A museum that will honor the Navajo Code Talkers in New Mexico is about $40 million short of becoming a reality.
That’s despite the state putting $6.4 million in capital outlay funds toward the project earlier this year, according to a report in the Santa Fe New Mexican.
“We’re still fledgling, still gaining momentum in finding our identity,” Navajo Code Talkers Museum CEO Regan Hawthorne recently told the interim Indian Affairs Committee according to the newspaper.
During World War II, the Navajo Code Talkers were U.S. Marines who dispatched military orders, maneuvers and plans in their own language, helping to secure the American victory in the Pacific.
Hawthorne is the son of the late Roy Hawthorne, a Navajo Marine veteran who served as a Code Talker on various South Pacific islands from 1942 to 1945, according to the newspaper.
The project began in 2019, when the late John Pinto, a code talker and Democratic state senator from Gallup, wrangled more than $1.2 million from funding controlled by fellow lawmakers and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
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Prior to that, Pinto had unsuccessfully worked for years to obtain funding for the museum. Chevron Mining Co. donated more than 200 acres in McKinley County near an area most of the Code Talkers called home for the project in 2009.
In addition to funding, the effort also faces several other hurdles. Hawthorne told lawmakers that a deal still has to be struck with the Navajo Nation about the land for the museum. Hawthorne said to avoid a problem with the state’s anti-donation clause, museum leaders are working on a deal to gift or sell the land to the Navajo Nation, according to the newspaper. Hawthorne hopes that plan is finalized within a few months.
Hawthorne also told lawmakers that obtaining funding has also been made challenging because the museum organizers do not have administrative offices where they can meet people and solicit financial support, the newspaper reported.
“We’re not yet capable of operating a museum,” he said during the hearing.
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Several lawmakers suggested that the museum’s organizers seek federal funding for the effort. That did not sit well with Pinto’s granddaughter, state Sen. Shannon Pinto, the newspaper reported.
“If the feds did it, it would not be the Navajo Code Talker Museum, it would be about all national code talkers,” she said in an interview after the hearing.
Hawthorne told committee members he thinks the Navajo Nation would put some money into the project, though he could not say how much. According to the newspaper, he hopes leaders there would at least match the roughly $7.5 million New Mexico has invested in the project.
The museum is budgeted at more than $46 million, To date, the museum board has raised about $50,000 in donations.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.