NAN A. S. HAYWORTH: “I would close with an observation by one of my constituents in the Navajo Nation, having spent Sunday in Window Rock…”

“I would close with an observation by one of my constituents in the Navajo Nation, having spent Sunday in Window Rock, Arizona. A lady told the story of a young homemaker in a Navajo household cutting off a substantial portion of a hand. Kids asked her why. She said, I do not know; mom did it. So she went to great-grandma and she said, why did you cut off a major part of your hand. She said, well, it used to be a smaller pot and so I had to cut that off to make it fit in the pot, an example of a tradition for tradition's sake that defied common sense and needed to be changed, in much the same way we need to make changes here. Not because Washington said so, but because technology and the people living in those areas are willing to make the changes of their own volition. History does not occur in a vacuum and history is on the side of freedom.”