MichaelMoore.com

Navajo president hopeful about Dems

By Felicia Fonseca / Associated Press

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - The newly re-elected president of the Navajo Nation said he hopes that the Democrats' takeover of Congress will help the nation's largest American Indian reservation, saying it was hard to win federal money from Republicans.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, the day after the Navajo general election, Joe Shirley Jr.'s thoughts were partly on how the political shift in Washington will translate into federal action on his reservation, which is home to about 300,000 people in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

"We're going to have a lot more friends in Washington," said Shirley, a Democrat. "I'm very much looking forward to continuing on with my quest as president and for more funding for our hospitals, for our schools, for our social services, for our health services, for the different things we get help with (from) the federal government."

Shirley compared working with a Republican-controlled House to "trying to get blood out of a turnip."

By treaty, the Navajos are a sovereign nation with their own government and laws. Like other American Indian tribes, they receive money from the federal government for social services, schools and infrastructure.

Many Navajos are poor, and unemployment hovers around 50 percent.

On a wall in Shirley's house is a poster that depicts the time when Navajos were forced to become dependent on the federal government, something that angers him and reminds him of his ultimate goal as president.

"When you really come down to it, you're talking about a sovereign nation," Shirley said. "The more money, the better off we are almost immediately. But in the long term, we need to get back on our own two feet, and revenue and jobs is what can do (that) for us."

Although hopeful about the Democratic-controlled Congress, Shirley said he's disappointed about another Election Day result: Arizona voters approved a measure making English the official language.

With the majority of the reservation's land in Arizona, Shirley said the measure will discourage Navajos from speaking their native language.

"If that's not genocide, I don't know what is," Shirley said. "We have our language, we have our color, we have our culture, our way of life, and we need help to preserve and protect that."