The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission will be conducting a public hearing to assess the mistreatment of Navajo and Native American students attending K through 12th grade in schools on and off the Navajo Nation.
The hearing stems from a lawsuit filed last week in a New Mexico court by a law firm that has represented dozens of abuse survivors over the years. The suit surrounds alleged abuses in the 1980's when an unnamed plaintiff was a student at a Catholic boarding school in Santa Fe. It comes on the heels of scandals and cover-ups of sex abuse by clergy within the church. The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission set the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - or UNDRIP - as its threshold on examining Navajo human rights issues. UNDRIP has been supported by the United States government since 2010. The hearing is this afternoon at a veterans center in Gallup, New Mexico, on the outskirts of the Navajo Nation.
