Navajo open new hotel in Monument Valley

MONUMENT VALLEY PARK — An ancient Navajo prayer, “Night Chant,” begins in a “house made of dawn” and evokes transition, healing and restoration of hozho – or beauty, order and harmony.

Like a manifestation of the prayer, a promotional photograph shows the morning Arizona sun washing vivid color and new life over Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park’s man-made mesa, The View Hotel.

Monument Valley Park is located three hours northwest of Flagstaff on Navajo land in Arizona. The hotel is significant to the preservation of culture and to the healing of a depressed economy of the nation within a nation, say those close to the project.

“My biggest reward is knowing that whatever building I construct will create employment opportunities for people, and with this current project it will create employment opportunities for my people, The Dine People,” says Romona Tayah, assistant superintendent for FCI Constructors Inc., who built the hotel.

In a prepared statement, Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. said the project will create much-needed jobs while highlighting tribal culture.

“Job creation on Tribal land means economic opportunity but also translates into cultural preservation,” he said in a recent press release. “When family members can find employment close to their traditional homes they stay connected with their culture and their language. This fosters an environment where traditional ways of the Navajo people can be passed from generation to generation.”

TRIBE STRUGGLES FOR RECOGNITION

The road to projects like The View was a long and arduous for the Navajo, also known as the Dine People.

Beginning in January 1863, the U.S. Army forced more than 8,000 Navajo from their native lands on the Colorado Plateau in what is known today as The Long Walk, a roughly 300-mile trek to Fort Sumner in New Mexico.

“The instigator of this policy, General James H. Carleton, was involved in a wide variety of non-military activities that presupposed removal of Indians from their homelands …
Carleton was involved in a series of questionable activities regarding mining, the cumulative effect of which appears to have contributed to his decision to remove Navajos from their homeland,” wrote Neal W. Ackerly in his 1998 book, A Navajo Diaspora: The Long Walk to Hwéeldi.

But Carleton had underestimated the number of Navajos and Fort Sumner was ill-equipped to care for them, Ackerly wrote.

In May 1864, Dr. Michael Steck, then Indian Agent for the New Mexico Territory, condemned Carleton’s policy as a failure, stating that the captured Navajos surrendered largely because the Army could provide food.

“The rich and powerful portion of them are still in their own country … it will cost ten times the amount to catch and remove the wealthy portion of the tribe,” Steck wrote.

By early 1865, Carleton was losing federal and local support. Hundreds of Navajo began leaving Fort Sumner on their own, returning to their native land.

On June 1, 1868 the U.S. signed a treaty with the Navajo, officially allowing the remaining detainees to return home to a reservation of about 3 million acres, or 5,500 square miles.

NAVAJO ECONOMY IS TOP CONCERN

Today, the Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles in Arizona and New Mexico and includes 204,698 people, according to Trib Choudhary, a principal economic development specialist with the tribe. This makes the Navajo the largest Native American tribe in the U.S.

Government, mining and services such as hospitals and schools makeup the Nation’s main employers, however 50 percent of its people live below the U.S. poverty level. About 9,400 Navajo families nationwide depend on welfare programs to provide clothing, gasoline, and food stamps, Choudhary says.

The Navajo Nation government earned about $71 million from all mining revenue in 2005, accounting for almost 58 percent of the tribe’s $124 million general fund that year, tribal documents show.

When federal emission standards forced the coal-fired Mojave Generating Station in Laughlin to close on Dec. 31, 2005, the Navajo Nation’s pocketbook took a big hit.

“[The Navajo government] lost about $20 million,” Choudhary says. Replacing that revenue seems about as hard as the stratified formations speckled across the desert floor.

The next day, Peabody Western Coal Company shut down operations at the Black Mesa Mine on the Navajo reservation. Mojave was the mine’s only customer, buying about 5 million tons of coal annually.

About 240 people were employed at the Black Mesa Mine when it closed.

The overall unemployment rate in Navajoland, including non-Indians, is 52 percent. Among Navajo people, the rate is 57 percent, according to tribal documents. Bout three-fourths of the 4,195 people living near the View Hotel project are unemployed, Choudhary says.

“The Navajos are trying to bring industry, but they often don’t have the money for infrastructure,” Choudhary says. Navajo lands are held in trust and cannot be leveraged to fund private enterprise – even by its own people. “Private companies don’t want to build because they can’t own the land.”

As a sovereign nation within the U.S., it is understandable that Navajo leaders would look to capture more of the tourism revenue currently bypassing its economy for lack of services.

About 2.5 million tourists annually visit the reservation’s many attractions like Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly and Chaco Canyon. They spent more than $100 million inside the reservation, according to the tribe’s 2006 economic report.

With only 13 hotels and few retail outlets on the reservation, much of the potential revenue leaks out to border towns.

So, borrowing from business models used by the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service, the Navajo Nation set up a system to lease parkland through its Parks & Recreation Department.

OUTLOOK IMPROVES WITH THE VIEW

The View Hotel is the first such project. The Nation’s parks department leased land to ARTSCO, a family-owned company led by Armanda Ortega, of the Kiy`anníí – Dine for “Towering House” – Clan. The Ortega family has traded in Indian jewelry, arts and crafts since the early 1800s.

ARTSCO built the 90-room hotel with private funds on the site of a former campground that adjoined the park’s visitor center, using contractors that employ more than 90 percent Native American workers.

The project means a lot to Romona Tayah, assistant superintendent for FCI Constructors, Inc., who lives in a reservation home her parents built the year she was born.

“Maintaining ties to family land given to me and my sisters by my grandmother and mother is what keeps me coming home from wherever my work takes me,” Tayah says.

The View Hotel will employ about 100 people. A percentage of gross revenue on all sales will go to Navajo Parks & Recreation. The Navajo Nation will receive sales tax revenue.

“The hotel goes beyond what have become standard eco-friendly building practices using low-flow water devices, extra insulation, windows with energy-efficient values, and fluorescent lighting,” stated Mike Finney, owner of AZ Communications Group, which has worked with ARTSCO and the Navajo Nation office of tourism.

“There are operable windows in public spaces including the soaring two story lobby that allows for natural air flow for energy efficient cooling,” he says.

Modern utilities and a wastewater treatment plant will be in place before the hotel opens in mid-November, Finney says. Hotel management is taking online reservations now for arrivals beginning Dec. 6, 2008, he says.

QUESTIONS LINGER ABOUT GAMBLING, IMPACTS

Despite the much-heralded project and its promise of new jobs, the long-term effects of bringing more tourist services to the Navajo Nation remain unclear. Information regarding financial benefits – both to the Nation and its workforce – were not immediately available.

Speculation abounds about the role gaming should have in tribal culture. Gaming on Navajo lands was approved in November 2004 by the Navajo people in a referendum vote. The first tribal casino – Fire Rock Casino – is under construction in Window Rock and expected to open in November, Choudhary says.

Choudhary advocates for tribal casinos and would support a casino at the View Hotel. However, he worries about the profit-sharing models used by other Native American tribes, which give between $7,000 and $38,000 to native individuals. A Navajo parks officials says that there is no gaming ever planned for Monument Valley Tribal Park.

“It’s not right to give welfare to people who are able to work. It makes them lazy,” Choudhary says.

But a casino could help fill the gap in government revenue and jobs left by the mining industry, Choudhary says.

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