A question of fluency on the navajo nation

Several days after Election Day, Janene Yazzie sat in the sand with her 3-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Seleste, between the towering red rocks outside Lupton, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. Her husband, Kern, their 5-year-old son, and her friend, Kim Smith, the self-titled “responsible auntie,” took turns firing a .22 at a target propped up by a soda can several hundred yards away. The group was enjoying a respite from tribal politics. On Nov. 4, Navajo voters at the polls had been instructed not to select a president. Though candidate Chris Deschene’s name was on the ballot, he had been disqualified for not speaking Navajo fluently, a formal requirement for office. A special presidential election was planned, but had not yet been scheduled.

Both Smith, 30, and Yazzie, 27, who are community organizers, fully support the fluency requirement. “I don’t think it is radical to require the president of our tribal nation (to) understand the language of the people he’s aspiring to lead,” Yazzie said, as Smith took aim at the target.

CONTINUE READING the piece that ran in the 12.22.14 issue of High Country News.