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Show -3- is the farthest Post Office from a railroad in the U.S. - if so, it supplants Kayenta, Arizona, in that place of honor and may still be a valuable cancellation at any date. Our best wishes to the new Postmaster, Jim Hunt! When St. Christopher's Mission was started the population of Mexican Hat was 3 at "Low Hat" (by the bridge) and 7 at "High Hat." It was said to be growing, because the Nevills children were inches taller each year. Anyway, the new Uranium refining mill construction work has brought nearly a thousand, whites and Navaho, into the area. We are still waiting for permission from "the Tribal Council to put up a church there, but in the meantime we serve the People as well as we can. IAI LCOHOL is still a major pl'oblem, and we wish we could report some progress. It looks from here like a long and hard campaign. Easy it is to say that the problem is no different here than elsewhere - "People are people, and Indians are people - we're all the same under the skin." But the fact is that we are not. A half century ago, when not very literate man " and woman was an amat.~1,ll' psychologist there was a saying to the effect that "What's in a man when he's sober comes out when he's drunk." Today we express pretty much the same ideas but in terms of alcohol "releasing suppressed hostilities." Generations of injustice, domination, contempt, djscrimination" exploitation and all manner of wrong, together with the knowledge that resistance by force is impossible - well, you just try to pack all that into a "repressed hostility," and then release it with a few bottles of l?g-al beer, and see what happens! The simple~t solution has of course been suggested - "Don't let them have it," - and that is, of course, impossible, even if it were desirable. The only real solution, in our opinion, is the building up of character, informed by grace so that it may be possible for each individual to face the facts of the case and determine, by grace, to work the thing out. This is not a quick and easy solution, nor can it be expected to work out in terms of a "five-year plan" or anything like that" The Church has come into the lives of t hese people, and must not fail them no"'. |
