Post by blackcrowheart on Dec 27, 2005 5:21:52 GMT -5
A christmas story
By Felix Sanchez , Staff writer
SHONTO, ARIZ. — Life is measured in miles in this land of flat-top
mesas, painted deserts and crimson rock walls on the Navajo Indian
Reservation. The vast, deep-blue skies that sweep overhead are marred
only by the occasional faint roar and the scribble of billowy white
contrails from distant military jets climbing to somewhere else.
View our flash slideshow narrated by photographer Leo Hetzel and
reporter Felix Sanchez
Daily life often means a 65-mile, one-way commute to welding or retail
jobs in the small town of Page, or to the Black Mesa and Kayenta coal
mines.
These voyages through the immense reservation on Arizona Highway 98 are
done under the watchful vista of Navajo Mountain, the dominant and
sacred landmark piercing the horizon from Utah 50 miles to the north.
Young Navajo measure their entertainment in miles as well, using the
deep crevices, brush-covered gorges and sheer, open scope of the
reservation surrounding their isolated homes as their unfettered
playground. This is a unique way to pass the hours after the sun goes
down and there's no electricity to power up other diversions.
Here, a small group of Boeing Co. volunteer workers from Long Beach,
Norwalk and surrounding areas who come with "Project Love" have gotten
an annual lesson about values and perspective during the Christmas
season.
The volunteer non-profit charity designed to benefit Navajo children was
first organized more than 40 years ago by McDonnell Douglas employees
and is now kept alive by Boeing Co. which acquired Douglas workers and
their families.
Earlier this month, the volunteers watched and etched the moment in
their mind to tell their own children, neighbors and co-workers back in
Southern California, as wide-eyed Navajo schoolchildren opened donated
Christmas presents and grew excited over something as simple as a box of
$5 Crayola Crayon washable markers and index cards.
A battery-operated clock radio and decidedly low-tech, even outdated
portable CD player draws similar reactions.
The gifts, along with small zippy Hot Wheels sets, Barbie and Cabbage
Patch dolls, footballs and backpacks, were more than enough to send
shrill shouts of "Yes!" echoing around the cavernous, mural-lined "big
gym" at the Shonto Preparatory School on the Navajo Indian Reservation
in Northern Arizona.
There were no Xbox 360s or video iPods among the hundreds of donated
Christmas gifts handed out by 16 Project Love volunteers on the
15-degree morning at schools in the tiny communities of Shonto, Kaibeto,
Kayenta, Tonalea and several others spread through the reservation.
But there were lots of bouncing basketballs, many in the clutches of
beaming Navajo schoolgirls. And there were plenty of Hilary Duff and
Dora the Explorer backpacks, huge but colorful book totes that dwarfed
the first-and second-graders who received and then proudly wore them the
rest of the day.
Because of Project Love, this early December day will likely be the only
Christmas many of the 8,000 elementary school students who got presents
this year will celebrate this holiday season. And very likely, these
toys will be the only ones they get for the year.
Such is life on an Indian reservation where 70 percent of the households
A Christmas Story
Narrated Slideshow
Journey to Shonto, Arizona
Click here for the full story
and homesteads these children come from don't have electricity, running
water or working telephones.
This is a place where it is not unusual for a dozen or more to crowd
into small dwellings barely comfortable for two, where cell phone
service is not available, where the per capita income is $1,500,
unemployment is more than 50 percent and fathers often spend their
waking days making long commutes.
But the project faces a tough road in 2006.
Boeing's announced intention to close down the 717 commercial assembly
line will be a dagger to the heart of many workers who have for years,
since its birth at McDonnell Douglas, made Project Love the charity of
choice for their money and time.
MD beginnings
Project Love was the 1963 brainchild of McDonnell Douglas mid-level
manager Bill Snowden and his wife Helen, who along with Plymouth
Congregational Church in Whittier first provided gifts for about 250
Navajo children attending Leupp School on the reservation. Congregation
members and Snowden heard about the plight of schoolchildren at the
reservation. Interested coworkers were brought in to help oversee the
program, but it was mostly volunteers who helped it grow.
Snowden, a member of the Douglas Aircraft Co. Management Club, died in
the late 1960s, but the program lived on, becoming the non-profit
McDonnell Douglas Project Love Foundation in 1984 and then Project Love
after Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged in 1997.
