Letters: No leadership at Diné College

I am glad Abe Bitok spoke of the truth because there is no leadership at Diné college. I am a parent and I have every right to do my own research of the institution that will be educating my daughter. When I first came to Diné College the staff was very friendly and openly willing to assist me, but now when I returned it seemed they were scared. I ask a few employees here and there and they said they were afraid of retaliation from the administration, especially from a certain Glennita Haskey, vice president of Student Success.

I was also informed about the extra security hired. Are they hiding information from us? Am I to worry about sending my daughter there? Is the college hiding something from the students, community members? Is the college dangerous that we need extra security?

It was because of certain staff members’ friendly attitude that I had no reservation on sending my child there and then I come back to find them either fired or on administrative leave.

I asked, Does the president know? Does the Board of Regents president know?

The response I got back was it was Glennita Haskey running the college firing and hiring people of her choosing. I was also informed that she was still on her 120-day probationary period from being newly hired.

My next question is how is or was she given this power to create such a hostile environment within that work area so quickly upon being newly hired?

The president and BOR president obviously don’t know or simply are letting themselves be manipulated. I took my daughter out of enrollment from Diné College fearing its unsafe surroundings that they need another security company and the employees there seem intimidated. A few would indulge me in answering my questions; the many simply would not fearing for their jobs.

Navajo Nation, we need order for our children and future are in uncertain hands with Diné College. The institution of higher learning simply is put on hold for certain individuals own agenda.

I for one will not put my daughter in an uncertain future or hostile environment at Diné College. If you, the reader, do not trust my opinion simply go to any department at DC and simply do your own research because the employees there are willing to speak, but are also afraid if they do they will get fired. The employees there are good people and this kind of disrespect of trust and k’e should be stopped. The administration there seems only to speak of, but do not practice k’e. Please, together we can help them understand.

Geraldine Sam
Shiprock, N.M.

Agree with Zah on endorsing Clinton

Hello, my name is Sterling Sonny Yazzie. I was born and raised in Shiprock. My clan is Near the Water People, born for Bitter Water. My grandpa on my mother’s side is Red House and my father’s side is Cliff Dwellers from the Ganado area. I’m currently imprisoned and fortunately, my cellmate obtains the Navajo Times each week.

When I was 10 or 11 years old I went to the Tuba City Fair in the mid-late 80s. I do recall at the time Peterson Zah was the Navajo Nation president then, and I do confirm with him about Hillary Clinton. I’m not into politics since I became a convict so I discontinue voting, but I would like to urge the Diné people to support Hillary Clinton by voting for her. She once proclaimed, “Democrats are the party of working people.”

Democratic programs regularly include key elements such as raising minimum wage, expanding aid to education, and there were historic changes, as well importantly on racial equality and civil rights.

“Our economy isn’t working the way it should because our democracy isn’t working the way it should.” Hillary Clinton stood as the most likely democratic successor to Obama after her term as Obama’s secretary of state. As a U.S. senator from New York, she served on the Armed Services Committee where she focused on expanding health benefits for veterans and their family as well as National Guard members and reservists.

Mrs. Clinton also wrote a law to supply grants to local and state governments to aid family caregivers. I presume that Hillary Clinton would pursue in her 100 days in office: Launching her infrastructure programs, investing in renewable energy, tightening regulations of health insurances and pharmaceutical companies, and expanding protection of voting rights, including immigration reform and raising the minimum wage.

Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992. In 1993, he became president of USA and in 1996, when I was 21 years old he visited the Navajo Nation in Shiprock. Then in 2000 it marked a clear comeback, electing to the presidency an African American pledged to securing universal health care. After the Great Recession, Barack Obama was elected. So let’s make history again. Since we have an African-American President, why not a female President? It might be great for the United States.

If Clinton succeeds Obama in the fall, her ambitious infrastructure plans would modernize the county’s failing bridges and roads, installing half a billion solar panels and creating 3.25 million new jobs.

Good luck to the voting Diné people and God bless.

Sterling S. Yazzie
Adelanto, Calif.
(Hometown: Shiprock, N.M.)

Escalade another way to fleece the Red Man

Once again, the White Man is trying to fleece the Red Man.

An out-of-town, off-the-rez, down-the-state developer wants to sell you on a land deal in which you receive the equivalent of $24 in trinkets and other odds and ends in exchange for property rights that are priceless.

These slick developers wish to negotiate a type of “treaty” in which the Navajo Nation and other local Native Americans, as usual, get the shaft, while these Scottsdale interlopers go straight to the bank to deposit their big bucks, giggling all the way.

