01/16/2024
Along with you, DDC family of companies remembered Dr. Martin Luther King who inspired our nation to make a way for justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. His stance and voice shapes today. May we continue to embody the legacy to meet the needs of today and the future.
Read Navajo Nation President, Buu Nygren’s, message, below.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/5k1GQEsjBMbtenoK/?mibextid=I6gGtw
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
THE REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Every year on the third Monday in January, the country remembers a remarkable man, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King fought a continual struggle to promote freedom, equality, peace, justice and dignity. When asked why, he said it was a simple man’s attempt an end man’s inhumanity to other men.
Despite his life-long struggle against violence, and after being awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King died when he was shot and killed in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. He went there the day before to support a strike by 1,300 sanitation workers. His legacy to all people is to remind us that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Injustice is what he called moral blindness.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a federal holiday in his honor. On Nov. 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law. Yet even our great states of Arizona and Utah were among the last to acknowledge the life and work of this man.
Arizona came to remember him only after a tourism boycott crippled the state economy, compromising with the creation of Civil Rights Day in 1992. In Utah, this is known as Human Rights Day, and both are celebrated on Martin Luther King Day.
Dr. King’s life and death inevitably reminds Navajos and Native people of our own great leaders of the past. We’re reminded of the struggles they confronted to achieve justice for our people.
We know now that just as the virtues of love, tolerance, understanding and empathy are learned in childhood, so are the shortcomings of hatred, intolerance, racism and apathy.
On this Martin Luther King Day, let our thoughts for our families, our Navajo Nation, and our country be good thoughts. On this day when we honor a man of peace, let’s release blame and strive to forgive the shortcomings of those around us.
Ahe’hee,
Dr. Buu Nygren, PRESIDENT
THE NAVAJO NATION