Boeing employees continue the tradition of volunteering for the project,
enlisting help from area church groups, local businesses and community
organizations to buy gifts for the annual trip or to donate money to
help pay for the long journey.
Schoolchildren at Shonto Preparatory School in Shonto and from other
reservation campuses each year fill out cards listing their top three
gift requests, and project volunteers use them as guides to buy the
presents, said Project Love President Marya Blackwell, a resource
planner with Boeing's C-17 program.
Volunteers aren't shy about buying all three items on a child's request
list, especially when a majority of the items are tools of the education
trade: writing paper and crayons, backpacks and other supplies the
students' parents have a tough time affording and that the school
district, with no tax base to speak of, cannot afford to supply.
Lists are painstakingly triple-and quadruple-checked to make sure no
child is left without. To volunteers, it can be heart wrenching to see
the frantic faces of children who think they may have been left off the
list as the gifts are given out.
A 12-hour tour
This year, with help from volunteers from Orange County and El Segundo,
volunteers were able to buy more than 6,000 to 8,000 separate gifts,
enough to fill two big-rigs driven by volunteers from the 717
transportation department.
For weeks leading up to early December, volunteers bought the presents,
then assembled them in a vacant 717 hanger to wrap and prepare for the
700-plus mile trip to Shonto, a small reservation community of about 700
people located about 50 miles north of Tuba City, Ariz. and 100 miles
from the Grand Canyon.
At midnight Dec. 7, 16 volunteers crammed into a 10-seat van, rented and
paid for by Boeing, a smaller rental van and two private cars for the
nearly 12 hour drive across the desert on Interstates 15 and 40 and U.S.
Highway 160, through Needles, Flagstaff and north to the Arizona-Utah
border, just skirting the Desert View rim of the Grand Canyon.
This year's group included project leader Blackwell and her daughter,
Maylei Blackwell, a UCLA assistant professor in Chicano studies; Tom
Price, a McDonnell Douglas veteran who has made dozens of trips and
plays Santa Claus for Project Love; Pam Benson, with C-17 financial
planning and 16-year-old daughter, Teresa; Debbie Woods with the Boeing
B-1B program and her husband, Richard; Judy Seymore, a Financial
Partners Credit Union volunteer on her first journey; and Vicki DiBella,
wife of a Boeing worker and a volunteer who has helped wrap presents for
12 years, making her last Project Love trip before moving to Fresno.
Making a first trip were Janet Read, a teacher at Center Street School
in El Segundo, which adopted a reservation school for its gift drive,
and volunteers for Center Street, Michelle and Margaret Moore.
Volunteers paid for gas and meals from their own pockets, stopping at
restaurants or resting areas discovered over the years of Project trips
on Historic Route 66 or small trading posts in Cameron, Ariz.
In Cameron, as volunteers took a smoke break near a popular trading
post, Pam Benson said it's the children's faces as they open presents
that has drawn her and her daughter on several Project Love trips.
"One year, there was a cake someone brought us as thanks," she said. "A
fourth-grader, a girl, kept asking us, 'Want some cake? Want some
cake?"' Benson recalled. "We told her, "Take some home." But she just
took a slice in her bare hand and ate it there. We said, 'Take it home."
"She said there was no way, it would never make it inside. She lives
with about 25 relatives inside this trailer."
After going through the fast-food paradise that is Tuba City, the
caravan is soon within eyesight of the shimmering red tower known as
Navajo Butte, a jutting rock reflecting the setting sun's orange rays
that gives the first hint Shonto is near. Just a two hour drive away
lies the scenic John Ford movie playground, also known as Monument
Valley.
Because the nearest grocery store or restaurant to Shonto is some 50 to
75 miles away the closest Wal-Mart is 65 miles away volunteers stay in
the small dormitories that once housed more than 1,000 children during
the Shonto boarding school's early heydays, and eat alongside the
schoolchildren in the cafeteria.
From Shonto, the group stages its base of operations for the quick,
hectic two-day stay, scattering out into the reservation to hand out
gifts at several different schools to children who have been counting
down the days until the Project Love people get into town.
Future questions
Except for a few glitches, when presents were delivered to the wrong
building at the Shonto school, and accidentally locked keys in a rental
van delayed the return trip on an icy morning and brought the prospect
of at least a two hour wait for remote AAA help, this year's Project
Love trip did its job again, Blackwell said.
