AMERICAN SELF-DETERMINATION EVIDENT ON NAVAJO NATION

posted by Michael Chihak

As Americans, we pride ourselves on our spirit of self-determination. We often attribute that spirit to the inheritance of our forebears, whether they were of European stock or of the many generations that inculcated a uniquely American culture in us.

A recent reporting trip to Northern Arizona showed me another source for this spirit – the first Americans. I saw it at Window Rock, capital of the Navajo Nation.

Thousands of years of self-determination by America’s native peoples was stifled by European immigrants settling the country, often using force as an expression of their own self-determination. In the face of it, the Navajos still manifest the spirit in working to modernize their society.

Evidence came from Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, who said that economic development and jobs for the reservation will make the Navajos independent of the federal government, a worthwhile cause by any measure.

Shelly pointed to what he called “western” education for young Navajos as the key. At the same time, he cautioned his people to retain their culture and traditions, a great measure of self-determination in and of itself.

Just before my interview with Shelly, a Navajo couple displayed a clear example of that spirit. The two were selling jewelry on the edge of the plaza honoring Navajo Code Talkers and other war heroes.

They sat in their van making the jewelry, and the man told me he and his wife were there because they couldn’t find work nearby in the fields for which they are trained – he a heavy-equipment operator, she a dialysis technician.

There was no self-pity in his tone, only a straight-forward and factual assertion that this was how they were making a living.

He showed a true spirit of self-determination, one engendered by his ancestors many millennia ago but still carried today on the wind.