Letters: Let’s not mar canyon’s beauty

An interesting guest column written by R. Lamar Whitmer, a managing partner of Confluence Partners LLC (“Escalade would join myriad structures in Grand Canyon,” Sept. 22). Definitely, I agree with the late U. S. President “Teddy” Roosevelt’s statement, because he was referring to greedy people like you, Mr. Whitmer, and your partners who would make a living off Mother Nature’s natural wonders as an attraction. And you go on to say there are countless business improvements to blame someone else, to imply it gives you permission to “mar” its timeless beauty too. I’m sure some my Native people have held their remarks in tongue and cheek, but the Times probably has plenty of opposing opinions and which to print is a dilemma. You mentioned playground and water parks, yet you want put in a tram that will take tourists to the canyon floor and marvel at the canyon monolith; a quick lift up and down. You failed to understand Roosevelt’s aesthetic appeal to save the Grand Canyon, for us, and the future generations. All you see is money in your eyes.

Artistry and design in the creative sense have no restrictions or rivals, and it does not exclusively belong to man, it belongs to Mother Nature ultimately — she invented beauty and art. An artist knows exactly what I mean. That artist would love to test his talent and gift to brush against one of the greatest — Mother Nature. Nature is mesmerizing and a visual distraction to behold that is appealing to our soul. For an artist to paint a tram coming down the natural beauty of canyon walls is like graffiti. You see what I’m getting at? It would be hard to visualize this in an artist’s mind. A tram as you describe would take away nature’s creativity and artistry every world-famous artist would love to capture on his canvas, if you can understand, R. Lamar.

“Grand” means, majestic, untouchable, and imposing to the minds of millions to behold; to some, a once-in-a-lifetime view. Yes, some shake their heads in awestruck disbelief that such a beautiful place can exist on Mother Earth. A place like the Grand Canyon is becoming rare, as a matter of fact, Grand Canyon is “one of the rarest.”

You see that tram as your money-maker and you don’t like to be left out of the “elitist playground.” I take this to mean “enough is never enough” for you, Mr. Whitmer. You would love to swim in your own confluence of money down the Grand Canyon. Our Hopi relatives have a wise saying, “If you are not spiritually connected to Mother Earth, it is doubtful you will make it.” Right now, the Sioux people of the Dakota Nation is making a stand at Little Rock, North Dakota, with a gathering of nations, of tribes and non-Indians alike all across the country on that same principle against what they call the “Black Snake.” The Sioux Nation is taking a protective stance as “protectors” of ancestral land, where their people are buried (sacred burial sites) who fought for an “ancient right” to live in peace and harmony with the environment as is. On the other side of the same coin, “enough is enough.”

This not a protest stance. There is a difference between these two causes. To protect is to guard against encroachment in whatever form, defend with life and to shield from harming detrimental effects to life and family, homeland and a host of time-honored values.

Let me make another analogy of “enough is never enough” as you compared the impoverished hardship in the “Bennett Freeze” area. Don’t feel sorry for us to justify your profits. It is not a state we wish to put ourselves in; it’s political and the federal government’s doing. NASA has a little extraterrestrial robot on Mars doing a similar thing Native American Indians do on Mother Earth, like collecting precious stones to make offerings. The robot is there to collect scientific data, observe the planet in its true form, not to introduce or upset the natural state of life such as bringing in foreign organisms to contaminate the environment. It is assumed man might live there one day. If man ever does: What do you suppose he will do to that planet? There are other ways to bring economic prosperity, like alternative clean businesses.

Understand the pressures of the Caucasian World. It is their way of making money and let’s not be too hasty. Diné are Nature’s People. Let us not mar it, but keep it as timeless as Mother Nature intended for us to remember and enjoy her beauty.

Teddy Begay
Kayenta, Ariz.

Patients’ families need money

 I feel prompted to share with the affected Navajo readership a growing issue that doesn’t seem to merit any attention by our Navajo government leaders. I don’t know what good it will do to submit this article but if unwavering support comes from affected Navajo families, this article could serve as a wake-up call for tribal leaders and redirect or reprogram a significant percentage of the tribal funding to this issue.

Many affected families don’t have a big bank account and thus, they have to borrow money or pawn their jewelry to cover costs during their stay in the big cities, close to a hospital facility. This is the current scenario but tribal leaders don’t seem to recognize this family shortfall. With the high cost of living, many families are barely making ends meet and can’t afford unexpected long distance travel-related costs. It would be interesting to find out how many families are affected.

