Hunter Gray
2014-04-19 22:32:57 UTC
This, an older post of mine, hasn't been around for about a decade. It describes the rise to power and the reign of Peter MacDonald as Navajo chairman. This was not a high point in Navajo governmental leadership -- but it's an interesting account with many lessons. I posted it the other day on RBB in connection with a productive discussion of the vast and quite culturally intact Navajo Nation -- and the issue of gay rights. It was well received by that discussion list. (I may have also sent this to a very few individuals but I am not certain of that --it was a fast moving discussion! So I am sending it to a few folks, just to make sure.)
I noted in the discussion on RBB that most members of the Navajo Tribal Council, and this would apply to chairpersons as well, have been and are good people (despite few weird things like the "Marriage Act." ) Peter MacDonald was definitely an aberration in Navajoland. (H)
PETER MACDONALD AND THE NAVAJO [DINE'] NATION [HUNTER GRAY 8/27/01]
This is with regard to the letter, by a visiting Scot, in the [Glasgow]
Herald on the Native American situation in the United States -- posted on
this List by Michael Keaney.
The letter, regarding the deplorable condition of Native people in the
United States, with a focus on the sins of Federal Indian policy, the Pine
Ridge tragedy and general border-town racism, etc., is certainly on
target -- with one big exception.
The writer gives the explicit impression that Peter MacDonald, former Navajo
Nation chairman, was framed-up and jailed in a Goldwater plot stemming from
MacDonald's defense of Navajo oil and mineral and related resources.
The reverse is the case.
MacDonald, no Braveheart, spent his long and pervasively corrupt career
selling out Navajo oil and mineral and other resources [and, in that sense,
very much the Dine' people] to some of the biggest corporations in the
world. He was, by far and away, the most consistent of the
Republican-supporting Indian leaders of his period -- and a very strong
Reagan and Goldwater man. Any stress with Goldwater would have stemmed only
from Goldwater's support of the Hopi elected tribal council -- strongly
influenced by Salt Lake City and corporate mineral interests -- in the very
long standing Joint Use Area land dispute between the Hopi and the Navajo
in the Big Mountain area. In this complex matter, traditionalists in both
camps -- i.e., the traditional Hopi council and Navajo religious leaders --
have long sought common ground and mutually satisfactory and peaceful
solutions.
Peter MacDonald formed Navajo OEO in 1965 and used patronage and contacts
made through it to build his electoral political machine -- in the context
of a reservation bigger than the state of West Virginia. At that time
especially, most Navajo did not vote in tribal elections. He became
chairman in 1971 and served until 1982, serving another stint in 1987-1989.
In 1989, he was suspended by the Navajo Tribal Council because of
allegations that he had been deeply involved in bribery stemming from the
the Navajo purchase of the Big Boquillas Ranch in Northwestern Arizona.
Soon after that, several hundred MacDonald supporters made a violent and
abortive effort to overthrow the Navajo tribal government. The effort
failed and, in 1990, MacDonald was charged with bribery in tribal court --
later other Federal offenses were added -- and he served a number of years
in prison. He was pardoned by Bill Clinton in January, 2001.
During the earlier part of his era, increased Federal funding in the general
sense brought some positive things to the Navajo nation. MacDonald, it is
true, fought for a much bigger share of corporate lease royalties vis-a-vis
Navajo oil and mineral and related resources in a long-standing
open-theft-complex where corporate interests, with BIA support, had long
gouged the Navajo and other tribes flagrantly. And he played a major role
in the formation of the Council of Energy Resources Tribes [CERT] to
facilitate this bigger cut of the pie, both in Navajo country and for 20 or
so other tribes. But the MacDonald administration [a classic Richard
Daley-type operation in many, many very sad respects] was swollen with
bureaucracy and blatant corruption and strong-arm tactics. Most of that
stemmed from the multi-faceted MacDonald et al. rip-offs in the broad
context of Navajo oil and mineral and related resources; as well, of
course, as the substantial skimming off from general Federal funding in
other dimensions of the Navajo world.
And Peter MacDonald also allowed the uranium corporations to do essentially
anything they wished in the Navajo Nation -- regardless of the increasingly
obvious lethal effects on miners, community people, land and livestock, air
and water.
A couple of personal observations:
One of my Native father's finest art students at Arizona State College,
Flagstaff [now Northern Arizona University] -- and one of our oldest family
friends -- was the late Ned A. Hatathli [or Hatathali] who was the prime
founder of Navajo Community College [now Dine' College] at the end of the
1960s. This was the first of the tribally-controlled colleges in the United
States -- initially at Many Farms and then located at remote Tsaile Lake,
with a branch campus at Shiprock. Ned envisioned an academically first-rate
bi-cultural institution which, as free as possible from both tribal
politics and Federal pressures, would serve the Dine' Nation and its people.
