GRIN 1987-1989

An Exploration of Archival Issues and Fun Stories

A Fresh Drop of Historical Newspapers from the Gila River Indian News!

Surprise, Surprise!

I went to the PDF archive to look up a story the other day and found that they had added some new issues from 1987-1989. What a treat!

I started going through them and wow — what an amazing period of history. My “interesting stories” page on the Gila River News Database was already long, but it is going to get even longer. This period just had so many cool finds.

My plan over the next couple of weeks is to post short-ish reflections on some of the stories I think are worth pulling out. Not to say these are the only ones “worth it” - I found a ton of really cool stuff — but I think some of these are the most publicly and historically relevant.

Before I get into it — a quick note on the paper itself. At this point the Gila River Indian News (GRIN) was only about two years old, having first published in 1985.

The editors at the time were Urban Giff and Colleen Moyah (01-87, p.5). From what I’ve heard, this was before the paper was fully controlled by tribal government — it was a related entity but still mostly independent. It wasn’t until around 1998 that it was fully taken over and lost most of that independence.

You can really feel the difference reading through these issues. The journalism is pretty in-depth, stories developing almost in real time across monthly issues — direct quotes from Community leaders, real back-and-forth in the letters to the editor, some genuinely uncomfortable “truth to power” moments.

Just a very different vibe from what we see today. Worth reading through yourself if you get the chance.

Anyway — let’s get into some of the finds. I’ll start with a few quickies.

The Casa Blanca RV Park

Did you know there was an RV park in Casa Blanca?

Right near the Arts and Crafts Center there was construction was underway in early 1987 with 50 spaces planned, and Community member Emmett White was awarded a landscaping subcontract (01-87, p.4). By October of that year it had opened with 22 fully serviced hookups (10-87, p.4).

I’d love to know if anyone remembers what eventually happened to it.

Issue Page Title

01-87 4 RV Park Construction - Expansion at Casa Blanca Market

10-87 4 RV Park Opens

Valley National Bank and Pamela Pratt

Did you know we had a local bank branch in Sacaton?

I remember it being around near the Post Office when I was a kid in the early 90s.

Well, there’s a great story from this period of Community member Pamela Pratt being selected as assistant manager of the Valley National Bank branch in Sacaton (05-87, p.4). Small story, but a nice one.

And I think relevant because it’s a reminder that we did used to have our own bank branch in Sacaton. Once upon a time.

Issue Page Title

05-87 4 Pamela Pratt - Asst. Manager at Bank

ATL Labs and the Rubber Plant Experiments

This one is super fascinating.

Sacaton and Gila River have a long history of experimental agriculture — Pima Cotton was developed here, after all. The ATL Labs articles from this period detail some pretty remarkable work going on with guayule, a desert shrub that can be processed into a rubber alternative.

There were large-scale growing operations happening, and by early 1988 a partner processing plant had opened up at Lone Butte in what looks like a public-private partnership with Department of Defense funding behind it (07-87, p.3 and 01-88, p.3).

Issue Page Title

07-87 3 Sacaton’s ATL Laboratory

01-88 3 Guayule Processing Plant Opens at San Tan Industrial

A Lot of New Infrastructure

This period was a big time for Community infrastructure. There are some other articles on GRHC that I’ll be doing a separate piece on. But..a few highlights:

The Ira Hayes Memorial Library

The library opened in June 1988 out of the old Pink School building in Sacaton, with startup support from the Kiwanis Club and donations from folks up near Sun Lakes (06-88, p.5). The building is still there today.

The Sacaton Sewer System

That’s right, this is when Sacaton got its sewer system. The completion is covered in the August 1988 issue (08-88, p.2). Something a lot of people probably take for granted today.

The Juvenile Rehabilitation Center

The old juvenile center was opening during this period, with GRIC taking over operations from the BIA and Laura Yergan hired as director (12-88, p.5).

I’m pretty sure this was the facility across from the current IT Department (the old Jail). I think this is the facility that was demolished a few years ago. I don’t think this is the juvenile facility near the current day Department of Rehabilitation and Supervision. But if anyone knows better please tell me!

