Purging myself of Tony Hillerman

I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, self-proclaimed "Indian Capital of the World."

Years and years ago, I read many, though not all, of murder mystery author Tony Hillerman's Chee and Leaphorn novels, about two Navajo Tribal Police officers, (I also read two non-Big Rez murder mysteries of his.)

Hillerman has long come off as sympathetic to Navajos in particular, and American Indians of the Southwest in general, as people. Going beyond oater dime novelist Louis L'Amour, who said more than once if he wrote about a place, "it was there," with Hillerman, not only was the place there, but so were the sociology and culture.

Well, recently, for various reasons, I started reading some of Hillerman again. But, after "Sacred Clowns," I may have hit a wall. An edited version of my Goodreads review will explain why.

Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On my "formula" for mid-level fiction reviews?
Characters 4.25-4.5
Plot 4.5
Dialogue 4-4.25

I'll take that to 4.5 or so overall but, round down due to an error.

Nope, it's "dropped" to 3 stars due to other issues listed at bottom. Some are specific to this book; others, the majority, apply to the Hillerman "canon" in general. I'm going to get to that after a condensed version of the first part.

On characters, Jim Chee as acting sergeant shows a first round of character development within the Chee-Leaphorn books, accepting enough of Lt. Joe Leaphorn's experience-developed wisdom to actually follow some rules. He also finds out that he may not be enough of a traditionalist to satisfy old-time hataałii (usually rendered by Hillerman as "shaman" or similar) to become one himself, complexifying his look at Janet Pete as too much of a "city Indian." One book later than Coyote Waits and two earlier than First Eagle, when you look at the series, you can see this "character plot line" developing. In addition to their hot-and-cold at times, the ethical playoff late in this story is good. As with widower Leaphorn's quasi?-romantic relationship with Prof. Bourebonette, this is Hillerman writing a generally internally consistent set of stories.
...

St. Bonaventure in Thoreau? It was there when I was growing up in Gallup eons ago. Not sure if it's the same church building today or not. Back then, it had a wood-plank floor that doubled as a roller skating rink, including being rented out; my church's youth group went out there more than once. I don't know if Gallup didn't have a roller rink then, or it was too big to rent to small groups, or what. (Or so I thought it was there. Teh Google lists skating in Gallup itself and not in Thoreau today, but Google Maps with "roller skating Thoreau NM" pointed to the Thoreau Community Center. Maybe skating moved there, or maybe that was the original church building.)

This all is why Hillerman is not dime-novelist Louis L'Amour, who used to brag that if a place was listed in one of his novels, it's there. With Hillerman, the people and culture are there, too.

But now, the problems start, beginning with smaller ones and working to bigger. 

First, he mentions an Iyanbito and Iyanbito Chapter House south of Gallup [pg 121, hardcover], and the only one I am familiar with is the one to the east. Besides, the Red Rock Chapter House is to Gallup's south. See for yourself. I have driven past Iyanbito many, many times. It has an exit on I-40. This is why I double-taked.

Sorry, Tony, but you don't explain why you "moved" Iyanbito if deliberate. And, a basic error otherwise? On the border on ratings, that gets you bumped down on the Navajo authenticity issue. That said, in this Smithsonian piece he admits to "shuffling around" places to meet his needs, but? There was no need for this. Nor for calling the Zuni Drive-In the Gallup Drive-In. Was it going to sue? It closed in 1982, anyway, so it couldn't. (I saw "Star Wars" there as a kid.)

There's an issue or two in other Hillerman novels that generally hold him at four stars, not five. For instance, he talks about "the Tuba City type of Navajo," a description both sociological, in terms of demeanor, and physiologically, in terms of build, as if genes work that deterministically and there's no outbreeding into that small area. And, of course, none of that is true.

Now, to a bigger issue, expressed in this novel, and I think one or two others.