Today, many Navajo infants are born premature and end up in off-rez children’s hospitals in Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff. I am certainly not a contemporary scientist and I don’t know what causes this growing health issue. Perhaps, it is the food we consume from the supermarkets – like genetically engineered organisms and re-cloning of poultry products. You can certainly taste the difference between GMOs and natural harvested food products. Now, researchers are coming across findings that processed meat products have steroid and antibiotic injections. Perhaps, it has something to do with environmental “injustice” issues like contaminated water and harmful contaminants found in the atmosphere. More than likely, this health issue can also be attributed to violating time-honored cultural archetypal standards.

In the interim, it would serve the best interest of Navajo people and other tribal societies to designate a cohort study on premature infants. If scientific studies have been conducted, relevant research should be shared with the Navajo public. Something is certainly not right when these problems and issues continually persist, year after year, and are not directly addressed. Forget about your rhetorical political platforms and realistically and actually do something that will significantly benefit Navajo families. Think ahead and think about the future of our children and grandchildren. If you can’t walk the talk, please don’t wave your hands in the tribal fair parades with a false smile.

Many affected family members end up at the children’s hospital without any preparation. This also applies to Navajo people in general. This means many family members don’t have the necessary funding resources that would cover transportation, hotel, and food expenses while waiting for a loved one to be released from the hospital. It is very costly.

Many family members don’t have a place to stay throughout the duration of a family member’s hospital stay. Even if a room accommodation for indigent family members is available near the hospital facility, a waiting time is always in effect. I am making specific reference to the Ronald McDonald House or the Talbot House in Flagstaff. There may be other accommodations. This means family members have to sleep in their vehicle out in the cold or in the waiting room. Some family members are fortunate to have immediate or close relatives who reside in the big cities.

Better yet, tribal leaders and Indian Health Service executives should start planning to build exclusive comprehensive hospital specialized facilities on the reservation, where Navajo patients can be treated with dignity by highly trained and specialized medical doctors. It appears current IHS doctors are not adequately or don’t have specialized training or simply doing residency or on-the-job training. One day they are here on the rez and the next day they are gone.

Isn’t this why we elect tribal leaders into public office? Currently, all Navajo patients are sent or referred to off-reservation hospitals where they receive specialized diagnosis and treatment. When Navajo patients are referred, they are transported by air and that in itself is very costly. Just ask those patients who have gone through this process. Sometimes, they receive a hefty hospital bill after their hospital stay when they are not referred by IHS.

If nothing else, please set aside some emergency funding for those family members who might be in dire need of funding to cover their transportation, hotel, and meals while providing comfort, spiritual support, as well as family support to their love ones. A doctor’s statement should suffice to validate and account for costly family expenditures.

Anthony Lee, Sr.
Lukachukai, Ariz.

It’s our land, our kids, our future

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the proposed Grand Canyon Escalade Project. Too much of it is coming from the usual suspects — Flagstaff, Phoenix, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C.

For generations they believe they know what’s best for us. They overran us, relocated us, marched us off causing thousands of us to die, took away our children, and froze more than a million acres of our land so we couldn’t even mend a fence … and now they tell us we can’t build something that would give us jobs, revenue, economic growth, and hope.

They send their paid protestors and professional anarchists to tell us what they want. I guess that’s better than armed forces but they keep forever ignoring what we want and need.

Do you think they care that, that part of the nation has more than 70 percent unemployment? Do you think they care about our children leaving the nation because they see no future here on our reservation? Do you think they will advocate for our children’s future? Did you really think outside influences care for our children?

We were the first people here, so why do they think we should be the last to decide?

Grand Canyon National Park is 1,217,260 acres. Grand Canyon Escalade, on our land, will be 420 acres. It will not harm the canyon and the Confluence will not even be touched, but be more protected. We are not talking about extracting natural resources from the canyon and/or desecrating the area.

Grand Canyon Escalade will provide 600 jobs during construction and 2,000 jobs onsite and 1,500 offsite when built out. Our people will be given priority for those jobs. A new road will be constructed, Internet service will be available, reliable water and power will be available for new homes, all within the former Bennett Freeze. And the nation will receive valuable revenue beyond taxes on the project.

For nearly 200 years, outsiders have been telling us what to do and what not to do. We need to stop listening to them. This is our land, our kids, our hopes, and our future. Let’s decide to move forward on our own. Let’s build our future, now.

Larry Hanks
Bodaway/Gap, Ariz.

