Miss Navajo Nation Victoria Yazzie holds one of the 200 posters she hopes to sell to raise money for the continuance of her official duties.

Photo by Nicole Goodhue

Miss Navajo caught up in fundraising

Bill Donovan
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — Victoria Yazzie, the current Miss Navajo, will spend a lot of her time on the fundraising trail in the next few months.

"We only have $408 left in our travel budget for the year," she said, "and there's still some six months to go before we get a new budget."

Yazzie, 24, who is taking a year off from teaching school in the Kayenta area to serve as this year's Miss Navajo, has come face-to-face with one of the grim realities of holding that office chronic shortages of travel funds.

While requests for appearances by Miss Navajo have increased sharply in the last few years she received 68 invitations last week alone, the department's travel budget has been cut annually by 8 to 15 percent to help balance the tribal budget.

"I'm being forced to pay a lot of my expenses out of my own pocket," she said. "I have to furnish my own clothing and my own jewelry as well."

Her relatives have helped. Her mother Mary Lee Kinney has made more than 50 traditional dresses for her since she was chosen Miss Navajo Nation last September.

Although the winner of the Miss Navajo competition is placed on the tribal payroll and the tribe pays for a secretary and program coordinator, the amount provided for travel which some years has been as low as $10,000 never seems to last long.

Yazzie, however, has an advantage that other Miss Navajos never had. Coming from Kayenta, she has been given a $5,000 grant by the Kayenta township to help defray some of her travel expenses.

But even this has turned a little sour in recent weeks as she has come under attack for accepting what some say amounts to a gift without getting proper approval.

But she said she cleared money with the president's and the tribe's ethics and rules offices before spending any of the Kayenta funds.

George Joe, a spokesman for the township, said he doesn't see what all the fuss is about.

"None of the money goes directly to Miss Navajo," he said. "She submits a list to us of some of her motel expenses, and we pay the vendor directly."

He added that none of the $5,000 comes from taxes collected by the town, since tax funds can only be used for certain purposes. Instead, the grant comes from interest that the township receives on revenues in the bank.

Kayenta officials have said the town, as a whole, wants to be able to help one of its own who now has the task of being an ambassador not only of Kayenta but of the entire Navajo Nation.

She has weathered these and other rumors that have cropped up here and there with a smile and the realization that better than 99.9 percent of the Navajo population has shown nothing but pride and admiration in the job she has done so far.

"I've never gotten anything but positive feelings when I go out and visit people," she said.

This includes her visits off the reservation.

She said she recently went to visit a school in Albuquerque and talked to students about the problems of growing up without a father. Her father passed away when she was 3 years old.

"A week later, I received a letter from a little non-Indian girl who was in the audience, and she said that she would share her dad with me," said Yazzie. "I was in tears. This really tore at my heart."

That's one of the good things about being Miss Navajo. "We were able to connect, and that's what I enjoy being able to connect with people."

It makes up for the long hours being Miss Navajo is not an 8 to 5 job, she says and the evenings and weekends on the road, traveling for long periods.

"A lot of people think being Miss Navajo is an easy job," she said, "but it's hard work."

The jobs not been made easier with the department's money problems.

To ease the situation, the department asks organizations that have funds available to help defray some of the expenses and some do, said Yazzie.

"But we don't reject invitations just because they can't afford to pay," she said.

She said she tries to accept as many of the invitations as she can each week, because she knows how excited children get when they have a chance to meet Miss Navajo.

She has been getting some help in her fund-raising efforts.

Larry Thompson, a Scottsdale design and marketing expert who is best known for the periodic "Women of Navajoland" calendars he has put out, has now made up a limited edition poster for Yazzie.

The poster includes a number of photos of Yazzie at various times in her life. A total of 200 were printed, and she hopes to raise several thousand dollars by selling them at $20 each.

The money will come in handy, she said, since besides helping to defray her ordinary travel expenses, she hopes to raise some $1,200 to pay for the cost of traveling to Japan in May on a goodwill trip and another $3,000 to help pay for a banquet Miss Navajo sponsors every September as the time of her reign nears its end.

She is also planning to hold a symposium in the near future for tribal royalty there are dozens of queens and princesses chosen each year on the reservation to talk to them about Navajo culture and history.

She's also beginning to think about life after being Miss Navajo.

She has been accepted at Harvard University and plans to go there to pursue a master's degree in education, but that will have to be put off until the fall of 2001, since her reign this year won't end until after classes start in August.

