#Navajo leader praises Trump for helping Native American community at RNC 2020

Enlarge Image

Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer
via REUTERS

The Navajo people were forgotten by Washington for years — until President Trump came to town, Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer said in a speech opening the second night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.

“Our people have never been invited into the American Dream. For years we’ve fought congressional battles with past congressmen and senators that were part of a broken system that ignored us,” Lizer said.

“That is, until President Trump took office.”

Lizer delivered a full-throated endorsement of the president from Shiprock, a sacred 1,583-foot peak within the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.

“Whenever we meet with President Trump,” he said, “he has always made it a priority to repair the relationship with our federal family.”

The president has helped Lizer’s community, he said, by signing a proclamation recognizing missing and murdered Native Americans and signing the coronavirus-relief CARES Act, which included $8 billion in funding for Indian Country.

Trump also reactivated the White House Council on Native American Affairs and nominated “strong conservative judges like Neil Gorsuch, who supports Native American rights,” Lizer said.

Lizer — who is also a pastor and a longtime businessman — has been second-in-command to Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez since both assumed office in January 2019.

The Navajo Nation is home to nearly 175,000 people across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — and Lizer ended his address by inviting Trump to visit.

His speech followed an opening prayer from Norma Urrabazo, a pastor at the International Church of Las Vegas and an executive board member of the National Latina/Latino Commission.

Urrabazo asked for prayers for Jacob Blake, the black man who was shot in the back by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday night, paralyzing him from the waist down.