Letters | Do not leave animals by the highway

As we move into the warmer months of the year, there needs to be an enhanced effort by the Navajo Nation and media to deliver a two-fold message to visitors and residents.

The first message is a warning to visitors regarding abandoned animals on Navajo highways. Do not attempt to pick them up.

There is an increased chance of being bitten by the animal and the victim acquiring botulism or whatever disease the animal may have in its mouth.

These animals, while seeming cuddly and cute, have most likely been scavenging on nearby carcasses. This makes them dangerous and should be avoided.

The second message that Navajo animal owners need to spay or neuter their animals. That is a lack of responsibility by the owner. Unwanted animals should be delivered to the animal control facility. The animals should not be left on the roadside!

Should those animals survive, they will have learned to fend for themselves and will have become a threat to local homes, families and livestock. This means they will attack for food and bite as a first defense.

I bring this message because my family and I came upon some non-Navajos stopping on the roadside to capture a couple of young dogs. We pulled over to assist them and, in the process, the young dog bit the non-Navajo visitor.

We captured the animals and delivered them to the animal control facility in Many Farms. The young dogs smelled of a carcass.

We informed the animal control officers and provided the location where we picked them up and they asked about the bite victim. They provided the information, which prompted this letter.

Hopefully the bite victim received the necessary care for the bite. For the next few days, I witnessed more pups and young dogs abandoned by the roadside. I refused to stop and only hoped those dogs would not grow to become wild dogs and attack someone or someone’s livestock.

There should be a public service message delivered by radio stations or billboards as reminders for folks to properly care for their animals and for non-Navajo visitors to refrain from stopping to assist the abandoned animals.

Jarvis Williams
Kayenta, Ariz.

Can Nez, presidency get any more pathetic?

Can Jonathan Nez and his presidency get any more pathetic? It was sad and embarrassing to see him shoveling dirt for another tax-exempt cult compound.

Nez should be shoveling dirt for new homes and new facilities that cater to the needs and benefit of the Navajo people, creating job opportunities and propelling our nation forward to meet the challenges that lay ahead of us.

He should be shoveling dirt for a new golf course at Twin Arrows, the groundbreaking of the new Fire Rock Resort and Casino, or the new Navajo Nation Convention and Visitors Center.

Instead, he chooses to stand next to those who stole our children, the tax-exempt Mormon Church that made every effort to prevent the Native American Child Welfare Act.

As this church financially benefited from exploiting our Navajo youth, how does our nation, a sovereign nation, allow these corporate religious compounds to even exist on our sovereign domain?

It’s time these tax-free religious institutions begin to pay rent to the people of the Navajo Nation. These corporate cult buildings are an eyesore to our nation and clutter our beautiful landscape.

What would the Mormon Church do if we Navajos wanted to build our ceremonial hogan in front of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City?

The Latter Day Saints would call out religious persecution and say it’s damaging to their faith. Yet they don’t bat an eye when they do the same violations to our nation and our sacred sites. There is more truth and wisdom in our traditional Navajo teachings and ways of life than in the fabricated pages of the Book of Mormon.

I, like many of my fellow Diné, don’t mind these mom-and-pop non-denominational churches on our nation as they truly benefit the people. However, when it comes to these corporate tax-dodging churches with agendas and headquarters in other parts of the world, there needs to be some accountability with them.

President Nez, you failed the Navajo people as our leader and now you add shame and embarrassment to that failure.

I, like many of our people, are sick of failure and sick of the lack of leadership.

Enjoy your remaining months in office and your perks while you can. And I would strongly suggest for the benefit of keeping some dignity of your presidency you do not run for a second term.

And to all these tax-exempt corporate religious compounds on our Navajo Nation, the time will come when rent will be due. Until then, enjoy your freebies because it won’t last forever.

It’s time the sins of the Mormon Church and the deeply offensive actions it took against our Navajo people be addressed. And reparations be made to those who were stolen from their families and whose lives were forever shattered because of this cult.

Blessings to all my fellow Diné. We have endured so much in the past two years, but we are a people known for enduring.

As we are the enduring Navajo, never stop fighting and protecting the sanctity and sacredness of who and what we are as a people and as a sovereign nation. Be’k’e Hozho’

Shawn Price
To’Hajiilee, N.M.

Political rhetoric is once again upon us

Once more the changing season is upon us and we can hear the same political rhetoric of promises of a better tomorrow from our wannabe political candidates during this election year.

Is it the same old bunch or will there be a charismatic candidate radiating their “feel-good” energy onto the crowd? With their political propaganda, this is easier said than done when one cannot comprehend nor possess needed skill sets of such endeavor.

In hindsight, after our politicians take public office, were we, as a people, better off in our standards of living, of being healthy and safe?

If those alleged political promises of yesteryears had been fulfilled, gone would have been the heavy burden and brutality of our social ills. We would all now be living well without further cycles of trouble in paradise.

In our past elections it took all kinds of candidates. After a while, after taking their oath of office, some began their entrenchment work and defined themselves through their hasty reactions to greed.

And still others contradicted their social responsibility and social accountability. They merely undermined social stability and neglected our basic service needs that promoted betterment to our society. As usual, thievery became their crimes of gluttony through opportunity.

There is a need for our aspiring political candidates to actually view and understand our social complexities. However, it seems our lawmakers and social enforcers only do their writings on their imaginary maze walls, this as their attempt to resolve social issues.

This is to say their rules and regulations only exist on paper. Our, supposedly, thinkers for a system tinkered their way through their term, thus their blame games only became part of our social disorder.

In such cases, it further provides our social offenders with mind-exercises, to further explore, ignore, walk through, climb over, or just walk around these illusionary boundaries of social order.

Obviously, trying to resolve social problems inside an imaginary maze box does not work, as examples with written obedience and an education through imitation. With such ideology, we can only expect the worst but hope for the best.

To understand our past is to predict our future. If our past social servants never understood their shortcomings and failures, then what makes the general public think our officials know what really drives our social problems at hand?

Therefore, in order to recognize the real issues, could it be vital to simplify the problems, as in origin, commonality and intention?

Throughout the pandemic, we, the people, could or should have realized something about ourselves. Yet to this day, Mother Earth, Nature and Father Sky continue to reveal and impart to us our human condition, as with our weaknesses and strengths.

Obviously, our return to “normalcy” of desecration without an inkling of reverence for our home planet is not the answer.

And why do some people attach themselves to madmen with a personal agenda of “fleecing the flock” in the dead of winter, through misinformation, deceptions, and constant lies?

Such period of influence result where lawlessness, disorder and death reign. As Indigenous, we have lost many relations, yet through our intuition, vigilance and resourcefulness we have survived what should never have been.

Moreover, a repeat of what seems being peddled by our aspiring candidates today is “to nurse or blame the symptoms as the source” of our social issues. With insight any proposed undertaking could be more than through ambition. These desires can be commitment of various crimes, indulgences and addictions, politics, greed, climbing-the-fantasy-social-status-ladder, education, and sports, to name a few.

All these dreams driven by motivation and competition for they induce a common “feel-good mentality.” This unknowingly intended sensation seems to originate from our distant memory of our once emotional “spiritual high” long before our physical existence.

There is hope for realization — that solving our social problems begins with passion for creativity and effective communication.

Robert Hosteen
Shiprock, N.M.

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