UPDATE

Update: Diné Relocation and Resistance

Following a confrontation over livestock impoundment, which took place in late March, at Big Mountain, the Hopi Tribe (the tribal government) announced a modification of its lease proposal. The new document contains some minor concessions, but its major provisions maintain a draconian and uncompromising position. Judge Harry McCue, whose task it is to conduct and conclude the mediation process, stated that the revision was to be the last proposal that he would permit.

The overall tone of the new document appeared at first to be somewhat conciliatory, as it dropped insulting references to the Diné from the main body and put such invective as has come to be expected from the Hopi Tribe, along with the provisions for eviction, into the appendix. Although the use of word "lease" was deleted in the new document, the Diné were given notice that they would still be under Hopi jurisdiction. The idea of the lease was preserved, even if the word itself was not.

The document requires that the Navajo Nation (rather than the US government) pay lease fees and develop a new compensation package for the Hopi Tribe. There is also the requirement that the 75-year term of the lease be preserved, placing the burden of renegotiating the "land dispute" on today's grandchildren (both Hopi and Diné), who are completely innocent of all the problems that precede them.

The document stipulates, further, a livestock limitation of 2800 "sheep units," subsistence for only about 20 (out of over 280) families. The stock will have to be apportioned by the Navajo Nation, a situation somewhat reminiscent of the starvation rations that Jewish leaders of Nazi concentration camp populations were required to dispense. The document leaves vague the details on grazing, including questions about whether grazing areas will be assigned near peoples' homesites, and whether traditional grazing areas will be preserved. The subject of burials went unmentioned.

The proposal was essentially the same as the one the Diné rejected last December, but this time the approach was designed to instill the fear that if they did not sign, the mediation process would end and evictions begin. Judge McCue insisted upon calling this exercise in coercion a "vote." The problem with the idea of "voting," according to Jon Norstog (an employee of the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission, within the Navajo Nation), is that the United States is predisposed to interpret a majority of signatures as indication that the Diné actually accept the terms of the Hopi proposal. The reality, he thinks, is that the people are only reacting to a perceived ultimatum which demands that if they do not sign, they will be evicted from their lands. On the other hand, if the Hopi Tribe and the US do take the position that those who ratified the Hopi offer actually have accepted it the way it was written, then the mediation will probably fail anyway, because the true Diné position will never be taken into account in formulating the final settlement.

The position of the Hopi Tribe is that there will be no further negotiations, according to statements it has given to the press. Meanwhile, the intransigence of the Justice Department almost guarantees that Congress will have difficulty in reaching a final settlement. At the same time, at least some people in Congress clearly want the settlement to satisfy the Diné, because they want to avoid the use of force that will almost certainly be required to dislodge the most militant of the Diné resisters. And those militants, who reject the authority of the Navajo Nation, just as they reject participation in the Manybeads case and the mediation process, and representation by Lee Brooke Phillips (the Manybeads attorney), are clear that the only way they will be relocated is by force. Any use of force is certain to be televised and exceptionally embarrassing for the United States.

The Diné were supposed to have ratified or rejected the proposal by late May. They were pressured heavily to meet that deadline. On 3 June, the responses to the ratification exercise were counted. Of 287 forms received, 193 (about 83%) ratified the proposal, 41 rejected it, 53 forms were sent back blank or were torn up or were never delivered (as the Navajo Nation field staff was chased away trying to do so). About a dozen families could not be contacted. Judge McCue has called for another mediation session to take place at an unspecified future date.

For more information, contact:

The Diné Alliance
PO Box 733
Hotevilla, AZ 86030

(Please refer to articles in Vol.3, no.2 (April) of the Fourth World Bulletin for contextual background of this update. Updates on this situation are posted continuously on the "nativenet" and "alt.native" on-line bulletin boards.)

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Fourth World Bulletin • July 1994