Letters | True freedom

True freedom

It is election season, and we in the United States use two criteria to select our leaders. 1) popularity and 2) how much money can they put in our pocket.

This is true for all political parties, at all levels. What an insane way to choose a leader. This process is indicative of a society that is happy to be controlled, a society that has lost its spiritual sense.

When will those who understand, who know what true freedom is, start the movement for humans to regain their spiritual bearing?

Bill Tanner
Brookport, Ill.

Diné, ‘resilient people’

By chance, I started watching Dark Winds recently on Netflix. I was attracted to the series because the locale and the characters were somewhat familiar.

I Googled Dark Winds and looking at reviews, I found the articles in your publication about Navajo reactions to the series. I was pleased to learn that many of the actors actually have Native American heritage. I can’t comment on how well or badly the actors spoke Dine, but I was more concerned about the picture of Navajo life (in 1971) that the series presents. Even though viewers might realize that the series originated from the Tony Hillerman novels and that he was creating a fiction mostly out of his head, some might believe that this is a realistic portrait of the Navajo people. My own experience tells me that this would be unfortunate.

In the summer of 1962, I worked at the BIA substation in Thoreau, New Mexico, and my major project (under the supervision of the local superintendent) was to research the practices (prices of groceries and interest charges on pawn) of the trading posts in the checkerboard area. I had a Navajo interpreter — a marvelous person who could put almost anyone at ease, especially fellow Navajos who might well have wondered why this young white person (perhaps studious-looking) wanted to ask them about their experience at their trading post. We drove around the area, often going to (surplus) food distributions where people gathered because we could interview a number of people at the location. I came to the conclusion that some traders were exacting high payments to keep pawned objects until their Navajo customers would afford to redeem them.

I heard stories about car dealers in Farmington who tried to sell expensive pickup trucks to Navajos without much income. I learned a little about how mining companies would buy the rights for future mining on Navajo families’ properties and make payments into individual Navajo accounts the BIA was supposed to keep track of. I recall that the BIA was later called out by the Secretary of the Interior for making a mess of those accounts, in effect losing serious money for the account holders.

I recall there was a Dutch Reformed Church from Michigan that sent young people out to the area in the summer. Some of their work was intended to be “missionary” work to the Navajos, but I don’t think they had much success. However well-intentioned, their efforts seemed to me to convey an attitude that Native Americans did not have a satisfactory belief system of their own.

I didn’t become friendly with any Navajos except my interpreter, but I don’t recall hearing any stories about violence among them. My sense was that they were a peaceful resilient people who were at times beset by white exploiters. And the episode in Dark Winds about the white-led People of Darkness seemed hokey and unrelated to anything that actually happened.

Elliot Zashin
Merrillville, Ind.