Neither the MacDonald tribal administration nor the Feds could ever respect
this and Ned was put under hideous pressures. In October 1972, my father
in Flag called me in Chicago and told me that our close friend, this
eminently honourable and visionary trail-blazer, had abruptly and unexpectedly died tragically that early morning at his home on campus. The college then went
through many internal convulsions but, thanks to dedicated faculty, staff,
students and the Navajo people, survived and has continued to grow.
MacDonald's loyalties were thin in all directions. When a Yorkshire
terrier, "
Toots," that he and his wife had purchased in Great Britain got on
MacDonald's nerves with its admittedly very strange yelp/cry, MacDonald
hurriedly dumped the poor little creature on a distant relative at the
college. That person in turned gave Toots to someone else and eventually
the Yorky wound up ostensibly at the Dean's house, close to our's; and
frequently coming into our kitchen to huddle under the table, surrounded by
our hostile cats and our one dog -- but very much aware that our family
always had handouts for discarded little strays.
Once, in 1980, during the several years period that I taught sociology and
criminal justice at Navajo Community College, word came to the College that
"the Chairman" and his entourage were would be holding a meeting at the
Cultural Center -- the primary headquarters building -- at the College.
Everyone -- the entire administration, faculty, the traditional medicine
men, college security staff, et al. -- had to vacate the Center and its
parking-lot as well. I moved my yellow Chevrolet pickup to a nearby point
and , leaning against it, awaited the arrival of The Great Man.
This was preceded by two or three tribal police helicopters which flew over
the general college area for about ten minutes. Then came a long line of
vehicles and, as they drew closer, now "coming around the bend" on campus,
one could see five tribal police vehicles leading three Lincoln
Continentals and these, in turn, were followed by five more tribal police
cars. The initial contingent of tribal police moved quickly into the
parking lot and immediately scattered to security positions. The Lincoln
Continentals then moved into the lot and parked. The rear contingent of
police vehicles parked, scattering their people into additional security
posts. Then, several well dressed body-guards got out of two of the
Lincolns and surrounded the third. The passenger door of that one opened
and, there he was! -- The Chairman -- Peter MacDonald. A short man,
dressed in an expensive suit, he scurried, head down, quickly into the
Cultural Center -- accompanied by personal bodyguards and followed by tribal
police.
I remembered the comment made by a Massachusetts friend of mine, Mrs Grace
Mitchell, mother of Attorney F. Lee Bailey. She had accompanied her son to
the Navajo capital of Window Rock to help MacDonald prepare his [successful]
defense in an early case. Grace Mitchell was surprised to note a huge
personal home behind walls and barbed-wire and a bevy of armed guards. "I
hadn't seen anything like that," she remarked to me, "since Lee and I went
abroad."
At the beginning of the 1950s, before I went in the Army, the old Navajo
chairman was Sam Ahkeah -- a committed and hard-fighting servant of his
people in an increasingly reactionary atmosphere [Red Scare, Taft-Hartley,
etc] where every effort was being made to undo the substantial reforms of
the Roosevelt period and, in the Native context, those generally very
meaningful and positive pro-Indian policies initiated by the excellent
Indian Commissioner of the FDR period, John Collier.
Sam Ahkeah, Chairman of the Dine' Nation, dressed in Levis and with a an old
Stetson, drove a battered pickup. There were no police escorts or body
guards. He often drove from the Navajo capital of Window Rock more than 200
miles to Flagstaff to see how Navajo people were getting on in that tough
setting -- and to visit the Navajo workers employed at the Navajo Ordnance
Depot [NOD], a government munitions installation at Bellemont, 12 miles west
of Flagstaff on Highway 66.
When he came to Flag and the NOD, he sometimes stayed at our house on the
northern edge of Flagstaff. He was inclined, as was my father, to rise
about 3 a.m. every morning -- and I can well remember them in the kitchen
together, drinking strong black coffee, smoking Bull Durham, and talking
Indian policy. Once, when his pickup broke down at Flagstaff, and he had an
important tribal council meeting pending, my father drove Sam Ahkeah to
Window Rock.
Sam Ahkeah was a man who epitomized the Native ideal of the good leader: the
person who serves the people rather than serving one's self.
Much has now changed at Window Rock, as it has everywhere. In the case of
the Navajo, as with all of the other Native tribal nations and peoples in
the 'States and Canada, the enemies -- massive corporations, hostile Federal
and state and provincial governments, racism and ethnocentrism, and much
more -- remain the same. And the Navajo -- and all of the other tribal
nations as well -- are very much on guard, committed, still-fighting to
maintain land and resources, still fighting for self-determination and
sovereignty. It's a fight that goes on, always, and always will. The
MacDonalds, made and nurtured by the Anglo world, are nothing more in this
vast and far-reaching context, than a passing season. The land and the
people remain, always have, and always will.
