Letters: The story of my ‘pink’ dog, Cubbie

Sorry, sorry, Cindy Yurth and Ravonelle Yazzie, for not reading your out-of-this-world full-page coverage of the 2017 Rez Dog Extravaganza: “Every dog’s a king,” Navajo Times, on Oct. 26, 2017.

It is May 2 and still tends to snow in Flagstaff. While I was starting a fire using an old copy of the Navajo Times this morning I noticed the dog article. I felt so stupid for not having read all the pages on Oct. 26, 2017.

In July 2008, my wife and I took a couple of new missionary partners to the old Gadiiahi Mission Site at Hard Rock. We spent two days there and as we started to leave, I finally noticed the dog, which had attached itself to me for two days.

Before we left I looked inside our camper trailer for a plastic bag with which I could pick up the feces our little Chihuahua had dropped that morning. When I returned with the bag, the feces were not there any longer, but I noticed the dog, which had been shadowing me for two days, walking away.

My wife said she just might be a hairless dog.

I had noticed earlier that each of her eyes were of different colors (termed “cracked eyes” by dog trainers). I asked the people at the mission site if she belonged to anyone. I was told, “No, she had been hanging around the mission location for several weeks.” I told my wife and friends that I simply could not leave her at Hard Rock.

So, I decided to give her a quick wash and examined her ears. As a pathogenic microbiologist/cell biologist I found four potentially pathogenic ticks in her ears and many skin mites. I removed the four ticks. When she defecated, I noticed several mature tapeworms.

It was early July and the Chicago Cubs had not won a World Series since 1908 — 100 years before! On that particular day the Cubs were in first place in their National League division, so I named my new pink dog “Cubbie.” I had been a Cubs fan since 1952.

On our way home, when we stopped to give her a potty break, she refused to leave our SUV. This told us that she had been abandoned somewhere and she was simply not going to take another chance.

As soon as we got home to Flagstaff, we took her to our vet. My wife mentioned to him that we had a hairless dog with skin mites and mature tapeworms. The vet just shook his head and said that she was severely malnourished and would have to come back later to be neutered. So, he gave Cubbie the necessary shots. After the second visit Cubbie became my running partner, as I was busy running daily 10Ks on my north Highway 89 route near our home.

Cubbie by then was a beautiful white, large-black-spotted Australian Shepherd. Cubbie still loves to run 10 years later and I have been hiking the Grand Canyon (114 trips to the Colorado River in five and a half years), including 18 rim-to-rims, seven rim-to-rim-to-rims. At Phantom Ranch I am known as the “Crazy Navajo.”

Several years ago I saw an ad for the Rez Dog Extravaganza in the Navajo Times. I learned it was going to happen at Crownpoint. Cubbie and I left early on a Saturday to be there on time. Cubbie won first place in the “Prettiest Eyes” category and second place in the obedient school. Cubbie turned her head after 10 seconds in the 15-second time period. The winner was stone-faced for over 20 seconds.

Finally, kudos to Mary Vitt (organizer of Rez Dog) for her reinventing the Rez Dog Extravaganza. Our rez dogs’ needs are important.

Tacheeni Scott
Flagstaff, Ariz.

Let us look within for solutions

How real is economic distress within the Four Sacred Mountains? Everyday life tells us that we are woefully mired in poor economy, hardship, and economic distress.

If we would but look beyond anecdotal journalistic reports, data and statistics, there is a landscape of hardship everywhere. Within every family, loss of jobs, affordable health care, wage earners struggling to make ends meet, family, heritage language, livestock, transportation and housing issues, stifled deliberative democracy, the list goes on. Much like other indigenous cultures in transformation globally, the deep paradox persists of why — despite years of social, economic, and fiscal intervention — there are still unconscionable pockets of searing life-conditions within our homeland that need urgent attention for lasting solutions.

The ideological cover of profiteering from these local debilitating life conditions of a certain sociodemographic and cultural-language population are too obvious to cover.

