Letters: Honor Riders board made experience meaningful

To the Navajo-Hopi Honor Riders Board of Directors:

First, let me thank everyone for all of your hard work and dedication in fulfilling your mission statement on a daily basis. Thank you, too, to all of the road guards and others who kept me safe on my Day 1 ride.

Yesterday, May 17, was a life-changing event for me. It was my first ride with members of the Navajo and Hopi communities as well as my first Navajo-Hopi Honor Ride and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet and express my gratitude to the Gold Star families.

There are so many moments that stick out in my mind. One of them was hugging a Gold Star mother who had lost her son. Through her tears, she said to me, “Thank you for remembering my son.”

I felt those words go right to my heart and I teared up. I witnessed so much love and appreciation for our fallen and our veterans. I was warmly welcomed wherever I went.

I will always remember the words said by many of the presenters and family members: “You created an environment where true healing can take place.”

Whether it was Leon Curley’s story of forgiveness, or Bobby Martin’s story of his cousin Lori, the words of Mrs. Piestewa of how difficult it was to lose her daughter and recently her husband, and how to take the time to forgive and tell people you love them.

On Wednesday, May 16, while traveling to St. Michaels, my front tire had a flat. I was about 30 miles from my destination. I contacted Chris West and told him of my situation. He told me to give him a few minutes (he was very busy at the time) and he would call me back.

Within 15 minutes Chris had contacted a mechanic who was on his way with a trailer and would be there soon. Ray (the mechanic) showed up, put my bike on the trailer and off we went to his shop. All together Ray spent about an hour and a half helping me to get back on the road. I will always be grateful for their assistance.

At the end of the day, Chris and Bobby presented me with some challenge coins. I could not find the words then to express what I felt. So I will attempt to speak from my heart now after having had the time to reflect: I am humbled to have received them.

Bobby, I promise to share your cousin Lori Piestewa’s story. I will pass it on to my family and friends — it is already known as far away as Sweden and the Philippines. My family there told me to please share with you their deepest appreciation for your cousin. Her coin is one of my most meaningful possessions now and her sacrifice will never be forgotten.

Chris, thank you for all your kind words and your heartfelt presentation. It is a moment I will never forget. You talked of going “above and beyond” but it is really you and the others who go above and beyond more than I can ever hope to do.

Both Bobby and Chris, I respect you so much. I believe in what you, the board and the Navajo-Hopi Honor Riders do on a daily basis. It is such a great honor to be in the presence of such dedicated people — people coming from the heart for the right reasons.

I will close this letter restating what Bobby said during his talk about his cousin … Lori is bringing all different types of people together to heal.

Roy E. Gustavson
Sedona, Ariz.

New San Juan County districts are gerrymandered

In an article by Cindy Yurth on page A2 of the May 17, 2018, edition of the Navajo Times (“Greyeyes shut out of SJC commission race”), Ms. Yurth makes the following statement:

“In a lawsuit brought by the Navajo Nation, its Human Rights Commission, and individual Utah Navajos, the court had ruled the original districts, which had not been redrawn for 30 years, were racially gerrymandered to dilute the influence of Navajo voters.”

The districts prior to 2018 were devised as a response to an earlier lawsuit in 1982 and implemented in 1984. These districts were drawn up and approved by a federal judge at that time.

Was that judge racially gerrymandering the districts? I don’t think so.

Further, for two reasons the districts had been unchanged for 30 years:

1. Since they were drawn by a federal judge, it was unclear who had the authority to adjust them: the federal court or the county commission.

2. When the county commission decided in response to the current lawsuit to examine the districts for population balance, a small adjustment involving only 200 voters in a non-reservation area was all that was needed to balance the districts by population and thus preserve the original intent of the federal court.

It should be noted that, by law, all county commission seats in Utah were required to be “at-large” elections. The legislative branch was compelled to pass a law allowing counties to create commission districts in order to legalize the settlement mandated by the federal court.

