Faustino Trejo: Navajo leaders don't support education for youth

Election season is again upon us, my fellow Navajo citizens and relatives, and the attention of a young nation is focused on the rhetoric and qualms of various leaders who upon election will seek to lead us in whatever fashion they deem as progressive. I, as well as you, have become incensed and frustrated with the dilapidated state our beloved Dine Bikeyah has fallen upon, wherever you may find us scattered about the world one unifying factor remains consistent; we are not content with our government.

The ears of our politicians favor the tongues of foreign- born lawyers and methodology rather than the voice and benevolent wisdom of our forerunners. Even in a scholarly capacity we are viciously silenced in all forums of government where we can effectively relay what we have learned in study to our own people. As a recent Navajo graduate of Arizona State University, I am finding the idea of “Education is the ladder” to be a façade used by my ‘Leaders’ to prop up foreign institutions that prepare our youth to fail in the outside world.

This instance culminated in a visit paid by Ben Shelly and his cabinet to ASU on April 11, 2014. Whereas they demonstrated to an assembly of my cohorts and I they are completely unfit to hold the reigns of leadership of my Nation. No real plans for economic development were presented, and at times the cabinet displayed their own weakness by arguing with one another in a public forum over returned federal funding whilst we watched on in embarrassment. Shelly stood there with his finger waving in the air touting the progressive measures graciously pushed forward by his neo-socialism.