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 Diné 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 Diné 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 Diné and Hopi people will live for the indefinite future as neighbors on or near Black Mesa. Like the distinct peoples of Bosnia, the Diné 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 It is punishment taken upon people who are simply the descendants of those Diné who originally made their homes on Black Mesa, before the United States was formed.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 Diné 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.
For more information, contact:
Navajo-Hopi Land Commission
Box 2549
Window Rock, AZ 86515
tel: (602) 871-6441
Fourth World Bulletin • April 1994
Copyright © 1996 by the Fourth World Center, University of Colorado, Denver
Created by Aigis Communications, Ltd