WEBVTT 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:08.640 yeah there it goes yeah. What I would like to also have to some of the 00:00:10.259 --> 00:00:17.986 points that I made was I think it was in the year 1975 when the Indian 00:00:18.019 --> 00:00:24.947 Self Determination Act was passed by Congress and it's ironic that the 00:00:24.980 --> 00:00:31.616 Republican administration had to propose that to U. S. Congress and I 00:00:31.649 --> 00:00:39.649 remember it was Richard Nixon who had a great role in understanding the 00:00:40.759 --> 00:00:48.667 need for such congressional at for the indian people to use. And he had 00:00:48.700 --> 00:00:54.457 some good advisors that not necessarily coming from indian country or not 00:00:54.490 --> 00:01:02.490 necessarily uh having a close advisors that were of american indian, but 00:01:02.609 --> 00:01:09.527 some of the people that was around him that he uh was surrounded with uh 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:14.736 really basically believe in education, the self determination of indian 00:01:14.769 --> 00:01:19.316 tribes, indian nation and south governments, that's what they believe in. 00:01:19.349 --> 00:01:23.307 And so as a result of all of that influence, 00:01:23.340 --> 00:01:28.486 President Nixon was able to support and proposed to Congress the passage 00:01:28.519 --> 00:01:36.167 of the uh huh american indian self determination act. And uh the Navajo 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:38.307 Nation, 00:01:38.340 --> 00:01:46.340 they simply, they simply uh where the one group that was doing all of that 00:01:47.379 --> 00:01:53.486 even before the passage of the act. And uh and one of those uh good 00:01:53.519 --> 00:02:00.147 evidence to show that was the uh the establishment of neighborhood 00:02:00.180 --> 00:02:08.106 community college and Navajo community college was really conceived bye. 00:02:08.139 --> 00:02:16.139 Never who tribal chairman Raymond Nakai. And then bob russell people like 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:23.726 I Gorman and those people really really believe in education that that's 00:02:23.759 --> 00:02:30.367 hardly was also one of them and they believe in education and and I 00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:36.177 remember the the neighborhood nation education committee really being 00:02:36.210 --> 00:02:43.527 supportive and they ask bob russell too, get involved and see if they can 00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:51.560 produce. Mhm. Um the first american indian community college. And so bob 00:02:52.689 --> 00:02:59.346 russell spearheaded that. And uh and as we now know, and as history can 00:02:59.379 --> 00:03:07.379 now say, uh that was such a tremendous beginning. Uh so far as higher 00:03:10.039 --> 00:03:15.987 education institutions for the american indians to have the neighborhood 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:24.020 community college become the first shots institution exercise and created 00:03:24.659 --> 00:03:31.936 by the largest american indian tribe in the United States and that voice 00:03:31.969 --> 00:03:39.517 or that kind of yeah, program was needed everywhere. And it was only 00:03:39.550 --> 00:03:44.717 appropriated the Navajo nation did what they did and they did all of this 00:03:44.750 --> 00:03:50.927 at the support of the federal government. And I remember sometimes right 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:56.807 along at that at that point, uh 00:03:56.840 --> 00:04:03.656 a meeting somewhere and say lee where you now currently have a naval 00:04:03.689 --> 00:04:11.406 community college located. The chairman of the Yeah, 00:04:11.439 --> 00:04:18.007 I believe it was ways and means committee. The, the chair 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:25.647 was present at the groundbreaking ceremony. And so he, I mean, some for 00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:33.077 somebody uh, of that high caliber in a federal government was so much 00:04:33.110 --> 00:04:38.757 power for that person to come to a small indian community there where 00:04:38.790 --> 00:04:42.726 there was nothing where they were making a groundbreaking ceremony to me 00:04:42.759 --> 00:04:47.877 was really, really something I forgot the gentleman's name that came, but 00:04:47.910 --> 00:04:55.327 I'll remember it later and he set some terrific things about supporting in 00:04:55.360 --> 00:05:02.007 an education and I remember here in, 00:05:02.040 --> 00:05:08.406 yeah, the tribal council who are members of the education committee really 00:05:08.439 --> 00:05:13.546 being enthusiastic about this new beginning where the indian people 00:05:13.579 --> 00:05:18.786 nationwide, they will now begin having some of their own community college 00:05:18.819 --> 00:05:23.447 in there in their own community with their own tribe back on those 00:05:23.480 --> 00:05:27.387 reservations. And that was really, really something for me to see. And I 00:05:27.420 --> 00:05:35.420 was just a young man working at DNA when, when I saw that. And to me uh, 00:05:36.139 --> 00:05:41.507 then that college which is now called in their college 00:05:41.540 --> 00:05:48.976 was one of those institutions that its potential was was unlimited. It 00:05:49.009 --> 00:05:54.606 could do many things, it could mean so many things to different people. 