Clint John, a 21-year-old Navajo youth, was killed June 10 by police officer Shawn Scott in a parking lot of a Wal-Mart store in Farmington, in northwest New Mexico. According to eyewitness accounts, John was shot four times, the last shot fired directly into his head. He was unarmed. A police investigation absolved Scott and deemed that he acted appropriately.

On September 2 some 1,000 people marched one and a half miles to protest the police brutality and racist harassment of Navajos. They were joined by 100 bikers who carried flags representing the sacred colors of the Navajo Nation. Among the marchers were members of the Hopi, Apache, and Ute Nations, from Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, respectively.

Della John, mother of Clint John, led about 80 supporters and family members, wearing T-shirts with a large photo of her son, from her home to the rally site on Highway 64. She told the Navajo Times, “I just couldn’t sit back.”

She reported that some passing motorists yelled obscenities at the group as they marched.

Because of racist violence in Farmington, in the 1970s the town was sometimes referred to as the Selma of the Southwest, referring to the 1960s civil rights battles in Selma, Alabama. In 1974, the bodies of three Navajo men were found burned and bludgeoned. The three white teenagers charged in their killings were sent to reform school, not to prison.

In 1978 Duane “Chili” Yazzie was shot by a white hitchhiker and lost an arm in the attack. Yazzie is today the president of the Shiprock, New Mexico, chapter of the Navajo Nation, and helped organize the September 2 rally.

In recent weeks racist attacks have escalated. On June 4, six days before John was murdered, three white men beat William Blackie, a Navajo man, and shouted slurs at him asking him to buy beer for them.

Navajos are 17 percent of Farmington’s population, but account for 69 percent of police arrests on assault charges and 62 percent of arrests on “driving under the influence” charges.

“The violent victimization of Native Americans is twice the U.S. national rate,” Yazzie told a special session of the Navajo Nation Council on June 23, called in the wake of Clint John’s killing.

“Farmington is a mining town. This type of harassment and abuse is what we face when we go to the border towns. This is a struggle for dignity. We are going to go and shop where we please,” Norman Dave told the Militant.  
 
 
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