Solidarity -
Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]
www.hunterbear.org
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)
I noted in the discussion on RBB that most members of the Navajo Tribal Council, and this would apply to chairpersons as well, have been and are good people (despite few weird things like the "Marriage Act." ) Peter MacDonald was definitely an aberration in Navajoland. (H)
PETER MACDONALD AND THE NAVAJO [DINE'] NATION [HUNTER GRAY 8/27/01]
This is with regard to the letter, by a visiting Scot, in the [Glasgow]
Herald on the Native American situation in the United States -- posted on
this List by Michael Keaney.
The letter, regarding the deplorable condition of Native people in the
United States, with a focus on the sins of Federal Indian policy, the Pine
Ridge tragedy and general border-town racism, etc., is certainly on
target -- with one big exception.
The writer gives the explicit impression that Peter MacDonald, former Navajo
Nation chairman, was framed-up and jailed in a Goldwater plot stemming from
MacDonald's defense of Navajo oil and mineral and related resources.
The reverse is the case.
MacDonald, no Braveheart, spent his long and pervasively corrupt career
selling out Navajo oil and mineral and other resources [and, in that sense,
very much the Dine' people] to some of the biggest corporations in the
world. He was, by far and away, the most consistent of the
Republican-supporting Indian leaders of his period -- and a very strong
Reagan and Goldwater man. Any stress with Goldwater would have stemmed only
from Goldwater's support of the Hopi elected tribal council -- strongly
influenced by Salt Lake City and corporate mineral interests -- in the very
long standing Joint Use Area land dispute between the Hopi and the Navajo
in the Big Mountain area. In this complex matter, traditionalists in both
camps -- i.e., the traditional Hopi council and Navajo religious leaders --
have long sought common ground and mutually satisfactory and peaceful
solutions.
Peter MacDonald formed Navajo OEO in 1965 and used patronage and contacts
made through it to build his electoral political machine -- in the context
of a reservation bigger than the state of West Virginia. At that time
especially, most Navajo did not vote in tribal elections. He became
chairman in 1971 and served until 1982, serving another stint in 1987-1989.
In 1989, he was suspended by the Navajo Tribal Council because of
allegations that he had been deeply involved in bribery stemming from the
the Navajo purchase of the Big Boquillas Ranch in Northwestern Arizona.
Soon after that, several hundred MacDonald supporters made a violent and
abortive effort to overthrow the Navajo tribal government. The effort
failed and, in 1990, MacDonald was charged with bribery in tribal court --
later other Federal offenses were added -- and he served a number of years
in prison. He was pardoned by Bill Clinton in January, 2001.
During the earlier part of his era, increased Federal funding in the general
sense brought some positive things to the Navajo nation. MacDonald, it is
true, fought for a much bigger share of corporate lease royalties vis-a-vis
Navajo oil and mineral and related resources in a long-standing
open-theft-complex where corporate interests, with BIA support, had long
gouged the Navajo and other tribes flagrantly. And he played a major role
in the formation of the Council of Energy Resources Tribes [CERT] to
facilitate this bigger cut of the pie, both in Navajo country and for 20 or
so other tribes. But the MacDonald administration [a classic Richard
Daley-type operation in many, many very sad respects] was swollen with
bureaucracy and blatant corruption and strong-arm tactics. Most of that
stemmed from the multi-faceted MacDonald et al. rip-offs in the broad
context of Navajo oil and mineral and related resources; as well, of
course, as the substantial skimming off from general Federal funding in
other dimensions of the Navajo world.
And Peter MacDonald also allowed the uranium corporations to do essentially
anything they wished in the Navajo Nation -- regardless of the increasingly
obvious lethal effects on miners, community people, land and livestock, air
and water.
A couple of personal observations:
One of my Native father's finest art students at Arizona State College,
Flagstaff [now Northern Arizona University] -- and one of our oldest family
friends -- was the late Ned A. Hatathli [or Hatathali] who was the prime
founder of Navajo Community College [now Dine' College] at the end of the
1960s. This was the first of the tribally-controlled colleges in the United
States -- initially at Many Farms and then located at remote Tsaile Lake,
with a branch campus at Shiprock. Ned envisioned an academically first-rate
bi-cultural institution which, as free as possible from both tribal
politics and Federal pressures, would serve the Dine' Nation and its people.