00:05:54.639 --> 00:06:02.176 And so the way people look at it was different in the sense that it made a 00:06:02.209 --> 00:06:09.207 lot too many of their parents under neighborhood nation. And of course, we 00:06:09.240 --> 00:06:16.286 now know that as the net college, which was a institution that spearheaded 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:21.197 the movements of indian people to establish their own community college 00:06:21.230 --> 00:06:28.606 within their own tribe. All that this was done as 00:06:28.639 --> 00:06:36.639 the Navajo people were learning how to get involved in the exercise of 00:06:37.009 --> 00:06:42.806 their voting rights. I believe it was in the mid 1970s, 00:06:42.839 --> 00:06:49.296 the Navajo people finally realized that, but it's a sheer number and by 00:06:49.329 --> 00:06:56.067 voter registration and by them becoming politically active where they can 00:06:56.100 --> 00:07:02.496 elect school board members to control the local schools, where they can 00:07:02.529 --> 00:07:10.529 elect people in their own county county border supervisors and those kinds 00:07:12.420 --> 00:07:17.906 of positions they could very well control. But it had to be demonstrated 00:07:17.939 --> 00:07:25.939 by, you know, the first action of any kind of institution building that 00:07:26.740 --> 00:07:32.046 can be promoted by the Navajo people themselves. I think Navajo Community 00:07:32.079 --> 00:07:39.637 College was only an institution that came about as a result of that. I 00:07:39.670 --> 00:07:44.846 could remember in Apache County there was a lot of controversy in Apache 00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:52.777 County because up to that point, there were no county board of supervisors 00:07:52.810 --> 00:07:58.346 that was a member of the Navajo tribe. But yet in that county majority of 00:07:58.379 --> 00:08:05.486 the voters were Navajo people and we always did not see that connection 00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:13.007 between uh huh the power to vote and how we can exercise that and learn 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:18.986 how to control things within the county. And it was Apache County and the 00:08:19.019 --> 00:08:26.147 lawsuit that DNA was able to file and as a result of what we were doing 00:08:26.180 --> 00:08:33.486 that came out in the newspaper, a lot of public education was, was given 00:08:33.519 --> 00:08:38.236 to the Navajo people through that case. And of course with the 00:08:38.269 --> 00:08:43.557 neighborhood people winning the right to vote in these various election at 00:08:43.590 --> 00:08:47.417 the state level in the county election also brought about a tremendous 00:08:47.450 --> 00:08:55.037 amount of education to the local Navajo youngsters. And it was perhaps at 00:08:55.070 --> 00:09:02.896 this time also that the Navajo people were also getting involved in a lot 00:09:02.929 --> 00:09:10.929 of the state racist, uh huh where uh huh margins of Navajo voters were the 00:09:11.179 --> 00:09:17.537 deciding factor in the election. Local officials and one really good case 00:09:17.570 --> 00:09:23.547 in point was the office of the governor in the state of Arizona. I don't 00:09:23.580 --> 00:09:31.226 remember what year that was, but that was the year that a democrat Raul 00:09:31.259 --> 00:09:39.259 Castro won the governor's seat in the state of Arizona purely on the basis 00:09:39.309 --> 00:09:46.807 of the Navajo voter turnout in that election. And uh, the uh, the way the 00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:52.707 situation was at that point or at that time was that when they were 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:57.996 counting the votes that came in from the various county, the last vote at 00:09:58.029 --> 00:10:04.516 the end of the night came in from Apache County. And, and Raul Castro had 00:10:04.549 --> 00:10:12.549 went overwhelmingly in Apache County simply because the county was 00:10:12.840 --> 00:10:18.967 heavily populated with democratic voters. And so as a result of what the 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:24.577 neighborhood nation did, uh, a democratic governor was elected and that 00:10:24.610 --> 00:10:32.366 opened the eyes of many, many are there candidates and subsequent to what 00:10:32.399 --> 00:10:39.707 happened in Arizona every time we had a tribal fair each year in september 00:10:39.740 --> 00:10:45.307 particularly during the election year. You would see all these politicians 00:10:45.340 --> 00:10:52.106 heavily involved in the parades at the Navajo tribal affair, both from 00:10:52.139 --> 00:10:59.726 Arizona and new Mexico and some occasion from the state of Utah And of 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:05.366 course then federal election when people are facing elections in the 00:11:05.399 --> 00:11:10.856 federal government. When these from these three states, you always see 00:11:10.889 --> 00:11:15.616 politicians that are running for this federal office seeking never hold a 00:11:15.649 --> 00:11:21.476 vote. And I believe in my own situation my, the last time I was in office 00:11:21.509 --> 00:11:28.667 , Hillary Clinton came to represent her husband, Bill Clinton at the 00:11:28.700 --> 00:11:32.876 neighborhood nation fair and spoke very highly of the neighborhood 00:11:32.909 --> 00:11:38.876 people's involvement in in voter registration and then the ability to turn 00:11:38.909 --> 00:11:45.287 out the vote so that they finally will have a, have a say so in the 00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:52.197 election of officials that will work with them. And so basically that was 00:11:52.230 --> 00:11:58.626 kind of like awakening of a political power than ever where people can 00:11:58.659 --> 00:12:04.837 exercise. And while all of these were happening, uh, on the neighborhood 00:12:04.870 --> 00:12:11.157 across the nation, people, the Navajo people were looking at, they did not 00:12:11.190 --> 00:12:15.746 overlook the, the development of the school board where they saw where 00:12:15.779 --> 00:12:20.256 they said that we could control the school, if we can get majority level 00:12:20.289 --> 00:12:26.297 people and we can elect them. We can control our own school system. And 00:12:26.330 --> 00:12:30.917 they were talking about the public school system. And so to me, there was 00:12:30.950 --> 00:12:36.697 a huge amount of progress that took place During this time, the late 1970s 00:12:36.730 --> 00:12:41.596 and early 80s, what the neville people were doing and that was all 00:12:41.629 --> 00:12:46.486 basically done because of the voter education that the Navajo nation was 00:12:46.519 --> 00:12:51.876 involved in. And then from there it picked up and into the county 00:12:51.909 --> 00:12:58.026 elections and in new Mexico, all those counties that come into the Navajo 00:12:58.059 --> 00:13:02.417 nation, There was always, uh, somebody from the Navajo nation that was 00:13:02.450 --> 00:13:07.606 running for state office, county seats and uh, and all of that. And so it 00:13:07.639 --> 00:13:10.707 was a tremendous 00:13:10.740 --> 00:13:18.740 assertion of political power by the, by the Navajo people. 00:13:22.539 --> 00:13:26.809 Okay. Shut her off for a minute. Yeah.