Relocation: Dine Communities Continue to Resist

BY HELEN HENRY & MARC SILLS

In 1974, the US Congress passed the "Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act" (PL 93-531, referred to here as the "Relocation Act"), which ordered the division of the 1882 Executive Order Reservation and the relocation of at least 13,000 traditional Dine (Navajo) and about 100 Hopi people. This forced relocation of Indians has been the greatest in the United States since the 19th century. The Dine were to move from ancestral sacred lands, responsibility for which had been handed down to them through centuries of continuous occupancy (many families can date their ancestry on these lands to at least the days of the Spanish Conquest). The lands within the 1882 Reservation have also been of great religious significance for the Hopi, whose civilization has been centered for a thousand years in the villages built on the southern escarpment of the geological formation known as Black Mesa, in the middle of the reservation.

For centuries, Dine and Hopi lived in the region as neighbors, maintaining extensive family friendships and trading partnerships between them. Due to widespread intermarriage patterns, many have relatives on both sides. However, with three cycles of colonial conquest visited upon them both, by Spanish, Mexican and finally United States invaders, their fundamental linguistic and cultural differences were magnified and transformed into visceral forms of struggle, often to serve the interests of the colonizing state. Conflicts were largely between individuals and communities, not between the two peoples at large. In fact, neither Dine nor Hopi existed as politically recognizable "nations," until the United States imposed centers of administration upon them in the present century. Conditions of over-crowding, close proximity, extreme scarcity of resources (especially land), and inter-"national" conflict, all problems that the Relocation Act claimed to resolve, were directly the result of United States domination of the region.

For the Dine, relocation away from lands designated as "Hopi Partitioned Lands" (HPL) has been more devastating than for the many fewer Hopi relocated from the "Navajo Partitioned Lands" (NPL). The essential core of Hopi life remains preserved in their villages, while the Dine have been cut loose from religious and spiritual roots, and their families and communities have been torn apart and destroyed. Extreme poverty, over-crowding, and loss of livestock have caused severe hardships for the Dine, whereas Hopis have largely been spared such experiences. The effects of Dine suffering have been measured in acute degrees of anxiety, alcoholism, suicide, and early death due to depression. The Dine who have resisted relocation have been subjected to a long-term campaign of harassment, surveillance, livestock impoundment, extensive fencing, water diversions, and bulldozing of burial sites, much of this at the hands of the police forces of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Hopi Tribal government.

The majority of Dine slated for relocation have now moved; thousands are currently living like refugees in cities bordering the reservation (at least 560 relocatee families have yet to receive the housing promised to them). However, about 1200 people (in some 253 families) continue to resist forced removal.1 PL 93-531 originally required the completion of relocation by July 1986 (and the 90% reduction of livestock by 1981). The ultimate goal of total removal has never been consummated. Instead, a story has unfolded which today finds the last Dine resisters facing another in a long series of major crises. The intent of this article is to explain the events since 1986 and the present uncertainty regarding whether a just resolution of the situation can be reached.

Relocation and the United Nations

In 1987, under pressure from increasing harassments and resultant factionalization and emotional turmoil, Dine and traditional Hopi representatives appealed to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations for assistance and intervention. The Working Group, then in its fifth session, drafted a resolution for its supervisory organ, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. The Sub-Commission, organized under the UN Commission on Human Rights, committed itself to deal with relocation at its subsequent meeting.

In 1988, the Sub-Commission authorized Erica Irene Daes (Chair of the Working Group) to prepare a report on the relocation. At US insistence, another study was assigned to Judge John Carey (US delegate to the Sub-Commission). Their reports, which contradicted one another, led to a compromise Sub-Commission resolution which declared: (1) that human rights must be respected by local and internal governmental bodies (clearly applying to the Hopi Tribal Government), no less than by states; (2) that participation by the people affected must be assured in designing a settlement; and (3) that the UN should offer "technical assistance" for educational and social needs, and for negotiations (mediation) as well. It called upon the US to help create a climate in which a fair settlement could be reached.

