50 Years Ago: Hearings held to confirm Bennett as commissioner on Indian Affairs

Of course, no one in Congress seriously considered granting the Navajo Tribe’s request but in hindsight, one had to wonder why the council even made the request.

Congress was planning to start holding hearings on April 1 on the confirmation of Robert Bennett as the new commissioner on Indian Affairs.

But on March 26, almost a week before the hearings were supposed to begin, the members of the Navajo Tribal Council voted, 70-0, to ask Congressional leaders to postpone the hearings.

Even Annie Wauneka, probably the most well known of the members of the council to Congressional leaders, made a personal appeal to Congressional leaders to postpone the hearings for a week or two.

In a telegram to Sen. Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.), Wauneka said the reason she was making the request was so that the tribe would be able to send representatives to the hearing.

Metcalf responded by saying that members of the committee had made arrangements to be at the hearings and it would be unfair to them to postpone it and require them to find time later to attend the hearing.

He also pointed out that the Navajo government knew of these hearings for several weeks and should have made arrangements to have their representatives at the event.

But the Navajo Times questioned whether the tribe was being totally truthful to Congressional leaders.

It wasn’t that they didn’t have time to make arrangements to send a delegation but Navajo leaders had no idea what a Navajo response would be if tribal leaders were asked how they felt about the appointment.

The reason was simple. Navajo officials had little information about Bennett’s plans to run the BIA. He had only made general statements of how he wanted to help the tribes help their people but as for specifics, little was being said.

The tribe also didn’t have a Washington office at this time – that would come a decade or so in the future.

And it was also evident that internal problems had a lot to do with many council members being concerned.

The tribe’s chairman, Raymond Nakai, had gone on record as saying he supported the appointment and there was fear within the Old Guard who opposed Nakai that if Nakai liked the guy, maybe that wouldn’t be a good thing for members of the Old Guard so what they apparently wanted was more time to figure how just friendly Nakai and Bennett were.

They may have been worried for nothing because shortly after he was confirmed, Bennett was asked about whether he would get involved in internal tribal matters and he immediately replied that he would not, pointing out that no matter whose side he took, the other side would go after him and if he wanted to be effective, he would have to be able to work with all the tribal leaders.

Also this week came a statement from officials for the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority that it was finally getting the organization’s financial situation together.

For as long as anyone could remember, NTUA had been losing money. In fact, according to NTUA officials, it had never come out in the black on any of its annual audits.

As a result, NTUA had lost $264,000 since the enterprise was created in1959 and was in the process of paying it off.

Mac Eddy, NTUA’s general manager, said NTUA was expecting revenue this year of $2.85 million with expenses in the area of $2.5 million. That meant the tribal enterprise would be able to pay off its debt and still have a little left over.

Eddy, who had worked with NTUA since 1963, was only named the enterprise’s general manager the week before and was still waiting for the council’s Advisory Committee to confirm him so there were some who questioned the sincerity of his announcement.

But he was confirmed and NTUA did post a small profit for the year.

And finally, in a story that is bound to have some people amazed about how little elections on the reservation cost 50 years ago, comes a report that Nakai was planning to hold a fundraiser in Shiprock to help him buy time on area radio stations as part of his campaign to be re-elected.

The campaign is holding a dinner honoring Nakai at the Catholic Center in Shiprock and plans to charge $3 a plate.

Nowadays, it isn’t uncommon for campaigns to hold fundraising dinners and charge $100 or more a plate.

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