Leon Grant is honored as Indian Center spark

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Leon Grant, an Omaha tribal member who has made the Navajo Reservation his home for more than four decades, will be honored Saturday by officials for the Phoenix Indian Center for his efforts in 1947 to make life better for Native Americans living in the city and for helping create the center.

The center is holding its 24th annual fundraising event at the Phoenix Civic Center, beginning at 7 p.m. and plans to use the occasion to also celebrate the 60th anniversary of the center by honoring the people who are still around from those days.

This includes Grant who, as a 21-year-old student going to college in Phoenix, decided that the time had come to help not only Natives but Hispanics and blacks get a better living.
He said he remembered going to a City Council meeting and explaining that more minority people were coming to town and not finding any help.

He said that one of the major problems were the signs around town, saying “White Only,” which meant that non-whites found themselves unable to use public services. And this wasn’t right.

Three months later, the City Council passed a resolution ordering businesses to take down these signs and Grant said he went to one of the businesses and saw the sign just lying around and asked what the owner planned to do with it.

“Destroy it, I guess,” the owner said, but Grant convinced him to give it to him.

“I still have that sign,” he said.

Grant was also instrumental in getting enough people together to petition the City Council to provide a space for an Indian center because of the growing number of Natives who were moving to the city. Today, there are more than 70,000 Natives living in Phoenix, 24,000 of them Navajo.

The city provided a room in the government building and over the years the center moved five or six times until in 2005 it moved into a new 88,000 square foot building that it shares with two other Native organizations, providing all kinds of social service programs for Natives living in Phoenix, including job training and help in finding jobs.

Tickets for the fundraiser are still available for $200 each.
For more details, contact the center at (602) 264-6768.