That is his take on the American Indian Movement . Yes, many people within Navajo leadership didn't like it. That's because it challenged their authority, just as on the Sioux reservations. Calling its leadership, like Dennis Banks and Russell Means, "city Indians," comes off as a bit, or more, condescending. And, it's a lie. Banks was born on a reservation in Minnesota. Means was born on a reservation in South Dakota. Both Bellencourts were born on reservations. Banks was forcefully removed to a BIA boarding school at age 5. Means' parents moved to San Francisco at age 3 to escape poverty; the Bellencourt family moved to Minneapolis when older brother Vernon was 16.

This comes off sounding like my dad. (I remember when AIM came to Gallup.) I've outgrown that, Tony. This review goes down to three stars, and I read you more skeptically on "flavor of the Southwest" in the future.

(At least Hillerman doesn't try to view Navajo religion through an Opus Dei version of the Catholicism in which he had been raised, unlike my conservative Lutheran pastor father with that, even doing a Ph.D. on how particular Navajo and other Indian beliefs of course all reflected a literalist, fundagelical, interpretation of the Christian bible.)

For a truly nuanced and insightful book on AIM, especially in the Siouxan heartland of its operations, read "The Unquiet Grave."

And, I realized I have now been "triggered," or if I accept that something like free will exists (I do, if you emphasize the "something like" and that it is not necessarily totally conscious), I have self-triggered.

First, the quasi-sneer about "city Indian" (also Blizzard, the "city Indian" Cheyenne from Chicago BIA agent in this novel) surely affects Hillerman's authorial stance toward Janet Pete throughout the entire series of his novels. He doesn't totally throw her under the bus when he has the final break-up between her and Chee, but he does entirely write her out of future books. Did his attitude toward "city Indians" in general harden as he grew older?

Related? As I think more skeptically, while Hillerman may not totally paint a romantic Rousselian noble savage view of reservation Navajo life, the toes of one of his two feet, at minimum, are in that swamp. And I use that word deliberately. In reality, not only is the poverty worse than he portrays, but bits of it are to some degree self-inflicted. Navajos overgrazed the land badly enough a century ago that, for this reason as well as price controls, Navajo sheep, like Iowa hogs, were "culled" as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act in the 1930s. There's some degree of overgrazing again. Beyond that, as disagreements between chapters over Bears Ears have shown, there's not a "unified Navajo stance" on many things. In either case, on the land, as he has Chee drive by the pivot irrigation lands of what is today Navajo Agricultural Products Inc, and contrast them with a bit of ruefulness to the buttes and mesas, he overlooks the sheepherding.

In other words, to mash up Colbert and a cliche? "Truth is truthier than fiction."

Another issue? I think Hillerman has a generally bilagaana take on frybread, which is a flash point among many modern American Indians of many tribes. That's also not specific to this book, but, I never recall Chee, as an "authentic" Navajo, in any of my past Hillerman reading, saying it's not authentic Navajo food.

One other issue. One of Hillerman's novels is entirely on the Zuni reservation. Others have Hopi connections. But? Even though the Ute Mountain Ute reservation is directly north of the New Mexico portion of the Big Rez, I'm unaware of any Ute characters in any of his novels. Also not mentioned, IIRC? The Paiutes who actually live on the Utah strip portion of the Big Rez. (Indeed, some of these Paiutes have Navajo surnames like Begay or Yazzie.)

One OTHER other issue. Why, given Leaphorn's strident antipathy to alcohol, after his wife's death, does Hillerman name his new female interest Bourebonette? Yes, the initial "e" hides it, but really? Something like "bourbon"? Am I the first to notice this?

Anyway, beyond being self-triggered, I realized my nostalgia leading me to re-read Hillerman wasn't as much nostalgia as escapism — not the escapism of reading fiction, but real escapism, the desire to move out of Tex-ass, with the New Mexico of my childhood years a reasonable option financially — should I get a pre-retirement job there — among today's US Southwest and Western states. I will further expound on this elsewhere.