But the toughest times for the program may come in 2006, when Boeing
closes the 717 program and puts the careers of more than 750 workers in
limbo. And the specter of the eventual ramp-down of the C-17 cargo plane
program looms as well.
"But even more than what happens with the donors, there will be a
psychological impact," Blackwell said. "Project Love really started on
the commercial side. So for commercial to close down, in essence, it's
just a lonely feeling. People are so supportive of the program. We want
to keep it going."
The project won't die, Blackwell insists, but things will have to
change. More outside community group donors will be solicited, more
volunteers will be sought to help with the trips and to drive the big
rigs carrying toys.
Price remembers the days when the aerospace company had more than 35,000
workers and Project Love could afford to buy gifts for everyone, even
the older, middle school-and high school-aged children. Boeing supplied
a 40-seat bus driven by longtime volunteer Larry Alford that was packed
every year for the trip.
The bus and older teens have long since been abandoned.
"I would hope that Boeing realizes the good will that's been generated
in the school community here and the reservation," Price said.
With change comes opportunity, and the coming year could also be a good
time to see if Boeing wants to donate some of its engineers, plane
makers and brains to add a little more to the experience for Navajo
children.
Shonto teacher Sarah Tunney, 41, was a Shonto student herself. She went
to college and decided to return to help her people. Tunney, who has
fond memories of getting a Barbie doll house from Project Love as a
child, praises the program but thinks there could be more.
Opening eyes to possibilities
"I always hope that the volunteers could stay a week, to go into the
classrooms and visit, to talk heart-to-heart with them," Tunney said.
The children desperately need mentoring, she said, to see the career
opportunities outside the reservation, and Boeing engineers and plane
makers would be inspirational.
"Boeing could give the children mini-lessons, show them things, the kids
could interview one of the workers," Tunney said. "That could be so
awesome for them."
The program is especially critical as outside social problems begin to
seep into the reservation, said school district superintendent Richard
McClements. Methamphetamine use is growing. The gang mentality is
encroaching. Parolees are learning the vast reservation is the ideal
place to hide.
"Shonto used to be the best school on the reservation, but some of the
kids, they don't behave like they used to," said Rose Mary Grass, 61,
one of the first teachers and dorm monitors at the school.
"They would listen. Now, they don't hear it," Grass said at her
homestead near the school and down a red-rock gorge where only a handful
of others live.
Nearby is the Shonto Trading Post, the only "retail" and gasoline
station for dozens of miles.
A towering sheer of rock is Grass' backyard, carved into it a trail her
mother used to climb up to walk to visit friends. Navajo-style domed
structures stand abandoned next to a modern Laundromat Grass built but
now is used almost exclusively by children and grandchildren visiting
from college who need their clothes cleaned.
Orleta Slick, 35, a former Shonto student and Tuba City native who was
raised in Shonto and now works at the school doing audio visual
projects, agrees children need mentoring.
"This should be a year-long partnership," she said. "Mentoring would be
an excellent idea." After graduating from the University of Northern
Arizona, Slick worked in Pasadena but returned to the reservation to
help inspire students. She organizes the "Native American Performing
Arts Club" at Shonto. The group performed in a special Christmas program
the first night of Project Love's visit.
Now Slick is headed to Washington, D.C., to work with the Smithsonian
Institution's Native American Museum. She said she sees it as the kind
of job Shonto students can aspire to if they can see those careers
exist. The Native American Museum will also help destroy shallow images
many have that the Navajo reservation is populated by people simply
waiting for government handouts.
"They think we're a third world nation," Slick said.
Dellanna Williams, director of Shonto's federal programs and grants,
said as young Navajos graduate, get a higher education and experience
the world, they can return and instill that attitude and help the
reservation rise above the stereotypes and become self-sufficient.
Williams, another example of a former student who has returned to help
her people, was recently able to secure a $3.9 million grant to build a
new high school campus for Shonto.
Academic performance can be better, Williams said, but state educators
have to understand Navajos have obstacles not taken into account when
school performance is assessed.
"Our isolation affects test scores," Williams said. "They don't consider
transportation issues, that students here have to travel several hours
each day just to get to school. Their families don't have cars. And
muddy roads can mean they'll miss standardized tests when the bus runs
late." Still, things are looking up.
"We have gifted and talented students here," Tunney said, "but they need
to be more exposed to the outside. We need to tap into their passion.