The resolution received enthusiastic support from the Dine and traditional Hopi present at the meeting. They welcomed the proposed technical assistance and especially the moral weight that international organizations would bring to bear upon the US, Navajo and Hopi governments. However, the US strongly opposed any UN involvement. It insisted on deletion of the offer of UN technical assistance. Thus, the resolution passed in 1989 became merely an appeal to the two tribal governments to act with local participation and respect for human rights.

In 1990, the Dine, the Hopi traditionals, and the Navajo Nation returned to appeal again for a stronger resolution in which the offer of UN technical assistance (mediation) would be restored. This appeal provoked intense opposition from the US State Department. Judge Carey himself supported the idea, but his superiors over-ruled him and threatened to destroy the Working Group and possibly even the Sub-Commission, through denial of US funds. The Sub-Commission bent under the pressure, and reference to UN assistance was again deleted. The US then argued that even this ineffectual resolution represented intolerable interference in US internal affairs.

US pressures brought to bear (especially on Mrs. Daes and the Working Group) prevented even discussion of the "Navajo-Hopi dispute" in 1991. In 1992 and 1993, however, the Sub-Commission returned to the issue, addressing forced relocation as a violation of fundamental human rights. It is now expanding this study and expects to make an authoritative statement of principles regarding relocation in the near future. Its conclusions may invalidate the justification used by the US in pursuit of Dine removal. It has again risked "interference in the internal affairs of the US," through its support of the mediation process ordered by the US Ninth Circuit Court (discussed below), and its appeal for no further relocation of Dine and Hopi families. It has pointed out that pressures to force relocation exerted upon Dine resisters undermine the ongoing mediation and thus violate their rights.

According to an enumeration conducted by the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission in 1992, there were then 6547 Dine relocatees who had moved onto the Navajo Reservation, 3764 who moved off the reservation, 3356 living homeless and awaiting housing, 3784 who had been denied housing, and several thousand resisters and others who had not registered for relocation. In addition, some 12-15,000 Dine in the "Bennett Freeze" area had no right to repair their homes or build new ones. Thus, 30-50,000 Dine (15-20% of their total population) have been directly affected by the Relocation Act.

The Manybeads Case and Mediation

In January 1988, the Hopi Tribal Government was declaring its eagerness to graze cattle on the HPL and was growing increasingly agitated over the delay in enforcement of the relocation. Resisting Dine families at Big Mountain created even greater delay by filing the Manybeads v. United States lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Arizona, claiming violation of their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religious practice, due to the site specificity of the Dine religion. The claim was similar to several other cases filed in that era, especially the Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetery Association ("GO Road") suit. This group of cases all made definitive linkage between Indian religious practice and specific geological, topological, and ecological features of the land.

District Court Judge Earl Carroll dismissed the Manybeads case, in October 1989, stating that nothing in the case necessitated Dine occupancy of traditional lands, because relocatees would be free to revisit their sacred sites from new residences in other places. His ruling demonstrated insensitivity to the inseparability of Dine spiritual practice from daily life. While some speculate that Carroll's decision may eventually be confirmed in the Supreme Court, on basis of the precedent set by the 1988 ruling in the Lyng case, Manybeads is presently still very much alive.

When the Manybeads plaintiffs appealed Carroll's dismissal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, in April 1991, the Court required that several of the parties in the "Navajo-Hopi land dispute" enter mediation. The Court stated that the settlement thus achieved would be more lasting than through direct judicial intervention. It appointed Harry R. McCue, a Federal District Court magistrate based in San Diego, to conduct the mediation among the Hopi and Navajo tribal governments, the United States, and the attorney of the Manybeads plaintiffs.

