Navajo Indians

This just in: Dorothy Benally of Beclabito needs a reliable sheepherder. He must be willing to take the flock up into the mountains for at least two months. Call collect . . . . The squaw dance for Frank Woody at Ojo Encino has been postponed . . . . And to anyone who's listening, Elmer Bigben would like the people of Red Mesa to leave messages at the chapter house. Rise and shine.

More than 50,000 people are arrested across the Navajo reservation each year -- yet there are only 59 jail beds here. Officials say the lack of jail space has led to a revolving door for criminals, most of whom are released within a day of being booked, and few of whom serve out an entire sentence. "It's been a horrendous situation," said Hope MacDonald-Lonetree, a Navajo council delegate. "You can't assure the safety of the police and judges and the prosecutors when you have the perpetrators running around.

Truckers rolling through on Interstate 40 refer to this city of 20,000 on their CBs as "Drunk City, U.S.A." The label reflects Gallup's long-established reputation as a place where people--most of them from the nearby Navajo reservation--come to get drunk. Along Route 66 and its assortment of bars and package outlets, drunks slump against buildings a block from the Santa Fe train yard, where passenger trains bound for Los Angeles and Chicago stop each day.

The dirt track we're bumping along doesn't qualify as a road -- even here on the sprawling, remote Navajo reservation. Next to me, behind the wheel of an old pickup, Christian Bigwater downshifts as he maneuvers over and around the rocks in our way. "You're in for a treat," he says as he stops at a point beyond which even he won't risk driving. From here, we hike through scraggly pines and yucca to a promontory from which the treat -- Canyon de Chelly -- reveals itself.

Like many Navajos, 68-year-old Eva Haswood is confused by the choices she faces in Tuesday's Navajo Nation primary election--and she is not getting much help from those running for office. With 15 faces in this year's race for leader of the country's largest Indian tribe, Haswood says that she has no idea who all the candidates are, much less what they'll do for her.

As I watched and listened and thrilled to the Statue of Liberty celebration and the expressions of pride we take in having welcomed the "tired, poor and huddled masses" I could not help thinking about the plight of our own Navajo Indians in Arizona who are to be forced out of their homeland of a hundred years. A barren, rocky, desolate land no one wanted until it was found to contain valuable minerals. INEZ BULGER Gardena

Navajo Indians and supporters marched through Santa Fe, N.M., protesting the planned relocation of 10,000 Navajos from northeastern Arizona to other regions in the state and New Mexico. The marchers oppose a 1974 law designed to resolve a land dispute between the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The law calls for the relocation of the Navajos by next July.

Thank you for your editorial (Aug. 13) regarding the plight of the Columbia River Indians, because of the broken promises of the federal government. Another example of such ill-treatment is the forced relocation of 10,000 Hopi/Navajo Indians from their ancestral homelands in the Four Corners area of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, to make way for leasing their land to the Peabody Coal Co. and utilities. It is a shame that our "liberal" politicians who spend their time frothing at the mouth about events in South Africa, Nicaragua, Chile, and wherever, cannot spare any time to correct these indignities imposed on these original Native Americans.

I am writing to bring to your attention the scheduled removal of thousands of Navajo Indians from lands that have belonged to them for many hundreds of years. The so-called Big Mountain dispute between the Hopi and the Navajo tribes is believed by many to be a government-sponsored scam,, and not without good reason. The Hopi and the Navajo, among the two most peaceful tribes of North America, claim themselves that there is no land dispute, and that the U.S. government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has used the so-called land dispute as an excuse to separate the Hopi and the Navajo.

Re "Blighted homeland," a four-part series, Nov. 19-22 Judy Pasternak's Nov. 19 article on radioactive residue in Navajo land illuminates the dark side of nuclear power. Juxtaposed next to one about Iran's nuclear threat, the article completes the picture of a technology that is disastrous by any definition. Whether intended to light our homes or destroy our enemies, nuclear energy kills. It should be abandoned immediately and its Native American victims adequately compensated. LANNY KAUFER Ojai Thank you for a heart-rending expose regarding the Navajo Indians' plight whereby radioactive materials were left strewn across their reservation.

Navajo tribal officials asked Congress on Tuesday for at least $500 million to finish cleaning up lingering contamination on the Navajo reservation in the American Southwest from Cold War-era uranium mining, an industry nurtured by its only customer until 1971: the United States government. The tribe also sought a moratorium on new mining in Navajo country, which extends beyond the formal reservation borders into New Mexico, until environmental damage from the last round is repaired.

El Paso Natural Gas Co. is lending support to a new Navajo effort to force federal cleanup of one of the Cold War's last major toxic legacies. El Paso filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court against the Department of Energy and other federal agencies, seeking cleanup of debris from an old uranium processing mill that the company operated. "We view them as the appropriate party," El Paso spokesman Bruce Connery said.

Take a backcountry tour into Navajo history at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, a landscape of soaring red-rock canyon walls and 1,000-year-old ruins in northeastern Arizona. THE DEAL: A special lodging-and-exploration package, called a Magical History Tour, will be available April 1 to Oct. 31 and will combine accommodations for two nights with an off-road, six-wheel drive tour.

The Southern California lawyer who successfully prosecuted top Enron executives has been hired by the Navajo tribal government to seek a full cleanup of the old uranium mines contaminating the country's largest reservation. John C. Hueston, who gained fame for his questioning of Enron founder Kenneth L. Lay, contacted the tribe in November after reading articles in The Times about the poisoning of the Navajo homeland as the government mined uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Re "Blighted homeland," a four-part series, Nov. 19-22 Judy Pasternak's Nov. 19 article on radioactive residue in Navajo land illuminates the dark side of nuclear power. Juxtaposed next to one about Iran's nuclear threat, the article completes the picture of a technology that is disastrous by any definition. Whether intended to light our homes or destroy our enemies, nuclear energy kills. It should be abandoned immediately and its Native American victims adequately compensated. LANNY KAUFER Ojai Thank you for a heart-rending expose regarding the Navajo Indians' plight whereby radioactive materials were left strewn across their reservation.

WHEN MINING companies started calling tribal offices last year, Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. issued an edict to employees: Don't answer any questions. Report all contacts to the Navajo attorney general. Decades after the Cold War uranium boom ended, leaving a trail of poisonous waste across the Navajo Nation, the mining industry is back, seeking to tap the region's vast uranium deposits once again.

Superstar Stevie Wonder made an appearance, but not even he, or a name like "Drums Across America" and a cause as American as it can come--the plight of Navajo Indians--could lure enough people to fork out $25 to fill even half of the seats in a Burbank theater. The all-day benefit concert at the Starlight Amphitheatre, billed as a big fund-raiser to aid several hundred Navajo Indians who do not want to be forced off land near Big Mountain, Ariz., wound up being a big money-loser instead.

MOST OF THE MINING companies that drilled, dug and blasted for uranium on the Navajo reservation during the Cold War did nothing to repair the environmental damage they left behind. For a time, tribal leaders staked their hopes for a cleanup on Superfund, the landmark legislation that forces polluters to pay for remediation of toxic sites. More than 1,000 abandoned mines are scattered across the Navajo homeland, which covers 27,000 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

IN ALL HER YEARS of tending sheep in the western reaches of the Navajo range, Lois Neztsosie had never seen anything so odd. New lakes had appeared as if by magic in the arid scrublands. Instead of hunting for puddles in the sandstone, she could lead her 100 animals to drink their fill. She would quench her own thirst as well, parting the film on the water's surface with her hands and leaning down to swallow. Despite the abundant water, an unexpected blessing, her flock failed to thrive.