San Juan County Commissioner Mark Maryboy said he will discuss "blatant racism" against Utah Navajos at a United Nations conference this month in Switzerland.
"I will tell them about the discrimination here," Maryboy told the Grand Junction, Colo., Sentinel in a story published Wednesday. "I have traveled all over, and I think the worst place you can be for discrimination is San Juan County."Maryboy, a Navajo tribal chapter leader and the only American Indian holding elected office in Utah, said he is one of several people from around the world chosen to speak at a U.N. conference on improving the plight of indigenous people. The conference is July 20-26 in Geneva.
About half of San Juan County's residents are Navajo, and the other half are predominantly white.
The county is among the most impoverished in the state, and many of the Navajo residents are without electricity or running water.
Most of the whites in the county are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Maryboy said Mormons control the local schools and don't treat Indians with respect.
Maryboy, 36, won election six years ago, becoming the first Navajo to hold elective office in the state. Since then, he has often feuded with county officials over distribution of tax revenues and royalties from oil and gas wells on the Utah portion of the tri-state Navajo Reservation.
Maryboy said his talk at the U.N. conference will focus on discrimination in San Juan County schools. He points to a study completed by University of Utah professor Donna Deyhle, who said more than 50 percent of Navajos in the county drop out of school.
Deyhle's study said Indians are pushed to forget their own language, religion and cultural values and to adopt white culture and values to succeed. It noted that the superintendent of schools and the principals of all four of the county's high schools are Mormons.