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Wednesday | Nov 23 | Nov
22 | Nov 20 / 21| Nov
19 | — Contents — IHS worker faces charges Chinle women helping needy |
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Living
on the edge By Tom Purdom, Staff Writer WHITEHORSE LAKE — Harrison Tsosie didn’t expect life to be easy, but the 37-year-old Navajo man sure expected more to it than what he and his family are living. Harrison, his 34-year-old wife Marlene, and their seven children live in a tiny two-bedroom uninsulated hogan. His 62-year-old crippled mother, Adell Tsosie, lives in a nearby uninsulated one-room hogan with her grandson and another relative. Adell’s 84-year-old mother lives in a nearby non-traditional one-room building. The two hogans have dirt floors and electricity, but Harrison owes the electric company $154 which he can’t pay so the electricity has been shut off. Crude wood stoves do a futile job of keeping out the winter freeze. The wood stoves also serve to cook food. Sitting on a blanket-covered couch in the combination
living room, kitchen, dining room and play room of her dark interior
hogan, Marlene watches over the children, ages 2 to 13 years old.
Wooden pallets found somewhere and dragged to the hogan do an inadequate
job of covering the floor. Actually portions of the wooden pallets
have been broken away to expose a dirt floor beneath. Cardboard covers a few feet of the pallets in a feeble
attempt to keep the cold out. The children sleep in a cramped bedroom
no larger than an average sized bathroom and they also sleep on the
cardboard-covered pallets. Boards have been put up on the walls in
a vain attempt to keep out drafts. “We have to haul water 23 miles,“ Marlene said. There’s water to do dishes and to drink. Bathing is a very, very rare luxury. There’s not 500 square feet in the whole home,
but it is the only thing the Tsosies have between themselves and the
elements. “He (Harrison) has back problems and can’t find work,” Marlene said, and as an afterthought, as if her words were misunderstood, added, “He’s disabled.” The kids attend a live-in community school all week and although Harrison and Marlene miss their children terribly when they are gone they know the kids get three good meals a day, have a warm place to sleep and clothes to wear while they are away. “They come home on the weekends,” Marlene said as the youngest child, Hilda Ann, her face dirty from play, crawled into her lap for a few minutes. About 60 feet away is the other 24-feet octagonal hogan where Adell lives with her 22-year-old grandson Harlan Begay and one other young person. It is a one-room hogan with three metal beds and a crude wood stove fashioned from a 55-gallon cut-in-half barrel. She’s crippled and relies on Begay to help her get around. Adell has lived in the hogan for the past 15 years. She is a traditionalist, but she wants to live in a warm home one of theses days. Unlike her son’s hogan there are no pallets on the floor, just dirt. Adell’s weathered face, lined with years of wrinkles and wisdom, cracks a smile every now and then, but she doesn’t have too much to smile about. Begay said they pay what they can toward the electric bill so the electricity will not be shut off and almost in the same breath begs a few dollars from a reporter and photographer to help pay the electric bill. Stacks of plastic jugs sit on a weight-weary metal table. The jugs are filled with precious water hauled the same 23 miles. A stack of wood that will not last through the month, let alone the winter, sits outside the hogan. No future Adell has no concept of what the future will bring. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I want a warm house to live in.” Begay freely admits he is living in the hogan to take care of his grandmother. He won’t speak of her dying one day, but, when the day happens, he will be out of there. “I could have been anything,” he said. “But I have patience. I’m a young man just starting my life. The day will come when I will go.” Harrison, meanwhile, is ashamed to show his emotions. He wears a constant look of defeat. “I worked for the railroad for five years and then hurt my back,” he said. The land on which the Tsosies live has been in the family for generations. Harrison said he can still push a broom and things like that. “I’d do that if I could to bring in a little money for my family, but out here there isn’t even that to do, there is nothing, no work at all,” Harrison said. “We need some kind of industry here for the Navajo people, but there’s nothing. It seems like there’s industry and work at other places. It seems like they’ve just forgotten about us out here.” His words spoke volumes about the area’s need. Harrison went to school until he reached the eighth grade and then dropped out because the family needed him to work at home. But his kids won’t be uneducated. “We make sure they get an education,” he said.
