Daniel Press: A Great Man Among Indigenous People
Updated: 7 days ago
By Kenneth G. White Jr.
Daniel S. Press was a great man. This is the guy Dad referred to as his attorney,
“fresh out of law school,” he kept representing him against Bechtel, an international power company, for discriminating against Navajo workers in Page, Arizona. Dan came to the rez from New York City where he graduated from Yale Law School in 1968.
He could have made some major bucks at a huge law firm on Wall Street buying into corporate interests and shady schemes.
But what does he do? He has a kind heart. He’s not the greedy type. All he wants
to do is ride horses and live in a Navajo hogan. He took on a job as an attorney at
the DNA Legal Services in Window Rock, Arizona on the great Navajo Nation.
He committed to a DNA lawyer’s salary, compared to what he could have received
on Wall Street, to provide legal services to needy people. How committed was he?
At this time on the Navajo Nation, there were no legal field offices. So, Dan and
three of his fellow lawyers bought a used bus, fixed it up, and traveled to remote
communities throughout the Navajo Nation and provided much-needed legal
services to the Navajo people. That’s how committed he was.
Yes indeed, Dan had to have a lot of commitment to come on the Diné rez in 1968
and stay until 1972. These times of social change taking place included the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, and a focus on true issues
presented by the American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee protests, the shaping
of true Indian sovereignty, and political injustice taking place throughout the Native
heartland.
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