Things are slowly changing on the reservation. I believe it will come. I
don't know when, but it's coming."
A Kid's Life
It's the Friday morning when Project Love distributes its gifts. For
13-year-old eighth-graders Kurt Bennett and Parnel Bedoni, standing in
the cold outside the cafeteria, all the fuss is much ado about nothing.
Chalk it up to middle school bluster, but their age keeps them from
joining in the Christmas celebration.
They are still more than eager to show the visitors from California
their school, and talk about the basketball game the night before;
Bedoni is a forward.
During an impromptu tour in the frigid air, both ask how far the beach
is from someone's home.
"Three or four blocks."
A puzzled look prompts the visitor to explain the distance in another
way.
"From here to that football goal way over there."
Ah.
"I like the reservation. We can run around at night and nobody knows
where we are," Bennett, who lives in Kaibeto, said later. "There's not
much to do at home."
The night before, in the dormitories, the 100 or so boys and girls who
live there were playing dodge ball in the warm gym with dorm monitor
Yolanda Anagal, 20.
Her goal is to work off their excitement.
"The kids, oh my God, they are so hyper," she said. "They can't wait
until tomorrow. All they talk about is Santa Claus. They won't go to
sleep." Finally, it's Friday and Tunney and Project Love volunteers Pam
Benson and daughter Teresa steer each grade's multiple classes into
circles around two gift-laden Christmas trees. As Price and "Mrs.
Claus," volunteer Jan Alford, of Norwalk, yell the names attached to
each gift, excited youngsters yell in unison "She's over there!" or
"Here he is."
But soon there was tension in the air and on the faces of some children
as the gift pile dwindled and some were still empty-handed.
Tomas Duif, 9, for one.
"Sean Bedonie?"
"Over here!"
Hot Wheels, Rev-Ups kit.
"Melissa Shepherd?"
Art treasure chest, Bratz shoes for the five-year-old.
Finally, as Duif's eyes darted around the tree looking for what he hoped
was his gift came the reassuring words.
"Tomas Duif?"
A relieved sigh and quick unwrapping later, out peeked a silver Tru-Tech
CD Clock Radio.
"Yesssss," the nine-year-old yelled.
"Now I won't be late for school."
Felix Sanchez can be reached at (562) 499-1297.
By Felix Sanchez , Staff writer
SHONTO, ARIZ. — Life is measured in miles in this land of flat-top
mesas, painted deserts and crimson rock walls on the Navajo Indian
Reservation. The vast, deep-blue skies that sweep overhead are marred
only by the occasional faint roar and the scribble of billowy white
contrails from distant military jets climbing to somewhere else.
View our flash slideshow narrated by photographer Leo Hetzel and
reporter Felix Sanchez
Daily life often means a 65-mile, one-way commute to welding or retail
jobs in the small town of Page, or to the Black Mesa and Kayenta coal
mines.
These voyages through the immense reservation on Arizona Highway 98 are
done under the watchful vista of Navajo Mountain, the dominant and
sacred landmark piercing the horizon from Utah 50 miles to the north.
Young Navajo measure their entertainment in miles as well, using the
deep crevices, brush-covered gorges and sheer, open scope of the
reservation surrounding their isolated homes as their unfettered
playground. This is a unique way to pass the hours after the sun goes
down and there's no electricity to power up other diversions.
Here, a small group of Boeing Co. volunteer workers from Long Beach,
Norwalk and surrounding areas who come with "Project Love" have gotten
an annual lesson about values and perspective during the Christmas
season.
The volunteer non-profit charity designed to benefit Navajo children was
first organized more than 40 years ago by McDonnell Douglas employees
and is now kept alive by Boeing Co. which acquired Douglas workers and
their families.
Earlier this month, the volunteers watched and etched the moment in
their mind to tell their own children, neighbors and co-workers back in
Southern California, as wide-eyed Navajo schoolchildren opened donated
Christmas presents and grew excited over something as simple as a box of
$5 Crayola Crayon washable markers and index cards.
A battery-operated clock radio and decidedly low-tech, even outdated
portable CD player draws similar reactions.
The gifts, along with small zippy Hot Wheels sets, Barbie and Cabbage
Patch dolls, footballs and backpacks, were more than enough to send
shrill shouts of "Yes!" echoing around the cavernous, mural-lined "big
gym" at the Shonto Preparatory School on the Navajo Indian Reservation
in Northern Arizona.
