Navajo Nation Zoological and Botanical Park - Controversies

Controversies

In January 1999, outgoing Navajo Nation president Milton Bluehouse ordered the zoo closed after two women from Rock Ridge claimed to have been visited by the Diyin Dineʼé, traditional Navajo deities, who had given them a warning, saying that the Navajo people were not living according to tradition by keeping caged animals, specifically bears, snakes, and eagles, which are considered sacred.

Subsequently, during his first days in office, Bluehouse's successor, Kelsey A. Begaye, received more complaints and letters protesting the zoo's closure than concerning any other political issue. After temporarily reversing Bluehouse's decision, Begaye then summoned a meeting with the Navajo Nation's Hataałii Advisory Council to discuss the situation; the group, however, refused to consider the matter while the animals were in hibernation and postponed any advice or decision until April of the following year. Options under consideration were releasing the animals into the wild, not accepting new animals and closing the zoo after the last one had died, or renaming the zoo to a term that would be considered more respectful to the animals.

Opponents to the shut-down maintained that most of the animals were unable to survive in the wild and would perish, and that the zoo's facilities had become one of the last possibilities for future generations of Navajos to see the sacred creatures and thereby relate to traditional stories, due to the fact that most younger Navajos are more accustomed to dealing with domesticated livestock rather than untamed animals.

On March 12, Begaye announced his decision to keep the zoo open without expanding it and letting the remaining animals live out their lives on the zoo-grounds. According to Harry Walters, an anthropologist and former chairman of the Center for Diné Studies at Diné College in Tsaile (Tséhílį́), the incident demonstrates a crucial difference between Navajo and Western culture in the way visions and supernatural experiences are handled: "Rather than focus on the sightings to determine if who saw it was nuts or not – that's what a Westerner would do – we look at it as a message: 'Are we going the way we should?'" Walters said.