Indian Country Today 05.12.06
Navajo oppose bill that would close relocation benefits office
Sen. John McCain's bill another push to force Navajos off Black Mesa to make room for Peabody Coal mining and use Navajo and Hopi aquifer water.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - The Navajo Nation opposed a Senate bill that would close the office responsible for Navajo relocation benefits, bringing more suffering to Navajos already victimized by federal laws, according to the Navajo Nation.
Roman Bitsuie, executive director of the Navajo Hopi Land Commission Office, said when Congress passed the original relocation law, the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974, Congress acted without a good understanding of the real situation in the Navajo/Hopi Joint Use Area.
Bitsuie said many Navajo families who have already been relocated are traumatized and suffer from a high incidence of alcoholism, poverty, suicide, depression and physical illnesses.
The Senate passed the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Amendments of 2005 Senate Bill 1003 on May 3. The bill, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would bring about the closure of the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation by Sept. 30, 2008. Now S. 1003 will be referred to the House of Representatives for consideration.
Bitsuie said Congress has grossly underestimated the number of affected Navajo families and the extraordinary social and economic upheaval the law would create, as well as the cost of implementing the law.
''In addition, the burden for caring for these families has fallen on the surrounding communities, as well as the Navajo Nation,'' Bitsuie said.
Further, Bitsuie said Navajos resisting relocation and who remain on the land should not be faced with forced relocation by the federal government.
''Any legislation should also make clear that there should be no forced relocation of Navajo families and should provide more time for individuals to be certified for benefits.''
Louise Benally, Navajo resisting relocation at Big Mountain, said Navajos have been victimized since the 1960s when the push began to remove Navajos from their land for coal mines.
''They didn't talk with anyone out here about this in the 1960s. This just shows you how they work. It is all about their need for more and more of this coal, and that coal, or this and that natural resource,'' Benally told Indian Country Today.
''This is just another deadline, which will come and go, and nobody will care on this end,'' she said of the Senate bill.
Revealing facts about the coal mine leases, University of Colorado professor Charles Wilkinson, in his book ''Fire on the Plateau,'' documented how the so-called Navajo/Hopi land dispute was orchestrated by attorney John Boyden.
Boyden secretly worked simultaneously for Peabody Coal Co. and the Hopi Tribe, which granted Peabody a coal lease on Black Mesa. Eventually, more than 12,000 Navajos and several hundred Hopi were relocated.
Traditional Hopi elders, including Thomas Banyacya and Dan Evehema, supported the Navajos' struggle to remain on the land, both at local gatherings and before the United Nations. However, the elected body, the Hopi tribal government, asserts the legal fact that the land in question is Hopi land, and supports federal relocation.
During testimony in 2005 before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Wayne Taylor Jr., then-chairman of the Hopi Tribe, said the Hopi Tribe supported the efforts of S. 1003. Taylor said federal relocation laws are the result of encroachment by Navajos.
''The Hopi Tribe is situated on a reservation in northern Arizona set aside by executive order of President Chester Arthur in 1882. The current reservation is but a small part of the Hopi aboriginal lands and only slightly more than 60 percent of the land originally set aside for the Hopi by President Arthur almost 125 years ago.''
Taylor said through a long history of action and inaction by the United States, the Hopi Tribe lost 40 percent of its reservation - approximately 911,000 acres - to the Navajo Nation.
''The Navajo reservation completely surrounds the much-smaller Hopi Reservation. For more than 100 years, the Hopi Tribe has worked to prevent the loss of its lands to the much larger Navajo Nation and to preserve the Hopis' right to control its lands against intrusion,'' Taylor said.
Taylor said since 1974, the Hopi have waited patiently for the relocation process to be completed and for the restoration of their full jurisdictional authority.
Bitsuie, however, pointed to decades of failed federal legislation for Navajos.
''S. 1003 would bring an abrupt end to the relocation program before any independent study of the program's successes and failures can be undertaken. Congress would repeat its earlier mistake.
''S. 1003 should provide for a study to be undertaken to assess the impact of the relocation law and to serve as a policy and fact-based tool for developing a humane closure plan.''
Bitsuie said that study should be performed before any closure is put into place and should be directly linked to a rehabilitation plan.
''The Navajo Nation opposes S. 1003, but will always seek to work in a constructive way with the Senator. We think there is room for compromise.''