So she plans to go back to Kayenta for a year and her former job as a fifth grade teacher of Navajo culture. She also wants to catch up on a lot of things she has been forced to put aside because of her Miss Navajo duties.

"But I wouldn't have missed this for the world," she said. "I really love being Miss Navajo."

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'The Return of Navajo Boy'

Nancy Watson
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — He sat down to read the Gallup Independent, and before he was done, he had found his family.

"It was the gateway to home," said John Wayne Cly.

Cly had been reading a story two years ago about the filming of "The Return of Navajo Boy," a documentary about Navajos who had lived in Monument Valley for more than 60 years.

Cly had once been one of those Monument Valley Navajos, but he'd been taken from his family by missionaries when he was 2 years old after his mother had died of lung disease.

Although they had promised to bring him home when he was 6, he spent the rest of his childhood with a foster mission family in Continental Divide.

"I felt lost. I never fit in," he said. "The people I was living with told me I could call them Mom and Dad, but it didn't feel right."

As a child, he wondered who he was and where his family was. He wasn't even sure how old he was, since he had no birth certificate

He did have two letters, one from his namesake, John Wayne, and another from his grandmother, Happy Cly.

Wayne's letter was a response to a letter the missionary had written, obviously requesting money.

In the letter, Wayne inquired about the child and included a check to help with his care.

The letter from his grandmother said when she was well, she wanted the boy brought home to her and his family in Monument Valley.

His grandmother never recovered from her illness, but she left a rich legacy that would one day lead him home, although it would take decades.

Like Wayne, the Cly family of Monument Valley had been filmed and photographed many times. Even John Wayne Cly had been filmed before the missionaries took him away from his Navajo family.

Harry Goulding, who started the Goulding Trading Post in Monument Valley, frequently took tourists to the Clys, so the visitors could observe Navajos.

Goulding and others took thousands of photographs of the Clys that were made into postcards.

Happy Cly, John Wayne Cly's grandmother, was once called the most photographed woman in America, but she was never named. She was known simply as the Navajo woman

Goulding also brought John Ford to the area, where he filmed several westerns.

It was during the shooting of one of these westerns that John Wayne appeared at the Cly home and named the baby, John Wayne Cly.

Ford filmed "The Navajo Boy" in the area and used the silent, black-and-white home movie to describe life in Monument Valley. Jimmy Cly, John Wayne Cly's brother, was the star of the film. The Kerr McGee Co. also filmed a piece of propaganda about uranium mining near the Clys' home.

A few years ago, Bill Kennedy, Ford's son, took the film to producer Jeff Spitz in Chicago. He wanted to do something with the movie.

Research on the movie brought Spitz to the Navajo Nation, where he began a documentary about the return of the home movie to the Clys.

He and Kennedy met Jimmy Cly, the star of Navajo Boy, and the other members of the Cly family, including Elsie Mae Cly, John Wayne Cly's sister.

She told Spitz about her 2-year-old brother, whom the missionaries had taken.

At the same time, hearings were taking place regarding the federal government's responsibility to the Navajo victims of uranium mining. Spitz included footage of the hearings in the documentary, because some of the Clys were testifying at it.

The Gallup Independent reported on the hearing and the filming of the Cly family that took place there.

Included in the news story was the fact that a baby had been taken from the family.

The next day, after reading the stories, John Wayne Cly called the newspaper office.

"They gave me the number of my niece, Violette Adakai, in Fort Defiance. I called her and told her who I was. She cried. She said, 'You're the uncle we've always been looking for.'"

He then called Spitz, who wanted to include John Wayne Cly's homecoming in his film.

In "The Return of Navajo Boy," Spitz had taken on a mother lode.

When Bennie Klain, a radio news reporter who had previously talked to Spitz, visited him in Chicago, Klain discovered Spitz had an enormous amount of "rich material" but couldn't tie it together.

Klain, became the co-producer, and together they wove the Clys story.

Spitz said his usual funding sources for films, including the MacArthur Foundation, denied him money for "The Return of Navajo Boy, but Kennedy kept the film alive financially.

The film includes the return of the original movie and many of the postcards and photographs taken of the Clys over the years. And it documents some of the devastation that uranium mining has had on the Clys, including the death of some family members.

But it also was responsible for and includes the return of John Wayne Cly to his family.

The tearful reunion of John Wayne Cly and his family is the climax of the film.

Cly says he cannot remember much of his life before the fourth grade. He thinks he may have chosen to forget.

He grew up with three foster brothers, two foster sisters and a foster mother, Patty Laughlin, who now lives in California. The father of the foster family was a missionary who took care of things from another location and was seldom at the home.

