Former NHA head moves to the mesas
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth A worker installs a tile mat for a wood stove in a remodeled traditional house on the Hopi reservation.
POLACCA, Ariz.
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth
A worker installs a tile mat for a wood stove in a remodeled traditional house on the Hopi reservation.
When the Hopi Tribal Housing Authority was created 50 years ago, it probably never envisioned having a Navajo director.
And former NHA head Chester Carl never dreamed he would be working for the Hopi; in fact, before he started working for NHA in 1991 he was an aspiring Olympic racer keeping body and soul together selling camper shells and satellite dishes and silk-screening T-shirts.
But life has more twists and turns than the gnarliest cross-country course, and, six years after being forced out of the NHA during the Lodgebuilder bankruptcy scandal (of which, it should be noted, he was acquitted in 2013), Carl is back and anxious to show the Navajo Nation what he’s doing on Hopi.
Whatever you can say about his previous business dealings, Carl has always been known as a problem-solver. He rose through the ranks at NHA by being thrust into a series of terribly run public complexes and turning them around.
That’s good experience, because, on Hopi, the problems abound. If you think it’s hard getting land to build on on Navajo, you should try it on Hopi.
“All the land is owned by the clans,” explained Carl. “I have to go to the clan chief, or his spokesman, and everyone’s talking in Hopi.”
Only members of a clan can live on their clan’s land, and because the Hopis’ ceremonial cycle is wrapped up with farming, everyone wants at least a small farm, and a house close to their farm.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow