On The Reservation

While we were couchsurfing in Santa Fe, our host Peter told us that Navajo Nation—an American Indian-governed territory about the size of New England—was something that we should be sure not to bypass. Standing in the middle of his art studio, and wearing a sort of longish frock, he told us that it would be a mistake to go directly to southern Colorado and Utah before going to the Grand Canyon, as we had planned, rather than stopping in Navajo territory first. Spanning northwest New Mexico, southwest Colorado, northeast Arizona, and southeast Utah, the Navajo Indian Reservation, he explained, is the largest reservation in the United States, and in addition to the over 165, 000 Navajos who call this place home, there are countless beautiful canyons and ancient ruins to see there.

“Stick to the touristy areas,” a National Parks ranger told us later that day in Petroglyph National Monument, a series of cliff drawings right outside Albuquerque. “And don’t take any pictures in the towns.”

By “touristy areas,” she meant the places that are located within the reservation, but owned by the National Parks Service.

During our stay on the Navajo Reservation, we did stick to the touristy areas. But observing the sheer distinctiveness of life there was unavoidable.

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After leaving Santa Fe, we began our adventure in Bandelier National Monument (yes, it was a cancellation stamp opportunity), where we explored ancient cave dwellings.

The ruins in this region belong not to the Navajo, but to the Ancestral Pueblo people, who farmed the land and established villages long before Europeans landed in North America, and before the Navajo arrived from Canada in the late 1500s. They carved complex dwellings out of the cliff sides, and created underground structures called kivas to house religious ceremonies. As we learned from the National Parks video (which we view as avidly as we collect cancellation stamps), Pueblo descendants believe that their ancestors’ spirits continue to live in the canyons, so these areas should be respected as sacred places.

A view from inside one of the cliff dwellings in Bandelier. Located about ten feet above the cliff floor, these dwellings are surprisingly warm and cozy.

Over the course of the next few days, we visited many such dwellings: Chaco Canyon, a grand, multi-storied architectural structure built by ancient Pueblos in the ninth century; Navajo National Monument, a series of dwellings built into cliffs; and Canyon de Chelly, a labyrinth of several canyons with ancient ruins built within them. There are records indicating that Native people—Paleo-Indians, basket weavers, Pueblos, and eventually Navajos—have been living in these canyons for over 5000 years. While there is no written history of their lives, the many petroglyphs on the canyon walls tell us their stories.

Ricky amid the ruins of Chaco Canyon.

When the Pueblos eventually abandoned these dwellings (and settled in other areas in the southwest to become the Hopi people), the Navajo became the dominant tribe in the region. As we learned from the Navajo Museum we visited later in the tribal capital of Window Rock, after the U.S. displaced Mexico as the central governing power, the Diné—Navajo for “the people”—suffered greatly. Armies murdered people and burned homes, crops, and livestock. In 1864, soldiers marched the survivors of these raids 300 miles to a reserve in eastern New Mexico. The tribe was finally allowed to return to their home four years later, but the “Long Walk” still remains a tragic event in Navajo memory.

But even though Canyon de Chelly is administered by the National Parks Service, the canyons themselves are still home to the Navajos. This is clear from the fact that you can’t actually go down into the canyons without a guide. Unlike the other national parks we’ve visited, the ones in Navajo Nation don’t present videos telling you about the geology of the place; they tell you about its sacred significance, and use language like “ancient voices can be heard here.” As Ricky noted, places that are sacred to Native Americans are really the only places in America that are old enough to be considered holy at all. The parks on the reservation present more than ancient history; they present living history, too.

Visiting the parks, you feel not like a fellow citizen of the United States, but like a visitor to a foreign country. Stepping out of the car and onto the overlooks, there are Navajos there to greet you with a warm “Welcome to Canyon de Chelly. Is this your first time here?” And then they’ll often say, “Would you like to take a look at some of my artwork? I grew up right here inside the canyon.” You feel as if someone just placed lei over your head. You feel guilty because you know that they really need you to take a look at their artwork.

Unable to pay for a guide, Ricky looks down into Canyon de Chelly from above.

Doing my best to zoom into the ruins from the top of the canyon.

It was in Chinle, the “big city” outside Canyon de Chelly, in which we stayed at a free campground, where we first realized we were the only non-native people in the area. We bought groceries at Basha’s, “a Diné supermarket,” and went to have dinner at one of the few restaurant options, a pizza store. In both cases, we experienced the slight feeling of being undressed by many eyes. It wasn’t the stare of hostility or resentment, I don’t think. It was just the sudden awareness of outsiders in their presence.

During our stay in Chinle, we also visited Window Rock, Arizona, which is essentially the Washington, D.C. of Navajo Nation. I think the most surprising part of being on the reservation was not seeing the things you might expect, like poverty, but actually how similar—at least on the outside—their life is to that of most Americans. Families are picnicking in the park, teenagers are laughing over a Burger King milkshake, and mothers are shopping for groceries. The only difference is that the shopper, the cashier, and the guy parking his car next to you are all Navajo.

A Navajo park in Window Rock, AZ. 

I was fascinated by the little touches, like the logo for "women" on the restroom door, that signaled that we were no longer in mainstream America.

During our final night on the reservation, we stayed at Goulding’s—a campground next to Monument Valley, which is the the only major park in the area owned by the Navajos and not by the NPS. Goulding’s was opened by a couple of white settlers in the early 20s, who set up a trading post for the local Navajo population. With the onset of the Depression, however, the Gouldings suffered a financial blow. That is, until a Hollywood director, one John Ford, decided that the arid desert with its unique rock formations (hence the name “Monument Valley”) was the perfect location to shoot Stagecoach, a United Artist Western starring a baby-faced John Wayne. Although the campground is now entirely staffed by Navajos, it continues to attract visitors both to the campground and to Monument Valley through its association with John Wayne and Westerns more generally. When we arrived, we were delighted to learn that they would be showing Stagecoach that night—as they show a John Wayne movie every night.

