Thursday, March 28, 2024

50 Years Ago: The way it really was back in the 1960s

If you are over 70 and lived on or near the Navajo Reservation in the 1960s, you probably remember vividly the turmoil that occurred during the first administration of Raymond Nakai’s two-term administration, which ran from about March 1963 to March 1967.

Up until that time, it was called the greatest period of turmoil in modern tribal history and while readers of the Navajo Times seemed to be fascinated by the fight between Nakai and members of the Old Guard who supported the former tribal chairman, Paul Jones, anyone who lived through that time would tell you that a lot of tribal members wondered whether the tribal government would survive.

In fact, tribal government officials would say that there were times when they fully expected the Bureau of Indian Affairs to say enough is enough and take over the running of the tribe. The BIA never did but there were rumors that BIA officials were considering that at various times during Nakai’s first administration.

That fight between Nakai and the Old Guard and the one between Nakai and Norman Littell, the tribe’s general counsel, got so bitter that it caused lawsuits and threats and a lot of behind-the-scene maneuvering to weaken the other’s opponents. It consumed a lot of time on both sides and a lot of money was wasted, not only through the filing of the lawsuits, but in cutbacks to services because they had the support of one group or the other.

The Navajo Times played a minor role in these fights as both sides tried to control the paper to try and get the support of the Navajo voter. In the 1970s, when Chet Macrorie came back to run the Times under Peter MacDonald, he often talked of his first years as managing editor of the paper (1963 to 1964) and the struggles he had to face to put out a paper that was fair to both sides.

He admitted that the people, including himself, who put out the Times in its early years weren’t equipped to handle the pressure that was put on them. The paper, he said, was too young, too dependent on the tribal council and the tribal government for funding and not strong enough to withstand the pressures that were put on the paper week by week.

Macrorie would eventually resign. His successor, Marshall Tome, would resign publicly at least twice and probably more than that behind closed doors.

There were a lot of things that the Times should have said or stories that should have been printed, Macrorie said, that weren’t.

A good example of this can be seen in the letters to the editor that were printed during the paper’s first four years or so of existence.

The paper would get letters almost weekly from people who wanted to blast one side or the other for the way they were behaving and the fact that their behavior was destroying the image of the tribal government, making it look like the ones that ruled in Africa and other remote places.

With only a couple of exceptions, none of these found their way into print. Attacking the members of the tribal council or Nakai would have resulted, said Macrorie, with one side or the other trying to shut down the paper and Macrorie felt at the time they could have succeeded – the paper was that weak.

He would justify later in life the steps he took to preserve the paper’s funding, saying basically that it was more important to get the fundingÊthan it was to take any kind of major stand to explain to the Navajo people what really was going on within the tribal government.

But what was amazing, he said, was that even though the Times couldn’t come out and tell the people what was really happening – the petty squabbles, the refusal of either side to give an inch or to compromise and the waste of tribal money and time to continue the bickering and back stabbing – the people, for the most part, knew what was happening.

Looking back now, the reason for that was simple. While the paper was weak, the chapter government system was strong, with hundreds of people regularly attending eachÊmajor chapter meeting. Today, the exact opposite is true – the Times is strong enough to print the truth without fear of reprisal and the chapter government is so weak that chapters are having a hard time getting 15 people to show up for the meetings to meet the minimum quorum needed to have an official meeting.

Tribal elders probably remember those days when chapter meetings would last 10 hours or more as chapter members struggled to get the latest information about what was going on in their government. Yes, a lot of it turned out to be nothing more than rumor but people were usually able to ferret out the nugget of truth that existed in almost every rumor.

Nakai realized this which is why he, for the most part, ignored what was written in the Times and concentrated on what was being said in the chapters, sending his staff to every important chapter meeting to make sure the Navajo voters knew what he was doing and what he was having to put up with on their behalf.

And Nakai’s efforts were extremely successful with Nakai supporters greatly outnumbering those in almost every chapter who were anti-Nakai or pro-Old Guard.

In his speeches, the Old Guard – and there were a lot of those, few of which made it into the Times – Nakai would point to a stack of chapter resolutions showing he had the support of the Navajo people.

Macrorie would say later that Nakai would attend numerous chapter meetings a month and he would often say, in Navajo, ÒMy time will come.Ó Macrorie said this indicated to him that Nakai believed that one day victory would be his and he would banish the Old Guard and Littell from any role in the tribal government (which eventually is what happened).

But really what Nakai was doing was sewing the seeds of his 1967 campaign to be re-elected and asking the support of the people in the chapters not only to vote for him but against the leaders of the Old Guard that were still on the council.

He probably couldn’t do that today with the weak chapters and so many tribal members living off the reservation, but back in 1965 and 1966, you could reach a sizable number of tribal voters by just going to chapter meetings in the biggest chapters.

Today, most tribal members have little or no knowledge of Nakai or remember him as the guy who kept losing to Peter MacDonald throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. But back then in the 1960s, he was a force of nature.


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About The Author

Bill Donovan

Bill Donovan wrote about Navajo Nation government and its people since 1971. He joined Navajo Times in 1976, and retired from full-time reporting in 2018 to move to Torrance, Calif., to be near his kids. He continued to write for the Times until his passing in August 2022.

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