These money-hungry, non-spiritual and uncaring people are headed by a scofflaw who, according to accounts I have read, casually and cavalierly shrugs off his just debts. Plainly, they plan to continue the cycle of the White Man in a business suit taking the Red Man’s land and hornswoggling the Red Man in the process.

As a white man, obviously there is much I do not understand regarding the Diné. Let me start here: The people who live in the vicinity of the Confluence consider the Confluence a sacred location. I am certain many other members of the Navajo Nation feel the same way. The Gap-Bodaway Chapter House has twice voted against this project.

But a certain legislator in the Fort Defiance area wants the Confluence project to proceed, and has introduced a bill in the Navajo Nation Legislature to clear the way for this hideous project. Is the Confluence not sacred to the Diné in Fort Defiance?

Apparently, the dollars are much more sacred to this legislator than the Confluence itself.

But, there is much more at stake here.

This area is sacred not only to many members of the Navajo Nation, but also to many members of the American Nation as well as many members of every nation on the planet.

We are talking about nothing less than one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

To further desecrate such a place, in this particular manner, would be a crime against humanity.

To the Navajo Nation legislature: I say vote against this monstrous development idea.

Donald Hill
Flagstaff, Ariz.

‘$5 million for each chapter’ bad idea

I read this the other day (“5 million for each chapter,” Aug. 18) and felt I needed to respond to this letter written by Richard Peterson regarding Mr. Peterson’s proposal to give $5 million dollars to each chapter house from the $554 million settlement.

Although it may be tempting to just divide $554 million and spend it to support programs as Mr. Peterson suggests, highlighting our children needing money to go to college, veterans’ homes, or the elderly, the truth is, while these are noble suggestions, they are shortsighted and dangerous proposals for money we as a nation have waited for over 60 years.

The $554 million represents our suffering as a people. We are a people who suffered 500 years of warfare from the Spanish to the modern day ransacking of our people’s natural resources. The $554 million is nothing more than a token payment of the billions of dollars we lost as a people.

While it is true our people have been burned in the past by unsavory council delegates who only supported each other by ensuring only their relatives received money from discretionary funds, we have to believe that our current Navajo delegates and president are serving in our best interest.

Regardless of anyone’s beliefs, money is power and if we divide the money and spend it then we lose the power of this money and what it could bring for us. The safest thing to do with the money is to put it into the best interest-building bank we can find and put it away for the future of our people.

Giving money to our local chapter house will lead to fights on how the money is spent and there is potential for embezzlement.

If the Navajo people decide to spend the money we really need to think about what we are going to invest the money into. We have to be smarter than average bears and really analyze, sit down and think about our children’s future. We cannot afford to think about the present but also the future. Money does not grow on trees and no one hands out money. Once the money is spent, it is gone.

Sean A. Begaye
Fort Irwin, Calif.

Standing with Natives at Standing Rock

My heart is breaking over the recent events. The U.S. government doesn’t care. I am shocked at the government, but I probably should know better.
I am writing you because my late maternal grandmother Anna Mae Langford Leigh Clark had three Navajo foster children, Elsie, Paulina and Les Johnson.
I knew Les. He was a few years older than me. We played together when I was in Southern Utah. I spoke with him in the 90s from my home in Boston, after I had left my phone with the Cedar City Navajo reservation center. Les had been known in Utah for getting over his alcoholism. (Navajo alcoholism is caused by White Man’s refusal to accept Navajos).
Because I knew Les personally, I am always pained when I read of how unfairly the U.S. government treats Native peoples.
The U.S. has not learned and does not care. The U.S. never cared.
I was in contact a few years ago with a sister of Les, Melanie Johnson, but I no longer have her current email.

About 10 years ago, I had emailed the editor of the Navajo Times to post a letter to the editor from me, asking if anybody knew Les Johnson of Cedar City, the foster son of Mae Leigh Clark of 200 West in Cedar.

That is when Melanie wrote me, sent me Les’ obituary.

I don’t have money to help at Standing Rock, and I am in Boston, so I am far away geographically, but the situation at Standing Rock is unconscionable.

I had reported in the 80s from my journalism program at Washington D.C, about the closing of the BIA Indian school in Bountiful, Utah, where Les had gone.

I am deeply shocked at the egregious and arrogant attitude of the U.S. government re: Standing Rock.

Since I do not currently have any money to donate and Boston is a “bitt” far, I am not sure if there is anything I can do to help directly re: Standing Rock, but I wanted you to know you are not alone. Most definitely you are not alone.

Some white people or perhaps many white people stand with you.

Kathryn Esplin
Boston, Mass. (formerly of Salt Lake City, Utah.)