MacDonald: Council reduction won't change a thing

Navajos who think reducing the Navajo Nation Council to 24 members will change the tribal government are in for a rude awakening.

That's the opinion of former tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald Sr., who talked at length by telephone Monday about the Dec. 15 special election and what it could mean for government reform.

"I don't think the number of delegates in the tribal council is a major problem," MacDonald said.

The real problem, he said, is that since 1938 the tribal government has been structured in such a way that power is concentrated in one body - the council - and until the Navajo people have a chance to form the type of government they want, nothing will change.

It was in 1938 that federal officials in Washington, D.C., were discussing what to do with the Navajo Tribe, he said.

The Indian Reorganization Act had been passed, setting procedures on how tribal governments would operate. But while other tribes accepted this, the Navajos did not and so they kept the council structure that had been set up by the federal Indian commissioner in 1923.

Galvanized by their hatred of federal livestock reductions, Navajos rejected the Indian Reorganization Act, which was intended to help tribes form governments that were democratic but also incorporated individual cultural traditions.

So while most tribes were working out the best form of self-governance for themselves, "there were two or three years that the Navajo Tribe was in limbo," MacDonald said.

Finally, federal officials got the Navajo council to agree to a system that put the council in charge of everything. Future chairmen got only what power the council wanted to give them.

"Chairmen like Paul Jones and Raymond Nakai really had no power," MacDonald said, adding that he faced the same situation when he became chairman in 1971.

Chairmen who went to Washington to speak on behalf of the tribal government had to have council resolutions verifying that they had this authority, he noted.

When the council put MacDonald on leave in 1989 and approved a series of government reforms the following year, one of the things it kept intact was its own power.

At that time, MacDonald said, the council created the president's office separate from the council and gave the president no input into the legislative process except for veto power, which the council can override with a two-thirds vote.

"Reducing the council to 24 or increasing it to 110 won't change that," he said.

No matter what the council size is, the president's power will still be limited, he said.

Navajo voters also need to consider who they are electing to the council, he suggested, because the current leadership isn't sensitive to public opinion.

"We don't elect the kind of leaders we need," MacDonald said. "Today's leaders feel they can do whatever they want without checking to see if this is what the people want.

"Until we start electing good and responsible leadership, we will continue to have problems," he said.

What needs to be done, MacDonald concluded, is to rebuild the tribal government "from the grassroots up."

That doesn't necessarily mean adopting a constitution, as called for in the Indian Reorganization Act, but it does mean finding a mechanism to allow the Navajo people more say in the government that oversees them, he said.

Echoing the mission statement of the 2002 conference on government reorganization, MacDonald said one approach would be for the Navajo people to take a good look at their government, make a list of needed changes, and come up with possible solutions.

One of the recommendations to come out of the conference was reducing the council but that, like its other recommendations, died for lack of action by the Navajo Nation Council.

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