Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation

The Ramah Navajo have been recorded in this area of New Mexico since 1540, when they came to the aid of the Zuni in their defense against the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado.

Community leaders, professionals, and Michael Gross, a lawyer from the East who had begun to work in legal services for Native Americans, obtained funding directly from the U.S. Congress in the early 1970s for the school and clinic.

Although the Ramah Band of Navajo had lived on their lands for several centuries up to the 1970s, their rights to them had not been fully secured under United States law since a transfer by the U.S. government had not occurred.

[2] He also taught the Ramah Navajo how to obtain all mineral rights underlying the lands he had secured for them with Public Law 97-434 .

Crull's work led to his nomination by the Navajo for the Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1981, which was endorsed by U.S. senators Dennis DeConcini, Pete Domenici, and John Melcher; and U.S. congressmen Manuel Lujan, Jr. and Paul Simon.

[4] Historically Native students in the reservation attended Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding schools in New Mexico and other states.

[6] After the Ramah Navajo approved the dormitory idea, the proposal was that the U.S. federal government would pay the New Mexico authorities for any Native American children attending New Mexican public schools.

[7] This dormitory opened in 1954, and Mountain View closed;[5] this meant that the majority of reservation students could attend a local public school.