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50 years ago: Wauneka fights Diné relocation

50 years ago:  Wauneka fights  Diné relocation

The long-brewing land dispute between the Hopis and the Navajos was heating up to a whole new level.

Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall had sent a letter to several Navajo families evicting them from land the Hopis claimed belonged to them.

It was the start of relocation and over the next three decades, would become one of the longest stories covered by the Navajo Times. Between 1966 and 1996,the paper would write hundreds of stories, Navajos would send in hundreds of letters, and Navajo and BIA officials would give hundreds of speeches.

Annie Wauneka, one of the most controversial council delegates during the 1960s and 1970s, decided upon reading in the Times that families would have to move out immediately, that she wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

She gave a speech at the site of one of the Navajo homes pointing out that this family and their ancestors had lived on that site for nearly 100 years and had rights. She told Udall he was breaking a promise made to Navajo leaders the previous April that he would give Navajos reasonable notice before any evictions occurred.

She said she found it very odd that this order would come just two weeks before tribal elections were going to be held.

She also suggested that Udall’s decision to go ahead with the evictions stemmed from the decision by the Navajo Tribal Council to hire attorneys to fight the eviction and the Navajos’ attempt to enact a land exchange that would allow the Navajo families to stay on their land.

Stop trying to take over the council, she said, and allow the two tribes to come to a peaceful settlement of the problem.

Wauneka’s plea apparently worked because a week later, Udall did agree to a temporary halt but it turned out only to be a short delay.

Speaking of the election, The Navajo Times reported that the race between the tribe’s incumbent chairman, Raymond Nakai, and his challenger, Sam Billison, was expected to be close.

How close? Just weeks before the election, the paper was saying that it conducted a survey and found Nakai slightly ahead with 7 percent of the voters undecided. The paper gave no information on how the survey was conducted, how many people were surveyed or who was surveyed.

“Both candidates are claiming victory in advance,” the paper reported, adding that Nakai seems to have peaked early but then had a new surge of support when he came in with promises of unlimited sheep for livestock growers.

The paper said Nakai appeared to be strongest in the Shiprock and Kayenta areas while Billison’s strength seemed to be in the Checkerboard and Tuba City areas.

Everyone knew by now that Nakai’s main support in his first election was the Native American Church and that he was expected to get as many as 5,000 votes from members of that group in the 1966 election. But Billison, when interviewed on this subject, said many NAC leaders had pledged him their support and he expected to get more NAC votes than Nakai.

The voter registration was at a record level of 35,750 and tribal officials expected that as many as 32,000 would come out to vote because Navajo voters either loved or hated Nakai.

In non-election news, the Navajo Tribe this week 50 years ago honored a VISTA volunteer for saving the life of a Navajo boy the previous September.

Jeffrey Smedberg, who was a VISTA volunteer in Burnham, was celebrating the end of his tour on the reservation with other VISTA volunteers at Jackson Lake south of Farmington.

According to the Times, he was sitting on the banks of the lake watching people swim “when he saw Gilbert Yazzie, 16, go down about 100 feet from the bank.”

He immediately dove into the water and swam to where he saw the boy go under. The paper said that the lake was about 14 feet deep at that point and Smedberg had to dive three times before he found Yazzie.

Once he got him to the shore, he began administering artificial respiration, the Times said, adding that Yazzie was still unconscious when he was transported to the San Juan Hospital where he remained in a coma for 16 hours.

The youth would make a full recovery and Smedberg was praised for being observant and taking quick action first to rescue Yazzie and then to do what was necessary to keep him alive until professional medical personnel arrived.

Nakai praised him, pointing out that every year about six Navajos, both youth and adults, die because so few Navajos are taught to swim.

He urged schools on the reservation to take steps to remedy this as well as to teach high school students how to do CPR and other first aid techniques that would help save them and others.


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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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