A place to call home

For many citizens on the Navajo Reservation, it is difficult to obtain a homesite lease because of the bureaucratic red tape set up to limit land use. Our reservation was permitted its large land base through a number of congressional and tribal acts to allow our livestock to graze. But, this has also limited many regular Navajo citizens today to make a home.

I am proposing an awareness campaign because this issue has been addressed neither in political elections nor in public discourse. But many people I have talked to, both relatives and co-workers, acknowledge the homesite lease process is fractured and ineffective. We have people waiting up to a decade to obtain a homesite lease, let alone build a house and line up utilities. We need to let our political leaders know this is not acceptable.

The Navajo Housing Authority has been charged with providing affordable housing to low-income families. Recently it received additional funds, $86.4 million, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to further its services. And according to the Navajo Nation Division of Economic Development, the nation has a high unemployment rate, a little under 50 percent, and a high poverty rate, close to 40 percent. This housing service is direly needed to provide affordable housing to those who cannot afford it.

But what about those that aren’t low-income nor want to live in a structured suburban setting the NHA has relied on? The NHA and homesite lease office is not set up to accommodate those that want to live on their homeland and work in their community.

This has made it difficult for many of the younger, educated generation to return home. As a Navajo woman holding a Bachelor of Science degree and working towards a Master of Public Health degree and the Registered Dietitian credential, I have been committed to working in the health field for my community. I grew up in Chinle and knew I wanted to return to my community to apply my education because we have so much to do to progress the health of our people.

I have worked as a public health nutritionist and a diabetes educator, traveling over 90 miles one way from a border town to get to my job on the reservation. This obviously isn’t anything new to many community members. Some travel much farther. I want to be in my community and contribute, but I feel like all this red tape prevents me from doing so.

I asked NHA about housing, and they said because of my background I was unlikely to obtain a home with NHA (perhaps because I was not a single low-income mother — their words, by the way), I would have to wait at least 5 years to get a home. People suggested Karigan Estates in St. Michaels, but when I found out the price (upwards of $100,000) that option was not possible. And I prefer open spaces—not shoved up against neighbors. People have also suggested renting, but still, that is not a home.

Our political leaders talk so much about the need for the educated youth to return home, but how? There are no jobs. And if there are, we are met with no or poor housing options.

When I wake up at my parents’ house and watch the sun rise over the sandy and bushy landscape and hear the chickens cluck, I am home. I want to work and live in my home community. I am calling for more political action and public discourse about providing a quicker and more efficient path to a homesite lease and thus, a home. I am not asking for a house; I am simply asking for a more equitable way to obtain/lease a simple piece of land so I can build a home. Even if I did ask either of my parent’s family for permission to set up a homesite lease on the grazing permittee’s area, I would still have to travel two hours to get to work. I want to live in an area accessible to my work where I can devote myself to the cause of improving our nation’s health.

I am soliciting information from people who are on the path to a homesite lease. I want to know what they think about this system and I want to use this information to advocate for our leaders to improve our ability to make a home on the reservation. Submitting at least 10 forms for clearances by everyone but your mother (oh, wait you need that, too) and waiting up to 10 years is not acceptable. We need an expedited path to a homesite lease. Please, fill out this online survey to get the word out: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VQ52J82. Your identity on the survey is anonymous.

Denee Bex
Littleton, Colo.

PLI crafted by political elite

My thoughts about Utah Republicans’ relentless push on the Utah Public Land Initiative before people’s interest. What is the proper political balance between totally democratic decision-making and elite management of policy? The following states:

“The true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people – faith that the people will not simply elect men and women who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but also elect those who will exercise their conscientious judgment – faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor and ultimately recognize right.” (John F. Kennedy)

Utah political elite comprised of politicians from county to state and congressional level of government along with corporate special interest groups does not represent the true democracy. John F. Kennedy is correct. The state, Utah, is not putting its faith in the people of diversity who will elect men and women who can exercise their conscientious judgment. This political discourse has become evident in the light of the Utah Public Land Initiative and perhaps many other issues such as suppressing individual voting rights, gerrymandering without meaningful democratic process, etc. Public Land Initiative legislation is crafted and finalized without complete tribal input.

Indeed, there is no proper political balance between totally democratic decision-making and elite management of policy. The elite take the benefits for self-interest and gaining office, per se. They hold the influence over the policy-planning networks through financial support of foundations or positions with policy-discussion groups or conservative think tankers like Sutherland Institute. In both ends, government officials and corporations, exert significant power over the policy decisions of both entities in the state. In the end, a better or an ideal society is not promoted.

James Adakai
Oljato Chapter President

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