All the time that things have been cooking on the 1882 Navajo-
Hopi "land dispute," we have been working away at getting some
reconstruction and redevelopment money into the former "Bennett
Freeze" area.
We are still working away on the "100 Homes" initiative. The
money is there, but getting it away from the BIA involves wrestling
with both their bureaucracies and ours. Nothing is easy. We have
the client lists ready and our guys are going out to stake out the
first batch of homes next couple weeks. Meanwhile the last two
resolutions are slowly winding their way through the Nation's
labyrinthine "signature approval" process. This essentially gives
eight or more different offices the power to veto, lose, or
occasionally approve any piece of legislation. Of course
everything, and I mean EVERYTHING has to have multiple committee
and sometimes full Council approval, meaning multiple trips through
the approval process. I have heard of an approval review taking
three years. I did one once in a little over two hours, straining
a couple friendships in the process.
This should be less of a problem soon. We put together a
Community Development Corporation, called Dine' Be'iinaa'
Na'hiilnaa' to take over a lot of the redevelopment work. There
are six board members now, trying for a full nine from the "freeze"
chapters.
The Dine' Be'iinaa' will be a non-profit. We are already
getting inquiries about donations. A man from the Unitarians,
David Prevost, wants to come out and volunteer, about 300 people
have written to offer cash, clothing, etc. We're filing papers
like mad, I never knew there would be so many! There was a
Crusaders television show about the freeze a few weeks ago, so a
lot of people have become aware of what a royal mess it is out
here.
100 Turquoise Toilets
One of the people who called us was Mr. Robin Martin, a west
coast distributor for American Standard bathroom fixtures. He was
really out raged and asked if we could use bathroom fixtures, and
if so how many? I told him enough to do 100 homes would be good
... he said sure, where do I send them, what's a good color. That
really floored me, so I said, "you got turquoise?" He said they
might have a few but for sure they had pastel blues and greens. He
says he's going to send out the whole outfit, tubs, showers, sinks,
toilets, kitchen sinks, everything. How bout that! He even found
someone to haul them out for free. There's a woman on the Dine'
Be'iinaa' board, I think I'll ask her what would be good colors.
The Paiute Clan
All through history, the Dine have been adding new clans, from
the first four who came out of the ground where the rivers join,
now there's 68 clans, maybe more. I heard there is even a german
people clan. Over the years various people from all kinds of
tribes have settled in with the Dine, sometimes to work for them,
sometimes as in-laws, sometimes as prisoners of war.
There is a group of Paiutes who have lived around Willow
Spring, west of Tuba City, another group living in Paiute Canyon
and a few others dispersed around Tonalea, Kaibeto, etc. They are
all Navajo Tribal members but have kept their ties to Paiute
relatives active and some of them speak the Paiute language as well
as Navajo. They were pretty well along the route so many other
groups have taken in becoming Dine'.
Roman Bitsuie told me that they were real good basket makers.
So the Paiute women started making lots of baskets and got them
into the museums, shows and gift shops. It was those baskets,
Roman says, that led the outside world to recognize them as a
separate group. One woman particularly, Mrs. Evelyn James, became
a spokesperson and activist for this group, which began calling
itself the San Juan Southern Paiutes.
The Paiutes got a lot of early support from - where else? -
anthropologists with a Paiute specialization. They also were
supported by the Hopi Tribe, which was at that time suing the
Navajo Nation for about 3.5 million acres in the western rez - the
suit that occasioned the 27-year freeze. The Paiutes organized,
elected Evelyn James as their leader and pressed for federal
recognition as a tribe. They also got Native American Rights
Foundation - NARF - to represent them.
The Navajo Nation opposed recognition on the grounds that the
Paiutes were already Navajo. The BIA recognized them and they are
the newest and smallest tribe in the U.S., with fewer than 100
members.
NARF decided to intervene in the 1934 Boundary Act litigation
to see if the Paiutes, too could get some of the Navajo lands the
court would presumably distribute to the plaintiffs. The NARF-
Paiute claim was for over 1.4 million acres, most of it inhabited
by Dine' families. The Paiute claim overlapped the Hopi claim as
well.
The court did award the Hopis about 60,000 acres, pretty much
what had been offered them as a settlement six years and many
millions of dollars earlier. The court noted that Public Law 93-
531 already provides a remedy for the Paiutes (allotments to
individuals) and decided that it did not have the authority to
create a reservation for them. The Paiutes and the Hopis both
appealed to the 9th Circuit Court, which is where things are at
this time. The 9th ordered mediation between Navajo Nation and the
Paiutes, to see if there could be a settlement.
At this time we have been working with the Dine' communities
in the Paiute claim areas to see what they would consider a
settlement offer. Their general response has been "not one square
inch of Navajo land." Still, here we are asking for an
accommodation for Dine' people who find themselves on lands awarded
to the Hopi Tribe by another court. We have made a couple offers
to the Paiutes, they don't like them. They have made a couple
proposals we don't like. It looks like there are about 45 members
for sure on their roles, plus another fifty or so who are still
enrolled as both Navajo and Paiute. It will probably go to court.
NARFED Again!
An interesting feature of this business is the role played by
NARF. For years, the Big Mountain people tried to get help from
NARF on their case. NARF refused because it was "Indian vs.
Indian" and they did not want to get involved. Good enough, we
said. Then they decided to sue the Navajo Nation on behalf of the
San Juan Southern Paiutes. My own feeling is that they knew it was
almost impossible to get land off the white people in Arizona, or
public lands, but that it WAS possible to take land away from the
Navajos. So that's what NARF decided to do. In their defense, I
don't think they started out intending to do that, but once they
accepted the Paiutes as a client, they just proceeded by degrees to
the point where they are now trying to take away hundreds of
thousands of acres of Indian land.
I guess the irony of all this is that once again the dominant
society has intervened in things which were probably going OK
without its help. The Paiutes were on their way to becoming
another clan of the Dine'. They had some gripes, like everyone
else out here, but were not an oppressed minority or a suffering
people. I wish them well, but would rather have seen them get a
reservation on public land, or have the feds buy private land for
them.
"FREEZE" Updates
With all the other things going on I haven't done much on the
freeze area. It probably won't change either, but I will try to
put out reports at least every month, if not more often. Since the
feeze was lifted, the only emergencies we face out there are human
ones, people living in horrible conditions, elders and children
getting sick cause they live in shacks, veterans who fought for
this country and are homeless. Those of you who live in the cities
maybe see conditions like this sometimes, among the poorest people
and the outcasts. Imagine if EVERYONE in your community had to
live as the poorest and most destitute do!