Inside the Tsosie's hogan a wood stove sits on rotted flooring. The stove, which was found at a local dump, is used for cooking and is the family's only source of heat. Finding wood to burn in the stove is very difficult for the family. Photo by Jeff Jones

Unemployed and broke, Andrew Cayaditto sits near the old school bus that he has turned into his house in Rincon Marquise, NM. Without a job and no assistance from the Navajo Nation or the U.S. government, Cayaditto relies on visiting his mother's home to get food. Photo by Jeff Jones

 

Living on the edge
Navajo families in grip of poverty (photos)

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.

Hauling water

There’s an outdoor toilet about 100 feet from the hogan and no running water in the place.

“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.
An unmistakable chill in the air warned of winter just around the corner as Marlene wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold.

“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.
“My wife and me, we can make it out here, but I feel bad for my kids, we need help,” Harrison said. “My kids and my wife, they are the best things that has ever happened to me.”

The Tsosies eat with food paid for by food stamps.

Abandoned bus

About 30 miles away, deeper into the Whitehorse Chapter is Rincon Marquez, a very poor community in which Andrew Cayaditto, 40, lives. His home is an abandoned school bus he found somewhere and had dragged to the community.

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.
Cayaditto and the Tsosie family are not typical of life on the reservation.

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 |