Last rights

HRC hosts forums on funerals

WINDOW ROCK

Let’s face it: It’s not the best time to shop.

A loved one has died; you’re devastated, and hardly in the mood to bargain.

Funeral homes know this, and some — not most, but some — will use it to take advantage of you.

Navajos are particularly vulnerable because of the taboo against preparing for one’s death.

“Most Navajo families don’t want to talk about it or think about it,” said Tobi Benali, a Diné carpenter whose Dolores, Colorado-based company, Summit Ridge Wood Design, builds caskets for Native Americans. “Then when the time comes, they don’t know what to do, and they’re easily manipulated.”

Benali completely understands. He himself never wanted to get into the coffin business. After building a casket for his cousin, he got so many requests he went to a medicine man for advice.
“I was reassured that doing this was a way to help my people,” he said. “In the 20 years we’ve been doing this, we’ve helped about 2,500 families all over the country and into Canada.”

That includes building caskets for their loved ones, but he’s also become a funeral consultant of sorts.

So when the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission planned two recent forums on dealing with unethical funeral practices, they invited Benali to sit in.

“I’m really glad they did this,” he said in a telephone interview after the forums. “I only wish they had done it 20 years ago.”

NNHRC Executive Director Leonard Gorman said the commission has for years been thinking about hosting forums on funerals, ever since doing research and finding out car purchases and funerals are the average Navajo family’s biggest expenses, but balked because of the taboos.

“People we talked to about it said, ‘Yii-yah!’” recalled Gorman. “We didn’t think we could get anybody out to a forum on death.”

Then they found out they actually could talk about such things.

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