Curley’s first two months as speaker features ‘huge amount of work’

One of two parts

TSÉBIGHÁHOODZÁNÍ

She trembled as she sat at her desk inside the Council Chamber Jan. 23.

Delegate Crystalyne Curley looked up and saw her desktop reminder plaque reading, “Be strong and courageous,” from Joshua in the Bible. She knew, if elected that day, she would hold a variety of powers over the 25th Navajo Nation Council.

Delegate Danny Simpson had nominated the first-time delegate for speaker of the Council during the Winter Council Session.

It’s been more than two months that Curley, 37, has been speaker. She is ceremonially the highest-ranking legislative official in the Navajo government and the first Diné woman to do so. She’s Tséńjíkiní and born for Tó’aheedlíinii. Her maternal grandfather is Kiyaa’áanii, and her paternal grandfather is Dził T’áádi Kiyaa’áanii.

“There’s a lot of things that I learned within that time frame, both internally and externally,” Curley said in an interview with the Navajo Times. “The work is tremendous. I took that step spiritually and mentally and physically to challenge myself; to be prepared.

“And it’s implementing my mentality, my values and I think that’s important of being a speaker, is using how I grew up and how I went throughout my whole lifetime as guiding my decision-making process,” she said. “And how I stand up priorities and how I look at structuring the Legislative Branch. What are some of the visions that I see for the branch itself as a whole.”

Curley says her office serves as the hub for the administrative functions of the Council and the branch departments.

“We’ve been working nonstop, almost every day looking at internal policies, and how it’s structured,” she explained. “Coming from the Executive (Branch) side, now to Legislative, there’s a huge amount of work that needs to be done, especially internally.”

Curley said a majority of the Council delegates are new, 16 of which are new and more than half have never served in tribal government nor been employed by the tribe.

“They’ve never been part of any of the branches,” Curley explained. “So, just helping them getting them orientated. So, a lot of the time, the standing committees––even the Council as a whole, we’ve been hosting a lot of work sessions and orientations and lengthy reports.

“Naabik’íyáti has been lasting over 10 hours because of the amount of knowledge that is needed fostering, nurturing the new Council delegates,” she said. “So, that’s been our priority for these short coming months. I just have high confidence that they’ll catch up to speed. It’s still ongoing.”

Within the two months she took office, Curley, who has a master’s in public administration, and her staff learned that there were no plans of operation for the speaker’s office. One of the things that guides an administrator is a mission statement or a plan that they go by.

“So, there’s no mission statement,” she said. “I don’t know how previous speakerships have guided their direction––administratively. Policy work, that has its own path, but administratively, it’s still a gray area.

“So, I’m trying to identify those areas,” she said. “We’re in a drafting stage of a plan of operation. We do have a draft and creating that mission statement as a whole of what the Office of the Speaker/Legislative Services––that vision, that mission.”

Curley said that’s going to be a big workload in the second quarter as speaker.

Another issue is Council’s information technology and network. Curley said she and her staff have been meeting with the tribe’s IT department.
“The last upgrade the Council has gotten was back in 2009, so it’s been in little stages––equipment here, work there,” she said. “So, we’re planning to upgrade the whole campus. That’s a whole monster within itself.”

Curley said one will not catch Wi-Fi after entering her office. She must use a hotspot to get online.

“A lot of our people are using web/apps or social media to get a lot of the information, but we have this huge speedbump,” she said. “It’s being practiced right now. Before, videos would be livestreamed through the pandemic. But the amount of information that we’re getting out, our network is pushing back because it can’t handle that much web traffic. We don’t have that memory base.”

Curley said that hinders updating the speaker’s website updated daily with communication.

“Those are just some of the internal goals that we have,” she added.

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