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had the Congress left it to the courts to determine. Had that been done, the outcome would inevitably have been that in order to enforce the decree that the court signed, it would have been required to send marshals out to the Hopi land to evict the Navajo, and I think it might have resulted in some bloodshed as a result.

The court found that the Navajo and the Hopi were entitled in the first instance to joint use of the joint-use area. It found also that the Nɛ ajo were encroaching on Hopi rights.

SETTLEMENT PROPOSALS

Articles that I have read have indicated that the Navajo offered to pay for the Hopi land. The Hopi refused it. One of the articles I read indicated that the Hopi had offered-I want to confirm this with Chairman Sidney when he comes in-has he come in yet? No? Or Mr. Zah.

Mr. Zah, are you here? Did you want to come up to the table because I think you have an interest in this proceeding.

One of the articles I read indicated that the Hopi had sought to settle the controversy by offering to exchange Big Mountain for some coal land interest. Is that a correct statement?

Mr. ZAH. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think Big Mountain is only one of the problems.

Mr. YATES. I know that. I am just trying to get his story at this point. I am trying to find out whether there was an offer of settlement that was made by the Hopis.

Mr. ZAH. Not to my knowledge, no.

Mr. YATES. Not to your knowledge? Okay. I know that you have made offers to Hopi.

Mr. ZAH. Sure.

PENDING COURT CASES

Mr. YATES. The controversy that we have before us in this hearing is only one of the land controversies between the Navajo and the Hopi, is that correct?

Mr. ZAH. Sure.

Mr. YATES. Are you in court now on some of those cases? Have the Hopi filed suit as they said they were going to?

Mr. ZAH. Mr. Chairman, I have with me Claudeen Bates Arthur, who is the Attorney General for the Nation.

Mr. YATES. Claudeen, what is the status of the other controversies?

Ms. ARTHUR. We have presently in court a number of damage claims against the Navajo Nation and the United States that have been filed by the Hopis. We have an accounting case and another case we call the use case, a post-partition rent case, and we have a case in court in which the Hopis are claiming 7 million acres in the 1934 reservation area.

Mr. YATES. Where are you with respect to Moencopi? What about that controversy? Is that part of this or the subject of another dispute?

Ms. ARTHUR. It is another dispute but also a part of the law that was passed by this Congress.

Mr. YATES. It has gone in and out of this case, hasn't it?

Ms. ARTHUR. Yes.

Mr. YATES. It is interesting, in retrospect, that there was no effort made to settle this dispute in the same way as other disputes were settled. I think of the controversy in Maine, the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddy were given a cash settlement in addition to some land. I understand there is a settlement pending in the city of Tacoma controversy where the Puyallups have filed a claim. I was told that too seems to be evolving into a settlement that will require a cash payment by the Federal Government and other matters. But the point I am trying to make is there was no relocation that was required under the terms of those settlements.

This case seems to be one of the few, if not the only one, that I have seen which required a relocation of the tribes. We have spent almost $100 million now and one wonders if we had offered $100 million in 1974, the case might have been settled at that particular time. Now we have before us the prospect of spending another $275 million in taxpayers' money over a period of seven or eight years with the hope-I don't know whether to use the word "expectation," but the hope certainly that perhaps this will result in the settlement.

But, again, as I pointed out, this is only one in the series of controversies between the Navajo and the Hopi. If there is some way of working it out, it would be well. Having said all this, where do we go from here? What does the Commission want us to do?

COMMISSION PLAN

Do you want to continue to adhere to your schedule? As I remember your testimony last year, Mr. Watkins, you want us to spend approximately $275 million over the next seven or eight years to relocate and to settle-not only to settle the controversy, but to relocate the people who have to be moved; is that correct? Mr. WATKINS. That is if you want us to fulfill the law as written, yes, sir. But we have made other overtures during the ensuing year and you have made a very broad statement there. Did you want me to answer some of those questions?

Mr. YATES. Of course I do.

If you feel that anything I said is unfounded in law or in fact, please tell me so.

Mr. WATKINS. I am not going to speak about the law because I am the layperson. We have one attorney onboard. Of course, you know, Mr. Atkinson, Ms. Massetto.

Mr. YATES. I know them.

Mr. ATKINS. And Mr. Chris Bavasi back here and Merrs. Mike McAlister and Paul Tessler.

Mr. YATES. Are you and Mr. Atkinson talking to Ms. Massetto this morning?

Mr. ATKINSON. Oh, yes.

Mr. YATES. Mr. Sidney, would you like to sit down at the table? Glad to see you.

Go ahead, Mr. Watkins.

Mr. WATKINS. First of all, we were not aware this was a budgetary hearing, but we will play it by ear, Mr. Chairman, and do what you want us to do.

Mr. YATES. If you prefer to consider it as an oversight hearing, we will do that. It is both oversight and budget.

Mr. WATKINS. It is good for all of us to be here anyway. I didn't make any-mark down anything as you went through the comments there.

Mr. YATES. Would you like to have my statement?

Mr. WATKINS. Yes, but first of all, I would like to say that some people have told you that the Commission has botched the job. I disagree wholeheartedly. I think the Commission and its employees are complying with the law and are doing everything humanly possible to make something that nobody else wants to do happen and we know we have no friends, and those letters you spoke of from all over the world, I am getting them as chairman of the committee.

Mr. YATES. What do you mean you have no friends?

Mr. WATKINS. Nobody likes the Commission.

Mr. YATES. Well, based on my statement, I would say deservedly so, wouldn't you?

Mr. WATKINS. Well, Mr. Chairman, I can't fight with city hall. If you want to direct questions to me relative to anything, I will answer them.