If there is potential lesson from the lagging census reports, these harsh socioeconomic barometers on ground level life-conditions will not abate with more of the same. The Navajo Nation economic stalling out progress over the years heavily characterized by external dependency needs urgent critical attention.

Everyday life tells us that economic disparity and skewed income concentration are driven by work incentives. Incentives are the measure, the engine of income disparity and economic growth.

Where there are broadly shared payouts by buying shares in a business venture, ROI (returns-on-investment), shared ownership, this is the incentive for broadly shared prosperity.

Business ventures are the new capital equivalent to land as property for relief of distressed economy. Despite reassurances that trickle-down economic tide will lift all boats, with tax breaks for the wealthy, there is this alarming rising inequality nationally with a U-shaped economy evolving where the rich get richer, the poorer become poorer, and the middle class reduced to zero-sum economics where you gain or lose at the expense of another.

If you are out of work, someone else has gained at your expense in today’s rapidly evolving globalized tech and knowledge-based economy, a Pareto-suboptimal economic outcome.

Someone somewhere near and far in concentrated affluence is making a good life at the expense of our localized deep economic distress. It makes little sense however to focus on what has become a given — our widespread economic distress, which is something like polishing brittle, discolored varnish, on a piece of board weather beaten over and over.

It makes more sense to shift focus to a critical function where profiteering is removed from the life well-lived equation. Are we not well past time to flip the equation toward an economic reform climate fueled by interdisciplinary network of extraordinary people equally with the aid of philanthropists, foundations, universities, politicians, political interest groups, private citizens, and government officials to heighten regional and national awareness on concentrated economic distress within the Four Sacred Mountains?

More importantly, ordinary citizens with elected leaders will have to mobilize these powerful resources to bear on the localized socioeconomic issues and challenges seemingly endemic to our homeland.

Our Navajo Nation Council and leadership will have to invest, allocate more funds, into this interdisciplinary network of citizens to bring back to our homeland as our Navajo and all other Native scientists, legal scholars, statisticians, economists, social scientists, engineers, doctors, scholars, lawyers to bear on the sociodemographic issues at hand, to take the lead to abate our ground-level widespread economic distress for our current and future generations.

Returning to one’s homeland, to one’s people for harmony and completeness, are inherent in our sacred Blessing Way songs and prayers. In economics, there are always worrisome flashpoints with continued spending pattern on “kicking the can down the road”, especially with highly unpredictable volatile revenues and/or going to the same well over and over.

Honoring our ancestors’ proverbial wisdom, “T’aa whi ajiit’ego t’eiya la’ hoot’i, (if it’s to be, it’s up to me), lasting solutions to imperiled communities, the challenging searing socioeconomic conditions within the Four Sacred Mountains can only come from within, not always from afar with more of the same.

Harold G. Begay
To’Nanees’ Dizi, Ariz.

People should sue IHS, GIMC

The system is broken at IHS Dental. Two things are needed to fix it. GIMC Dental Director told me that New Mexico Medicaid pays per the visit and not by the procedure; therefore I am to spread out the treatment into as many appointments as possible.

Having my doubts on this, I called New Mexico Medicaid who completely contradicted him. The reason for his lies is that multiple patient visits look better on our statistics. The downside is that patient care suffers. To the bureaucrats numbers are what matter. To me, patient care is what matters.

In other words the bureaucrats are milking the system, mismanaging government funds, and they abuse their patients to achieve this. The only way this will be fixed, the only way change will occur, is when people begin suing GIMC and the IHS for mistreatment and abuse, for malpractice, and for mismanagement of government funds.

To accomplish real change, many people need to start suing for cause. When GIMC failed joint accreditation inspections due to two people needlessly dying which was due to the nursing shortage, IHS went into high gear to prevent lawsuits. They made some minor changes, hired a new CEO, and said all was fixed. It wasn’t.

A Band-Aid on a festering wound only allows the wound to continue to fester. They fixed nothing, but that was not their goal. Their goal was to make the people believe the problem had been fixed so as to avoid litigation for criminal negligence.