Issue Page Title

06-88 5 Sacaton’s Ira H. Hayes Library Opens

08-88 2 Sacaton Sewer Nearly Complete

12-88 5 Tribe Now Operating Juvenile Rehabilitation Center

And Some Places Closed…

Not everything from this period was a new beginning. The Gila River Career Center, a nearly 20-year partnership with Central Arizona College, came to an end. CAC voted to cancel its lease in December 1988 (12-88, p.5), with GRIC wanting to repurpose the space for youth programming. Some training continued through JTPA but I don’t think we ever did get college-level programming back at Gila River.

The Olberg Trading Post also closed during this period — a fixture of the Community since 1927, shuttered over a lease and water dispute (06-88, p.6). And by the end of 1989, the Ryobi plant at Lone Butte closed, costing 52 Community members their jobs (12-89, p.3).

Issue Page Title

06-88 6 Olberg Trading Post to Close

12-88 5 CAC Votes to Cancel Skill Center Lease

12-89 3 52 Community Members Lose Jobs

A Quick Note on Culture

One thing I noticed reading through these issues — there isn’t a lot of local language, history, or cultural content in the paper during this period. What’s there is mostly republished outside material, mainly journal articles. There were a few notes on “Pima traditionalists” (03-87, p.4), a story on Arlene Howard speaking the language at Miss Gila River (04-87, p.3), and a fascinating piece on Emmett White blessing the Pope (09-87, p.4).

There are a few re-printed articles from local journals that have some interesting history in them, but none of these are locally created… I’m assuming the editors (Urban Giff and Colleen Moyah) wanted the histories in the articles to be known by the Community.

It’s a pretty sharp contrast to the consistent cultural content we see in the modern GRIN.

A striking piece is a November 1988 story about Sally Pablo driving to Hermosillo, Mexico to find Pima speakers. She talks about how she read that there used to be a thriving O’otham speaking tradition there, but when she went to go find someone she could only find a handful of speakers, and even the elder she met took time to remember how to speak the language.

The reflection at the end of that article hits hard: “[Hermosillo] - This is Gila River in 50 years — no more Pima-speaking people. That’s very frightening and yet very possible” (11-88, p.1).

Whats cool about her making that connection is the Elder from Hermosillo was later invited to an O’otham Arts and Crafts Festival later in the year.

Anyway… maybe the subjects of language, history, and culture didn’t seem as urgent when there were still many first-language speakers and elders who had lived that history. But I know I’m very grateful to Emmett White, Billy Allen, Robert Johnson, and all the other folks who have contributed to the modern GRIN for the past 10-20 years. They have done an amazing job keeping language and history alive for our Community.

Issue Page Title

03-87 4 Frank Vavages

04-87 3 Arlene Howard - Culture and Language

09-87 4 Emmett White - Blesses the Pope!

11-88 1 Curiosity and Book Made Her Search for Pima Speakers

And the journal re-prints if you want to check them out

Trennert - History of Phx Indian School

• 09-88, p.8 — Phoenix Indian School: Indians Must Conform Peaceably or by Force

• 10-88, p.8 — After Boys Were Chosen, They Were Given a Good Scrubbing and a Haircut

• 11-88, p.8 — The Only Right Belonging to the Indian Is...to Make a Man of Himself

• 12-88, p.8 — From Slouchy, Dissatisfied Girls to Ladylike, Agreeable Young Ladies

Fontana - History of Christianity and O’odham

• 12-87, p.7 — Taking to Christianity Was No Easy Task for the Early O’odham

• 01-88, p.7 — The Early O’odham Took What They Liked, Discarded Parts of Christianity

• 02-88, p.7 — O’odham Liked Christianity, But They Didn’t Like the Personal Abuse

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Anyway - this is long enough.. these were just a quick collection of cool stories I pulled out, but I’ll be digging deeper into other stories and some of these stories in the next few weeks.

If you see anything that needs corrected in this article or in the future articles, feel free to reach out to me at Lfnbrucie [at] Gmail to let me know. This period is something that a lot of folks lived through, so would love to have some reflections or memories from people

More to come =)