TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/030689/03068900.031

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 5KB | 87 lines

NATION, Page 30

Letting Down the Tribe

Scandal tarnishes a Navajo leader


    Of all the tales of hard-pressed people, few are more tragic
than the history of affliction borne by the Indians of the U.S.
Years of reservation life have left many of them mired in poverty
and despair. In Washington the Senate's Select Committee on Indian
Affairs is holding hearings on the general state of Indian
problems, and they seem to be no better than ever: a high rate of
alcoholism and mortality, desperate health conditions, low
employment and income, rampant child abuse. Bad enough that years
of failed policies administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs
have contributed to the difficulties. Now the committee has
discovered a style of corruption usually associated with the white
man.

    A key figure in the lawmakers' investigation is Peter
MacDonald, 60, Chairman of the Navajo nation, whose reservation
encompasses 17 million acres in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Raised to be a medicine man, MacDonald went on to become a
successful aerospace engineer. In the 1960s he gave up a lucrative
job to return to his people and help manage their finances. It
turns out, investigators say, that he managed only too well.

    Elected tribal Chairman in 1970, MacDonald set out to improve
the Navajos' economy by demanding better prices for the tribe's
oil, coal and natural-gas reserves. Along the way, say his critics,
the Chairman spent tribal funds profusely. He reportedly hired a
public relations firm for $1.5 million. He had his office in Window
Rock, Ariz., remodeled for $600,000, of which $4,800 alone went to
pay for carved office doors. He chartered a jet for more than
$18,000 to take him and his family to the 1988 Orange Bowl.

    At the same time that his accusers say he was depleting the
tribal treasury, MacDonald was considerably improving his own
financial state, supplementing his $55,000-a-year salary with
lavish "gifts" from outside contractors. His critics did not call
him "MacDollar" for nothing. Testifying under immunity before the
Senate committee, MacDonald's son Peter Jr. said that  when his
father needed cash, he would call a benefactor and ask for "golf
balls," MacDonald Sr.'s code word for $1,000 cash payments.
MacDonald Jr. would then collect the bribe.

    The most serious allegation facing MacDonald -- who has yet to
respond to a committee subpoena -- concerns a tawdry kickback scam.
In July 1987 MacDonald arranged for the Navajos to buy the
491,000-acre Big Boquillas ranch near Seligman, Ariz. The tribe
paid $33.4 million for the place, which only two days earlier had
been purchased by an oil company for $26.2 million. Real estate
broker Byron ("Bud") Brown testified that when he was fixing the
deal with MacDonald, the Navajo leader smiled and said,  "I assume
I'll be taken care of." Replied Brown: "Certainly."

    For his part in the scheme, MacDonald was to receive up to
$750,000 in cash payments. By the time the plot was exposed, Brown
says, he had given MacDonald $75,000 in cash and use of a $55,000
BMW. Most of MacDonald's fellow Navajos did not share in his good
fortune; they continue to live their old, hardscrabble life. Fully
half of all Navajo homes, for example, have no electricity or flush
toilets.

    But there's always bingo. According to federal officials, the
game has become a $400 million business on the nation's
reservations, and for an obvious reason. Since federal laws give
Indians some of the privileges of independent countries, gambling
operations are free from state regulation. Thus while most church
bingo games in the U.S. might permit a maximum prize of $250 a
card, the Indian version can offer as much as $50,000 for a single
game. Several tribes hire management companies to run their bingo
enterprises, and some of these companies, says the FBI, are fronts
for organized crime, which skims the profits, leaving a pittance
to the Indians. At least the Navajo nation is spared this form of
corruption, since bingo is unpopular there; but those looking for
a big-money game can always find one on a neighboring reservation.

    MacDonald denies the litany of charges lodged at his mahogany
door. He claims that the testimony in Washington is unsubstantiated
and unfair and that he is the victim of an attempt to divert
attention from mismanagement in the BIA.

    When the tribe's 88-member council voted to place him on
indefinite leave with pay, MacDonald got himself reinstated by
appealing to a Navajo tribal judge, who happens to be his
brother-in-law. But last week the tribe's supreme court challenged
the reinstatement. A new judge will hear MacDonald's latest appeal.
Says Navajo Peterson Zah, a MacDonald rival and former tribal
chief: "MacDonald has let the Navajo people down."