Where I stand—Mike O’Callaghan: Tough being a Navajo

Friday, April 13, 2001 | 3:30 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

SHORTLY AFTER this column praised then-President Bill Clinton's release from prison of former Navajo leader Peter MacDonald, a letter appeared in the Navajo Times. New Mexico state Rep. Ray E. Begaye wrote in part:

"Regardless of the pros and cons, there has to be a healing process somewhere in the equation. From my point of view, major corporations, Republican politicians, special interest groups, and conservative groups were afraid or frightened of the former Chairman MacDonald at that point. I am not aware of any person from Navajo Nation that has researched behind the reasons why the former chair was placing fear in those groups. If you know of outside politics, you will understand the total picture. We should not divide but understand."

Respected reporter Brenda Norrell read my column and wrote a letter every American should read. Following is some of her letter:

"I covered MacDonald's trials in tribal and federal court for Indian newspapers and as a stringer for AP. What I discovered during the final trial made me unpopular for a time in some circles.

"Anyway, what I realized transformed me from being a green reporter in Indian country to one who realized that the federal government would do anything in its power to silence MacDonald, and any other powerful Indian leader.

"The federal prosecutors disregarded the facts and his own attorneys were never prepared to defend him. He was convicted in Prescott by a pack of white ranchers, not a jury of his peers. The media never offered him fairness, instead behaved like a rabid dog pack ...

"During the final trial, I was having lunch with MacDonald, his family, Donald Benally and others. I asked them what was really at the bottom of the effort to put him away for life: " ' Water rights? Mineral rights?' "

" 'All of it,' " they answered.

"MacDonald had become too powerful for the government to control.

"That was 1992.

"It is interesting that this fall a Navajo tribal hydrologist became a whistleblower, revealing that the Navajo Nation's non-Indian attorneys failed to go after billions in Navajo water rights to the Colorado River ...

"And of course, the water, coal and energy in the Southwest are bound in unfair leases on the Navajo Nation -- low royalty rates and Navajo employment preferences never honored at mines -- as a means of delivering water and electricity to southern Arizona and California."

MacDonald, after serving eight years in prison, recently underwent his first major surgery and has many more ahead. This Navajo codetalker knows that he was targeted by those who resented his higher education and contributions to our nation as a whole.

Again let me remind the U.S. Department of Justice that Navajos Earl Lee, Don Benally and Ned McKensley are still being held in prison. There's more on this subject coming as my research continues.