It was the one point of pride that Harrison had his kids going to
school. The Tsosies eat with food paid for by food stamps. Cayaditto talks little, but his eyes tell a story of total degradation. He hasn’t had a bath in years. “I like living in the bus because it’s solid,” Cayaditto said. There’s a bed and a wood stove in the bus. He eats at his mother’s house nearby. For Cayaditto there is absolute poverty. He has no income and is ashamed of the way he lives. But it is all Cayaditto has. His younger brother, Andy, about 30 years old, lives in another school bus about 300 yards away. Cayaditto’s friend since boyhood, Edison Ramon, a Navajo agent working for the senior center at Whitehorse Lake, summed up Cayaditto’s life in a few, poignant words. “Andrew is isolating himself,” Ramon said. “He has been neglected since he was a little boy. No one wants him, no one loves him.” As Ramon talked Cayaditto hung his head. Through the
fog of poverty Cayaditto knew exactly what Ramon was talking about.
But they do exist on the reservation and there are others like them, some living in worse conditions. A fiercely proud people, the Navajos interviewed just days before Thanksgiving had a lot of their pride stolen from them long ago by an enemy called poverty. There is little help even from the Navajo Nation for these people. They have life, but little else to be thankful for these
days. Ironically it was their distant Native American brothers and
sisters who long ago gave the pilgrims ducks and geese for the first
Thanksgiving dinner in America. | Top |
Physician
assistant at IHS charged
GALLUP — A physician’s assistant for the Navajo Area Indian Health Service is facing charges in federal court for allegedly engaging in sexual contact with a patient. The incident occurred on Jan. 9, 1998. Franklin Tso, who works for the Shiprock Service Unit’s Dzilth-Na-O-Dith-Hle clinic, was removed from all patient contact once IHS became aware of the allegation, said Ron Wood, executive officer of the Navajo Area Indian Health Service. Tso, who is not in custody, will be arraigned on the charge at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 9 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Svet in Albuquerque. As a physician’s assistant, Tso performed basic diagnosis and treatment under the supervision of a physician. According to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the sexual contact consisted of “unwanted touching, directly and through the clothing” of a female patient. Tso was charged for the misdemeanor by the Assistant U.S. Attorney, Kathleen Bliss in Albuquerque. This is the first case where an Indian Health Service
employee has been charged with a federal crime since a Crownpoint
doctor was sentenced in 1998 to federal prison for six years for soliciting
sex from a minor. | Top |
Bates kept as head at NAPI By Bill Donovan, Diné Bureau GALLUP — Lorenzo Bates is now two-thirds of the way to keeping his job as head of the Navajo Agricultural Products Industries. On Tuesday, Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye signed off on a resolution keeping Bates on as general manager of the tribal enterprise for another year ... | Top | Chinle
women helping needy By Jim Maniaci, Diné Bureau CHINLE, Ariz. — Imagine the impact $156,000 a year
would have on feeding hungry people in the Navajo Nation. Imagine the impact 6,000 food baskets would have on
feeding hungry people in the Navajo Nation. Imagine the impact doing both would have. Six women in Chinle have imagined these possibilities.
They point out this is the amount of money that would
be raised if each of the Navajo Nation’s approximately 6,000
employees donated $1 from their 26 paychecks a year. And they imagine
the impact money and food baskets would have. Even more than money,
they imagine the impact of each Navajo Nation employee providing one
turkey and food basket each year to feed the hungry. And the six women have challenged the other 5,994 tribal employees, from the three branch chiefs on down... | Top |
NTUA
tells customers it’s ready for Y2K By Bill Donovan, Diné Bureau WINDOW ROCK — Officials for the Navajo Tribal Utility
Authority have a message for residents of the Navajo Reservation who
are worried that civilization as they know it will end at the stroke
of midnight on Dec. 31. Stop worrying. Mike Jennings, NTUA’s Y2K coordinator, said that the tribal enterprise is prepared and does not expect its customers to have any problems as the clock ticks from one century to the next ... | Top | Medical
honoree uses award for clients By S.J. Ludescher, Staff Writer GALLUP — Through secret balloting by her peers,
Joy Woolman of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital was chosen as
the patient educator of the year. Woolman has been a licensed practical obstetrics nurse
for 23 years. She works at Red Rock Clinic. The award was announced at the annual RMCH Thanksgiving
staff luncheon last week. The honor was a surprise to Woolman, who
had given away her ticket to the event. In addition to a commemorative plaque, she was given
a check for $100. “I’m going to buy information booklets for
pregnant women with it,” she said. “They keep telling me
my budget is gone.” | Top | All contents property of the Gallup Independent.
Any duplication or republication requires consent of the Gallup Independent. Feel free to send any questions or comments to gallpind@cia-g.com
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