Reznet

Sharon Brown, chief of trail operations with the National Park Service, discusses Long Walk National Historic Trail alternatives with McKinley County School Board member Chee Smith at the open house in Crownpoint, N.M., on June 15. Reznet Photo by Andi Murphy

Long Walk Trail Must Overcome Taboos

By Andi Murphy

CROWNPOINT, N.M. — The National Park Service is completing its journey to Congress with the thoughts of the Navajo and Mescalero Apache about making the Long Walk a national historic trail.

Park Service representatives have been researching the Long Walk routes and history since 2002 when Congress passed a law ordering it to do so.

They are asking the Navajo and Apache what they think of the endeavor to make a trail. They stopped at the chapter house in Crownpoint on their way across the Navajo Nation with a series of open houses.

“There’s a lot of ‘yee yahs' ” said Bonnie Yazzie, a traditional educator who works with the Navajo Technical College in town. Yee yah in Navajo means dangerous thing, or things you’re supposed to stay away from. “We never go back to the place of death,” she said.

Lessons for Children Outweigh Taboos

Yazzie spoke her mind about Navajo taboos and how making the trail would be taboo. But she supported the effort fully because it’s more important for children to know of the history and the atrocities that took place during the Long Walk. She said that instead of a taboo, it could show respect for the dead and for the efforts of getting the Navajo home after the Navajo Treaty of 1868 ended the captivity of the people.

“We came home,” said Leonard Perry, an educational thought and sociocultural studies student at the University of New Mexico. “That’s what we should be telling our future generations.”

With his studies in history and culture, Perry knows that history can repeat itself, and something like the Long Walk shouldn’t be repeated, he said. The history of the Long Walk could easily be erased because there’s very little physical evidence, just old military records — many of them missing — and oral stories. A historic trail would be physical evidence of the event and an emotional and educational experience for visitors.

In 1863 -1864, the U.S. government forced about 8,000 Navajo and Mescalero Apaches to Bosque Redondo, a concentration camp in Fort Sumner, N.M., from native lands in New Mexico and Arizona. They marched from as far as 500 miles away to the desolate campsite. They stayed for four years as prisoners of war and many died from starvation, disease, exposure, raids by other tribes and conflicts with the military.

"What Matters is That We Came Back"

“It was really interesting to see that place,” said Rita Capitan, vice president of the Crownpoint chapter ,who recently took a trip with her family to the monument.

Capitan had a discussion with her family about how the Navajo could navigate 300 miles from Crownpoint to the camp and endure a march of that distance. Although Capitan is a very traditional person and believes going back to the place of death is yee yah, “we can’t continue to tell our children to stay away,” she said.

“Five hundred years from now, our grandkids can always go back and remember the things,” Capitan said.

Sharon Brown chief of trail operations with the Park service, summarized the remarks from most people she has heard speak about the trail as "What's important is that we came back." . Most reasons people don’t support the trail is because of the taboo of the dead or reopening old wounds, she said. But so far, despite mixed feelings in Crownpoint,. most of the comments have been positive.

4 Plans are up for Consideration

The Park Service has heard hundreds of people’s opinions about the trail, Brown said. The Park Service will have four alternatives to present to Congress when it's done revising the plan. One is making the historic trail and focusing on the events of the Long Walk, and another is giving more notice to the return home for both tribes. Other alternatives include no action and a grant for Long Walk educational projects for the Navajo and Mescalero Apache tribes.

The trail would start like fingers from Kayenta, Ariz. and in the middle of the Navajo reservation and go into New Mexico through Gallup and east on Interstate 40 to Albuquerque. It would go up to Santa Fe, Las Vegas, down to Bosque Redondo and to Mescalero. Along the way, there would be museums and landmarks telling the story of the Long Walk, Brown said.

“My job is to get the plan finished and get it to Congress,” Brown said. “Then it would be up to Congress.”

Andi Murphy, Navajo, is a journalism student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. A graduate of the Freedom Forum's 2007 American Indian Journalism Institute, Murphy has interned as a reporter at The Daily Times in Farmington, N.M., and the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune. This summer she was editor of the Crownpoint Baahane', a community newsletter in Crownpoint, N.M.