Fair director arrested after inquiring about remarks in Navajo

Wednesday, September 14, 2011  

The director of the Northern Navajo Nation Fair was arrested and jailed after an incident in which he asked about some remarks that were made in the Navajo language.

Lloyd Smith was speaking at a board meeting when Wallace Ben, the organizer of the fair's Indian Market and Ye'ii Bi' Chei events, said something in Navajo. After the meeting, which lasted six hours, Smith approached Ben and asked him what he had said.

"I didn't raise my voice. I just questioned him," Smith, who doesn't understand Navajo, told The Farmington Daily Times.

Red Dawn George, who is Ben's niece, saw things differently. She called tribal police because she said Smith yelled at her uncle.

"Lloyd got within inches of my uncle's face," George told the paper.

Smith spent the night in jail in Shiprock, New Mexico. He was released on Tuesday morning but said he wasn't told of any charges against him.

Get the Story:
Fair director out from behind bars (The Farmington Daily Times 9/14)