There were no Xbox 360s or video iPods among the hundreds of donated
Christmas gifts handed out by 16 Project Love volunteers on the
15-degree morning at schools in the tiny communities of Shonto, Kaibeto,
Kayenta, Tonalea and several others spread through the reservation.
But there were lots of bouncing basketballs, many in the clutches of
beaming Navajo schoolgirls. And there were plenty of Hilary Duff and
Dora the Explorer backpacks, huge but colorful book totes that dwarfed
the first-and second-graders who received and then proudly wore them the
rest of the day.
Because of Project Love, this early December day will likely be the only
Christmas many of the 8,000 elementary school students who got presents
this year will celebrate this holiday season. And very likely, these
toys will be the only ones they get for the year.
Such is life on an Indian reservation where 70 percent of the households
A Christmas Story
Narrated Slideshow
Journey to Shonto, Arizona
Click here for the full story
and homesteads these children come from don't have electricity, running
water or working telephones.
This is a place where it is not unusual for a dozen or more to crowd
into small dwellings barely comfortable for two, where cell phone
service is not available, where the per capita income is $1,500,
unemployment is more than 50 percent and fathers often spend their
waking days making long commutes.
But the project faces a tough road in 2006.
Boeing's announced intention to close down the 717 commercial assembly
line will be a dagger to the heart of many workers who have for years,
since its birth at McDonnell Douglas, made Project Love the charity of
choice for their money and time.
MD beginnings
Project Love was the 1963 brainchild of McDonnell Douglas mid-level
manager Bill Snowden and his wife Helen, who along with Plymouth
Congregational Church in Whittier first provided gifts for about 250
Navajo children attending Leupp School on the reservation. Congregation
members and Snowden heard about the plight of schoolchildren at the
reservation. Interested coworkers were brought in to help oversee the
program, but it was mostly volunteers who helped it grow.
Snowden, a member of the Douglas Aircraft Co. Management Club, died in
the late 1960s, but the program lived on, becoming the non-profit
McDonnell Douglas Project Love Foundation in 1984 and then Project Love
after Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged in 1997.
Boeing employees continue the tradition of volunteering for the project,
enlisting help from area church groups, local businesses and community
organizations to buy gifts for the annual trip or to donate money to
help pay for the long journey.
Schoolchildren at Shonto Preparatory School in Shonto and from other
reservation campuses each year fill out cards listing their top three
gift requests, and project volunteers use them as guides to buy the
presents, said Project Love President Marya Blackwell, a resource
planner with Boeing's C-17 program.
Volunteers aren't shy about buying all three items on a child's request
list, especially when a majority of the items are tools of the education
trade: writing paper and crayons, backpacks and other supplies the
students' parents have a tough time affording and that the school
district, with no tax base to speak of, cannot afford to supply.
Lists are painstakingly triple-and quadruple-checked to make sure no
child is left without. To volunteers, it can be heart wrenching to see
the frantic faces of children who think they may have been left off the
list as the gifts are given out.
A 12-hour tour
This year, with help from volunteers from Orange County and El Segundo,
volunteers were able to buy more than 6,000 to 8,000 separate gifts,
enough to fill two big-rigs driven by volunteers from the 717
transportation department.
For weeks leading up to early December, volunteers bought the presents,
then assembled them in a vacant 717 hanger to wrap and prepare for the
700-plus mile trip to Shonto, a small reservation community of about 700
people located about 50 miles north of Tuba City, Ariz. and 100 miles
from the Grand Canyon.
At midnight Dec. 7, 16 volunteers crammed into a 10-seat van, rented and
paid for by Boeing, a smaller rental van and two private cars for the
nearly 12 hour drive across the desert on Interstates 15 and 40 and U.S.
Highway 160, through Needles, Flagstaff and north to the Arizona-Utah
border, just skirting the Desert View rim of the Grand Canyon.
This year's group included project leader Blackwell and her daughter,
Maylei Blackwell, a UCLA assistant professor in Chicano studies; Tom
Price, a McDonnell Douglas veteran who has made dozens of trips and
plays Santa Claus for Project Love; Pam Benson, with C-17 financial
planning and 16-year-old daughter, Teresa; Debbie Woods with the Boeing
B-1B program and her husband, Richard; Judy Seymore, a Financial
Partners Credit Union volunteer on her first journey; and Vicki DiBella,
wife of a Boeing worker and a volunteer who has helped wrap presents for
12 years, making her last Project Love trip before moving to Fresno.