What is ironic about Goulding’s, though, is that while the filming of these westerns helped to keep Monument Valley alive, as anyone who has seen a western knows, they also contribute to the negative/flattening portrayals of American Indians in film. Goulding’s helped Monument Valley thrive, but it also turned it into a tourist trap—something commercial rather than something sacred.  

The filming of Stagecoach in Monument Valley

Me at a very windy Monument Valley 

Interestingly enough, the Navajos at Monument Valley are well aware of this issue, as on one of the signs in the visitor’s center they mention the infractions of the “visitors to the region” and the ways in which they exploited Monument Valley’s resources. The truth of the matter is that Ricky and I hated Monument Valley. Not only did we have to pay $10 to enter the park (we enter National Parks for free because of our annual pass), but when we asked the man at the kiosk whether we would be able to explore the park in a two-wheel drive, he told us it’d be no problem. It turns out that it was. After warding off several people trying to get us to pay $120 for a guided horse tour, we only made it about a mile into the road, realizing that the car couldn’t sustain itself on the bumpy, unpaved road. As Ricky drove slowly, angrily back to the visitor’s center, he said he felt suddenly less interested in the book he had been reading about the Navajo.

Our inability to really make sense of the reservation—the presence of both normalcy and also a kind of third world feeling—helps to explain the paradoxes of the reservation system itself. As anyone who is a part of a religious or ethnic community knows, preservation and separation are virtually one and the same. If reservations are the means by which American Indians can continue to practice their ancient traditions, and in the case of the Navajo at least, live on their sacred lands, they are also the reason for poverty, unemployment, and general disconnect from the mainstream world.

I haven’t been able to do the kind of research I would like to in order to present more facts when writing about this highly complex topic. But with a little bit of Googling I was able to at least confirm something that Peter had told us: since the inception of the United States, there hasn’t been a single treaty between the U.S. and the natives that the U.S. hasn’t broken. Although policies have varied from extermination to “civilizing” missions, the ultimate goal is always the same; to force them to embrace European-American culture. Speaking to the Brothers of the Choctaw Nation in 1803, Thomas Jefferson said: “Compared with you, we are but as of yesterday in this land. Yet see how much more we have multiplied by industry, and the exercise of that reason which you possess in common with us. Follow then our example, brethren, and we will aid you with great pleasure” (Yale Law School). So, even a historically moderate attitude implied a complete disregard for the preservation of native culture.

With the growing population of American settlers, however, the policy quickly became even less understanding. Under Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate southeastern Cherokees from their homes and forcefully move them to lands west of the Mississippi. Jackson used the military to transport them west on what became known as the “Trail of Tears.” Reservations, as these new lands were called, were generally located in places where they could be separated from tradition and more readily pushed into European-American society. After handing the cashier a $20 bill with the face of Andrew Jackson on it in that pizza store in Chinle, Ricky noted how bizarre that must be for them.

As more and more people came to the west—first the early settlers, then the tourists arriving on the transcontinental railroad, and later those travelling on Route 66 and the early US highway system, native culture was further forced to become something of a tourist attraction. Whether it was Westerns depicting Native Americans as wild and blood lusting, people going to the southwest to visit the famed trading posts, or youngsters taking “Indian Detours” during cross-country road trips, native culture seemed to appeal to the commercial mainstream as a result of its connotations of an “exotic” past. 

A prime example of this phenomenon lies in the Fred Harvey Company, named for an entrepreneurial freight agent, who began opening restaurants in the late 19th century in order to accommodate the growing number of travelers on the new Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railways. Harvey also began to offer people the opportunity to go on "Indian Detours," bringing them into the areas that had previously been considered exclusively for natives. 

A 1920s billboard advertising an "Indian Detour."

We actually stopped at Petrified Forest National Park, in order to view an example of the Harvey Company's legacy. In addition to being home to a collection of logs that have turned into beautiful gemstones as a result of some geological process I don't really understand, the park is mostly famous for being the only national park that includes and protects a sizable portion of the old Route 66. Opened in 1940, the park also houses the Painted Desert Inn, a restaurant that was built by the Harvey Company to offer food, souvenirs, and lodging to these Route 66 travelers. Here, the famous "Harvey Girls" provided legendary service to the public, and helped to attract hordes to the otherwise desolate region.  

A photograph from the Painted Desert Inn during the 1940s

That's me at the Painted Desert Inn- now it's just a museum and visitor's center.

The growth of tourism in the area explains how the Navajo have both conceded to the assimilationist demands of the U.S. government, while still trying to hang on to their true selves as best as they could. 

Today, the legal standing of American Indians remains complex: there are over 500 federally-recognized tribal governments in the US, and these tribes possess the right to form their own governments, enforce laws within their lands, tax, and to zone and exclude people from tribal territories. But limitations on tribal powers are the same as those on states; they don’t have to power to make war, coin money, or engage in foreign relations. They also face the extra burden of trying to maintain a culture that the government has long tried to extinguish, and to live in a situation that is unfortunately conducive to poverty, unemployment, and lack of education.

These statistics were posted in the Monument Valley Visitor's Center.

While many improvements have been made—for example, tribal colleges have been founded on many of reservations, and in 2009, Obama signed a historic apology into law for past “ill-conceived policies”—the situation remains historically tragic and endlessly complex. Despite Obama’s claim that we are “one people, one America,” I have found that this really couldn’t be further from the truth.