The Court established a distinct bias in its designation of the actors in dispute. It used a second lawsuit, one of several contested by the Hopi Tribe against the Navajo Nation, to bring the two tribal governments into the mediation, each represented by its own negotiating team. The practical effect of this decision was to exclude the Manybeads plaintiffs themselves as active participants. Only their attorney was authorized to negotiate in their behalf. However, the Dine made every effort to be present in the negotiation sessions, anyway, to ensure a faithful representation of their position by their non-Indian attorney. Also excluded from the process were Hopi traditional people, who have contested the legitimacy and authority of the Hopi Tribal Government since 1936. The Hopi Tribe adamantly refused to allow them to participate.

Negotiation sessions, conducted by Judge McCue, convened in several different cities, including San Diego, Phoenix, Flagstaff, and occasionally on the Hopi Partitioned Lands. Judge McCue also was transported to affected communities to see for himself the dire nature of the situation faced by the people subject to relocation. The major negotiation sessions required the presence and participation of all four parties. The Dine experienced severe personal hardships in order to be present also, at those meetings. While the other parties were paid salaries and had expense accounts, the Dine (many of them elderly) often had to scrape together money for gasoline (the other participants had airfare), to find people to tend their homes and livestock, and to cope with the personal stress of an alien process that might destroy their personal and collective lives. They did receive some transportation assistance from the Navajo Nation.

The Dine faced more factionalization as the mediation progressed, due to increasing cynicism some felt for the process within which others wanted to work, trusting that mediation was based upon sincerity. Some felt required to show genuine interest in reaching an agreement, that otherwise the Hopi Tribe would cast them as the villains in the process, and they would end up with nothing. Some clearly felt that they would be rewarded for their cooperation and envisioned a land exchange that would guarantee their jurisdiction by the Navajo Nation, rather than the Hopi Tribe. They expected a settlement which respected their right to remain on land cared for by their ancestors and upon which their residence was deemed legitimate by the United States until 1974. Others felt that they were being run around and played for fools; angrily, they warned against placing trust in the government that had historically oppressed them.

Before the mediation had even begun, the Hopi Tribe repeatedly made clear its unwillingness to participate in the process with the Navajo Nation, or to discuss land exchange as a possible solution. In August 1991, as its first step in negotiation, the Hopi issued ten demands which many observers expected the Dine to refuse, though that would have made it easy to castigate them as the intractable villains in the dispute. Of these demands (referred to by the Dine as the "Ten Commandments"), the most important were: first, that each Dine head-of-household sign a statement acknowledging Hopi jurisdiction over them and their land; second, completion of the partition fence, which resisting Dine families had prevented up to that time; and third, the removal or destruction of certain homes and buildings of high symbolic importance (including a large, ceremonial hogan at Mosquito Springs that was used for meetings and shelter of destitute families). The Hopi Tribe also wanted protection of eagle-nesting areas and access to spiritual sites on lands of the Navajo Reservation. Most important, they demanded the removal of a building complex at the "Survival Camp" that had been constructed in 1981 as a center of community resistance to relocation.

Surprising everyone, the Dine carried out all the Hopi Tribe's demands (finally dismantling the Survival Camp in November 1991). They proved that they were negotiating in good faith and were not intractable, as alleged in repeated vindictive public statements by Hopi Tribal officials, especially then-Chairman Vernon Masayesva. The Dine were ready to make concessions, and they expected Hopi concessions in return. Nonetheless, compliance with the demands caused great anxiety and depression among many of the people, while causing confusion, dissension, anger, and more factionalization among others.

The mediation continued, despite frequent threats delivered by the Hopi Tribe that it would walk out of the process. The negotiating team for the Hopi Tribe (referred to by them as their "Relocation Team") repeatedly made it clear that they had no interest in mediation, always justifying their position with the text of the Relocation Act (legislation imposed by the US Congress), while insisting that they were exercising sovereignty as an Indian nation. They expressed no interest in making continued Dine occupancy of the land possible.

For reference on this section, see testimony by Russell Barsh, in "Navajo-Hopi Dispute Settlement: Agreement in Principle," Hearing of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (Senate Hearing: 103-47), 10 February 1993.