Making a first trip were Janet Read, a teacher at Center Street School
in El Segundo, which adopted a reservation school for its gift drive,
and volunteers for Center Street, Michelle and Margaret Moore.
Volunteers paid for gas and meals from their own pockets, stopping at
restaurants or resting areas discovered over the years of Project trips
on Historic Route 66 or small trading posts in Cameron, Ariz.
In Cameron, as volunteers took a smoke break near a popular trading
post, Pam Benson said it's the children's faces as they open presents
that has drawn her and her daughter on several Project Love trips.
"One year, there was a cake someone brought us as thanks," she said. "A
fourth-grader, a girl, kept asking us, 'Want some cake? Want some
cake?"' Benson recalled. "We told her, "Take some home." But she just
took a slice in her bare hand and ate it there. We said, 'Take it home."
"She said there was no way, it would never make it inside. She lives
with about 25 relatives inside this trailer."
After going through the fast-food paradise that is Tuba City, the
caravan is soon within eyesight of the shimmering red tower known as
Navajo Butte, a jutting rock reflecting the setting sun's orange rays
that gives the first hint Shonto is near. Just a two hour drive away
lies the scenic John Ford movie playground, also known as Monument
Valley.
Because the nearest grocery store or restaurant to Shonto is some 50 to
75 miles away the closest Wal-Mart is 65 miles away volunteers stay in
the small dormitories that once housed more than 1,000 children during
the Shonto boarding school's early heydays, and eat alongside the
schoolchildren in the cafeteria.
From Shonto, the group stages its base of operations for the quick,
hectic two-day stay, scattering out into the reservation to hand out
gifts at several different schools to children who have been counting
down the days until the Project Love people get into town.
Future questions
Except for a few glitches, when presents were delivered to the wrong
building at the Shonto school, and accidentally locked keys in a rental
van delayed the return trip on an icy morning and brought the prospect
of at least a two hour wait for remote AAA help, this year's Project
Love trip did its job again, Blackwell said.
But the toughest times for the program may come in 2006, when Boeing
closes the 717 program and puts the careers of more than 750 workers in
limbo. And the specter of the eventual ramp-down of the C-17 cargo plane
program looms as well.
"But even more than what happens with the donors, there will be a
psychological impact," Blackwell said. "Project Love really started on
the commercial side. So for commercial to close down, in essence, it's
just a lonely feeling. People are so supportive of the program. We want
to keep it going."
The project won't die, Blackwell insists, but things will have to
change. More outside community group donors will be solicited, more
volunteers will be sought to help with the trips and to drive the big
rigs carrying toys.
Price remembers the days when the aerospace company had more than 35,000
workers and Project Love could afford to buy gifts for everyone, even
the older, middle school-and high school-aged children. Boeing supplied
a 40-seat bus driven by longtime volunteer Larry Alford that was packed
every year for the trip.
The bus and older teens have long since been abandoned.
"I would hope that Boeing realizes the good will that's been generated
in the school community here and the reservation," Price said.
With change comes opportunity, and the coming year could also be a good
time to see if Boeing wants to donate some of its engineers, plane
makers and brains to add a little more to the experience for Navajo
children.
Shonto teacher Sarah Tunney, 41, was a Shonto student herself. She went
to college and decided to return to help her people. Tunney, who has
fond memories of getting a Barbie doll house from Project Love as a
child, praises the program but thinks there could be more.
Opening eyes to possibilities
"I always hope that the volunteers could stay a week, to go into the
classrooms and visit, to talk heart-to-heart with them," Tunney said.
The children desperately need mentoring, she said, to see the career
opportunities outside the reservation, and Boeing engineers and plane
makers would be inspirational.
"Boeing could give the children mini-lessons, show them things, the kids
could interview one of the workers," Tunney said. "That could be so
awesome for them."
The program is especially critical as outside social problems begin to
seep into the reservation, said school district superintendent Richard
McClements. Methamphetamine use is growing. The gang mentality is
encroaching. Parolees are learning the vast reservation is the ideal
place to hide.
"Shonto used to be the best school on the reservation, but some of the
kids, they don't behave like they used to," said Rose Mary Grass, 61,
one of the first teachers and dorm monitors at the school.
