Letters: A proposal to honor largest Native nation

Kindly permit me to speak as a Native American (Dineh/Navajo) historian and former Fort Lewis College professor of microbiology, cell biology and currently professor emeritus microbiology, Department of Biology, California State University, Northridge, since 2007. I served at FLC during academic year 1982-83.

Initially, I was privileged to have lunch with the late Rexer Berndt (1920-91), FLC president, on a number of occasions. Berndt was formerly an administrator at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, and, when he learned that I grew up in Flagstaff and even attended ASC (pre-dating NAU) 1963-1964, we became instant friends. Before long, we’re having a running conversation — hallway chats included — and, in our office visits I began to share aspects of my undergraduate major in world history (bachelor’s, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, 1966); minor, Western American Indian history (directed readings).

I shared that as I read assignments for the latter during 1964-1966, I developed a deep personal burden for confronting the oft-erroneous record left by Anglo historians for the previous 170-plus years — including a popular Hollywood film “How The West Was Won.” Today, the challenge is still before us. As Native Americans, we need to say “No more — that was stuff of the 1800s.” We need to make an effort to “right the wrongs of yesteryear.” We need to address the people in charge who quietly allow things to continue to go on and on and go into ad nauseum.

Stop, it is way past time to stop “reminding” us of how “the West was won.” It is time to say “the West was stolen!” The reasons to have forts have long ago disappeared. Such is the case for Fort Lewis College. Thankfully, the Raiders moniker is history. I can take credit for that one as I simply told former FLC President Berndt that it was wrong to keep honoring some old Army guy named Lewis by calling him a Raider. Now is the time to take our former school back.

Read about how this school designed to educate Indians had been renamed to honor an old Army officer. Now is the time to give it a rightful name by honoring the Dineh who are still here learning to compete in today’s academic wars. Dineh U is the place to right the wrongs. Today, fall 2017, I am proposing to honor academically the largest Native American nation in the entire United States by bestowing upon the Colorado Higher Education Establishment the challenge to think, evaluate, soul-search — even contacting former Colorado state and U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne, and listen to his thoughts — and then conducting with purpose the following: rename Fort Lewis College as Dineh University.

Many Native American FLC graduates are now serving their communities as elementary/secondary/junior college instructors on all four Native American reservations in the Four Corners region. Specifically, the Dineh Nation government would be proud to send scores — more of future educators to Dineh University to earn and receive quality education in the hard sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, geology) and in education. Dineh University graduates will augment the services offered in surgery-specialties of Durango’s noted medical facilities. For those seeking a terminal education doctoral degree, it would be a simple step to continue at Dineh University’s sister institution, Colorado State University, a top academic institution worldwide for the past century. Dineh University will have ready-access to “nothing but the best.”

The Dineh Nation government would enjoy being able to offer more college/university scholarships, as Dineh University will accept Dineh students who do not have to pay tuition costs. The Dineh students would be closer to home so that they will spend more weekends with family members while developing more and deeper relationships — and having a positive influence on them — and to focus on attending Dineh University themselves. How about tutoring siblings? How about teaching parents on how to pay off credit card debts and organizing other financial obligations? All future Dineh University students can attend a university and not have to experience the loneliness and disenfranchisement that the students who go away to cities like Flagstaff, Tempe, or Tucson have to “put up with” and having to live through all the hassles. Dineh University will be within “walking distance” of the Dineh rez, the Southern Ute rez, the Ute Mountain rez, and the Jicarilla Apache will be only a couple-to-three hours of driving time away from their rez in north-central New Mexico — four Native American reservations (within walking distance? …hmmm).

Imagine: A master’s degree can be earned in many fields (most notably, the hard sciences) on a campus surrounded by mountains, trees, deer, elk and a fantastic Animas River flowing year-round through the middle of Durango — within walking distance of Dineh University campus — and a final reward of “walking back to da rez” with a certificate embossed with Dineh University on it. Finally, even I — personally — could once again become a part of the university scene by bringing to the Dineh University campus the tremendous opportunities offered by two scientific societies I was able, as a founding member, to offer ideas to, and help design a skeleton for a new organization and then getting it started: 1. AISES, American Indian Society for Engineering and Science (1972), and 2. SACNAS, Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (1973).

O. Tacheeni Scott
Flagstaff, Ariz.

K’e is key to disenrollment debate

Declaring one to be an “official Indian” has a real chance of turning into a nightmare for all Native American tribes. It is called “disenrollment,” and thanks for Christopher Pineo’s report (“Lawyer: Disenrollment threatens Indian Country,” Nov. 22, 2017), but no comments on his article were made the following week. I thought it most interesting so I’m going to make one.

I do not believe our traditional mothers would deny any blood relatives born of interracial offspring no matter how thin the Indian blood. That is not k’e. The state and federal court system is creating our own demise whenever an Indian ancestry case is brought into court. It plays into the hands of tribal councils saying there is a need, a requirement to have certain amount of Indian blood.