The Agreement in Principle (AIP) of 1992

On 30 October 1992, the mediation process reached its logical end-point with the conclusion of an "Agreement in Principle" (AIP). The achievement of the Agreement brought great relief to government officials and many others who had been working with this situation for years and thought a solution was at hand. But these hopes proved to be false: after nineteen months in exhausting deliberation, the participants had emerged with a document that clearly satisfied primarily Hopi interests.

The AIP stated that the 253 Dine families that were fulltime residents on HPL would be offered leases on 112 three-acre homesites, including up to ten acres of farmland (a small fraction of their traditional use areas). Each family would receive its portion of 2800 total "sheep-units," which amounted to an average of eleven sheep per family (far too few to support even a single person). The Agreement had no provisions for 317 part-time resident families, the effect of which was to put control of determining family membership in the hands of the government.

The AIP lifted the "freeze" on repairs and enlargements of homes and on construction of certain new structures, but made explicit Hopi permission required in each case. It ordered civil and criminal jurisdiction to be given to the Hopi Tribe, while probate and social benefits would be administered by the Navajo Nation.

The AIP specified that causes for eviction of Dine "tenants" would entail non-use of their premises, violation of conditions of the agreement, felonies or crimes against Hopi law, and failure (of the Navajo Nation) to pay rent. Elegibility for relocation financing would terminate after three years, and termination of the federal relocation program would follow.

The AIP also ordered the dismissal ("silencing") of the Manybeads and five other major unsettled lawsuits against the Navajo Nation by the Hopi Tribe. Meanwhile, it released the US Government of liability (of up to $300 million) for dispossession of Indian lands and other claims.

In addition, the AIP ordered the Hopi Tribe to be compensated in land for dismissal of its lawsuits. About 500,000 acres would be transferred to it from private lands to be purchased by the Navajo Nation, and from lands controlled by the State of Arizona and the Federal Government. The rational for the transfer was that, with partition of the 1882 Executive Order Reservation, the Hopi Tribe had lost jurisdiction of the Navajo Partition Lands (NPL), just as the Navajos had lost jurisdiction of the HPL. The Navajo Nation had been granted 400,000 acres in "New Lands" on which to move the more than 13,000 Dine who were originally subject to relocation. The Hopi Tribe demanded that it be compensated commensurately, even though only about 100 Hopi people had been subject to relocation through the partition.

At about this time, US Forest Service personnel in Arizona leaked information of the AIP to the press. Instantaneous furor resulted, as white ranchers, commercial and recreational users of National Forest and other public lands, citizens of Flagstaff concerned about water rights, and others loudly protested what they saw as "another Indian land-grab." After this outpouring of negativity, Senator DeConcini (D-AZ) declared that transfer of public lands to the Hopi Tribe would be impossible to legislate. Since that statement, public protest has subsided.

The US and the two tribal governments were required by the court to ratify the AIP by 23 November 1992. This they did, thus assuring that mediation would continue. The Navajo Nation's assent was given contingent upon future ratification by the Manybeads plaintiffs. Dine Reject the Hopi Lease and AIP In February 1993, the Hopi Tribe issued the details of its lease proposal, amending the AIP as follows: (1) the burial of human remains anywhere on the HPL would be prohibited; (2) individual Dine could be evicted from the land, for absence of more than two years (except for school or work), court conviction for felonies or for misdemeanor infractions of Hopi laws (including cutting green fire-wood, damaging fences or property, being a public nuisance, misbranding livestock, polluting streams, keeping broken-down vehicles on the property, or violating Hopi "Woodland and Wildlife Ordinances"); (3) entire families could be evicted from the land, for using the homesite for commercial or mining activities, or subletting the premises, or for failure of the Navajo Nation to pay the rent; and (4) the provisions of the lease and the AIP would be enforced with assistance from the US Government.

