Utah: How a Utah county silenced Native American voters — and how Navajos are fighting back | High Country News
To understand why Wilfred Jones wanted an ambulance, you have to understand where he lives. San Juan County, in southeastern Utah, is nearly as big as New Jersey but is home to fewer than 15,000 people. The lower third is part of the Navajo Nation and is almost entirely Ute and Navajo. The upper two-thirds are white and predominantly Mormon. Jones, a 61-year-old grandfather with jet-black hair and a diamond stud in each ear, lives in the lower third, five miles south of the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Montezuma Creek. It’s rough, rocky country, where bullet holes riddle the road signs and lonely pumpjacks ply oil from the earth. The nearest services are in Blanding, some 40 miles north. Sixteen years ago, when Jones joined the board of the Utah Navajo Health System, he realized his neighbors were dying because the closest ambulances — the county’s, in Blanding, and the tribe’s, in Kayenta, Arizona — were an hour away “on a good day.” So Jones asked the county commission if one of San Juan’s ambulances could be housed in a garage in Montezuma Creek. From there, it would take half the time to rush an elder suffering a heart attack to medical care.