(I don't know where, if at all, daughter Anne stands on these issues. I only read the first book in her continuation of the series, which I found overstuffed with characters and having other problems. One of those problems is not exactly the same as Christopher Tolkien turning piles of notes, or maybe even rambling marginalia, by dad JRR, into books, but it broadly parallels that.)

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Muleshoe NWR expansion: Murdered by Arrington and USFWS

Shock me on the latter.

The Texas Monthly provides more information about how US Fish and Wildlife Service is a quisling pseudoenvironmental organization, with a detailed blow-by-blow of its total cave-in on what had been a planned massive expansion of Muleshoe NWR out in the Panhandle:

Outdoor enthusiasts are drawn to its remote beauty, where rugged swaths of wildflowers and mesquite trees shelter the elusive pronghorn antelope and the lesser prairie chicken.

Oy.

And part of this ties to the lesser prairie chicken, discussed here last week:

[Recently a] federal judge in Texas ruled there had been “serious error” in the agency’s classification of the lesser prairie chicken’s endangered status, temporarily removing Endangered Species Act protections for the bird in the state—a culmination of a Republican-backed effort that began in 2023 when Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a suit to overturn the listing.

Shock me that Kenny Boy was involved.

The key pusher on the ground was Lubbock Congresscritter Jodey Arrington. He had gotten a bill to shut down the expansion out of expansion just before USFWS caved.

As for this?

“Rep. Arrington’s opposition to Muleshoe was mostly, if not entirely, based in misinformation. The issue about the idea that landowners are somehow going to be forced or pressured to sell their land is simply not true,” says Nathan Marcy, a senior policy analyst at the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife.

It misreads Arrington. Information and misinformation isn't his concern. Nor is apparent hypocrisy of supporting state parks expansion. Instead, GOP wingnuts fellate the oil and gas industry, and will never, at the state level, allow a state park to even think about infringing on it. Beyond that, they hate the feds in general, until they start sucking off the federal teat.

It misreads USFWS as well.

That said, California Congresscritter Jared Huffman, known on these pages before, is a rank hypocrite for calling out Arrington on that bill as long as he continues to fight to keep cows INSIDE Point Reyes.

No, Nicole Collier was not held captive

So says Chris Hooks at the Monthly. Nicole Collier was not held captive. First, the historical background:

House Speaker Dustin Burrows’s decision to involve the police should not have come as a total surprise. Legislative leaders have, and have always had, a broad remit to try to compel attendance, from locking the doors of the chamber to deploying state troopers. (The “Killer Bees” of 1979 evaded a statewide police manhunt by hiding; Speaker Dade Phelan locked the doors of the chamber in 2021 to prevent another quorum break.) That’s why quorum breakers leave the state—they can be arrested if they stay here. The quorum break is a form of civil disobedience, and participants know they’re inviting a law enforcement response.

In other words, even before new legislation passed after the 2021 quorum break, people like Collier should have known this was possible, even if Burrows got heavy-handed.

Fast forward to the start of the current session, and now:

The rules package enabling the rounding up of absent House members was enthusiastically approved by Democrats, including Collier, at the start of the last session, and Burrows was the overwhelming choice of Democrats at the last Speaker election. What’s more, Burrows’s attempt to enforce attendance could be seen as conciliatory, not punitive—GOP elected officials to his right have been advocating much harsher and stricter measures.

Give the rest of it a read, even if you're a totally tribalist BlueAnon.

I'll admit, it looked like compelling theater. 

But, I knew about this, at least in a general way, being part of the rules package. Presumably, Collier was one of the Dems enthusiastically approving it.

Hooks does talk about Dems losing power in the House and find out Burrows' vice-chairmanships meant nothing. (Same is true of "ranking member" on committees in DC.) But, Burrows doesn't have a supermajority, unlike Dannie Goeb, Hooks notes, so he can't do too much. It should make Dems wonder, once again, if making the deal with Burrows, rather than lumping it, was the right call in the first place.

Final word from Hooks:

The ordeal has become a faint echo of the 2013 Wendy Davis filibuster, which created another media sensation around a Democratic lawmaker who chose to lose well and lose with style.

