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INDIAN WELFARE: THE NAVAHO
by RUTH FALKENBURG KIRK, Chairman, State Board
New Mexico Department of Public Welfare

LIVING IN a social service "No Man's Land" are the 55,000 Navaho Indians whose reservation stretches in and across the state boundaries of New Mexico and Arizona, extending even into the scenic wildness of southern Utah. All this country is breathtakingly beautiful, a tourist's paradise. It is a highland of sage and juniper under sunny blue skies that seem even bluer against crimson hued cliffs and terraced horizons. Although there are some mountains, most of the country is arid and over half is real desert, with wide stretches of sandy terrain eroded into a myriad of arroyos and washes. It is the most severely eroded section of land of its size in the United States.

The people are handsome; swarthy, tall and proud—full bred Indians—dressed in bright tribal costumes and living picturesquely in small, primitive mud and log huts, or hogans, scattered about through the 14,-500,000 acres of reservation and the 1,100,000 adjacent acres which the tribes occupies.

It is indeed unfortunate that picturesqueness does not register on the scale of social advancement. Navaho Indians exist under well nigh intolerable conditions of poverty, illiteracy, illness and neglect; they are sub-underprivileged. 

During the war period, about 3600 Navahos in service sent allotment checks home. These and some 15,000 others in industrial work off the reservation inflated incomes above normal expectancy. Along with other similar groups in society, the Indians have spent this war income as fast as it reached them leaving almost nothing of a tangible and permanent nature to show as a result. Unemployment will force them to return to the reservation, to the only security they know, which lies in family and clan interdependency. The Indians are generous in sharing with each other when they have anything to share.

In 1940, the most normal recent year for which data is available, the average per capita annual income of the Navaho people was just $81.89. This income derived 30 per cent from wages, 44 per cent from livestock, 14 per cent from agriculture, 9 per cent from rug weaving and 3 per cent from miscellaneous activities. These figures included  income derived from home grown products used for home consumption. Over half of the 30 per cent income from wages was from government wage work now no longer available. The silversmithing craft which gained impetus during the war may offset this loss.

NAVAHO ECONOMY

THE MAIN economic support of the Navahos is their sheep; the carrying capacity of the range being approximately 513,000 sheep units and because of the drastic stock reduction program of the government, grazing permits at the present time are only slightly in excess of carrying capacity. The story of the Navaho sheep industry is an engrossing one, but relevant to the present description only as the sheep affect the Navaho economy and their living conditions. The Navahos have never developed a highly organized community life because the hogans have to be isolated from one another in order to keep separate the bands of sheep. Mutton is the favorite meat, wool is woven into Navaho rugs and the surplus wool and lambs have been sold to the white man's market. The 44 per cent average annual income is not evenly distributed. With an estimated 7300 stock owners, only 100 owners possessed sufficient livestock to provide a fairly substantial and adequate income.

Farming in 1940 accounted for only 14 per cent or $11.89 each, because the reservation is not productive. Comparatively few acres are useful agriculturally, with little of it under irrigation. Rug weaving is an important supplement to Navaho economy, bringing in an average of 9 per cent of their 1940 income, or $7.08 per capita. This is an unsatisfactory source because the weavers who are most in need often do not have wool to use for making rugs; and rug prices have never been high enough to make weaving profitable. The average weaver, in normal times, can earn only from $.03 to $.07 an hour, which makes it a marginal income at best. It is the first activity abandoned when economic conditions improve, as demonstrated during the temporary affluence of the Indians during the war.

A breakdown of expenditures of the $81.89 average per capita income shows that home grown and used produce was estimated at an average value of $20.00 per person annually, the remaining income having been spent approximately $37.00 for other food, $13.00 for clothing, $4.00 for farm and household equipment and the balance for unrecorded purchases.

Food usually consists mainly of native fried bread, fried potatoes or potato soup, occasionally mutton or