Word: navajos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...custody battles involve contending parents. The fight over a nine- month-old girl named Allyssa is a classic clash of cultures. The mother, Patricia Keetso, 21, is an unwed Navajo Indian who would like her daughter to be adopted by Rick and Cheryl Pitts of San Jose, who have been caring for the baby since birth. But tribal officials, fearing that the flow of Indian foster children to non-Indian homes threatens their survival as a people, are seeking to rear the baby on their Arizona reservation. The emotional case has become a symbol of tribal resistance to the baby...
Keetso and the Pittses were brought together through San Jose lawyers who arrange adoptions. She lived at the couple's home for three months before giving birth last July. But in April, Navajo officials, who refer to the child as Baby K., convinced a California judge that any decision about custody should rest with the tribal courts. At a hearing last week, a tribal judge in Tuba City returned Allyssa temporarily to the Pittses, but a final decision is still pending...
...case has produced its share of wild scenes, charges and countercharges. At a Phoenix airport two weeks ago, a hysterical Cheryl Pitts chased after Navajo social workers who she claims seized the child and spirited her away to the reservation. Keetso and the Pittses charge that Navajo officials violated an understanding that Allyssa would be placed solely in the care of her maternal grandmother until the hearing. Instead, they say, the child was left in the home of a stranger, where she was neglected and quickly fell ill. Tribal authorities deny that such an understanding existed and contend that...
...just in deeply absorbing eclectic influences ranging from Italian hill towns to science-fiction movies, but also in rarely letting one idea overwhelm the rest. And his sensible, good old Americanism, counterbalances his spacier side. On old Route 66 at Albuquerque's southwest edge is the Beach, a Navajo-blanket-pattern ed, neon- emblazoned apartment complex that, despite the glitz, has a strong sense of urbanity, a function of the labyrinth of outdoor stairways and corridors...
...Phoenix. A former colleague, Anne Bingaman, recalls that "in a firm of young workaholics, Bruce stood out as the one who never ate lunch and came in on Sundays." Babbitt donated many hours to pro bono cases, but was little involved in politics. Then another epiphany. While representing the Navajo tribe in a voting-rights case against the state, Babbitt realized, "My God, the attorney general has the largest law firm in Arizona, and it's devoted to the defense of racial discrimination. What it ought to be is a public-interest law firm!" And so it became after Babbitt...