Word: beolta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Time to Learn. Rough Rock was the first such beolta, and it won such enthusiastic support among the Navahos that Roessel and tribal leaders felt encouraged to try the next step. They got a $457,000 grant from OEO to start the community college in a borrowed building. They got $200,000 more from tribal funds, and $60,000 from the William H. Donner Foundation...
...they had known were the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, which they called Washington beolta, the public schools, which they called belagona beolta (white man's schools), or the mission schools, called eeneishoodi beolta (for "those who drag their clothes," meaning the first Catholic priests who came to the reservation). The Navaho likes none of those places. White men's creations, they separate children from their families and tribal traditions, are largely inadequate, and have succeeded mainly in teaching young Indians to feel like second-class citizens. As one result, Indians have the country's highest illiteracy...
Language and Legends. The community college is something else: dine beolta (the people's school) really belongs to the Navahos themselves. The college is primarily the creation of two men. President Robert Roessel Jr., 42, brought to his dream the experience of 20 years of teaching and school administration among the Navahos, plus the insight of his Navaho wife, Ruth, who is liaison officer for the college. Roessel's indispensable colleague was Raymond Nakai, the Navaho tribal chairman, who has advocated a community college on the reservation for more than a decade...
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