Chris forgot to mention that:

A. Davis lost hypocritically, as well, and

B. She faded from the scene quickly enough.

Back to the original story.

This isn't teh stupidz like Texas Senate Dems walking out, but not enough to block business. It's more than a nothingburger, too. But, it's like a White Castle slider instead of a Double Whopper. 

An introduction to saying Fuck the USFWS

This is a shortened form of a piece at Substack, to which I gave an introduction four weeks ago. 

First, the USFWS? For those unknowing of federal acronyms and shorthands, especially in land management and related agencies, that’s the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

They’re the folks who run the system of national wildlife refuges. Especially in states with little public land, like here in Tex-ass and especially with little free public land in nature outside of cities, national wildlife refuges are a magnet for nature lovers. Unfortunately, these places aren’t so pristine.

Often, they’re heavily managed for the “hook and bullet” crowd — hunters (especially duck hunters) and fishermen. This may include use of irrigated water from non-environmental damned dams. It may include “overseeding” winter rye or wheat to keep geese, also part of the “bullet” crowd to some degree, from going even further south for winter. Ponds and berms for these birds, and for migratory shorebirds like sandpipers, plovers and such, can and will be manipulated.

That’s one of the two key facets of this piece.

Second? They’re the federal agency that handles Endangered Species Act listings. That is, should the grizzly bear, in the Lower 48, be listed as “endangered.” As part of this, at times, they will recommend a “delisting,” or at least a downgraded listing, like moving the grizzly from “endangered” to “threatened.” Often, this is under outside political pressure. However, sometimes, USFWS does this on its own.

Related to that is USFWS often using a “threatened” listing in the face of lawsuits by more active environmental organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity, to try to hold off a listing as fully endangered. And, yes, USFWS does this a LOT, for garden-variety environmentalists who don’t know. This is often, especially with the USFWS Southwest Region, done in the service of the oil and gas industry. That’s just the start.

They also have, more than once, at regional or national headquarters, improperly filed an ESA listing — often enough to make one wonder if it’s deliberate.

In addition, with animals like the Gunnison’s sage grouse, USFWS has often been slow to accept the biological science that what has been considered a subspecies is actually a separate species, and ergo, one thin enough on the ground that it may need ESA listing.

Finally, with both animals and plants, an ESA listing — IF it’s to be of any value — required designating critical habitat for the protection of the species. FWS is especially a foot-dragger on this.

And with that, stay tuned for the follow-up in a week.

Texas Progressives talk redistricting, stupidity from Paxton and Texas Dems

Off the Kuff took a look at the election numbers in the proposed new Congressional districts to see how Republicans made the math work (sort of) for them. 

SocraticGadfly is glad to see McKinney go ahead with work for a passenger terminal at the city airport and awaits details of gates and airlines in the future.

STAAR results are out. So are A-F ratings. With the combo, more school districts face possible TEA takeover, including in red areas like Beaumont and Wichita Falls. You reap what you sow.

Kenny Boy Paxton has fumbled away all of his Senate GOP primary lead against John Cornyn. Why was he too stupid to not pay Angela to defer her divorce filing until after March 2026?

ICE is hammering the business of and at taqueria trucks. 

The first post-Kerrville flooding lawsuit to directly target a campsite or resort is on the books. (Unfortunately, Camp Mystic, which deliberately built new cabins in a floodplain while getting the Obama-era FEMA to pencil-whip that land out of floodplain status, is not the target.)

Speaking of? Any bills that come out of the Lege will ignore climate change. Of course they will.

Democrats in the Lege can't stop redistricting, and they also can't stop putting cops' dirtiest deeds under a veil. (Some Democrats may like this, for that matter.)

Related? Texas Senate Democrats are performative dum fuqs. (The likes of Kuff are probably gaga over them instead.)

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project reported on two grassroots-led protests in Harris County. Voting is not going to be enough.