It should be clear from these facts that the San Juan County Commission districts created for the first time by a federal court were clearly not “gerrymandered to dilute the influence of Navajo voters.” They were gerrymandered to assure that at least one Navajo would be elected to the commission.

Now they’ve been gerrymandered by yet another federal judge to assure a Navajo majority on the commission. They’ve been gerrymandered so wildly that a lot of folks are having trouble figuring out which commission district they live in.

Further, as I read the Voting Rights Act, such gerrymandering was allowed to assure representation, not to assure a majority.

I’m willing to bet that Ms. Yurth lifted that paragraph from CNN or the Salt Lake Tribune or some other misinformed source, but she didn’t attribute it or fact-check it.

I’d like to see a page A2 correction. Please ask her to send an email notice of her correction to my email. Thank you.

Al Clarke
Blanding, Utah

Editor’s note: The Navajo Times stands by its story. These very arguments were brought by the county during the lawsuit in a motion to dismiss, and were addressed by U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby in his March 15, 2015, memorandum decision and again in February of 2016, when he wrote, “Keeping an election district in place for decades without regular reconsideration is unusual in any context. But when the asserted justification for this inertia is a racial classification, it offends basic democratic principles.”

The county’s later attempts at redistricting to comply with the court order were also clearly rejected because of racial gerrymandering.
“The court concludes race was the predominant factor in the development of District 3 of the school board plan and Districts 1 and 2 of the county commission plan,” reads the court’s decision.

The reporter did not watch CNN’s coverage of the lawsuit and did not read the Salt Lake Tribune’s article until after writing her own story. She rather read the court documents, which are public record and readily available to anyone with a PACER account.

Don’t diminish our sovereignty in our own legislation

Kindly permit me to comment on the inclusion of “more or less” as a description of our Dineh Nation sovereignty in a bill sponsored by Delegate Jonathan Hale, and reported by Arlyssa Becenti (“Trump policy: ‘Native’ is racial, not sovereign,” Navajo Times, May 17, 2018).

“More or less” constitutes a severely debilitated inclusion in a serious bill the Dineh Nation Council is evaluating. How can “more or less a sovereign government as was established in the Treaty of 1868” mean anything?

The statement has no legal substance – zero!

In August 1970 I started a Ph.D. program in microbiology at the University of Oregon, Eugene, after teaching biology and physical science courses and coaching baseball while starting a cross-country program at Tuba City High School. Early on, I met and became friends with Professor Charles Wilkinson, Esq., who taught Indian Law in the U of O Law School. I asked if I could “sit in” on his Indian Law class. He graciously invited me to do so as I was wishing to become the first Ph.D.-trained American Indian microbiology professor.

Professor Wilkinson stated in one of his early lectures that the U.S. federal government is a sovereign three-branched government as defined by and based on the U.S. Constitution. As such, each of the branches is very limited in the powers it possesses. In fact, all treaties the U.S. government has become party to can be finalized only by the joint-U.S. Congress. The president of the USA has absolutely no power to engage autonomously in any treaty with another sovereign nation.

Mr. Hale, just like Mr. Donald Trump, is simply uninformed. The Dineh Nation is not a “more or less” sovereignty.

According to Professor Wilkinson who has written a book on Indian law and has for a long time considered the authority on Indian law: “All Indian/Native American nations are sovereignties and only the Congress of the United States can abrogate established treaties.”

Finally, as a PhD-trained genetics professor — and now professor emeritus — I wish to advise all elected governmental entities that “racial” is a biological — and therefore genetic — term and cannot be used as a governmental description of “autonomous self-governing sovereignties.”

O. Taacheeni Scott
Flagstaff, Ariz.

Treaty reprogrammed us for servitude, dependence

With the upcoming Navajo Reservation political elections, candidates’ hindsight — “they herd sheep, hauled water, and rode horses” — now political propaganda, when there’re ominous issues.