Neither the MacDonald tribal administration nor the Feds could ever respect
this and Ned was put under hideous pressures. In October 1972, my father
in Flag called me in Chicago and told me that our close friend, this
eminently honourable and visionary trail-blazer, had abruptly and unexpectedly died tragically that early morning at his home on campus. The college then went
through many internal convulsions but, thanks to dedicated faculty, staff,
students and the Navajo people, survived and has continued to grow.
MacDonald's loyalties were thin in all directions. When a Yorkshire
terrier, "
Toots," that he and his wife had purchased in Great Britain got on
MacDonald's nerves with its admittedly very strange yelp/cry, MacDonald
hurriedly dumped the poor little creature on a distant relative at the
college. That person in turned gave Toots to someone else and eventually
the Yorky wound up ostensibly at the Dean's house, close to our's; and
frequently coming into our kitchen to huddle under the table, surrounded by
our hostile cats and our one dog -- but very much aware that our family
always had handouts for discarded little strays.
Once, in 1980, during the several years period that I taught sociology and
criminal justice at Navajo Community College, word came to the College that
"the Chairman" and his entourage were would be holding a meeting at the
Cultural Center -- the primary headquarters building -- at the College.
Everyone -- the entire administration, faculty, the traditional medicine
men, college security staff, et al. -- had to vacate the Center and its
parking-lot as well. I moved my yellow Chevrolet pickup to a nearby point
and , leaning against it, awaited the arrival of The Great Man.
This was preceded by two or three tribal police helicopters which flew over
the general college area for about ten minutes. Then came a long line of
vehicles and, as they drew closer, now "coming around the bend" on campus,
one could see five tribal police vehicles leading three Lincoln
Continentals and these, in turn, were followed by five more tribal police
cars. The initial contingent of tribal police moved quickly into the
parking lot and immediately scattered to security positions. The Lincoln
Continentals then moved into the lot and parked. The rear contingent of
police vehicles parked, scattering their people into additional security
posts. Then, several well dressed body-guards got out of two of the
Lincolns and surrounded the third. The passenger door of that one opened
and, there he was! -- The Chairman -- Peter MacDonald. A short man,
dressed in an expensive suit, he scurried, head down, quickly into the
Cultural Center -- accompanied by personal bodyguards and followed by tribal
police.
I remembered the comment made by a Massachusetts friend of mine, Mrs Grace
Mitchell, mother of Attorney F. Lee Bailey. She had accompanied her son to
the Navajo capital of Window Rock to help MacDonald prepare his [successful]
defense in an early case. Grace Mitchell was surprised to note a huge
personal home behind walls and barbed-wire and a bevy of armed guards. "I
hadn't seen anything like that," she remarked to me, "since Lee and I went
abroad."
At the beginning of the 1950s, before I went in the Army, the old Navajo
chairman was Sam Ahkeah -- a committed and hard-fighting servant of his
people in an increasingly reactionary atmosphere [Red Scare, Taft-Hartley,
etc] where every effort was being made to undo the substantial reforms of
the Roosevelt period and, in the Native context, those generally very
meaningful and positive pro-Indian policies initiated by the excellent
Indian Commissioner of the FDR period, John Collier.
Sam Ahkeah, Chairman of the Dine' Nation, dressed in Levis and with a an old
Stetson, drove a battered pickup. There were no police escorts or body
guards. He often drove from the Navajo capital of Window Rock more than 200
miles to Flagstaff to see how Navajo people were getting on in that tough
setting -- and to visit the Navajo workers employed at the Navajo Ordnance
Depot [NOD], a government munitions installation at Bellemont, 12 miles west
of Flagstaff on Highway 66.
When he came to Flag and the NOD, he sometimes stayed at our house on the
northern edge of Flagstaff. He was inclined, as was my father, to rise
about 3 a.m. every morning -- and I can well remember them in the kitchen
together, drinking strong black coffee, smoking Bull Durham, and talking
Indian policy. Once, when his pickup broke down at Flagstaff, and he had an
important tribal council meeting pending, my father drove Sam Ahkeah to
Window Rock.
Sam Ahkeah was a man who epitomized the Native ideal of the good leader: the
person who serves the people rather than serving one's self.
Much has now changed at Window Rock, as it has everywhere. In the case of
the Navajo, as with all of the other Native tribal nations and peoples in
the 'States and Canada, the enemies -- massive corporations, hostile Federal
and state and provincial governments, racism and ethnocentrism, and much
more -- remain the same. And the Navajo -- and all of the other tribal
nations as well -- are very much on guard, committed, still-fighting to
maintain land and resources, still fighting for self-determination and
sovereignty. It's a fight that goes on, always, and always will. The
MacDonalds, made and nurtured by the Anglo world, are nothing more in this
vast and far-reaching context, than a passing season. The land and the
people remain, always have, and always will.
Solidarity -
Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]
www.hunterbear.org
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)