Mr. YATES. No. You go ahead and make your statement.

COMMISSION RECORD OF SUCCESS OR FAILURE

Mr. WATKINS. I am trying to recall what you said in the statement relative to the Commission.

Mr. YATES. I said the Commission had botched the job of relocation. You have been in it since 1974, not you personally. The Commission has been in. I think you have been in for two years now. Mr. WATKINS. Three years.

Mr. YATES. Three years. And I think that from all reports certainly in the first ten years there was little done in the way of relocation and that which was done in the field of relocation was not done very well according to the reports we have received and the report that was filed by our investigative staff.

Secondly, that the Commission botched the job of unseling the Indian people. As they were moved, they were not counseled before nor were they counseled after they were relocated. As a result, a third of the families that were relocated to new housing wound up selling their houses and I don't know where they have moved.

I don't know if the Commission knows where they have moved. The houses that they were in were sold to other people, I am told by investigators they were subsequently bought by the Commission and sold to other relocatees.

Those, in essence, were the charges that I made against the Commission in my statement.

Mr. WATKINS. All right. Do you want to speak to the houses first, sir?

Mr. YATES. Whichever way you want to proceed.

Mr. WATKINS. Paul, do you want to respond to that?

RELOCATEE RETENTION OF HOUSING

Mr. TESSLER. Mr. Chairman, in terms of people who have moved, there is no question that we have had problems with relocations. Some of the folks that got houses no longer own them. Some of them were taken advantage of by unscrupulous real estate people. Some of them sold them for the same reason that the general population sold their homes.

Of those who no longer own their homes, certainly some of them have moved back to the reservation. Others have moved to other places if they sold homes for a profit or for new jobs or for education. We don't know where everyone has moved to, but we have followed up with the relocatees who have sold their homes by and large.

Currently, as a result of that process, we have instituted procedures. One was a new restriction for a period of two years which prevents relocatees from selling or encumbering their homes unless they consult with the Commission before they do that. Additionally, to prevent people from moving off reservation where they might lose their homes for taxes or non-payment of mortgage, we instituted procedures requiring that they have sufficient income to support the home.

I believe both of these procedures will through time show a reduction of the people who no longer own their homes. I believe those practices are decreasing.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. YATES. Mr. Regula.

Mr. REGULA. Are these homes located on real estate that is not part of a reservation?

Mr. TESSLER. Correct.

Mr. REGULA. Do the recipients get a fee simple title?

Mr. TESSLER. Yes, they do.

Mr. REGULA. What was the source of the land to provide the relocation? Was it a purchase of land by the Commission? Where did you get the land?

Mr. TESSLER. The sites are scattered in most cases around the Navajo reservation, in border communities.

Mr. REGULA. Were they sites that were purchased?

Mr. TESSLER. Individual home sites, city lots, regular houses in the city.

Mr. REGULA. When the family moves from the disputed land into this home, they get a fee simple title which enables them to convey it as they choose?

Mr. TESSLER. Correct.

Mr. REGULA. Are they conveying to non-Indians or to Indians or what? You say a number of them have been sold. Are they sold to anyone or for any purpose?

Mr. TESSLER. In most cases they have been sold to non-Indians. The reasons why people sell? Is that what you are asking?

Mr. REGULA. Some of that, yes.

Mr. TESSLER. In some cases they can't keep up with the utility payments and taxes, in some cases they sold for a profit. In some cases they have been taken advantage of and offered real estate deals to trade down, if you would.

Mr. REGULA. Once they sell do they go back to the Navajo reservation normally?

Mr. TESSLER. In some cases, they do, yes.

Mr. REGULA. Do they go back onto lands that are not in dispute between the two tribes?

Mr. TESSLER. I believe they have returned to other places on the reservation.

Mr. REGULA. On the Navajo reservation?

Mr. TESSLER. Correct, but not the places they came from in most cases. When they sell and relocate, we purchase the dwelling from them and that property is disposed of. It is turned over to the Hopi tribe and in many cases salvaged or if it is usable it is kept under Hopi jurisdiction.

Mr. REGULA. When you purchase it, is that money applied to the cost of the one you provided for them?

Mr. TESSLER. That is correct.

Mr. REGULA. You may add some if it is necessary to acquire the new property?

Mr. TESSLER. That is correct.

COMMISSION COUNSELING

Mr. YATES. This is what the Commission told us in their reply to our investigative report last year on this. Commission counseling services, "The Report's criticism of the counseling program is inaccurate, unfair and does not take into account the general lack of education and degree of acculturation of relocatees. The Report recognizes, but fails to take into account that the majority of the relocatees are in some stage of transition from a traditional way of life to grappling with life in the 20th Century."

We know that. We recognize that.

Just a minute, Ms. Massetto.

That is why we think the counseling has failed, because it failed to take that into consideration. "The Report states that the primary reason for the resale of relocatee homes off-reservation is the failure of the Commission to adequately prepare the relocatee to make the transition to off-reservation life. Anyone familiar with this history of Indian affairs will realize the effort to make a transition between a traditional reservation life and urban life has been a problem for which the entire Federal Government has been unable to find an adequate solution."

Well, what you are doing is dismissing it by that. You are saying, well, the Federal Government has never been able to do it so we don't have to do it but that does not mean that you don't try to do an adequate job. The record shows there was no adequate job of counseling either before or after.

Now, Ms. Massetto, you may speak.

Ms. MASSETTO. The only thing I wanted to add, Mr. Chairman, to your comments is that

Mr. YATES. Incidentally, I was reading from the Commission's own statement. That isn't our statement. The Commission is acknowledging the defeat in counseling because of the character and the background of the Navajo people who were relocated saying

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