The federal government did grant Native Americans the inherent right of self-government and self-determination. This focal point created all Indian issues a “political” definition by which legislation has defined Indians based on membership in federally recognized tribes.

Today, many tribal leaders prefer this definition because it allows them to determine the meaning of “Indian-ness” in their own membership criteria — the right to belong within a Native American tribe. Tribal leaders defend that “disenrollment” is meant to correct tribal rolls and protect the integrity of the tribe. Some analysts criticize the federal government’s role in this, even in a limited way setting certain conditions on the nature of membership standards. By the same token, one day, the whole thing will be turned on Native Americans having set their own precedence in the court system. Hidden behind that justifiable claim is that they are politically and economically motivated overshadowing a legal ethnic cleansing in my view.

We have lawyers circumventing the law on blood. Imagine that. Today, blood is used to save lives, but Indian leaders are using it for the wrong reason. We’ve known federal abuse equivalent to the “one-drop rule” of African Americans, but they’re not doing what we’re doing about blood heritance. Those tribes that adopted more European-American ways believe our traditional system of government is obsolete when it is better for our culture. We do not disclaim like we have been disclaimed to be less than human in American history.

Where and why did “blood quantum law” come into being? In 1705 the Colony of Virginia adopted a law about Natives and persons of one-half or more Native ancestry to mean having “inferior blood,” also called “racism.” The concept of blood quantum was to limit Indian civil rights, clearing the way to steal land.

Fast-forward to a new era after all the land was taken and privatized. Indians were herded into reservation lands and blood quantum became widely used by the U.S. government under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 — declaring one to be an “official Indian.” From that, the federal government is putting us in an exigent (urgent need to demand) situation with the full knowledge of terminating all Native Americans by “disenrollment” legally. Someday, the American Indian blood will thin out so much — as is happening in Oklahoma and other eastern states — that states will no longer recognize Native American tribes.

Hypothetically, science can claim there is no Native blood in a Native American person through DNA testing from so much interracial marriages (ancestryDNA.com). There will be a loss of people, culture and ancestral land, and the states can proclaim all reservation lands to be under their jurisdiction.

Which is worse, be hauled away from your country as slaves or have your country taken away from underneath you while you still live on it? Before it gets out of hand, this problem must be resolved by addressing a change of discourse on blood quantum among all Native tribes. The national Native American Bar Association must declare it “immoral and unethical” for any lawyer to help tribes remove people from their rolls without an adequate process to address the rights of individuals. The question of who is “more” or “most” Indian, “disenrollment” immortalizes historical trauma as a “colonial shrine” resulting in suicide, homicide, domestic violence, child abuse and alcoholism, as well as other social problems for not belonging. There is no integrity in that and the true meaning of “sovereignty” doesn’t work this way.

Once upon a time, so much emphasis was put on how different we were and raped, dehumanized, killed, still destroying our cultures, and giving a satisfaction for a wrong never understood. For whatever reason given, it cannot be fathomed by any logical means to make any sense. A question need not be asked: Why?

Lastly, I place a lot of hope in what Vanessa Leonard from the University of New Mexico said (we have a solution for that), “We call it k’e.” The young generation has their work cut out.

Teddy Begay
Kayenta, Ariz.

Recommending a different toughness

Krista Allen’s “A day of mourning” in the Nov. 30 issue of your newspaper caught my eye. I bought the paper at a gas station while traveling home from Arizona. It was the first time I had been to your homeland, and I was struck with the stark beauty on every side as I drove. The physical and mental toughness required to make a living in arid, high altitude country awes me. However, there is a different kind of toughness I would like to recommend to the people of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

As a person of Mennonite descent, I understand reluctance to engage in the kind of battle I recommend. It is difficult to put one’s deepest beliefs aside in order to win points against an opponent who understands nothing of that culture. In the case of the border wall, however, I believe everyone involved must do what is necessary to stop this insane project. Everyone knows the proposed wall will do little to stop illegal immigration into the United States. Even President Trump must at some level realize it is largely symbolic. We must all point out vociferously that this is a needlessly expensive symbol. There are more effective ways to spend tax dollars.

A border wall symbolizes only failure. Failure of Mexico to create a homeland where her people are safe and prosperous. Failure of the United States to create an economy not dependent on cheap immigrant labor. Failure of both countries to engage in productive dialogue. Failure of individuals and institutions on both sides of the border to dig out the roots of drug trafficking, gangs, corruption, and exploitation of vulnerable people. Do we really want to impoverish our people to build an enormous and expensive monument to our personal, familial, and governmental failures?

