Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 47 



officially termed community schools. World War II forced the closing 

 of the Kayenta clinic, which has never resumed operation. 



Indian reservations throughout the United States were essentially 

 imder caretaker administration during much of the war, as the focus 

 of National interest and effort shifted elsewhere. The number of 

 Government personnel on the Navaho Reservation was cut back ap- 

 proximately 50 percent, to a sort of skeleton crew. An immediate 

 result was that the hard-fought battle to maintain range capacities 

 could not be sustained, and livestock remultiplied throughout the 

 western part of the reservation. This was particularly true in more 

 inaccessible areas, including Shonto. 



The gradual reversal of Collier's decentralizing policies which was 

 necessitated by the war, has, in general, continued in the post-war 

 period. Day school operation has never been resumed; some of the 

 schools which were shut down have not reopened; and there has 

 been no expansion of the community school program. Immediate 

 post-war emphasis was on getting Navaho children into existing 

 Indian school facilities off the reservation, where more than half 

 the children from Shonto are still sent. Later came a program of 

 large, new, concentrated boarding schools within the reservation. One 

 of the first of these was opened at Kaibito in 1952; another has re- 

 cently been opened at Kayenta. A step in the opposite direction is 

 seen in the trailer day schools recently established in several smaller 

 communities, including both Red Lake and Cow Springs. 



Medical facilities remain centralized. The Kayenta clinic has never 

 been reopened, but the old Tuba City hospital was replaced by a 

 completely new and much larger unit in 1954. 



On the administrative level, the 18 prewar land management dis- 

 tricts were consolidated into 8 in 1949, and the resident district super- 

 visor was removed from Shonto to Kayenta. A further withdrawal 

 occurred in 1954, when all land and resource management was con- 

 centrated in six sub-agencies, more or less paralleling the old five- 

 reservation structure of 1904-36. Tuba City is once again the chief 

 administrative center for the Shonto area. 



Concurrent with recentralization of Indian Bureau operations has 

 been the growth and ramification of activities of the Navaho tribe. 

 It is expedient to consider this phenomenon under the general head- 

 ing of Government Operations, since few Shonto residents make a 

 consistent distinction between Tribal and Federal Government. 



The first Navaho Tribal Council was constituted in 1924, but it 

 had little real authority until after World War II, and in any case 

 western Navaho participation was nominal at best. Few people at 

 Shonto can recall who represented them at Window Rock in the 

 prewar years; indeed, many are surprised to learn that there was a 



