With Neither Side Relenting, Navajo-Hopi Land Feud Rages On

BIG MOUNTAIN, Ariz. —  The feud has festered for more than a century. Lawsuits were filed, agreements were forged, deadlines have come and gone. Still, the battle rages on between Hopi and Navajo Indians over an island of desolate earth both consider their own.

Feb. 1 marked an important juncture in their dispute: On paper, it was the day the government could have begun eviction proceedings against about a dozen Navajo families who have refused to leave the land or sign a lease with the Hopis to allow them to stay.

In the hearts of those fighting the battle, it signified much more.

To a Navajo elder now considered a trespasser on the pastures she calls home, it was a day of dread and fear. To a Hopi rancher who has been harassed for grazing cattle on land that is legally his, it was a day of hope but also skepticism.

And to their tribal leaders, it was a day that could finally mark the beginning of the end to a dispute that has forever divided a place and its people.

It might, at last, have been the chance to return harmony to Big Mountain.

*

There are still hints of the peace that once enveloped this swath of high desert in northeastern Arizona. They are in the fragrance of air left unsullied by man and machine. The sleepy rustle of juniper on gently sloping mesas. The mystical maze of magenta canyons carved into the Earth.

There is evidence too that the peace is long gone. It’s found in the dispirited frown of May Shay, a Navajo elder, and the defiant scowl of her grandson, Sean Benally.

“I want to live in peace,” Shay, speaking in Navajo, says as her grandson translates.

She is standing, crumpled and small, on a patch of dirt in the midst of the Hopi Indian Reservation. Beside her are a pile of cinder blocks and a stack of wood--the remnants of her traditional Navajo hogan, which fell to pieces several years ago. She has not been allowed to rebuild it.

May Shay is a trespasser on this land where she has spent her entire life--some 74 years, although she can’t be sure. She was among thousands of Navajos left living on Hopi land after the courts and Congress in the 1970s indiscriminately divided 1.8 million acres between the two tribes, stranding members of each on the wrong side.

The land dispute dates back to the 1800s, when Congress first began carving this territory into reservations. In 1882, the Hopis were granted 2.5 million acres west of land the Navajos had obtained years earlier. But when the Navajo tribe began growing, Congress expanded its territory until it completely surrounded the Hopi reservation.

By the 1960s, the Hopis had exclusive control over just 651,000 acres of their initial allotment. The other 1.8 million acres were designated as a “Joint Use Area” to be shared with the Navajos. After several more years of wrangling, that land was divvied up between the two tribes.

The 100 or so Hopis left on Navajo land quickly moved. More than 3,000 Navajo families, about 13,000 people, also were given new homes and land in other towns and cities or in a relocation community known as the “New Lands,” on the southeast corner of the Navajo reservation.

Hundreds more refused to leave, saying they were tied to the land by their heritage and religion.

In 1996, after years of negotiations between the tribes, Congress ratified a settlement that allowed the remaining Navajos to stay on Hopi land if they signed a 75-year lease granting them three-acre home sites and 10-acre farm sites. They also had to agree to abide by Hopi laws.

Some 320 individuals living on about 75 different home sites have signed, according to both the Navajo and Hopi tribes. Anywhere from 50 to 70 people, although activists put the number at nearly 1,500, still refuse. Come Feb. 1, they faced eviction.

“They will become trespassers,” says Eugene Kaye, a spokesman for the Hopi tribe. “It’s their choice, the same way it was their choice whether to accept accommodation or relocation.”

The tribe has agreed to allow the U.S. attorney’s office to handle the eviction process, although officials stress no one was to be removed from their homes on Feb. 1. First there will be an investigation into those families deemed trespassers, followed by potentially lengthy court proceedings. The entire process, says Assistant U.S. Atty. Joe Lodge, could take from six months to two years.

Such assurances do little to soothe the so-called “resisters,” many of whom are elders like May Shay.

She has spent the last several years living with relatives on Navajo land about a mile from her former home. Her belongings--a chair, a coffeepot, even a can of Lysol--are piled under a juniper tree.

“This is her home now,” says activist Marsha Monestersky, who helped organize a prayer march and protest on Feb. 1 in support of the resisters. “It’s sad.”

Shay and her family have tried to repair her hogan but are greeted with trespass notices when they return to the Hopi land. Standing in the spot where her home once was, she looks tired, wounded.

“I want to come back here. Every day I think about it,” she says. “If I get my house back, I’ll heal. I’d be back home.”

Her grandson, a lanky 19-year-old wearing an Air Nike baseball cap backward, stops translating to interject. “This is what they do to elders in America,” he says with a look of indignation as plain as his grandmother’s despair.

“They stole our turf,” he says of the Hopis. “When I grow up, I don’t want to suffer like my elders did. My heart can’t handle it. I’d rather rebel.”

*

Hopi rancher Clifford Balenquah is very much like Sean Benally in one respect: He is angry and refuses to hide it.

Balenquah, 53, is one of the many Hopis who insist the Navajos should never have been cut a deal to remain on their land. His tribe relinquished its hold to the Navajo land years ago; the Navajos, he insists, should have shown the same courtesy.

“I’d really like to see these people say, ‘OK, we were wrong. The government did draw this line, and there’s a boundary. I’ll be a good neighbor and move on the other side.’

“It’s that simple,” he says.

But the past years have been anything but simple for Hopis who want access to their land.

In 1990, Balenquah obtained a permit for grazing on a slice of Hopi land that had been vacated by Navajos, and moved 14 cattle onto the premises. Within months his boundary fence had been cut and four cattle were missing.

He built a corral; it was dismantled. He erected a stone wall; it was demolished. Then one afternoon, as his teenage son looked on, Balenquah scuffled with the relatives of Navajo resisters who he says had threatened him.

Of the 75-year lease agreement his tribe offered the Navajos, Balenquah grumbles: “I was in favor of it for 75 seconds: Give ‘em 75 seconds to clear out.”

Balenquah still has cattle on the disputed land, as do a handful of other Hopis, but the problems remain. For him, Feb. 1 carried with it a glimmer of hope that other Hopis, perhaps even his own son one day, can begin using the land that is legally theirs without fear of retribution.

“It’s a day that we can look forward to and say, ‘Now we can have free usage without harassment.’ But we should have had that a long time ago.”

Pausing, he reconsiders--and the hope suddenly fades.

“I know those people,” he says of the resisters, “and they are not going to move. They will be there come Feb. 3. They’re still going to be there, and they’re going to be kicking.”

*

In reality, Feb. 1 was simply another day, another deadline in a dispute that has endured decades. It came and went with Navajos still striving to avoid the eviction of their people, and Hopis still praying the Navajo resisters would leave peacefully.

But one way or another, this fight is nearing a conclusion. Despite all that’s happened, that alone may allow the healing to begin.

“We can’t tell where the future lies. That is something that time has to see,” says Navajo spokesman Mellor C. Willie.

“We just want it to be over with,” adds Kaye, of the Hopi tribe. “It’s time to move on.”