Judge McCue then ordered meetings to be held throughout the HPL, in which the Hopi Tribe would explain the lease and answer questions. Every Dine family would thus have an opportunity to understand the terms of the document that would direct their lives, in preparation for their vote to ratify the AIP. Through May and June 1993, these meetings occurred in all communities. At each meeting, protests were raised, especially with regard to burials and to placing the burden of relocation upon a generation 75 years into the future. In November and December 1992, and again in April 1993, three Dine communities wrote detailed resolutions stating their objections to both the lease and the AIP.

The date for the Dine to vote on the AIP was set for 5 August 1993. Ratification would signify their acquiescence to a family-by-family acceptance of the terms of the lease. 208 families attended the ratification meeting; 207 families rejected the AIP in its entirety. Immediately, to provide substance for further mediation, attorneys for the Dine submitted a report to Judge McCue, giving reasons for their virtually unanimous negative decision. Simultaneously, the Navajo Nation offered a new land exchange proposal, this time offering the Hopi Tribe three acres of prime grazing land for every acre provided for Dine occupants. The Hopi Tribe rejected the Navajo offer and once more called for an end to the mediation entirely, again claiming that both the Dine and the Navajo Nation were intransigent. McCue refused to concede defeat, however, and indicated that the mediation would continue.

In the fall of 1993, the US Government began an intense campaign of threats and coercion intended to force the Dine into compliance, while the Hopi Tribe attempted to subvert further mediation. In October, the BIA announced what it called an "aggressive" livestock impoundment program, including a ten-fold increase in fees charged for livestock taken from out-of-bounds areas. It radically increased surveillance of Navajo homesites and grazing areas, often flood-lighting homesites at night, following elderly people while they herded their sheep, patrolling normal activities such as pinon-nut gathering, arresting people for cutting firewood without written permits on their person, and other assorted harassments. The actual impoundment of livestock has been moderate; however, the Navajo Nation fund to pay retrieval fees has been exhausted, and families must pay the fees or lose their stock (impoundment for a single horse costs $470, plus $5 per day).

A Search for Justice?

In September, Judge McCue asked the Dine families to define explicitly their religious needs which had been instrumental in their rejection of the AIP. These needs had been clearly expressed already in the Manybeads case, but the Dine stated them once more in a series of meetings which took place throughout the HPL during the fall. McCue required that the US Department of Justice be present during these meetings, to be sure that the US Government fully understood the Dine position. He also demanded that the Navajo Nation be absent, due to his suspicion (and that of the Hopi Tribe) that the Dine families had been influenced by the Navajo government to reject the AIP (a suspicion that caused hilarity among the Dine).

In mid-November, the Ninth Circuit Court impatiently announced that unless there were "substantial progress" towards settlement, the mediation would be terminated on 31 December. Under pressure, the Dine communities then chose representatives to submit the substance of their fall meetings to their attorney to report to Judge McCue. The Court then extended mediation for another sixty days and required that the anticipated new Hopi government (which has now been elected--see accompanying article) authorize its own negotiating team.

In their report, delivered in December 1993, the Dine summarized their religious understandings and practices, indicating the inseparability of these from daily life and ritual communion with the land. The report indicated the requirements of both time and space (beyond individual three-acre homesites) for traditional ceremonies. It described the religious significance of burial and herb-gathering sites, springs, livestock (especially sheep), and places of spiritual importance for individual families as well as for broader communities. The report also related the desire of the Dine families for a lasting agreement in which friendship, "neighborship" and peace with the Hopi Tribe would be emphasized, replacing the harsh language of eviction expressed in the Hopi lease proposal.

The report then called for separation of the issues of rent and compensation due to the Hopi Tribe from issues concerning residence on the land, religion and daily life, and aspirations for neighborly relations. The Dine excluded themselves from the issue of compensation and "rent." They feel that the Hopi Tribe deserves generous treatment that must be negotiated trilaterally with the Navajo Nation and the US Government, the party the Dine believe is most obliged to compensate the Hopi Tribe for its sacrifices. Finally, the Dine stated that the agreement should be permanent, rather than contingent upon a 75-year term, and they called for a test or interim period in which to reconsider and renegotiate the agreement.

