50 Years Ago: Goodluck: ‘As long as there are big Navajos, there will be little Navajos’

So how did the Navajo Times change after Marshall Tome stepped down as editor and turned over the reigns to Leslie Goodluck, the paper’s acting editor?

Any frequent reader of the Times during the summer of 1965 probably noticed some significant changes in the paper, some good and some, well, that were decidedly a different approach to covering the news on the Navajo Reservation.

For example, one early article on the front page during Goodluck’s first three weeks as editor was this whimsical article about “Norman Kay Bowman,” the seven week-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Bowman. Az usual, during its early years, the Times, as did many other papers in the country, would refer to women in news articles using the name of their husband, ignoring the fact that they had first names of their own.

The article said the paper, in an exclusive interview, talked to Bowman who stated “she has not made up her mind whether to enter the Rodeo Queen contest or the “Miss Navajo” contest at the 37th annual Navajo tribal fair to be held in Window Rock in 1983.

Now this kind of article could be found in a paper edited by Tome in his Smoke Puffs column because everyone knew not to take things in his column too seriously but it would never be printed as a front page article because it violated certain ethical journalistic standards that Tome observed.

Readers, however, didn’t seem to mind and Goodluck would receive a number of compliments for playing up photos bigger than Tome did. Some people commented as well that the pictures seemed to be of better quality but whether this was due to better selection or the fact that the paper was taking more time toning the photographs is not known.

She also put photos in the paper to get readers thinking about the old days.

For instance, one photo showed Mr. and Mrs. Mike Smith of Rehoboth hand-in-hand walking in front of the Window Rock landmark. The photo caption pointed out that Mrs. Smith is the daughter of “Bela Guddy,” who was an Indian scout in 1877.

“Mr. Smith claims to be 107 years old and his wife is 85 years old.”

That photo got a lot of attention over the summer of 1965 because it related a debate over whether Mike smith was the oldest living Navajo at that time. Other claimed to be a little older but the problem in settling this dispute, said the Times, was an inability to find any documented evidence except for the census records kept by the Franciscans since 1900 and those figures relayed heavily on information given to the priests by the people themselves so this was not indisputable.

The paper also began filling up the smoke Puffs column with information given to the paper’s readers about people who would just stop by the paper and say hello.

For example: this report in one column:

“And speaking of visitors, John Zollinger of the Gallup Independent was in Window Rock thursday and was kind enough to stop by the office of the Navajo Times and say “Hello.”

Another thing that was noticed and this was a negative thing to many Navajo Times readers was that there was less Navajo government news in the paper and more photos with long cutlines just explaining who was in the photo.

In many cases, the reason for the photo was just in Window Rock and were available to have their photo taken and while this may have made people who wanted less governmental news and more people or community oriented stories in the paper, it was definitely a different approach to covering the news on the Navajo Reservation.

One advantage of this, however, was that members of the Navajo Tribal Council did not have to worry, as they did under Tome, that there would be some controversial article about the council’s fight with Navajo tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai in the paper.

Still, according to circulation figures printed in the paper in late 1965, the changes apparently had no effect on the circulation since the paper continued to say subscriptions were on the increase.

But this did not mean there was no government news. The paper would report what the Council did at its meetings but there would be no articles going into any depth of what these resolutions meant for the Navajo people or the future of the tribe.

Tucked away in a long story about news from the Interior Department Secretary Stewart Udall discussed something that was rarely discussed in Navajo society: Birth control.

Udall said he was surprised to learn that the Indian Health service had been providing birth control information to Indians since 1955 and contraceptives to indians for several years.

While he was happy to see IHS make the efforts, he said the Interior Department is going “to proceed in a very systematic way and develop programs of our own in this field.”

He did not elaborate any further on this subject, according to the Times.

A few days later, however, he issued a memorandum on: Availability of Family Planning services, which Goodluck said meant, in plain English, “Birth Control for Indians.”

The memo became quite controversial in Indian Country for this paragraph:
“In the past, on some Indian reservations, inadequate education, welfare or medical services have deprived residents of the area of birth control and family planning advice, services that are generally available to other people in major metropolitan communities.

“(And the Times put this in capital letter) IN SOME OF THESE AREAS, THE AVAILABLE NATURAL RESOURCES WILL NOT BE ADEQUATE IN FUTURE YEARS UNLESS EXISTING POPULATION GROWTH RATES DECLINE.”

In other words, Udall was apparently saying, according to the Times, that if the Indian population continued to have high birth rates, the Indian people would suffer because there would not be as much available for future generations.

Goodluck said: “Washington has told us when and how to do a lot of things in the past – but we seriously doubt if they are gong to be able to tell us when not to, or how not to, make babies. As long as there are big Navajos, there are going to be little Navajos.”

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