62 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 197 



With the formation of this assembly, attention was turned to the 

 preparation of rules to guide the election of future tribal councils. 

 After many delays, a set of "Rules for the Navajo Tribal Council" was 

 finally promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior in 1938. These 

 rules provide for the election at 4-year intervals of 74 members of the 

 tribal council plus a chairman and vice-chairman. Each of these 

 members is elected from an election district whose boundaries were 

 drawn so as to include (in 1938) between 400 and 550 persons.^ Thus, 

 at that time, each council member represented a similar number of 

 persons. 



Within the tribal council, provision was made for the formation 

 of an executive committee composed of 18 delegates; 1 from each 

 land management district. This committee could easily be called 

 into session upon short notice if necessary. 



Since 1938, three major modifications of the original rules have 

 been made. In 1950, provision was made for the use of pictorial 

 ballots, permitting easier recognition of candidates by persons unable 

 to read. In 1951, the appointment of a standing committee was made 

 the first order of business of each tribal council following its own 

 election. This committee constitutes a permanent advisory commit- 

 tee which, in recent years, has assumed many of the duties formally 

 imposed upon the council as a whole. This committee is sufficiently 

 small to meet continuously if required, wdiereas the council itself nor- 

 mally meets only four times each year. Finally, the 1938 rules were 

 modified to transfer all responsibility for the conduct of tribal elections 

 from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the tribe itself. This is a sig- 

 nificant step in the gradual transfer of authority from the Bureau to 

 the tribe. 



In order to appreciate the vital role to be played by the Navaho 

 tribal organization in the future, a brief digression is necessary. In 

 the previous discussion of trends in Navaho economic and educational 

 development, the underlying Federal policy toward Indians in gen- 

 eral has remained largely implicit. A brief survey of the major 

 shifts in this basic policy will, at this point, serve to underline the 

 crucial problems confronting the Navaho tribe at the present time, 

 and will indicate the position of the tribal council in dealing with these 

 problems.^ 



The earliest policy directives of the Federal authorities concern- 

 ing Indian affairs in this country sought quite simply to accommodate 

 Indian and White interests by creating separate spheres of influence 



^ The average number of persons now represented by each council delegate would come 

 to about 1,000. 



' An excellent summary of the development of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and related 

 Federal policies is included in Young, 1955, pp. 125-141. For a briefer account, see Thomp- 

 son, 1951, pp. X ff. 