My issue with this sorry state of affairs is that for several years they have known of the nursing shortage and they chose to do nothing. My question then: How many more Native Americans need to die before real change occurs?

I truly wish there were alternatives to lawsuits, but I do not see any. The bureaucrats are too well entrenched within their incompetence, to allow real change to happen. Upon initiation of litigation, the first to go must be the bureaucrats and the freeloaders.

My wife’s hospital went into bankruptcy when they lost their government handouts, because the administration was incompetent. When LifePoint Healthcare bought the hospital, they restructured. They took providers off of payroll and put them on production, and so Maria’s income increased by more than $100,000 per year.

The lazy providers took a cut in pay. The same must be done at GIMC and the IHS. Providers need to have a basic salary with the option of pure production when their production levels increase. Lazy providers will never see more than this basic salary, but others will see their incomes double. In this regard I am willing to put my money where my mouth is. Have IHS set up a satellite office even here in Gallup, to perform prosthodontics (partial and complete dentures, dental implants, full-mouth rehabilitations), and set up an in-house lab. I will donate all my equipment and materials (nearly $40,000 worth), and then employ lab technicians as well as clinical staff.

In return, I am willing to be paid on the basis of production only, meaning if I do not work, I do not get paid — this is how it is done in the private sector.

David McGuire
Gallup, N.M.

Election-year politics in full swing

Spring is in the air and tribal politics has sprung for the 2018 tribal election. Please allow me to offer a few comments on these concerns and other related matters.

Many of us are wondering if the tribal election will be fair, free of legal battle and/or will it be another chaotic one like 2014? Due to the last election, some are reluctant to register to vote.

Will the current Begaye/Nez administration put on a fight to serve their term until May 2019? One campaign by Dineh Benally already kicked off in full gear on April 29, 2018, at the Shiprock Chapter House. His platform is focusing on improving health care service compatible to a private medical institution for the Navajo people. Poor health care service provided the Indian Health Service is nothing new and has pre-existed for many decades.

Adequate health care for all the Navajo people is a good thing and it is possible through the PL 93-638 concept. All current IHS are providing good wages to its employees, whether qualified or not. A complete turnaround is long overdue — and keep dirty politics out of it. The Benally supporters are already sounding off criticism that another presidential hopeful is returning to the reservation in time for the 2018 election.

The criticism is clearly aimed at Christopher Deschene, who left the reservation for another job in Washington, D.C., shortly after the 2014 election. Forgive the gentleman, as the Bible teaches us.

Will we have more disgruntled losers filing for grievances for their own personal benefit after the primary election? I sure hope not because it’s very costly to the voters. I urge all candidates to exercise being a good sport.

The other issue of concern is the monkey wrench thrown in last week about the daughter of President Russell Begaye. It was reported she had committed a Driving While Intoxicated offense on Interstate 17 near Phoenix. The degree and nature of this issue will hover over the Begaye/Nez ticket.

And there will be others entering the race solely to showcase their appearance to gain popularity and recognition. The Navajo people do not deserve those kind.

I urge the voters to listen carefully to the candidates and cast their vote for those who are fully committed and determined to make serious changes to benefit the people, not themselves. How well are the tribal election laws written or modified? Are they fair and just? Does it address conflict of interest and eliminate husband and wife to serve as elected chapter officials or Council delegates? There are many that serve in these capacities and it’s pure conflict of interest.

The one important matter I don’t overlook is the status of the chief of police who was hired two years ago and getting bashed for not being progressive. I say let the police chief do his job without political interference. He’s accomplished a lot in the short time span.

Finally, I would like to state these issues and concerns are from own perspective. I have been labeled as bad-mouthing in the media by my letters to the editor and not trying to enter the political arena. My true answer is I simply don’t know how to lie and cheat to qualify to be a politician.

Look at President Donald Trump who is reported to have lied more than 3,100 times since he took the oath of office, including the hush payment in the Stormy Daniels case. As always thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address these issues of concern and other related matters.

Vern Charleston
Farmington, N.M.

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