Let us not waste time plowing old ground as was done in the Thanksgiving meeting cited in Allen’s article. Until Native people push the right buttons, they can only suffer further losses. To push the right buttons, one must find out who has the power to effect change, then make a logical and persuasive argument to that person. Prove to that person that what Native peoples desire is a win/win for all concerned.

Ophelia Rivas states it is difficult to translate into the O’odham language what building the wall entails. She and others of her people must take into account that it is also difficult for non-Natives to understand her culture. A non-Native will not believe that the elders in her community died because of the border barrier that was erected on their lands. The non-Native will say the elders died because they were old. Thus her argument is self-defeating. Non-Natives value change and adaptation. It is the world they live in and cherish because it is what creates wealth and security for them.

Natives have a different value system, one which non-Natives could learn much from. But Natives must learn to communicate those values in language non-Natives can understand and see worth in. The saga of persecution of Native peoples means nothing to non-Natives because it does not create contemporary solutions to the issues that divide the two. It does not help to continually bring up past tragedy because non-Natives believe historical events, while tragic, have little bearing on the present. What would be helpful is to present a set of proposed solutions different from and better than what narrow-minded bureaucrats and government leaders propose. Point out the weaknesses of their plans and the disastrous consequences of proceeding with building the wall. Prod them to find a better way to solve problems which do not have their origin in the Tohono O’odham, but which nevertheless sweep them into its harmful field of consequences.

The wall is a terrible waste of time, natural resources and tax dollars. It will be an ecological disaster along its entire length. It will have to be removed eventually, at even greater cost than what it will take to build it, once the terrible results it will entail become apparent. I encourage the Tohono O’odham people to take the lead in rallying all opponents of the wall into an effective lobby that can talk the talk in dealing with Washington in words its leaders understand.

As an aside to the resisters, I shall add that Thanksgiving does not mean to most Americans what they believe it to represent. Most of us do not even consider the pilgrims and the Wampanoag when we sit down with our families to enjoy a celebratory dinner. We gather to give thanks to God for the blessings of the recent harvest and past year. We enjoy being with family and planning for the future. We hold the new babies and admire the progress the youngsters in our families have made. We mourn for those who will never sit at our Thanksgiving table again.

Certainly, Native people do much the same when they gather with their families, whatever the event is that brings them together. We may not all relish frybread and mutton, but we do all value family and tradition, whatever form tradition takes. Perhaps we can find some common ground in that, at least.

My ancestors came to these shores long after colonial times. They were escaping persecutions in their homelands, so I can sympathize with the dilemma of the Native. My Mennonite ancestors were hounded from one end of Europe to the other for centuries because of their religious beliefs, and were even persecuted once they emigrated to Canada and the United States. They did indeed farm lands that had once belonged to the Sioux and other Natives. But their lands had been taken from them in Europe. I do not know how to assuage the wrongs Native people suffered any more than I know how to right the harms my ancestors suffered. But I do know that finger pointing and deliberately misrepresenting non-Native culture, as the resisters do, is no more helpful than when non-Natives engage in such hurtful behavior.

My children attended schools where they, as whites, were a minority among the mix of blacks, Hispanos, Pacific Islanders, and various Asian groups. They were often persecuted simply for being white. Had they ever lashed out at their persecutors for being of whatever ethnicity they were, my children would have been severely disciplined at home. Our kids instead reached out and befriended youngsters of every background. It made them better people and more aware of the issues facing minorities, no matter their color.

My plea to all Native people is to be proud of who they are. But do not withdraw into a shell of self-pity or take strength from the wrongs of the past. Engage with the present. Wrestle with it — intelligently and effectively. Find ways to reach those in power in productive ways that will secure security and peace for all. Believe that there is reason in the opponent, and touch his mind to convince him. Work with non-Natives to achieve everyone’s goals. Never give up.

Heather Miller
Provo, Utah

Land status story left out colonialism

In her story on Navajo land statuses, Cindy Yurth fails to account for colonialism to understand land problems in the Navajo Nation (“Understanding land on the Nation,” Nov. 30, 2017). Instead, she relies on dated descriptions of Navajo people as “nomadic” and alludes that federal policy was concerned only about the general welfare of the Navajo people. She talks about allotment land, but does not acknowledge that a central motivation in privatizing Native lands was to dispossess us of our territories.

The General Allotment Act decimated Native land claims, especially among the tribes of the Great Plains. It was also meant to open up indigenous lands for the settlement of non-Native populations — a crucial point Yurth fails to mention (or that she is part of this settler population). Fixing “nomadic” people into place was a cheap rhetorical cover to justify theft. In the Navajo Nation, allotments were meant to give non-Natives power over Natives, such as allotments for the railroad, trading posts, or religious missions. This guaranteed property rights to settlers and was backed by violence. Today we are left to deal with this injustice. The least we could do is to acknowledge this history in our tribal newspaper.

Andrew Curley
Chapel Hill, N.C.

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