An Awakening in Valentine 01-02

I was shocked by the vision of such graphic poverty spread out before me. It was gut-wrenching. The only comparisons I could make to these scenes were pictures I had seen of slums in Haiti or Calcutta. I could not conceive of such destitution in the United States. The sight of such wretched living conditions made me wonder about other necessities like water, sewage, and electricity, not to mention food. How could people survive in these circumstances? There was a desperate need for change, but the area seemed mired in an atmosphere of hopeless resignation.

As after my stop at Valentine, I had many questions. Why did such grinding poverty exist on the reservation? How did it come to be that a proud people with an ancient heritage were suffering like this in the modern world? What could be done? I felt a need to educate myself, or perhaps better stated in this case, to reduce my ignorance. My short time researching numerous issues makes me a dilettante at best, but sometimes basic knowledge eliminates the cloudiness of complexity. It is possible to present all kinds of legal, economic, and sociological explanations. Still, I think the core answer lies in one simple fact: The Navajos came out second-best in an armed conflict and cultural war they never wanted to participate in to begin with. The ancient realpolitik, ''Woe to the vanquished!" is alive in contemporary America. The Navajo people were by force of arms isolated and segregated on inferior land to be governed by laws and economic restraints created for them (and other tribes throughout the country) by the white power structure. The policies of the United States government have led with an inevitable certainty to the Navajo Nation becoming a Third World-like society immersed in poverty

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Even the most cursory investigation yields statistics so staggering that they seem beyond the realm of possibility:

The unemployment rate on the Navajo Reservation hovers near 50%. 43% live below the poverty level, compared to 15% for the state of Arizona combined. Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2.16 a day, is at 19%, which translates to over 33,000 people, many of them elderly or disabled. The median household income is $20,000. 38% of the houses on the reservation have no running water, 32% have no electricity. A significant percentage of the land and water is contaminated with radioactive waste from concentrated uranium mining, placing many people at risk. The Nation is considered an extreme food desert with only nine grocery stores to serve 180,000 widely dispersed people. Many have no way to get to the stores, which are often poorly stocked with food. Healthcare on the reservation is among the worst in the country. Tuberculosis rates are six times the national average. Teenage girls have reproductive organ cancer rates seventeen times higher than the rest of the country. Chronic diseases like diabetes and cancer are far above average, placing the Navajos in the country's highest risk groups for COVID infection. Alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, and child mortality rates are high. Life expectancy is seven years lower.

No matter what the explanations are, there is one certainty: Something is very wrong. The systemic poverty that exists in the Navajo Nation is nothing short of a national travesty. The way of thinking that drove the genocidal practices that befell American Indians centuries ago still haunts federal policy today. The federal and state governments have repeatedly betrayed the trust of the Navajo people. There is a need for radical change to eliminate the suffering. I will expound here shortly on what I regard as the most egregious example of the criminal treatment of the Navajos by the US government in modern times, but first, I want to delve into a question I kept asking myself:

Why was I having these powerful, intuitive experiences?

The answer ties into my narrative in a personal way. The incident at Valentine was an awakening, a stirring of my inquisitive nature to unearth the history driving the experience I had there. At Cameron, I was exposed to a present-day reality that forced me to ask questions about our society. The answers I arrive at may put some people on the defensive. I may stand accused of finger-pointing, but I must stress that I am a white person too, so this is mainly a self-examination. And that is what I believe the extrasensory experiences were demanding of me. It is a difficult task, as it is always easier to misinterpret others than to see the truth inside oneself. But when I divide society into ranked segments with my own group on top, then I am automatically condemning others to poverty and suffering.

(to be continued)