He graduated from Thoreau High School. About a month later, while waiting to hear about job in the uranium mine or from the U.S. Coast Guard, he was kicked out of the foster home. He was told that it was time for him to leave.

He had no money and nowhere to live. He did not know where to go or what to do.

Sherwood and Roberta Stoddard, friends of his, gave him a place to stay, and he began working in a uranium mine.

He later met his wife Rufina and moved to Zuni, her pueblo, where he became a silversmith. They have a son, and Cly is stepfather to Rufina's two daughters. They have one grandchild.

He currently works as a fire bus driver, taking firefighters to forest fires.

He said the reunion with his family is like a "monkey off his back, like a burden lifted."

When asked his comments on the Indian Child Welfare Protection Act, passed by Congress in 1978 to protect Indian children from being adopted or taken into foster care off the reservation, he said, "It's a good idea.

"That way, there will not be so many lost people."

"The Return of Navajo Boy," an official Sundance Film Festival selection, will be shown in several locations this weekend.

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52 immigrants picked up on I-40

GALLUP, N.M. (AP) — Fifty-two illegal immigrants were picked up in three separate traffic stops Tuesday near Gallup.
That's in addition to the 27 picked up on Monday at Gallup.

State police stopped a van about 2 a.m. in Gallup and found 16 illegal immigrants, then stopped a second van at 3 a.m. on Interstate 40 three miles east of Gallup which had 22 illegal immigrants inside.

Both vans were from Phoenix; one headed for Denver and the other for Albuquerque, said state police Capt. Glenn Thomas.
Gallup police stopped another van shortly after 2 a.m. and found 14 illegal immigrants inside.

All were turned over to immigration agents.

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Crownpoint auto crash claims life

Jim Maniaci
Diné Bureau

CROWNPOINT — A 17-year-old Smith Lake resident died Monday morning when a tire on her pickup truck blew out, causing her to skid across the road and collide with a van carrying a family of five from the Becenti Chapter.

Leora Lee died at the scene, trapped in the cab of her northbound truck.

Terry Morgan, 23, of Becenti was the driver of a 1989 van and carried four passengers...

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Alan Arthur
Sports Editor

GALLUP — The Gallup Bengals got the victories they wanted, just not in the way they wanted to do it.

The Bengals swept the Grants Pirates 10-0 and 8-5 in prep baseball action at Veterans Memorial Complex Tuesday afternoon in their last tune-up before the District 1AAAA season gears up.

Gallup pitcher Justin Munoz fired a one-hit shutout in the easy opening victory, but the Bengals had to come-from-behind to capture the second game win...

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Correction

GRANTS — In a story Tuesday about Cibola County possibly purchasing a building in Grants, some information was misstated. The investment firm that owns the Alco building has not said it will take $200,000 for the structure. The amount was discussed as an offer that could be made.

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Texas girl has hantavirus

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A 12-year-old Lubbock girl was treated for hantavirus by Texas Tech Health Sciences Center doctors last week after contracting the virus this month.

West Texas doctors announced the case Tuesday, saying they are concerned the drought is causing rodents to seek human food sources, increasing the likelihood of contact with their feces, the source of the virus.

"Fourteen cases in a seven-year period makes it a relatively rare disease, but obviously there have been outbreaks," Texas Department of Health epidemiologist Julie Rawlings said. "This seems a little bit early in the year, and I think we need to be watchful..."

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Orange barrel alert
U.S. 666 widening project begins

Tanya Brazil
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Gallup City Council members received an update from state highway officials Tuesday about the $13.5 million expansion of U.S. Highway 666.

Joe Peterman, the local project manager for the New Mexico state highway and transportation department, said the project they began a week ago Monday is "right on schedule."

Using a map, Peterman presented an overview of the road expansion, which the department has divided into six phases of construction...

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'Navajo Boy' showing at museum

Staff Report

GALLUP — The Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock will host a special screening of the film, "The Return of Navajo Boy," at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Copies of the film and other archival information will be presented to the museum by Bill Kennedy, the film's sponsor.

Co-producers Jeff Spitz of Chicago and Bennie Klain of Austin, Texas, will also be present...

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N.M. special session topics

SANTA FE (AP) — Proposals that Gov. Gary Johnson placed on the agenda of the Legislature to consider during a special session that began Tuesday. A state budget to finance public schools, higher education and general government operations in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Revised gambling compacts to lower the casino revenues Indian tribes must pay the state...

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