BIA ADMITS ECONOMIC WARFARE AGAINST NAVAJO ELDERS

Representatives of the Navajo Nation in Washington D.C. learned last week that the purpose of recently-intensified impoundment of Navajo livestock is to coerce Navajo families into signing a controversial land agreement. "The Bureau's Attorneys stated on the record that this impoundment is targeted at Navajo families who are resisting relocation under Public Law 93- 531. They said they were using impoundment to pressure the families into signing the agreement in principle and the proposed lease..." which were features of the latest U.S. effort to "settle" the so-called Navajo-Hopi land dispute.

The "land dispute," which arose from the vague wording of an 1882 presidential executive order creating a reservation for Hopi and Navajo Indians then sharing the area, was 100 years later the occasion for a costly and traumatic twenty-year program relocating Navajos from lands belatedly awarded to the Hopi Tribe. The stubborn resistance of a core group of about 350 of the most traditional Dine' (Navajo) families led to a lawsuit (MANYBEADS v. UNITED STATES) and, in 1991, court-ordered mediation.

The mediation, which included the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribes as well a the United States and the traditional Dine' families, was carried out behind closed doors, mostly in San Diego and Phoenix. While the federal mediator barred direct participation by grassroots Dine', he developed a working coalition with the white attorneys for the United States and the Hopi Tribal Council. This working coalition pushed through an "Agreement in Principle" under which the Dine' would remain on their ancestral lands as tenants for a 75-year period. In return for leasing out about 1300 acres in small lots scattered over the "disputed lands," the Hopi Tribal Council would receive about 500,000 acres of prime lands in Northern Arizona, purchased by the Navajo Tribe. There was no provision for renewal of the lease.

When the Hopi Tribe revealed its proposed lease agreement, it contained numerous open-ended provisions for eviction as well as draconian restrictions on religion and day-to-day life. It was actually worse in many ways than the provisions of the Relocation Act, which at least offer the Dine' families some use rights to their land while they "await relocation."

The federal mediator ordered the Dine' families to sign the leases by August 5, 1993. Instead of signing, the families offered a counterproposal. The Hopi Tribe walked out. The mediator belatedly began consulting the families to find out what their objections were to his plan. The Hopi Tribe demanded that BIA resume impoundments of Dine' livestock, which had been much reduced during the two-plus years of mediation. The Hopi Tribe itself began a campaign of selective law enforcement targeting the Dine' for offense such as "illegal" woodcutting and construction activities.

In November 1993, the BIA announced that impoundment fees would be drastically increased. The fees which previously had been quite high relative to the limited incomes of most Dine' families, were increased five- to ten-fold. The BIA rangers began daily raids, forcing families to keep their livestock penned and feed hay, or risk impoundment. A dozen families have been virtually bankrupted by this federal tactic.

Ada Deer, the head of the BIA, wrote to the Navajo President Zah on Dec. 27 that the stepped-up livestock impoundment was simply a continuation of previous policy, as to the radical increase in fees, "a similar policy for assessing livestock impoundment fees is followed throughout Indian country by the Bureau." The part of a nationwide campaign to protect grazing resources, and was not meant to affect any one group in particular. In last week's meetings however, it was learned this is not true.

However, attorneys for the U.S. Solicitor's Office have frankly admitted that the impoundment was intended to force the Dine' families to abandon their negotiating position. Learning of this, Navajo President Peterson Zah sent a letter to Assistant Secretary of Interior Ada Deer, warning her that the tactic could backfire.

In his letter, Zah points out: "I often feel that your advisors are unable to understand the human and Navajo side of this dispute, and a recommendation to 'turn up the heat' on the families in order to get them to make more concessions is a fundamental misreading of what will be necessary to win the trust and the assent of these families. " He adds "Unfortunately, the stepped up enforcement is having exactly the opposite effect, and has deepened the families' suspicions that the purpose of the United States' participation in the mediation is to have Navajo families forcibly evicted from their homes."

This is an issue on which the United States has received much adverse attention form international human rights institutions, including the United Nations. The current direction taken by the federal government will almost certainly destroy any chance for a negotiated settlement. In that case, laws already on the books provide for what will almost certainly be a massive forced removal of Native people from their homelands. This is an issue in which the United States has historically lied about its actions and intent.

Now, I who write this say: We who work closely with this issue feel that the problem is due to the influence of mid-level bureaucrats, holdovers from the Reagan and Bush Administrations, who are wedded to the concept of extinguishing the traditional rights and liberties of the Dine'. Even Assistant Secretary Deer's letter, with its misleading statements, was signed by an aide. Until the policy-makers of the Clinton Administratioon give this issue the attention it merits, there is little hope of averting another human rights tragedy in Indian country. The Dine' families have been resisting all the pressures the federal government could bring to bear against them for thirty years. This additional burden is more likely to kill chances of a settlement than to make the families submit to feeral demands. There once were more than five thousand families on the land. The 300 or so left are the strongest of the strong. We who know them know they will resist.