Navajo residents say:
DUI, not tobacco, is the problem

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — If Navajo Nation lawmakers really want to do something to benefit the Diné people, they would be better off tackling issues such as royalties, roads, drunken drivers, and school uniform policies, rather than tobacco.

At least, that’s the opinion of most people surveyed Friday in the Window Rock/Fort Defiance areas. The majority of Navajos questioned about a tobacco ban didn’t want their names used in the newspaper, as is typical here on the Navajo Nation, for fear of retaliation.

The Navajo Nation Council failed to get enough votes Thursday to override President Joe Shirley Jr.’s veto of the Commercial Tobacco-Free Act of 2008, but that’s not going to keep the legislation from coming back to Council, according to sponsor Thomas Walker Jr., chairman of the Health and Social Services Committee.

Roscoe Smith of Red Rock, said he is all for the tobacco ban. “There are enough things in the world killing people. We don’t need to add that.” Cars kill people too, the couple told him. “Are we going to ban those?”

Showing wide gashes on her arms and scars on her legs, as well as an area where part of her lower leg was missing, the woman said, “We need to be stricter on DUIs.” One rainy evening several years ago, her vehicle was struck head-on by a drunken driver as she traveled toward Gallup. She ended up with more than 40 fractures. One woman died in the collision, but the driver walked away, she said.

Smith said if Council wants to help, “They should do something about all these big corporations coming in here and giving the people pennies for their land.” The most his relatives have received has been $450 a year for right of way leasing. The couple said one person they know receives 13 cents, and another 47 cents in royalties.

Angel Topaum of Cove said, “If there’s smoking, it’s usually the herbal medicine kind. The only place you ever see smoking is once in a great while outside stores — not standing against the building, but in their car. If you do smoke, you get disapproving looks. It’s mostly in big towns like Farmington and Gallup.”

Tony Mana, a vendor who smokes, said, “I spent five years in the service. I was in the Marines at Camp Pendleton, and I’ll be damned if anybody’s going to tell me I can or cannot smoke. If they’re going to try to ban this, why not all the men and women coming by spitting (smokeless tobacco) and then wiping their hands and trying to touch you?”

Jasser Asi of Gallup, a smoker, said he does see people coming through smoking sometimes. But he added, “If Navajo says no smoking, we all have to. Everyone here is under the law. We are on the reservation so we have to respect the law.”

“Isabelle,” who was minding the gate at the swap meet, said, “Why ban it when you don’t see it? They’re supposed to be talking about our roads, our buildings. They need to think about the roads and the school buses, sending little kids on buses with big kids. They get picked on.”

In her area of Black Rock Acres, she said, there’s a big pothole. “Small cars get stuck in it. In the Piñon area, they need jobs. There’s a lot of need,” she said, but regarding whether there should be a ban on smoking, “I don’t know the answer, because I don’t see anybody smoking.”

One of the workers at the post office in Fort Defiance said she never sees people standing outside the building or in the lobby smoking.

“You may smell it on them sometimes when they walk through,” she said, but you don’t see them smoking.

One of the clerks at the Fina station in Window Rock said that “maybe every once in awhile, you’ll see somebody outside, but no, not really. You don’t see people coming in the store smoking.”

One of the frequent vendors at the swap meet had a different opinion. He said that too often he sees people walking around “smoking the wrong thing,” meaning marijuana. Asked whether it was among the youth or adults, he added, “That’s all I’m going to say.”

A woman from Fort Defiance who was selling at the swap meet said she doesn’t see people walking around smoking and she doesn’t think there’s a big tobacco problem. If there was, she said, “you’d probably see a lot of cigarette butts,” but that isn’t the case.

A couple from Tohatchi who frequently sell their jewelry at the swap meet said they see people smoking sometimes. “There’s one tribal worker that comes out, usually during lunch time, who smokes a cigar. It doesn’t bother me though. We were here during the fair and we really didn’t see anybody smoking.”

The woman said that while she doesn’t have a complaint about the tobacco, she does have a complaint about the uniforms at the school her sons attend in Tohatchi. One of her sons, who plays football, wore a black T-shirt underneath his white Polo shirt and “ended up having to spend the whole day in the cafeteria doing nothing.”

“What about the black shoes? We had already bought school clothes for the boys and were told their shoes were OK when he registered, but then he got written up.” Shoes are $60 a pair, and she has two sons, she said. “That gets expensive.”

The gentleman with her said, “Kids are written up and pulled to the cafeteria or music room and they keep them there all day. They miss all their classes, and then they’re complaining about the grades.”