Opinion | To our Navajo Nation leaders

To our Navajo Nation leaders

By Dr. Rosanna Jumbo-Fitch

Editor’s note: Dr. Rosanna Jumbo-Fitch is the former Chinle Chapter president who served from 2020-24. She is a registered Chinle voter. She is Yoo’ó Dine’é and born for Mą’ii Deeshgiizhinii. Her maternal grandfather is Tábąąhá, and her paternal grandfather is Táchii’nii.

The Chinle Chapter received (federal) assistance from the Navajo Nation CHID-ARPA program, where there was an opportunity to provide new homes for our local residents on January 19, 2023. Since, the Chapter has completed rounds of applications, first submitting ten (10) applications in February 2023, and later updating applications in November 2023 to include seventeen (17) applications, based on the allotted budget.

The Chinle Chapter made significant investments to each of the seventeen (17) applicants, hours of administrative support to obtain required documents (driver’s license, Social Security card, Certificate of Indian Blood, birth certificates, family names and history, homesite lease documents, medical records, marriage license, divorce documents, voter’s card, and photos), hours of mandatory meetings with each of the applicants, hours of meeting on a bi-weekly to monthly basis with DCD and CHID-ARPA representatives, paying for additional expenses to meet requirements of CHID-ARPA (homesite lease, surveys, trash/site cleanup, site clearing, and grading, and infrastructure review), and hours of infrastructure planning.

This process of assessments and administrative effort was coordinated between the Chinle Chapter (2020-2-2024 chapter officials, chapter manager, chapter project coordinator, and district grazing representative), the Department of Community Development (division director, department managers, project managers), and CHID-ARPA department (project coordinators and third-party consultant) representatives. I assure you that there was not one person making decisions for this project, it was a team effort with multiple avenues of communication. Chinle Chapter was noted by DCD and CHID-ARPA as going above and beyond in the process.

There were multiple assessments conducted from February 2023 to December 2024, where documents were reviewed by the CHID-ARPA, which were fully compliant, sites were assessed multiple times by CHID-ARPA, Chinle Chapter, and the third-party consultants, which again had no impact on the project, and final housing details were provided and approved for each of the seventeen (17) applicants in November 2024, which was shared with CHID-ARPA for final home preparations (to order the homes). The Chinle Chapter was in final approval stage and scheduling the delivery of each of the seventeen (17) new homes in January 2025 for the sixty-eight (68) family members that applied out of the seventeen (17) applications but were hindered when the newly elected Chinle Chapter leaders were sworn into office in January 2025.

Prior to the projects coming to a sudden halt in January 2025, with no reason or justification, the Chinle Chapter’s seventeen (17) applicants were alarmed. This led to letters being submitted to the Navajo Nation leadership on multiple occasions, where one leader, in particular, was harassing and threatening all of the CHID-ARPA recipients. There were multiple letters sent from September 2024 to January 2025, expressing the seventeen (17) applicants’ concerns, as well as submitting a formal complaint against Chinle Council Delegate Shawna Claw.

To date, there have been no repercussions for her threatening actions toward sixty-eight (68) innocent Chinle residents. It is appalling and embarrassing that our Navajo Nation speaker or the Navajo Nation president has not responded to any of the (68) sixty-eight residents’ concerns, especially when we state that we work for the people and listen to the people.

It is embarrassing that the leaders of the Chinle Chapter do not support housing for their own people. It is embarrassing that they take away homes from our elderly, medically bound, young families, children, and homeless families. Not once, during the last three chapter meetings has there been support mentioned by any Chinle Chapter leadership for any of the seventeen (17) CHID-ARPA recipients, only arguments toward the recipients as they asked for support.

The Chinle Council delegate did nothing but bullied each of the seventeen (17) applicants, advocated that they did not meet the criteria, threatened to change laws at the Council level, and also canceled each of their status with CHID-ARPA and DCD. Since when do Council delegates manage chapter projects? Now each of the seventeen (17) recipients are being asked to re-apply due to hearsay. If there was a concern of fairness or transparency, why weren’t there any questions asked within the two-year process? Why would they have to re-apply? Why is there no division director, no department manager, no ARPA representative, and no Navajo Nation leader speaking up for these seventeen (17) recipients?

If there was a concern from the department manager, why wait two years to address this concern? This shows lack of department transparency, and unprofessionalism, it shows a huge conflict of interests, and it definitely shows that the Navajo Nation is dishonest and unethical in operating a federally funded program (CHID-ARPA).

As mentioned, time and time again, these CHID-ARPA homes are extremely important to each of the (17) applicants because not only did they meet the ARPA requirements of the four categories. Homelessness, burnout, overcrowding, or unlivable situations, they completed the work to earn a new home for their families. They met the requirements presented to them. These homes are important: to the elderly women that are medically bound, to the children who are living with medical conditions, to the young families with no homes, to the multi-generational homes, to those who caught COVID-19, to those who are homeless, to those who have a burnout home, to those that are overcrowded. These families are working families, they have given their time to their community, voted for leaders, and now are requesting your support.

Chinle is a large and central community in the Navajo Nation that has much growth potential, and we are limiting our own people by denying their right to a new home that was federally funded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was not funded by the Navajo Nation.

We need our Navajo Nation’s (leadership) support, whether it is a Navajo Nation speaker, Navajo Nation Council delegate, Navajo Nation president, Navajo Nation vice president, or other local leaders. Their response will either greatly impact these sixty-eight (68) applicants to live positively or not. This is up to the Navajo Nation leadership. The question is now to each of you who represent the Navajo Nation as a whole because if one Council delegate can destroy the lives of sixty-eight (68) residents in her own represented community, how many others will follow this path?

I can personally state that it is negatively affecting each of the sixty-eight (68) residents because we have children (still going to school, with medical conditions), elderly that need daily assistance, or struggling families that are trying to make ends meet already and now we’re taking away a once in a lifetime opportunity that they deserve. They did the work with no questions from the CHID-ARPA department. The Department of Community Development needs to follow the protocols made and honor these homes.

Chinle Chapter was first in line to receive homes as of fall of 2024, now they have been bypassed, and Western Agency already received their CHID-ARPA homes with prior rules and laws on CHID-ARPA. Chinle Chapter followed the same rules and laws and should be allowed to proceed as well.

I ask once again, as a former Chapter president who knows how much it means to truly serve her people, please support the approval of the already approved seventeen (17) CHID-ARPA recipients, deliver their homes, and let the sixty-eight (68) residents live safely within our community. I plead with you to listen to the sixty-eight Navajo people you represent and not the one disturbed leader.

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