Window Rock, Ariz.
The inauguration thsi week turned out to be a very moving experience.
Not the inauguration at the state Capitol in Denver, where Gov. Bill Ritter and our other distinguished state leaders took their oaths of office.
I mean the biggest inaugural you may never have heard of, the one in this dusty capital nine hours’ drive southwest of Denver, where 10,000 people gathered in a frigid rodeo arena to witness the swearing-in of President Joe Shirley Jr. and the other elected leaders of the Navajo Nation.
The Navajo Nation is country’s largest Indian reservation, bigger than all the New England states combined, and home to 225,000 tribal members.
Historically, Navajoland reached well into Colorado. Some of the visiting dignitaries here – like Darius Smith, a Navajo tribal member who now lives in Denver, where he serves as Mayor John Hickenlooper’s anti-discrimination office director – are a reminder that thousands of Navajo people still call Colorado home.
Then there were the handful of visiting federal officials from the Four Corners states, who were greeted with polite but tepid applause from the crowd.
Like other Indians living on reservations – including the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute nations in Colorado – the Navajo have been forced to rely on the U.S. government for many of their basic public safety needs for the past 140 years. By act of Congress and federal court decree, major crimes committed on reservations – including murder, rape, and any other offense punishable by more than a year in jail or a $5,000 fine – must be handled by federal law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges.
This is an enormously important federal responsibility. Yet only a handful of federal representatives journeyed here to pay respects to representative government, Navajo-style.
There’s a Navajo joke that “the white people may have invented bureaucracy, but we Navajo took the time to perfect it.” The truth is, the Navajo system of representative self-government, like other democracies elsewhere, can be complicated, frustrating and painfully slow. Yet Tuesday’s inauguration, like the one in Colorado, reminded us there is no better system.
There were no F-16s for the ceremony here; our “flyover” consisted of a lone National Guard medical helicopter.
The total combined household income for the thousands of Navajo families seated in the bleachers averages less than $6,500 per year.
The simple dignity and solemnity of the occasion transformed this humble setting into a place of beauty. The crowd roared when the high school band, dressed in headbands and velveteen shirts, broke into “Hail to the Chief” as President-elect Shirley walked up to the podium.
Then came “The Star Spangled Banner,” sung in the Navajo language.
Indeed, nearly the entire three-hour ceremony was conducted in Navajo – or “code-talking,” as the locals call it.
Rising at a height of three stories behind the platform, a Navajo rug – the largest ever woven – attested to a resilient culture that it is respected throughout the world.
It is miraculous how the Navajo, pushed to near-extinction in the mid-19th century, have survived and flourished.
This, despite all the strikes against them, and regardless of the inequities that persist to this day. The same goes for the Utes and the other Native peoples of the Southwest who can help us appreciate how truly special Colorado is – if we would only pause to listen.
Troy A. Eid is the U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado.
