Perhaps we should be grateful to James Lambert, candidate for county commissioner, for giving us the opportunity to think about our treatment of minorities. I doubt that he is racist, and he renounces the doctrine of White Supremacy. But his unusual ethnocentric religious doctrine maintains that people from England and northern Europe will be favored by Jesus in his kingdom, a comforting belief for most white people in Montezuma Country. But not for Navajo and Ute people. They remember the genocide by immigrants from England and northern Europe who drove Chief Ouray and his people from their hunting grounds in Colorado and Utah. Navajos remember the U.S. Army driving them on a forced march from their orchards and sheep pastures to Bosque Redondo, where most of them starved to death. Is that ancient history? Well, only about 20 years ago in the middle of Cortez, my Navajo friend lost his brother to some white boys who decided to “roll an Indian” one night. They caught him on his way home from work and beat him to the ground, then drove over him with their pickup truck until he was dead.
Racism still permeates our community. Some of my kids are blue-eyed blonds, but the two adopted ones have beautiful brown skin tones, derived from their African and Asian heritages. These kids taught me about racism in Dolores and Cortez schools, when I asked the usual question, “How was your day?” Their stories weren’t pretty. Think about the extra languages we offer in our schools: European languages. Yet a quarter of our school kids wish they could speak Ute or Navajo with their grandparents. Maybe our schools could help us overcome our ethnocentricity. And maybe James Lambert could show us his true feelings by offering to help achieve racial balance in county hiring practices, since he told me that he successfully hired many Native Americans in his business. Maybe he could offer to be sensitive to the beliefs of native peoples when considering cemetery expansions. Maybe he could help us make a new start.
Bill Jobin
Cortez