"They would listen. Now, they don't hear it," Grass said at her
homestead near the school and down a red-rock gorge where only a handful
of others live.
Nearby is the Shonto Trading Post, the only "retail" and gasoline
station for dozens of miles.
A towering sheer of rock is Grass' backyard, carved into it a trail her
mother used to climb up to walk to visit friends. Navajo-style domed
structures stand abandoned next to a modern Laundromat Grass built but
now is used almost exclusively by children and grandchildren visiting
from college who need their clothes cleaned.
Orleta Slick, 35, a former Shonto student and Tuba City native who was
raised in Shonto and now works at the school doing audio visual
projects, agrees children need mentoring.
"This should be a year-long partnership," she said. "Mentoring would be
an excellent idea." After graduating from the University of Northern
Arizona, Slick worked in Pasadena but returned to the reservation to
help inspire students. She organizes the "Native American Performing
Arts Club" at Shonto. The group performed in a special Christmas program
the first night of Project Love's visit.
Now Slick is headed to Washington, D.C., to work with the Smithsonian
Institution's Native American Museum. She said she sees it as the kind
of job Shonto students can aspire to if they can see those careers
exist. The Native American Museum will also help destroy shallow images
many have that the Navajo reservation is populated by people simply
waiting for government handouts.
"They think we're a third world nation," Slick said.
Dellanna Williams, director of Shonto's federal programs and grants,
said as young Navajos graduate, get a higher education and experience
the world, they can return and instill that attitude and help the
reservation rise above the stereotypes and become self-sufficient.
Williams, another example of a former student who has returned to help
her people, was recently able to secure a $3.9 million grant to build a
new high school campus for Shonto.
Academic performance can be better, Williams said, but state educators
have to understand Navajos have obstacles not taken into account when
school performance is assessed.
"Our isolation affects test scores," Williams said. "They don't consider
transportation issues, that students here have to travel several hours
each day just to get to school. Their families don't have cars. And
muddy roads can mean they'll miss standardized tests when the bus runs
late." Still, things are looking up.
"We have gifted and talented students here," Tunney said, "but they need
to be more exposed to the outside. We need to tap into their passion.
Things are slowly changing on the reservation. I believe it will come. I
don't know when, but it's coming."
A Kid's Life
It's the Friday morning when Project Love distributes its gifts. For
13-year-old eighth-graders Kurt Bennett and Parnel Bedoni, standing in
the cold outside the cafeteria, all the fuss is much ado about nothing.
Chalk it up to middle school bluster, but their age keeps them from
joining in the Christmas celebration.
They are still more than eager to show the visitors from California
their school, and talk about the basketball game the night before;
Bedoni is a forward.
During an impromptu tour in the frigid air, both ask how far the beach
is from someone's home.
"Three or four blocks."
A puzzled look prompts the visitor to explain the distance in another
way.
"From here to that football goal way over there."
Ah.
"I like the reservation. We can run around at night and nobody knows
where we are," Bennett, who lives in Kaibeto, said later. "There's not
much to do at home."
The night before, in the dormitories, the 100 or so boys and girls who
live there were playing dodge ball in the warm gym with dorm monitor
Yolanda Anagal, 20.
Her goal is to work off their excitement.
"The kids, oh my God, they are so hyper," she said. "They can't wait
until tomorrow. All they talk about is Santa Claus. They won't go to
sleep." Finally, it's Friday and Tunney and Project Love volunteers Pam
Benson and daughter Teresa steer each grade's multiple classes into
circles around two gift-laden Christmas trees. As Price and "Mrs.
Claus," volunteer Jan Alford, of Norwalk, yell the names attached to
each gift, excited youngsters yell in unison "She's over there!" or
"Here he is."
But soon there was tension in the air and on the faces of some children
as the gift pile dwindled and some were still empty-handed.
Tomas Duif, 9, for one.
"Sean Bedonie?"
"Over here!"
Hot Wheels, Rev-Ups kit.
"Melissa Shepherd?"
Art treasure chest, Bratz shoes for the five-year-old.
Finally, as Duif's eyes darted around the tree looking for what he hoped
was his gift came the reassuring words.
"Tomas Duif?"
A relieved sigh and quick unwrapping later, out peeked a silver Tru-Tech
CD Clock Radio.
"Yesssss," the nine-year-old yelled.
"Now I won't be late for school."
Felix Sanchez can be reached at (562) 499-1297.