An Interview with Dr. Annie Dodge Wauneka

Abstract

Out of the forests and deserts that for centuries have nurtured the Dine, the Navajo People, one strong and powerful woman exemplifies the special traits that describe so many of her tribal sisters: strength, determination, perseverance, indomitability. She is Dr. Annie Dodge Wauneka, of whom Stan Steiner has said, If there were a queen in the United States, it would have to be this woman.I Leadership responsibilities are nothing new to women of the People. The matrilineal clan and homestead organizations are built upon women's ownership of hogans and herds. The women are responsible for the family land, for this generation and the generations yet to come. They must respect Ground Mother. The decisions that they must make can only be pragmatic: there is no room for sentimentality in the beautiful but harsh world of the People. The women decision makers are guided by natural laws learned from their spiritual antecedents in this and the previous three worlds through which the People have come. White Shell Woman and Spider Woman gave them gifts and guidance and set the Navajo on the path toward their destiny. Dr. Annie Dodge Wauneka is the daughter of Henry Chee Dodge, the last tribal chief and the first tribal chairman of the Navajo. Born in 1913, she grew up in a livestock-raising household in which horses, donkeys, mules, sheep, and goats were herded. In the 1930's, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) made the judgment that there must be a reduction in the number of animals being grazed on the Navajo reservation because, it maintained, the lands were being overgrazed. This was the second livestock reduction for the People: the first occurred when U.S. soldiers removed the Navajo from their lands along the Long Walk into relocation camps at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. Kit Carson used both U.S. troops and volunteers to clear the People, their animals, and their crops, off the land which, it was incorrectly rumored, contained gold. For three years they languished in despair on starvation rations. Their return home was bittersweet: their eyes were met by scorched earth and dead animals. The stock reduction that Dr. Wauneka experienced in the 1930's came into being, as has been said, because the B.I.A. determined that the land was being overgrazed by too many herds on too little land. One Native explanation for the loss of grass in the 1930's targets the B.I.A.'s parent structure, the Department of the Interior, as the villain. In an attempt to eradicate endemic bubonic plague in the Southwest, Interior launched a plan to kill off the prairie dogs. Such spraying as was done killed an enormous array of small burrowing animals, say some Navajo, far more than just prairie dogs. When small rodents are destroyed, the burrows they excavate soon cave in, no longer holding rain water near ground level: it runs off or it evaporates. The loss of thousands and millions of tiny catchments in the