Stanley Dehiya displays one of his handmade belts at his home in John Day.

From boyhood on a Southwestern U.S. Indian reservation to logging, milling and leatherworking in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, Stanley Dehiya’s life has endowed him with a wealth of unique experiences.

Dehiya, a longtime resident of Grant County, was born in Crownpoint, New Mexico, a part of the Navajo Nation reservation, in 1945. “I’m full-blooded Navajo,” he says, “a member of the Deer Clan.”

Raised on the reservation, Dehiya grew up speaking the Navajo language. “My dad first put me in school when I was 9,” he recalls. Several years later, on the recommendation of U.S. government officials, Dehiya’s father sent him north to the Chemawa Indian School in Salem — the oldest continuously operated boarding school for Native American students in the United States, according to the school’s website.

“When I got there, there were only Navajos,” recalls Dehiya. “After two or three years, Eskimos came in.”

Life at Chemawa was highly regimented, says Dehiya: “We were treated like an army. We lined up before we went to dinner.” And in class, “we were told not to speak Navajo, but to speak English only. Otherwise, we’d get in trouble.”

Chemawa was a vocational school, says Dehiya, but he also remembers instruction in math, English and social studies.

Dehiya’s six years at Chemawa took him through the eighth grade. Then, “a sheet was posted on the bulletin board that listed jobs,” he recalls. “Whichever job you wanted, you signed your name to. I put my name under carpenter, automotive, and ranch work. I was assigned ranch work, which was how I got out here.”

After completing their schooling, many of the Navajos at Chemawa returned to the reservation, says Dehiya’s daughter Ersela, who lives in Mt. Vernon. But Dehiya, she says, “was one of the few who never did. His family referred to him as ‘the lost brother.’”

Arriving in Grant County in the early 1960s, Dehiya says, his first job was for Dennis Lemons on a ranch near Mt. Vernon. While there, “I picked up side work hauling wood, driving cows, working hayfields, driving tractors.”

Seven years later, “I took a job at the sawmill in John Day — Hudspeth Lumber.” He worked there 12 years, he says, and after Hudspeth closed its mill, at Malheur Lumber another 10.

After almost a quarter-century at the mills, “I went on another job — logging in the woods,” says Dehiya. “I did that for two and a half years. I was a ‘knot bumper’: When they brought a log to the landing, and there were limbs on it, I was the one on top of the log cutting them off.”

Over the next couple of decades Dehiya worked as, among other things, a U.S. Forest Service truck driver on Mt. Hood, a railroader in Texas, Arizona and the Willamette Valley — and, again, a millhand in John Day and Prairie City.

Then, “I went into wildland firefighting for AAA Thunderbolt Fire Service in Mt. Vernon,” he says. “I worked wherever they sent us to fight fire — Washington, Idaho, Nevada, elsewhere in Oregon.”

Dehiya’s final job was as a security guard at Malheur Lumber. While there, “I got a sore on my toe,” he explains. “I tried to get it to heal, but it wouldn’t.” One night in November 2021, “I could hardly walk, it hurt so bad. I went to a doctor who told me it had to come off” because gangrene had set in.

Dehiya was airlifted to Boise, where “they amputated my right leg between my knee and my ankle. And that’s when I retired” — at the age of 76.

Today, Dehiya occupies himself with leatherwork — a skill he acquired decades ago at the Chemawa Indian School. “I make belts, billfolds, purses, all by hand,” he explains. “Right now, I’m doing some leatherwork for my great-grandson.”

And so a productive life’s journey continues for “the lost brother.”

NAME: Stanley Dehiya

RESIDENCE: John Day

AGE: 77

OCCUPATION: Retired logger, millworker and firefighter

NOTABLE: For years, presented wallets he’d designed and made to graduates of Mt. Vernon High School