Walk is all about race
Scores march for 'Unity and Justice'

From left, Ericke Willie, Anna Rondon and Gil Shorty lead the Walk for Unity and Justice down Hwy 66 Saturday morning. The walk was organized to remember those who have lost their lives and who have experienced hate crimes and discrimination and bring attention to the Navajo Nation-wide effort to oppose racism in border towns. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — It was the murder of three Navajo men that sent Duane "Chili" Yazzie marching down the streets of Farmington in 1974. For the next seven weeks, Yazzie said, he and others organized marches and boycotts that "brought the City of Farmington to its knees."

And it was the recent shooting death of another Navajo man, Clint John, that brought him back to the streets in 2006.

He was in the streets once again Saturday, this time in Gallup, for the "Walk for Unity and Justice." And just like the marches of his past, he wasn't alone.

Close to 100 people spent a cool, bright morning marching through the empty streets of downtown Gallup to remember those who lost their lives to racism or survived its barbed stings, and to call as the event's name suggested for unity and justice. It was the culmination of a pair of public forums at the University of New Mexico-Gallup in late October and early November addressing racism in the border towns that ring the Navajo reservation.

Members from most of the city's ethnic groups came out, from American Indians to Arabs. Children too young to walk were joined by elders who had trouble walking themselves.

Led by Gilbert Shorty, a local American Indian veteran of the Vietnam war, the group marched west from the Gallup Cultural Center along Highway 66, swung south onto Sixth Street, east onto Coal Avenue, and finally south onto Second before finishing at the courthouse square. There, gathered quietly around the central dance arena, they listened to speakers including Clint John's mother, Della John, and the sister of Larry Casuse, an American Indian shot to death in 1973 after kidnapping the mayor of Gallup out of anger for his ties to the local liquor industry share their thoughts on the morning's theme.

They agreed that conditions have improved in Gallup since the 1970s. There are fewer bars and liquor stores in the city now, noted Lenny Foster, a local activist and the day's moderator.

But they also agreed that racism was far from over and that much work lay ahead.

As a reminder, friends and family of Clint John stood in the crowd wearing T-shirts bearing his image. While a police investigation cleared the officer of any wrong doing, many are convinced that racism cost John his life.

"Our relationship as Native people to our border towns ... has not been always positive," Yazzie said. And while that relationship may never be completely clear of racism's long shadow, he added, "that is no excuse to let those things continue."

"We are neighbors," Yazzie said, "Neither of us is going anywhere."

It was "Native money" that built Gallup, he said. All they asked for in return was to be treated as equals.

"We just ask for respect and the honor that should be afforded us as Native people," said Yazzie,

Dana Chandler went further. As Yazzie and his colleagues did more than three decades ago, he urged the area's American Indians to hold back their money.

Chandler, who is black, said he moved to Gallup seeking relief from the civil rights struggles he'd left behind in Boston only to find the same problems, only among American Indians instead.

"You are the owners of all of this," he told the American Indians in the crowd. If they stopped shopping here, he said, "everything in the city would collapse ... because the God in American is money."

Only then, said Chandler, would the border towns learn to appreciate how valuable they were. He suggested starting with Farmington.

"We are not a minority; we are the majority," he said, speaking of people of color both here and the world over.

Europeans, he said, account for only 10 percent of the Earth's population; "That means that 90 percent of the world is us. You ought to clap to that."

Larry Emerson, a Navajo educator who roomed with Casuse during their days at the University of New Mexico, struck a more conciliatory note. The economic exploitation of the American Indian was not over, he said. But to restore the balance they've lost, he said, they had to work with their neighbors, not against them.

Before ending his speech, Emerson explained the image on the banner that stood behind the speakers that morning. At the bottom lay the broken stocks of burnt corn plants, a reminder, he said, of the scorched earth policy Kit Carson used to drive the area's tribes off their land. The green corn stock growing out of those ashes represents the resilience of those people. It's topped off by seeds the plan will need to pass on its genes to future generations.

Said Emerson, "The sum total is, 'Say, colonialists! Say, racial bigots! Say, those of you out there who could give a damn about Native people! We're still here! ... And we're still smiling as well."

Taking inspiration from that image, the organizers of Saturday's march don't plan to make it their last. Foster said they hope to make it an annual event.