HeraldScotland Article On The Navajo Nation

Above, "The Mittens" at Monument Valley Tribal Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

One of the things I'd like to do this coming summer is to take a trip up to Monument Valley. I was last there three years ago during the month of November. I stayed at Goulding's Lodge Campground.

During the day, it was cold and windy. At night, it got down into the 20s.

Still, I enjoyed my visit, which also included a tour of the area made famous by John Ford/John Wayne westerns.

Above, the lobby of the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There is an article by the HeraldScotland about the Navajo Nation that is worth a read. It discusses Monument Valley (it is a tribal park in the Navajo Nation), Canyon de Chelley National Monument and the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico.

It begins with:

"Do you ever get tired of that view?" I asked, sitting in the cafe of the visitor centre. "How could I?" said the young Navajo waitress, "John Ford said Monument Valley was the place where God put the West. He was right." 

She is from a nation living in an area roughly the size of Scotland, and with a population of 300,000, which you will search hard for on the map – though you will possibly have been there in your celluloid fantasies. In that nation lies Monument Valley, scene of John Wayne and his director John Ford's films, such as Stagecoach and The Seekers, and of many other westerns. There is even a John Ford Point, a favourite film location of the director. But it is in reality far from being the home of cowboys.

On the contrary, this area stretching through much of northern Arizona, northern New Mexico and southern Utah in the American south-west, with its world-famous scenery is part of the Native American Navajo Nation, a self-governing territory, with its own education and legal system, and its own police force. Size and devolved political powers may be similar to Scotland's but similarities end there.

To read more, go here.