SOCIOCULTURAL PROBLEMS IN INTRODUCING NEW TECHNOLOGY ON A NAVAHO IRRIGATION PROJECT.

This article focuses on sociocultural problems in introducing new technology on Navaho irrigation project. The development of the Navajo Project under the Upper Colorado River Project will give the Navaho Indian Tribe an opportunity to rehabilitate 1,900 families on 122,000 acres of irrigated land. However, a wide gap exists between the Navaho's current level of agricultural technology and understanding of modem economic practices and that which he will need when the large irrigation development is completed,some years hence. This article describes a case study of a 60-acre farm which the Indian Bureau planned as one method of teaching the Navaho to bridge this gap. It did not succeed, largely because of the lack of coordination between the agency branches concerned, arid because the planners failed to take into consideration the culture and social organization of the community. The demonstration farm is located on a newly subjugated part of an existing irrigation project in the northeastern part of the Navaho Indian Reservation in New Mexico.