Navajo Administrative History

By the mid-1980s, the pattern of attending to the needs of the area as well as of the park was firmly ingrained at Navajo National Monument. There were efforts by the Navajo to tie into the electricity and sewer systems of the monument. Because of the limited capacity of both, at the end of the 1980s such requests had not been filled. But the trend had been established, at least to a certain degree. The amenities and advantages of the park would be available to some of the Navajo some of the time.

The appointment of Clarence N. Gorman as superintendent in 1986 inaugurated a new era. A Navajo, Gorman once worked as a seasonal ranger at the monument. More than twenty years later, he returned as the head person at the park. Gorman's appointment reflected the importance of close relations with local people. Many of the Navajo employees felt a stronger feeling that they belonged after Gorman's appointment, knowing that they would return to work each day with other Navajos, speak the language, and experience a certain feeling of accomplishment. There was a stronger pride in working for the park for Navajos working for a Navajo superintendent. "It's good to see your own people working here," Delbert Smallcanyon said in the Navajo language. There was a measure of freedom that Navajos did not experience working for industries such as the railroad. [39]

To the people of the region, the presence of Navajo leadership also inferred a gradual transfer of the monument to the de facto custodianship of the Navajo people. In the fall of 1990, Gorman arranged for the return to the Barlow family of the very medicine bundle that had been the subject of controversy in the early 1970s. Even though the bundle--called a jish--had been purchased from the family, the Park Service did not request reimbursement. Another jish was given to Navajo Community College near Chinle for its "lending library" designed to help teach the practices of Navajo medicine men to new generations of the Dine. These gestures, of a piece with an emerging enlightenment in the scientific community regarding prehistoric and historic artifacts, typified the heightened level of concern for Navajo sensitivities.

Yet the growing presence of Navajo people did not indicate a dislike of previous Anglo superintendents. Most of the past Park Service officials were fondly remembered by many of the Navajo in the area. Art White particularly was revered by area people, as were others who sought to build a relationship with people in the region. Only one was mentioned in an unfavorable light, ironically by both Navajos and Anglos who worked for him. According to accounts, he had a textbook view of Indians and had difficulty adjusting to living among real ones. [40]

Gorman's appointment had symbolic overtones. It reflected two decades of growing empowerment of the Navajo and American Indians in general and the overwhelming desire of the Park Service and federal agencies to operate in a more inclusive fashion. A career Park Service professional who worked his way up the ladder, Gorman's position as the highest GS-rated official at the park spoke volumes about inclusiveness to the people of the region. Some of the sub-surface tension about NPS presence was mitigated by having a Navajo in a position of leadership.

Gorman's presence also widened the role of Navajos at the park. Because of its unique geographic position in relationship to the location of labor, the park could hire area Navajos without going through standard federal employment procedures. Support programs that included Navajos also grew, and Navajo history and culture played a growing role in the interpretation. Efforts to include high school students from the area in summer activities at the park followed. In the summer of 1988, five young Navajos from the Shonto Chapter worked at the monument.

The Navajo Nation also became increasingly aware of cultural resources in and around the reservation. This resulted in legislation designed to protect the interests of the Navajo people. One such law, the Navajo Nation Cultural Resources Protection Act, seemed inapplicable to NPS activities. The Park Service chose to respond to it on a case-by-case basis, preferring such a tactic to an open challenge. But passage of the act reflected the fundamental changes in Navajo-park relations that followed the Memorandum of Agreement in 1962. In 1909, the Navajo people had yet to adapt their leadership structure to the realities of outside encroachment on reservation life. The Navajos exerted little if any influence on the park or the Park Service. By 1988, with a governmental and legal structure in place and a clear sense of their identity and rights, the Navajo Nation was a force with which the Park Service had to contend. The Park Service moved carefully in Navajoland, not wishing to alter the pattern of good relations that had lasted more than three generations. [41]

But the Navajo Nation was powerless to slow the pace of change for many of the Navajo people. By the 1980s, Navajos on the western reservation were a people in transition. The roads that crossed this previously isolated area had brought the cultural impact of the modern world, and the traditional ways of living that had lasted in the remote parts of the reservation began to change. Younger people began to lose their ties to traditional culture, although not at the rate that occurred among more urbanized Navajos. Yet many of the younger people moved away in order to find work, settled in Flagstaff, Phoenix, Los Angeles, or some similar place, and began the transition to urban status. Even the most traditional people were involved in the modern economy. Hubert Laughter, who worked at the park, became a Navajo Tribal Police officer, served on the tribal council, was later drove heavy equipment for the Peabody Coal Company, and also a medicine man. A man packing squash and gourds to the Inscription House Trading Post that Bill Binnewies met in the early 1970s typified the duality. When not engaged in such subsistence economic activities, he was a technician for a guided missile system. Clearly this was a harbinger of a complicated future. [42]

These contradictions characterized the future predicament of the Navajo people. Caught with a foot in two distinctly different worlds, they will have to fight to retain cultural individuality. A recent trip to the Farmington Mall revealed scores of young Navajos in the classic garb of the generic teenager: unlaced tennis shoes with the tongues hanging out and heavy metal T-shirts of popular groups. The demands of the modern world have an overwhelming character. They hegemonize indiscriminately.

Ironically, when young urban Navajos seek to rediscover their own culture, places like Navajo National Monument have the potential to play an important role. As the monument fused more and more with its surroundings, it became a haven for Navajos who sought to remain Navajo but have many of the material advantages of the modern world. In the early 1990s, the character of the workforce of the monument was Navajo--very traditional Navajo. Even younger Navajo members were attuned to their unique and protected position as employees of the park. By providing the benefits of mainstream American life without many of its drawbacks, the monument insulated the people of the region from the worst effects of change. In addition, interpreting Navajo culture at the monument was on the upswing, and the growing number of Navajos in the work force at the monument assured greater future presence. The bits of Navajo culture preserved in places like Navajo National Monument can provide a visible guidepost for young Navajos as they seek to reattain what they earlier shunned for the perceived advantages of "civilization."