The Texas Observer reports on hard times for Texas abortion funds.

The Austin Chronicle finds another way to fight back and defend our history.

Steve Vladeck reviews the history of "federalizing" Washington, DC. 

Houstonia tallies up the cost of tariffs at your favorite restaurant.

Hearst vs Alden in Dallas, or The Snooze between the devil and the deep blue sea

With Hearst, already owning Houston, San Antonio, Austin (I forgot that they bought the Stateless earlier this year, somehow) Laredo, Beaumont and Midland, along with a few yet-smaller properties, is its purchase of the Dallas Snooze good for journalism in Texas? Michael Hardy discusses that at the Monthly. I can say that, at a minimum, it's better than vulture capitalist Alden owning the Snooze, Michael. On the other hand, especially seeing how the SA Express-News is treated as not much more than an appendage of the Chronic, and suspecting that's started happening at the Stateless, and knowing that it's surely happened to Beaumont, which is otherwise in the crapper, I can understand worries about how other papers outside Houston will lose, or have already lost, individual identities.

But, that's a lesser issue than the future of journalism. Even if the Chronic itself hasn't been gutted, the Stateless acquisition shows Hearst is no white knight overall:

Some journalists at Hearst’s Texas papers have a less rosy view of their employer. When Hearst bought the Statesman this spring, it declined to ratify the contract that the paper’s union had signed with Gannett just a few months earlier. Hearst and the union are in negotiations over a new contract; in the meantime, the company has laid off the paper’s copy editors, eliminated job protections, and cut some employee benefits. In May, the Austin News Guild filed an unfair labor practices charge against Hearst with the National Labor Relations Board.

I mean, yes, with more and more of a truly digital first world? Those copy editing positions are dead in the water. Do you want to pick up a reporter's notebook or microcasette player?

But? Some are still needed, and laying them ALL off sure as hell looks like union-busting. It does so to the unionized in Dallas, and at Hearst papers elsewhere:

In July, the union issued a statement on X expressing alarm at the paper’s sale: “The experiences of our colleagues at other Hearst papers have left us with concerns that we look forward to addressing with Hearst leadership.” This was followed by an open letter to Hearst from unionized journalists in California, Connecticut, New York, and Texas urging the company to refrain from “intimidation tactics and inappropriate discipline meant to scare journalists into silence or complacency.”

Ugh.

An additional problem is that Hearst is privately owned, so it can say it needs to bust unions for the bottom line, but, unless somebody leaks some financials, who can tell, and there's no shareholder pressure anyway.

As an additional note, online personal friend Chris Tomlinson, author of "Tomlinson Hill" and other books, is at the Chronic — and by extension, at the Expressed-News. And maybe at the Stateless now. His social media doesn't comment on the acquisition. 

==

Now, how does this play out in the longer term?

Beyond Hearst? Craphouse (sic), the half of the post-merger company that is the tail wagging the dog of the new Gannett, owns El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, Abilene and Corpus Christi, and continues to implode. In other words, outside of Odessa, two chains own all dailies in West and West Central Texas, and Hearst making a bid for Odessa and a consolidation with Midland wouldn't surprise me. CNHI, a chain that's the crappiest one not owned by a hedge fund, owns many newspapers in Texas that were dailies before COVID. It's not quite imploding, but just falling apart more and more. 

The StartleGram is owned by hedge-fund controlled McClatchey, which also continues to implode.

Papers inside or near the Triangle, since, setting aside Cowtown, Hearst will now pretty much control all points? Temple remains privately owned by the Mayborn family and won't be sold. Waco and Bryan-College Station are both part of Lee Enterprises, whose flagship is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. They might sell.

In the Valley? Hearst, if the price is right, might look to move further south from Laredo. It wouldn't need to buy everything, just one or another of Brownsville, Harlingen etc, and then use its growing clout.

That leaves East Texas, east of where CNHI trails off, as more competitive for now.

Also, a side note to journalism union hater Jim Schutze? STFU.