Dozens of Indigenous people gathered Saturday in Farmington for the annual Chokecherry Canyon Massacre Memorial Prayer Walk to call attention to the killings of three Navajo men in 1974.
The killings drew national attention to racial injustice in the Four Corners region.
Herman Dodge Benally, John Earl Harvey and David Ignacio were abducted, beaten and killed by three white high school students in April 1974. The attackers, who were juveniles, were sent to reform school and served less than two years – a sentence that fueled outrage among Native American communities.
The victims’ bodies were found mutilated in Chokecherry Canyon, a nearby area where the teenagers had engaged in a violent local “sport” known as “Indian rolling,” which targeted vulnerable, often homeless, Native Americans.
Demonstrators decried systemic discrimination and unequal treatment under the law. Activists at the time, including Duane “Chili” Yazzie, described the city as “the Selma of the Southwest,” a reference to Selma, Alabama, where protests against racial injustice helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Public outcry prompted an investigation by the New Mexico Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which found evidence of widespread discrimination against Native Americans in housing, employment and policing.
