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Black Mesa, AZ (source: usgs.gov)

Hopi/Navajo Land Dispute Resolved

By Carl Jackson | Sedona.biz

Flagstaff, AZ - Since 1882 the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation have been in a bitter dispute over land rights in the Black Mesa just south of Kayenta, AZ, and about 150 miles northeast of Flagstaff. 

According to Ivan L. Sidney, Chairman for the Hopi Tribe, the Hopi Reservation has lost 40% of the land originally set aside by Executive Order of President Chester Arthur in 1882 to the Navajo Nation. 

In 1966, Bennett Freeze, named after former Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner Robert Bennett, was issued to restrict the Navajo tribe from constructing and repairing their dwellings on land that was subject to a land dispute with the Hopi Tribe; approximately 700,000 acres. 

Under the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974, reservation land in the Black Mesa was partitioned into exclusive Hopi and Navajo lands, with the Hopi Reservation in the center surrounded by the Navajo Nation, but the Navajo still remained on land the Hopi claimed as its own.

The Hopi then filed a lawsuit that sought to reclaim a large portion of the partitioned Navajo land that it said was its homeland for thousands of years before the Navajo arrived in the mid-1880s.

Currently, the Navajo Nation covers 23,000 square miles in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southern Utah.  The Hopi Reservation is in the center of the Navajo Nation and covers 2,400 square miles.

In 2004, Congressman Renzi sought to repeal Bennett Freeze stating that it had done grave harm to the Navajo people and was a gross violation of the U.S. government's treaty with the Navajo Nation, but it was not enacted.

Earlier this year, Senator John McCain sponsored Senate Bill 1003 that would have required the full relocation of the Navajo people off the Hopi Reservation by 2008, or otherwise submit to Hopi jurisdiction.  Congressman Rick Renzi then sponsored an alternative bill to Senate Bill 1003 that called for a study of the Navajo relocation issue and impacts, suggesting that the 1974 Act was a 'grave error.'

More recently, the Navajo Nation Council approved 75-3 in favor of an agreement that would permit either tribe to enter the other's land without a permit for religious purposes, but the Hopi will not receive any additional land.  This agreement was signed by Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. 

This month the Hopi Tribal Council approved the new agreement in an 18-0 vote and agreed to drop their 1974 lawsuit.

If approved by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. District Court in Phoenix, which is expected, Bennett Freeze will also be repealed.

Read about the Sinagua (Hopi ancestors): The Tantalizing Mystery of the Sinagua

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