There has as yet been no response to the Dine report. At the moment, the new Hopi government has already stated its intent to end the mediation. Meanwhile, as of this writing, the BIA has resumed menacing and provoking Dine resisters.

Issues Behind the Scene

No account of the "Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute" can be given in its proper context without mention of the interests that are really at stake but hidden from view. There is a subtext to the story of settling land-surface jurisdiction and occupancy within the former 1882 Reservation which has consistently dogged all who have attempted to explain fully why the relocation of the Dine was ever really necessary. Based on the precedent of countless cases, it is clear that in any other context of land settlement, aggrieved parties (like the Hopi Tribe) would be ordered to accept land-exchange or cash as compensation for their losses. But in this case, with thousands of Dine lives in the balance, relocation has managed to remain the only solution that either the Hopi Tribe or the US Government will consider.

Over the years, many people have pointed at the tens of billions of dollars worth of low-sulphur coal in near-surface deposits that extend throughout much of what is now the HPL as the core interest at issue. The question of sub-surface rights has nagged relentlessly in the background, since the beginning of the whole discussion which led to passage of PL 93-531. Fourteen years ago, Jerry Kammer's The Second Long Walk (1980) laid most of the groundwork regarding the connection between relocation and coal-mining for the reading public. For others, the Dine who were ordered to move from their ancestral lands, along with Hopi traditionals who stood in opposition to the Hopi Tribe, have maintained since Day One that coal has always been the subject of greatest interest. It remains unclear how the issues of mining and relocation are connected, if they are, but nonetheless suspicions continue. A few news items have appeared in the past several years that have encouraged such suspicion.

On 6 April 1989, the Gallup Independent reported that the Hopi Tribe was seeking rights to thousands of acre-feet of underground Black Mesa water, with which it intended to slurry coal from the Big Mountain area to Teesto, where it had plans to build a 1000-watt coal-fired power plant. This information was revealed in the course of a lawsuit filed to determine rights to the Little Colorado River. The Hopi Tribe, in making known its claims, revealed a map that had been created in 1985, in which it stated explicit intentions to place a strip-mine in the Big Mountain area. The Hopis claimed the right to draw some 50,000 acre-feet of non-replenishable groundwater per year for coal-mining, coal-slurry, mineral-mining, industrial, power-generation, and other uses.

Then, on 27 April 1989, the Gallup Independent reported that the Peabody Coal Company had plans to strip-mine at least 54,000 acres of the HPL, doubling its production up to that point. The coal was to be shipped to Japan for electricity generation. Japan was then (as now) grossly favored in balance of trade relations with the US, and was looking for products other than tobacco and orange juice worth consuming. The US government was actively pressuring the Japanese to buy coal from the Peabody mines on Black Mesa. Japan needs to import 100% of its energy resources and was (is) attempting to avoid over-reliance on nuclear power generation. According to the same report, "coal company officials estimated that 300 million to 500 million tons of coal lie just beneath the surface of the proposed site, located in an undisclosed area south of the [current] Black Mesa leases. . . [Peabody's Western Division representative] denied the site, referred to as the `South Mesa Area,' is Big Mountain, the community that is the center of resistance to federally mandated relocation of Navajos from Hopi lands."

Subsequent news reports published in several papers during 1990 revealed that the Peabody Coal Company was seriously interested in constructing a new railroad that would transport coal from the Black Mesa mines to the Port of Los Angeles. Further, it was revealed that a consortium of Japanese and other investors were interested in building a major coal-exportation terminal at the Port of Los Angeles. Since these reports from four years ago, the Japanese have either lost interest in the project, or the negotiations have moved underground, as media reports have ceased. Nonetheless, strip-mining continues apace at the Black Mesa and Kayenta mines operated by Peabody, whose current leases will continue into the next century.