Before proceeding to political promises of a better tomorrow, some basic challenges are worth addressing. Why does our replicated socio-political system generate difficulties whereas we become our own worst enemy, unknowingly side with failure, thus spread into an uproar?
Worst yet, the malevolent, parasitic dark energies that instigate divide-and-conquer upheavals. These disturbances deeply impact our communities. Baa ya’ sin!

When setback roots are explored, they’re more disturbing than servants unfamiliar with an imitative governing system or just being greedy.
As understood, before release from Hwe’eldi, our ancestors submitted to U.S. government’s Treaty of 1868, with contractual clause: “reprogramming” future generations for servitude.

Thereafter parental roles/responsibilities shifted to boarding schools, thus, onsets of domestic violence and abuse, alcoholism, teen suicides.

Evidently, an “education of what-to-think” meant obedience, being similar, to possess an inoculated mindset that surrenders to dependence, sense of entitlement, expectation, freebies, compulsion, and convenience.

These supposedly “gifts” only promote “laziness” and, eventually, idiocy?

Accordingly, “i’hoo’ahh” implies “to learn, study, train, realize, understand.” However, we now possess an “educated, arrogant-ignorant mentality.”

Our numbed lives driven only by memory, without intuition, always recalling and repeating to others what we experienced within our assimilation and thereafter. With perverse audacity redefined our potential and virtues, learning mere memorization, without intelligence; experience oblivious to wisdom; knowledge ignores reasoning-logic; duplication shuns originality-creativity; mediocrity forbids integrity – character; ambiguity refuses to listen to inner voice of truth; prejudice railroads justice; and blind faith condemns research into curiosity.

Shamelessly, in this fast-paced, blurred, make-believe world, as our divine-self starves, our new drug of choice is getting high on worthless, artificial digital information.

Bound by contrary constraints we dwell with broken spirit, impassive, insensitive, and unresponsive. We no longer resonate with our now agitated Mother Earth, our sacred family circle broken, relations scattered into bitter winds. Without bond of kinship there’s no stability, no support, and no dignity.

We’ve become blind, lost sight of our center, our reference point for balance, self-awareness, strength, and self-sufficiency in our lives. Our prayers, appeals, offerings, and songs no longer acknowledged by divine truth.

Our life-giving water, air we breathe, plants for oxygen and animals, our food, and the soil we cherish, all now grossly contaminated by fatal irresponsibility and apathy. Sadly, we place blame on the animals and insects, when our hardships and distress environment are ours by default.

Now’s not the time for chasing rainbows of social change, nor progress, political promises of changing our social direction while still willfully inflicted with social ills and heavily burdened with excess baggage of unused laws, rules, and policies will not ease our pain.
It’s more than what we say, it’s what we do for resolve. Empower, meditate, and initiate unraveling our social complexities, as “to see the forest for the trees.”

Perhaps we’d be worthy to rightfully reclaim our sovereignty as intelligent, responsible, compassionate, practical earth beings through social recovery or … rebirth?

Robert Hosteen
Beclabito, N.M.

Enjoyed Monument Valley, but about those flags …

As a Canadian tourist I really enjoyed my first-time visit to Monument Valley in April. Lunch at The View was great. Two dust storms, high winds, everything was fantastic.

Everyone friendly, thank you.

Even the bumpy fall-apart road through the valley is not to be missed and must be considered as part of the total experience so long as the ground doesn’t open up underneath it at some point in time. Maybe a dollar surcharge item road renewal fee added to the entrance fee and then in five years time there should be plenty to cover the cost of the road repair.

I was just wondering though about the “We accept MasterCard, Visa, etc.” flags flapping in the wind at the bottom of the valley in unmanned booths. Is this really helping anybody?

With all these beautiful rock formations a billion years old, does anyone really need it economically? Just a thought.

Hope to visit again one day soon.

Downtown Kayenta is a lot of fun. Stop and get out for eats, don’t just drive through.

Harvey Meyer
Cambridge
Ontario, Canada

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