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Shiprock Small Town in a Big Pond
by
Miranda Cain
Shiprock Monument
Located
off U.S. Highway 491, formally U.S. Highway 666, sits
Shiprock , N.M. , a San Juan County town with a
population of 8,156 people, according to the Census.
In a June 2005 press release New Mexican Governor, Bill
Richardson said, “I’m pleased that after years of
controversy, this issue which has plagued the Navajo
Nation and Northwestern New Mexico has finally been
resolved.”
At the
entrance to the town, there is a small, two-story
hospital, a handful of gas stations, a food market, and
miles and miles of nearly empty to roads. The town is
small and looks slightly worn down but the people who
live there enjoy it*. Most of the buildings are old,
with peeling paint. There are no franchised businesses
in town. There are, however, numerous homes that
slightly resemble trailers, scattered within town
limits. The view is the only thing that captures a
person’s attention. The sky runs on for miles atop a
glorious dirt landscape. The mountain features that
decorate the desert landscape on which the town was
built are beautiful, large, and unique. They are the
town's shining star.
However, the superstitious name of a highway is not the
only important issue for Shiprock, which is plagued with
more serious issues like poverty and graffiti on the
town’s most notable feature, Shiprock Monument. Navajo
people call the Shiprock formation the Tse bi dahi, or
“the rock with wings.” The formation is 7,178 feet from
the surrounding flat ground and has an elevation of
5,550 feet.
“This
name comes from an ancient folk myth that tells how the
rock was once a great bird that transported the
ancestral people of the Navahos[sic] to their lands in
what is now northwestern New Mexico,” said Cheryl
Coleman in an email, a Shiprock resident. “The Navaho
[sic] ancestors had crossed a narrow sea far to the
northwest and were fleeing from a warlike tribe. Tribal
shamans prayed to the Great Spirit for help. Suddenly
the ground rose from beneath their feet to become an
enormous bird. For an entire day and night the bird flew
south, finally settling at sundown where Shiprock now
stands.”
Due to
the sacredness of the formation, the Navajo Tribe is
refusing to allow people to climb it, according to a
pamphlet about the formation distributed by the Navajo
Parks and Recreation Department. Despite the
importance of the formation, there is a significant
amount of graffiti visible at the formation’s base.
“Many younger people have begun to find its ‘remoteness’
a place to gather and drink. The drinking and other
drugs used tend to create a need to ‘personalize’ their
time there and also leave trash behind,” said Diana
Cudeii in an email. “However, there are tourists who
also want to personalize their visit as well.”
Cudeii,
who works in private business as an oral health
consultant and is a research study coordinator at UC
Denver and a student at NAU, said that she thought
locals who caused damage to the formation show a lack of
respect for their tribal history. “I’m not sure if
anyone is taking care of the litter and graffiti around
the Rock, maybe they should,” said Coleman. “I think
people are dis-respectful [sic] for treating the
formation like that.”
The
residents still cherish their land and town because
Shiprock is more than just Shiprock Monument, it is a
community. “It's considered the largest community on
the Navajo reservation,” said Cudeii. |
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