Harry Walters, Museum Curator at Navajo Community College/Diné College passes
By Miranda J. Haskie
Dr. Harry Walters (1943-2008) was a longtime Museum Curator at Navajo Community College/Diné College from 1973-2008. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe right after high school. He taught Navajo Oral History, Navajo Moccasin Making, Navajo History to the Present, Beginning Painting and numerous other Navajo Indian Studies courses at Diné College. He served in an advisory capacity at the Diné Policy Institute (DPI). He retired in 2008, after a 35-year career at the oldest tribally controlled college. Dr. Walters was Maii deeshgishnii and born for Táchiinii, his chei are Hooghan Łaní and his nali are Tabaahí. He was originally from Cove, Arizona (K’aabizhii Naastł’ah) where he spent his remaining years in retirement with his wife, Anna Lee Walters. In retirement, Dr. Walters continued to teach Diné culture and arts classes and give tours at Dinétah, the original homeland of the Diné people.
Dr. Walters remembered the first Navajo Community College President, Bob Roessel, and his wife, Ruth Roessel, inviting him to lead the college’s museum. He recalled
I started from scratch really. I only worked five years implementing exhibits. Bob
Roessel, who started the college, and his wife, Ruth—I was teaching art at Chinle Boarding School and they came to me in the spring of 1973. They said “We’re building a college, it’s going to be a cultural center and a museum. We can get people from the outside with all kinds of museu degrees, but we don’t want that, we want Navajo. We checked all around, and you seem to be the only one who has experience in that. We want you to work for us.” The salary, they suggested, was very good, so I jumped at it. That was one thing about Dr. Roessel—he could recognize the talent in people. (Haskie, M.J. and Shreve, S., 2018).
He recollected going on training for about a year. He “…spent three years with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and another six months at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. That is where I learned about museum management and collection management, exhibit installation and planning, and so on—it was very useful.” (Haskie, M.J. and Shreve, S., 2018).
At the Diné College Fall 2021 Commencement, he was awarded an honorary doctorate.
In the Diné College President Charles Monty Roessel’s Welcome Address, he stated:
This morning, we did something that the college has not done. We bestowed the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters upon Dr. Avery Denny, Dr. Johnson
Dennison, Dr. Harry Walters and Dr. Don Denetdeal. I do want to share why
we did it, because it is important. Those gentlemen, those scholars, those
historians took what was created back in the first time this college was built.
They legitimized the idea of Navajo philosophy in a college curriculum. For the
first time, it had never been done before. People laughed at it, “oh you can’t do it,
that’s not a college degree,” but they did something new. That’s our creation
story here at Diné College. But, once you create something, you have to operate it.
And that’s what those four gentlemen epitomize, they professionalized, if you will
the Diné teachings, to put it into Higher Learning Commission, to put it into
textbooks, to put it into curriculum, to put it into dissertations, that’s what they did.
And we, all of us, are the smarter for it. We are proud of those four because they
are a symbol of so much more (Roessel, 2021: 32:50).
In the summer of 2009, Dr. Harry Walters was featured in a Navajo Oral History project. Students who interviewed him were Dine College student’s, Derrick Harvey and Larissa Jimmy, and Winona State University student’s, Andrew Neumann and Stephanie Precourt. The Navajo Oral History project was led by Winona State University Professor, Dr. Tom Grier and Diné College Professor, Dr. Miranda J. Haskie. His video is archived at the National Museum of the American Indian–Smithsonian Institute. A timely honor given the fact that he began his career learning about museum studies at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
His video can be viewed at:
He had recently co-authored a publication in 2023 entitled
Kitchell, Jennifer and Walters, Harry (2023). The Navajo in Their Different Genius: Living a Long Life in Beauty is its Own Reward. Cerulean Stratus Press.
Dr. Harry Walters was a cherished treasure to the Diné people and Navajo Nation.
References
Diné College (2021, December). Youtube video of Winter 2021 Commencement Honorary Doctorate bestowed upon Dr. Harry Walters. Retrieved from https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/harry-walters-dine-college
Haskie, M.J. and Shreve, S. (2018). Remembering Diné college: Origin stories of America’s
first tribal college.Tribal College Journal. Volume 30, Number 1-Fall 2018.
Kitchell, Jennifer and Walters, Harry (2023). The Navajo in Their Different Genius: Living a Long
Life in Beauty is its Own Reward. Cerulean Stratus Press.
Roessel, C.M. [Diné College]. (2021, December 10). Charles Monty Roessel, Ed.D. Welcome
address: Fall 2021 PM commencement-Diné College[Video].YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgHKhBt7nP0.
Toda, Mitch (2020). Harry Walters, Director of the Diné College Museum, 1973-2008. Retrieved from: https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/harry-walters-dine-college
Image from DC Fall 2021 Commencement on YouTube:
