FEDERAL RELOCATION OF NAVAJO INDIANS

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NAVAJO-HOPI-UNITED STATES "LAND DISPUTE"

Called by a Federal court the "greatest title problem in the West, the 113 year old Navajo-Hopi-United States "land dispute" is much more--it is a human tragedy on a huge scale, and yet another sad example of Federal mistreatment of Native Americans. The "land dispute" has led to the largest forced relocation of any racial group in this country since the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, with devastating spiritual, psychological and economic consequences for thousands of Navajo families. Ironically, even as the U.S. government decries the abuses of "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, it advocates such a solution to a land conflict it created within its own boundaries.

ORIGINS OF THE "LAND DISPUTE"

In 1882, at the request of the local Bureau of Indian Affairs agent who was seeking authority to evict two non-Indian missionaries working among the Hopi, President Chester Arthur signed an executive order establishing a reservation "for the use and occupancy of Moqui [Hopi], and such other Indians as the Secretary of the Interior may see fit to settle thereon." At the time the reservation was created there were 300 to 600 Navajos living within its boundaries, and approximately 1800 Hopis.' President Arthur's order, by its broad reference to "such other Indians", clearly encompassed the Navajos who made up one-sixth to one-third of the population. Even so, it was evident that little thought had been given to the actual land usage of the two tribes as the boundaries of the new reservation (known as the 1882 Reservation) were artificially designated as a rectangle--one degree of latitude in width and one degree of longitude in height. Inside this artificial reservation there were over 900 Indian sites--the majority of which were Navajo.'

Because of continuing pressure by the Hopi Tribe for a determination as to who legally was allowed to occupy the 1882 Reservation, the Congress authorized the two tribes in 1958 to sue each other to resolve the issue (as sovereign nations, both the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe are immune from suit unless Congress dictates otherwise). The Hopis sued within ten days after the law was passed and claimed exclusive ownership of the 1882 Reservation. In 1962, a Federal court held:

[t]he Hopi and Navajo Indian tribes have
joint, undivided, and equal interests as to

the surface and sub-surface including

all

resources appertaining thereto, subject to the
trust title of the United States."

In reaching this decision, the Federal court thus ruled that the Navajo Indians living on the 1882 reservation were "such other Indians" as set forth in President Arthur's executive order.

It

Dissatisfied with this result, the Hopi Tribe began petitioning the Congress for partition of the land. In 1974, this effort succeeded. However, according to a recent history "[i]t was not repeated Hopi complaints about Navajo encroachment onto uninhabited 1882-area lands that drove the [Federal] government to action. was the pressure of oil and gas companies to determine ownership of the area. 116 The "disputed lands" lie on top of one of the richest coal beds in the Western United States. A Congress more interested in Watergate revelations than Indian issues adopted "the Hopi solution", and passed Public Law 93-531 which provided for partition of the 1882 reservation (except for an area known as District Six which had previously been determined to be exclusively Hopi). This law called for the appointment of a Federal mediator to seek a negotiated settlement of the dispute. If the two tribes could not come to agreement--and they did not--the mediator was required to establish within 90 days a partition line dividing the "disputed lands" in half, except for District Six which was to remain in Hopi hands. All the Hopi had to do was wait and not agree to anything for 90 days and the arbitrary boundary partition and draconian relocation provisions would come into effect. The Hopi did just that. The partitioning required by Congress did not require any inquiry into nor a determination of who was actually living on what area of land. Congress simply required the mediator and the federal court to partition the land in half without looking at whether the Hopi Tribe's claims bore any relationship to their use of the lands. The result of the arbitrary partitioning is that thousands of Navajo people, many of whom are non-English speaking, traditional and elderly, were shocked and horrified to learn that the land they and their ancestors have lived on for generations was now Hopi land and that they would have to relocate.

Had this legislation only called for partition, then perhaps today there would be no dispute; there is no reason a large number of Navajos could not live on the Hopi Reservation, just as many Indians live on the reservations of other tribes throughout the country. But Public Law 93-531 called for something more, something terrible: all members of a tribe located on land partitioned to the other tribe would be forced to relocate! Because the Hopis live in villages, most already within what was recognized as the exclusive Hopi reservation, it was possible to draw a partition line which would place only 100 Hopis on the Navajo side of the line. In stark contrast, the Navajos, who live in small family groupings located out of sight of each other, numbered over 10,000 on what was now Hopi land. Many of those