One of the areas most significantly affected by coal strip-mining is the Dine community at Forest Lake, which is near but not on the HPL. The Forest Lake residents have mobilized in protest against mining operations, and they are allied with Dine on the HPL who are facing relocation as a result of the "land dispute." They themselves are being pressured to relocate by the mining operation which is closing in on them. In a recent appeal to the British firm, Hansen Industries, present owner of Peabody Coal Company, the Forest Lake people complained of the death of the plant and animal life near the mines, the drying up of surface, spring and well water, the pollution of the land, illness among both people and livestock, the loss of their livelihood, and generalized disrepect shown to them by mine operators. This testimony is sure to be repeated as the mining operation moves further south and west, which seems to be assured, all things taken into account, unless public outcry puts an end to it.

There are serious objections to the "energy connection" as a hypothesis that completely explains relocation as the only possible solution satifactory to the Hopi Tribe. Without delving into the negations of coal-mining as cause, it is simpler to state that cattle-ranching has explanatory power that is perhaps stronger than energy. The Hopi Tribe is controlled by cattlemen, including the new chairman, Ferrell Sekacucu (see next article), and there is an abundance of pasture in certain parts of the HPL which presently are grazed by Dine livestock. However, there is also, in the area surrounding the 1882 Reservation, other land that could easily support livestock, and it is not impossible to imagine how that land could be made available to the Hopi Tribe. The insistence of the Hopi Tribe that only the HPL lands will satisfy them creates reason to look below the surface for clues about other possible explanations.

Into the Future

The United States has presented itself to the world as having no higher interest in resolving the title and use of the former 1882 Executive Order Reservation than to separate two warring Indian peoples who somehow cannot put aside their differences and just get along. According to this script, condescending to assume the "white man's burden" of "bringing civilization to primitive savages," the US has had to take on a most unpleasant task of removing thousands of traditional Dine from lands to which they have strong religious ties. The New York Times (18 February 1979, p.10) called the division of the land a "Solomonic decision."

However, examination of the situation reveals obvious conflicts-of-interest. The United States has become simultaneously an advocate for the Hopi (by appointing the attorneys who constructed the Hopi Tribe), a prosecutor against Dine and Navajo Nation, the judge and jury (through actions of Congress and the courts), the executioner (in the BIA and Navajo-Hopi Relocation Commission), the mediator (in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals), and the estate trustee (through the Interior Department). Was this all nothing more than coincidence, or simple statist hegemony? Was it truly a quest for justice? Or was something else at stake?

The Dine and Hopi people will live for the indefinite future as neighbors on or near Black Mesa. Like the distinct peoples of Bosnia, the Dine and Hopi will require conditions that will be conducive to relations which foster a sense of commonality and mutual appreciation, rather than conditions conducive to continual resentment, as fostered by the Hopi Tribe during the near-decade of its jurisdiction over the HPL. No matter how the "land-dispute" is understood, however, it is clear that forced relocation is severe punishment. It is punishment taken upon people who are simply the descendants of those Dine who originally made their homes on Black Mesa, before the United States was formed. Why should those who are innocent of wrong-doing be punished for deeds of their ancestors, who themselves did nothing that the United States considered wrong until 1974?

Hopis were dispossessed of territory, and the United States itself was responsible for most of their losses. It is incumbent upon the United States to compensate those losses. Clearly, if innocent people are punished to compensate for the deeds of others, conditions conducive to neighborly relations will have been utterly denied. Nine-tenths of the Dine who lived on the HPL have been forced to move at tremendous cost to themselves and their succeeding generations. If this has been accomplished with the underlying purpose of exploiting the situation for ulterior motives, the party responsible for such manipulation deserves the maximum opprobrium that the world community can bring to bear upon it.

Helen Henry is an anthropologist and a chronicler of Dine resistance to relocation. Marc Sills is co-editor of the Fourth World Bulletin. For more information, contact: Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Box 2549 Window Rock, AZ 86515 tel: (602) 871-6441