The record, read closely · issue articles
The companies the people own
≈ 6 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines
D · Draft — not verified Every quote is verbatim from a candidate’s own turn. Quotes are their claims, not this site’s findings. Statements about the proposed constitution cite its section and page. How we verify →
What Cal asked. “Do you support the enterprise concept to continue with the Navajo Nation government?” He notes “one of the enterprises is not even located on the Navajo Nation.” Boards — who sits, whether they meet, whether they know the industry.
The count. 36 of 42 candidates engaged ranches and enterprises.
On the November ballot. The proposed constitution’s § 1024 would transfer NTUA, NTEC, DDC and the Gaming Enterprise to living tribal members. Almost nobody is discussing this.
Companion page: where the candidates stand on this, one by one →
The Nation’s enterprises reach substantive discussion in 36 of the 42 interviews — tied for the third-most-covered subject in the record. Nineteen of the 42 candidates say something specific about them. They disagree about almost everything except one point, which nobody disputes and almost nobody says out loud: the people own these companies and cannot see inside them.
The companies are real and large: NTUA, the utility; NTEC, the energy company whose sole shareholder is the Navajo Nation; the Gaming Enterprise; Diné Development Corporation; NAPI, the agricultural producer; Navajo Arts and Crafts; the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority; KTNN; and more. Follow the money covers where their numbers live.
“Not known to me”
FINDING
Donovan Begay, a candidate for President of the Navajo Nation, was asked about the enterprises. He named the casinos as the biggest, and then said this: “Whether or not, if they’re making money or not, is not known to me, so that’s one that I would want to look into the books to try to figure out, is it helping us.”
Read that again. A person running to lead the Nation that owns these companies cannot say whether they make money, and describes looking into the books as something he would do after being elected. That is not a criticism of him — he is being unusually honest about a limit every candidate faces. It is a finding about the Nation. Greg Bigman states the principle the record keeps circling: Navajo “has enterprises that are government entities that should be open to the public.”
Approach: they should stand on their own feet
Eugene Badonie speaks from inside one. He chaired the KTNN radio station management board, he says, for twelve or thirteen years, and during that time it was “the only enterprise that never got any kind of supplement from the Navajo Nation.” His conclusion is a standard, not a complaint: “That’s the way every enterprise should be. They should be able to be on their own feet.”
Lewnell Harrison describes the opposite pattern from the Council side: “you see enterprises coming to Navajo Nation Council always requesting for funds to help their enterprises.” His verdict is blunt: “they’re not generating money for the Navajo Nation.” He also says he would rather “converse with the people that are the experts in these fields” than pretend to a three-point fix — which is either humility or evasion, and the voter gets to decide which.
Approach: fix the boards
Eula Yazzie goes at the governance rather than the balance sheet: something needs to be put in place, she says, “to vet the members. What’s their credentials.” She wants each enterprise examined to “see which one is losing money or not making any money,” and notes some are “outdated.” Jerilynn Yazzie, describing the healthcare side, traces the chain the same way: a hospital, and then “the board of management, or the board of directors” above it.
FINDING Boards recur across the record as the place accountability is supposed to live and often doesn’t — boards that lack the expertise for the industry they govern, boards that meet rarely. No candidate proposed a public list of who sits on which enterprise board, or how they were chosen. That list, too, appears to be a page on a website that does not exist.
Approach: an enterprise should serve the people who own it
Joan Gray asks the question that turns economics into K’é. She uses Navajo Arts and Crafts, and a market, as her examples, and asks why, living “in the most remote areas,” the store “does not sell grain, does not sell salt, does not sell what our ranchers need.” Marcella Yazzie makes the workforce version of the same point: Navajo people are “well qualified to run… the power plant, but yet they bring in” outsiders — “even down to the co-op stores.”
This is the same idea the economy article found under a different name: an enterprise owned by the people can still be built as though the people were not the customer.
Approach: some are working — say so
The record is not uniformly grim, and this site will not make it so. Gervana Begay names the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority as a Nation contractor doing real work — “bathroom renovations and bathroom additions.” Debbie Nez-Manuel would put NAPI to work supplying restaurants and larger cities. Donovan Begay names NAPI as the second enterprise worth studying, for jobs and for how it sustains itself. And publicly, NTEC’s dividend to the Nation rose from $3.15 million in 2025 to a record $5.5 million announced in 2026 — a fact no candidate mentioned, and one that complicates the story.
What almost nobody said — and it is on the ballot
FINDING
Section 1024 of the August 7, 2025 proposed constitution (page 23) would bar the Navajo Nation government from directly owning, creating, managing, operating, or investing in business instrumentalities — corporations, LLCs, partnerships, enterprises — that compete against Navajo citizens in the marketplace. Insurance programs, incentives, grants and guarantees remain permitted. And §1024(B) provides that every business entity the Nation currently owns shall be transferred and owned by living Navajo Nation tribal members for their collective benefit, with profits directed to infrastructure, language and culture revitalization, and limited scholarships, and a dividend distribution system implemented.
On November 3, a vote on the proposed constitution is, among other things, a vote on whether the Nation keeps NTUA, NTEC, the Gaming Enterprise, and the rest. Not one of the 42 candidates discussed §1024. We have written the questions down for the draft’s author — what the transfer mechanism would be, who would hold the shares, what happens to federal loans, bonds, and utility obligations, and where NTEC’s dividend would go. The questions →
TAKE ACTION
Two questions, and one document
Ask any candidate: “Name one Nation-owned enterprise, and tell me whether it made or lost money last year.” Then: “Section 1024 would transfer the enterprises to tribal members. Have you read it, and do you support it?” Then read page 23 of the draft yourself — it is four sentences long, and it decides who owns the Nation’s companies. Tell us what you find on Participate.
Up a level: What runs through all of it →