AN UNGRATEFUL NATION BY GEORGE MCCOLM - 3K

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While working as an agricultural expert for the Bureau of Indian Affairs after WW II, the author co-wrote a report that revealed the desperate plight of the Navajo people who lived on the brink of starvation in the American Southwest.

"Inanition," a word unfamiliar to most people, was listed as the cause of death on many of the death certificates completed in 1947 by Navajo Service doctors who tended the residents of the Navajo Indian reservation in the Southwest United States. The word sounded better than its more descriptive meaning–"slow death by starvation"–to the federal agencies that since the Treaty of 1868 had been responsible for the care of the Navajo Nation. The euphemism’s use helped to mask the sorry state of affairs that existed on the reservation at the end of World War II, a conflict in which many Navajos gallantly served the Allied cause [See "Code Talkers" in the January/February 1997 issue of American History].

As a United States naval officer in World War II, I had been in charge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s agricultural planning for the post-war occupation of Japan. In the fall of 1946, I was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and sent to Window Rock, Arizona–capital of the Navajo Nation–to direct the soil conservation program on the Navajo reservation, where living conditions were well below the national poverty level. I reported to Reservation Superintendent James Stewart and soon became his confidential advisor on a number of problems that he encountered. It shocked me to learn that no members of the Navajo Nation were being asked to participate in any of the decisions being made "for their good" by the BIA officials at Window Rock or in Washington, D.C.

In the late spring of 1947, when the BIA sent Elizabeth Chief to Window Rock to conduct a study and prepare a report on the welfare needs of the Navajo people, Stewart saw an opportunity "to convince Washington that we really have a lot of starving Indians out here." He told me to work closely with Elizabeth, a wonderful person who put her heart and soul into gathering detailed information for the report. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent to her that all of her training had failed to prepare her emotionally for what she experienced on the reservation. Although it was an undertaking far beyond the requirements of official duty, Elizabeth and I dedicated ourselves to the task of writing the "Navajo Welfare Report of 1947"; we wanted the government to know what was really happening to these people.

Certainly, other means of getting the message back to the nation’s capital had so far proved fruitless. When Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug toured the reservation in the fall of 1946–the first high ranking government official to do so since the land was allocated to the Navajos in 1868–Superintendent Stewart and tribal leaders impressed upon him the necessity of immediate funds to stave off widespread starvation on the reservation. They also pleaded for job-creation projects, such as the building of schools, hospitals, and housing, to provide much needed income to the Indians. By May 1947, however, the $50,000 in relief money allotted annually to the Navajo Welfare Agency had been spent, and no additional funds were forthcoming. It seemed that Secretary Krug had not reported to President Harry Truman on what he had seen the previous fall. Elizabeth and I hoped that our report would serve as a reminder.

Between the signing of the 1868 treaty and the turn of the century, members of the tribe had been very happy to be left alone by the BIA, choosing to overlook repeated treaty violations. To subsist during those years, they cultivated small plots of land and made good use of native plants and herds of wild game; in addition, they earned income through sheep raising and the sale of wool, rugs, and jewelry. But by 1920, the population of both the Navajo people and their sheep herds had increased dramatically, making it apparent that the reservation’s resources could not support the growing numbers.

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