Leaving the Grand Canyon, we saw this….
And this…
And then an awful lot of this…
Which is basically nothing.
Nothing but dry, barren, useless dirt and rock.
And that my friends, is the Najavo nation reservation.
27,673 miles of nothing.
I’m not going to get political. I won’t rail against the government that stole their land and their culture. The government that forbade them to practice their religion or speak their language. The government that slaughtered the buffalo, settled the plains, destroyed their way of life and shunted them on to large tracts of inhospitable land.
No, not me.
But I will post these pictures of what we saw.
Poverty.
And a once proud people…
Now forced to try and make a few bucks off the passing tourists.
I could make a joke about the jerky…
But my heart isn’t in it.
As we drove through this bleak landscape, we remembered a recommendation someone gave us about a place called the Cameron Trading Post… supposedly rich in Native American history with authentic Navajo food in the restaurant and lots of Indian art in the gift shop.
Well, it certainly didn’t look Native American.
And it’s rich history was basically two white men who traded with (and took advantage of) the Navajo years ago and made a fortune.
The authentic food? Navajo taco salad was the closest I saw.
We ordered dinner, which I didn’t photograph because it was absolutely inedible and had to be sent back.
Oh, there was Indian art… some of it made in China.
What was authentic? Astronomically expensive, marked up for tourists jewelry that I’m sure the Navajo artists saw very little profit from.
The food wasn’t the only thing that left a bad taste in my mouth.
