a few years all of these tribes have been forced west of the Mississippi River.
The year is 1876, in the southeast corner of the Montana territory, the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Tribes destroy the U.S. 7th cavalry. Yet, shortly thereafter, these and many other tribes were restricted to reservations, becoming dependents of the government.
The year is 2016, in the south-central region of North Dakota, thousands of Native Americans and their allies protest and block the construction of an oil pipeline. Things get very ugly. The call goes out and within a few days thousands of veterans descend on the area to stand between the tribes and the militarized police. The president backs down and halts construction of the pipeline. Yet, next year the Dakota access pipeline is complete, and oil is flowing and leaking.
Victory leading to defeat is one of the methods in which those who strive to control, do control. All of the protests, the calls for change, will always result in a victory leading to defeat unless we first change ourselves. Only when we strive for complete knowledge and understanding of ourselves will we regain our inherent, primordial spiritually, and with that, the ability to truly change how we live and survive on this great Mother Earth.
Bill Tanner
Brookport, Ill.
Prove me wrong
Editor,
This is a continuing complaint against BIA Navajo regional director. He refused response to my complaints in the media many times. Worse is his refusal to justify disagreement on accusations of BIA grazing program mismanagement created by the Fort Defiance Agency range management specialist and his supervisor regional supervisory resource specialist, Calvert Curley and Jerome Willie.
They were unable to prove burden of proof to cancel my grazing permit. They did not advise District 17 Grazing Committee that approving one more permit in 1991 is violation of 25 CFR 167.8(c) “a person cannot have more than one grazing permit”. BIA gave me a second grazing permit and accused me of having two permits. BIA failed as a technical adviser. I appealed BIA’s decision. Why are they now disputing their wrongdoing 34 years later?
Worst-case scenario, Navajo Region continues its failure to uphold its mission statement: “The Bureau of Indian Affairs Navajo Region is committed to provide high quality services to customers in a timely and professional manner”. Two agency professionals never met this commitment in 34 years.
Many livestock producers and farmers are caught in disputes because BIA failed its trust responsibility. Agency office created grazing and land disputes by not following rules, policies, guidelines, and regulations. Region have done nothing correcting problems. It’s time Navajo Nation Council RDC Committee, Washington Office of Inspector General, and Government Accountability Office investigate to protect American taxpayers.
In 2005, I sent a report to RD requesting Region for program review of Fort Defiance Agency Range Program deficiencies as mismanagement. Region refused to take action, nor did they acknowledge receiving the request. Now 34 years later, the issue is in the media again.
Serious violations. Agency range specialist and his supervisor at Region demonstrated incompetent performance with resource management at double standards. Violations:
1) 25 CFR 167.8(b). Agency range specialist and his supervisor failed to advise District 17 DGC Committee that my grazing permit cannot be canceled without court order;
2) 25 CFR 167.8©. Agency range specialist and his supervisor failed to advise District 17 DGC Committee that allowed me to have more than one permit;
3) BIA denied my request to combine two permits; Agency range specialist and his supervisor allowed combining two permits in 1986;
4) 25 CFR 167 states no permit to be issued less than 10 sheep unit; Agency range specialist authorized 7 sheep unit grazing permit;
5) 2002 — Interior Board of Indian Appeals (BIA) advised BIA standards apply to everyone, equally and fairly, not to single out one grazing permittee as BIA did with me in 2019;
6) 25 CFR 166.400 Agency range specialist authorized range fence enclosing Indian allotments without allotees compensation in the Houck and Lupton community and he received annual performance check for his wrongdoing; not only was he wrong, but he got paid for wasting American taxpayers’ money;
7) 25 CFR 167.16 and Navajo Nation Code Title 3 713. Agency range specialist authorized construction of unapproved range fence for his supervisor’s family members; RD is aware of this violation and has done nothing;
8) PL 104-320, 5USC 571 and 370 DM Chapter 770. RD refused to comply with Washington BIA director’s recommendation to turn my appeal back to Fort Defiance Agency for negotiation through Alternative Dispute Resolution. I was willing but Region refused. Instead, RD turned my appeal to IBIA. Absence of ADR ended with law enforcement intervention two times;
9) Violation of IBIA Board justification to “surrender” my grazing permit is authorized in IBIA Docket 11-142; Region refused our request to transfer permit back to Lena Roanhorse; no action on our request letter;
10) 25 CFR 2.7. Abuse of Authority violation (Misuse of Federal Funds) — Agency range specialist allowed expenditure of range program funds for livestock water development for those without valid grazing permit in Grazing Unit 7;
11) Navajo Nation Code Title 3 154 — Agency range specialist and his supervisor failed to monitor farm plots to avoid idle farmlands becoming burial grounds;
12) 25 CFR 162 (Leasing Land Permits). Agency range specialist and his supervisor approved transfer of irrigated farmland to LDS mission site without consulting Navajo Nation Council Resource Committee who has authority to rescind irrigated farm plots for other uses;
13) 25 CFR 11.448(b) (Abuse of Office) and 5 CFR 2635.101 (falsification) by federal official. Agency range specialist and his supervisor convinced DGC Committee to disapprove my plan to transfer permit to my son; that the son must have a homesite lease. Agency range specialist and DGC Committee chair rejected my plan because my son does not have a homesite lease. BIA technical adviser failed advising DGC rejection is falsification because Navajo Nation Homesite Policy does have such restriction.
There are many more violations coming. The manner which I am being singled-out is demoralizing.
Mr. BIA Regional Director, sir! I am asking you one more time to prove me wrong. The public needs to know the truth.
Nelson Roanhorse
Oak Ridge, Ariz.
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow