by Chee Brossy
Navajo Times
04 June 2009
WINDOW ROCK--Will
the route Navajos took for the Long Walk become a National
Historic Trail?
Should the trail
be commemorated given it is such a painful piece of the Navajo
past?
Those will be some
of the issues discussed when the National Park Service hosts a
series of open houses on the reservation in the coming weeks.
The proposal to
name the route, or routes, being that there were a number of
different trails and roads the Navajos traveled to get to Bosque
Redondo, as a historic trail has been in the works since 2000. But
it is only recently that the Park Service, working with the Navajo
Nation's Historic Preservation Office, is making the move to
finalize the proposal.
In 2002 Congress
passed legislation to request the National Park Service to do a
feasibility study of the Long Walk routes.
According to the
National Park Service Web site, to be considered a National
Historic Trail, the Long Walk must be of "exceptional value" in
illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. In
2006, The National Park System Advisory Board agreed that it did.
To become official
Congress must confirm the feasibility study. But before it does
the National Park Service will take public comments on the draft
plan at open houses in communities along the proposed routes.
There will be four
open houses held on the Navajo Reservation and three others along
the proposed route.
On June 15 there
will be an open house at the Crownpoint Chapter House from 6 p.m.
to 8 p.m.; June 16 in Window Rock at the Navajo Nation Museum from
4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.; June 17 at the Chinle Chapter House from 6
p.m. to 8 p.m.; and June 18 at the Tuba City Chapter House from
2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
An emotional
subject
Judy Martin, a
cultural specialist with Navajo Historic Preservation, assisted as
an interpreter at the scoping meetings and heard a wide variety of
comments, many emotional, on the subject.
"The old people
were saying that we're not supposed to talk about these things,"
said Martin. "Hwéeldi was a place of death and burial.
"But the young
people said they wanted to know about our history," she added.
"There were all these pros and cons and different reactions."
At one meeting
Martin recalled that she "bawled" her eyes out and "by the end our
eyes were all red and puffy."
That type of
reaction indicates the Long Walk still is an event that can
produce heart-felt anguish in elderly Navajos who remember stories
about it from their parents and grandparents. For these people it
is not merely an historical event contained in the past.
But for some, like
Antoinette Curley-Begay, an ethnographer for the Navajo Nation's
Archeology Department, it is important that it be talked about.
"Our younger
generation, we're saying if we don't talk about it how will we
know?" said Curley-Begay.
Curley-Begay works
at Diné College in Shiprock, where the Archeology Department keeps
an office and trains students to be archeologists.
"Some of these
students are not taught these things at home," Curley-Begay said.
"There's no one to talk to them about these issues, the importance
of knowing this, and how our grandmothers and grandfathers went
through all this so we could be here."
The "all this"
Curley-Begay is refers to is the forced removal and later
imprisonment of thousands of Navajos at Bosque Redondo, N.M., by
the U.S. Army from 1864-68.
More than 1 route
There was more
than just one Long Walk route, said Robert Begay, director of the
Navajo Archeology Department, who helped draft the feasibility
study and whose staff provided one-on-one interviews with elderly
Navajos.
In the beginning
the Park Service had only one map with one trail, Begay said.
"That was
incorrect," said Begay. "It wasn't just one expedition, there were
over 50 long walks. It depended on what region you're in, we
identified three main groups."
Some people did
not go on the Long Walk, but instead hid and escaped detection
from the army.
Some people from
the Navajo Mountain area did not go on the Long Walk, said Begay.
There are also
stories of harsh winters and people dying along the way to Bosque
Redondo or being killed by soldiers because they couldn't keep up.
Begay said there
were also stories of people who missed their relatives and
voluntarily joined them in Bosque Redondo.
"There were 50
different campaigns, and a lot of different perspectives, that's
why you have so many different versions of it," he said. "It all
varies depending on who you talk to."
The missing 2,500
According to Harry
Myers, a retired National Park Service project leader who worked
on the feasibility study, military records say about 11,000
Navajos were taken from their homeland and there were a total of
about 8,500 in captivity at Bosque Redondo.
What happened to
the missing 2,500? They were killed or died in some way, said
Myers.
"But many were
unaccounted for," Myers said. "They probably died, were killed, or
expired one way or another. I suspect probably more Navajo people
died in addition to (the 2,500 number).
"The army
maintained that they kept good records, but there's no way they
could do that," he added. "There's no way to prove that but that
sure is the feeling I get from reading even the military
accounts."
If the Long Walk
is designated as a National Historic Trail, awareness will be
raised and more people would know about it, but it would look
nothing like a hiking trail, said Sharon Brown, chief of trail
operations for the National Park Service's Intermountain Region.
"It's not a trail
that starts at point A and goes to point B - it's not like the
Appalachian Trail," said Brown. "It is a trail that people can
follow and visit historic sites and museums and visitor centers
that tell stories of long walk events."
Typical practice
for such a trail is to put markers on roads that have been laid
over the historic trail, said Brown.
"For the Long Walk
when Navajo people were taken to Bosque Redondo, they were
following established roads of the time in the 1860s," she said.
"A lot of those roads have modern roads built on top of them."
The draft
feasibility study can be found on the Web at
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/ntsi.
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