WASHINGTON – Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and the Navajo Hopi Land Commission were at the White House Monday to request President Biden to appoint a commissioner for the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation, based in Flagstaff.
President Nygren, Navajo Hopi Land Commission Chairman Otto Tso, Vice Chairman Casey Allen Johnson, Navajo Hopi Land Commission Director Sarah Slim and Justin C. Ahasteen, director of the Navajo Nation Washington Office, presented White House staff with a 14-page letter that contains the history of the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Relocation Act.
The letter cites findings of the U.S. General Accounting Office and results of a NNWO field visit with 130 relocatee families, and five requests to reform the federal office that includes the need for new leadership.
“For the last two decades, ONHIR has repeatedly reported that it is ready to close,” President Nygren and Commissioners wrote. “The fact is, ONHIR is not ready to close. The Navajo Nation needs a commissioner who will not just carry on the status quo, but someone who will genuinely evaluate whether ONHIR can fulfill its mandate or whether it is prematurely trying to end its mission.”
They wrote that the appointment of a commissioner is not a procedural step but a way to ensure remaining, critical tasks are completed, “and that these families finally receive the justice they deserve.”
“The relocation of Native Americans in the United States is a relic of the distant past, of another century,” President Nygren said. “It is inconceivable to imagine that a federal law could have ever been enacted to move any group of 12,000 people from homes they’d occupied for generations. But Navajos today are still suffering from one of the most misguided federal laws since the boarding school era.”
Navajo relocation from the 1970s to the present is the largest forced displacement of U.S. citizens since the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the letter states.
As many as three generations and 16,000 individuals have been uprooted from their land where family and ancestors are buried, where springs and site where they prayed and left offerings are located, and that are intimately intertwined with their culture, identity and way of life.
Since the 1980s, several federal officials acknowledged that the Navajo-Hopi Relocation Act was flawed.
The late U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a sponsored of the Relocation Act, called the law the biggest mistake of his career, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
During a 1975 hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, Sen. Goldwater called relocation “one of the most serious and tragic failures of the federal government.”
The late U.S. Sen. John McCain, a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee for 22 years, from 1995 until 2017, said the Relocation Act was intended to settle the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute “in a timely and orderly fashion.”
“The Navajos have lost, the Hopis have lost, and the attorneys have won,” McCain told the Monitor in 1999. “It’s clear this program has failed to meet its objectives.”
McCain criticized the cost of the program as it was approaching $400 million.
In April 2018, the U.S. Government Accounting Office reported to the Indian Affairs committee that ONHIR had spent about $600 million to relocate 16,700 individuals since the office was created.
The original deadline for completion of relocation was 38 years ago. On July 2, 1986, Interior Secretary Ross Swimmer acknowledged that the deadline was unrealistic.
“I want to emphasize that there will be no action by the federal government to forcibly remove Navajo families from land belonging to the Hopi Indian Tribe,” Swimmer declared in a prepared statement. “Congress has recognized that the original July 6, 1986, deadline for completing relocation cannot be met.”
Interview comments gathered by the Navajo Nation Washington Office from relocatees in preparation for Monday’s meeting countered repeated assertions by federal officials that relocation would not be forced upon Navajos:
“They threatened us (ONHIR) and said we would be forcibly moved to another location if we didn’t leave voluntarily.”
“Grandma went to the chapterhouse and came home crying. She blamed the government. It’s not the Hopis. She got thrown in jail. They (ONHIR) broke her arm because she was trying to protect her animals. I remember that incident. They jumped into their vehicle and left.”
“The supervisor, he ripped up our application. He got so mad, put it in a ball and threw it in the trash can. He said, ‘Get the hell out of my office.’”
“We talked to the judge and the relocation commission. They didn’t want to listen. They told us what’s done is done. Get on with it. Learn to live with it and don’t come back.”
President Nygren and the Navajo delegation said that although President Biden has repeatedly been a champion for Indian Country, the Navajo Nation has not seen his support fully realized when it comes to ONHIR.
“No sitting president since Bill Clinton has visited the Navajo Nation,” they wrote. “As far as we can remember, no representative from the White House has come to review the status of relocation efforts, especially in the most impacted and disadvantaged communities, like Pinon and Hard Rock.”
Other Navajo communities impacted by the Relocation Act are Chinle, Tuba City, Dilkon, Fort Defiance, Ganado, Greasewood Springs, Kayenta, Shonto, Tsidii To’ii and Whippoorwill. Each has felt the strain of accommodating an influx of relocatees who had nowhere else to go.
One third of Native Americans who reside on reservation land in the U.S. are Navajos, they said.
President Nygren said many relocatee families still live in overcrowded and substandard housing. Others have waited years for relocation benefits. Those who received assistance continue to face struggles, he said.
This includes limited grazing for their livestock that they did not want to abandon, dilapidated housing, insufficient infrastructure, bad roads, and a lack of nearby stores.
Nahata Dziil Chapter, where ONHIR’s long-standing oversight failed to deliver adequate housing or essential services, is one example, the delegation said.
The community has an inadequate water distribution system. A structurally defective school has been abandoned, depriving local children of local education.
Similar dilemmas are documented at Coalmine Mesa Chapter near Tuba City where the chapter house built by ONHIR was closed and abandoned because of shifting land beneath its foundation, making it unsafe and uninhabitable.
President Nygren called these federal failures “completely unacceptable.”
He said NNWO’s recent documentation is similar to decades-old findings that substantiated that the Navajo people have endured decades of neglect, and ONHIR has not fulfilled its commitments or federal mandate.
The NNWO survey of more than 130 families documents alarming systemic problems, the delegation’s letter states. These include reports that more than one-third of relocatee families were forcibly relocated under duress.
More than half of the families’ relocation homes had structural deficiencies within two years of occupancy.
The survey found ONHIR largely failed to respond to relocatees requests for assistance.
In light of the survey findings, President Nygren and the Navajo Hopi Land Commissioners presented the White House representatives with demands that need immediate attention. These include:
1. The immediate appointment of an ONHIR commissioner to provide leadership and accountability. The office has been without a permanent commissioner for nearly 30 years.
2. Support for the enactment of the Navajo Technical Amendments to address systemic challenges within the relocation process.
3. Collaboration with the Navajo Nation to develop a comprehensive plan to complete and transition ONHIR’s functions in a manner that meets its original mandate.
The Navajo leaders said these demands are essential to secure justice for displaced Navajo families who continue to suffer from federal neglect.
“The consultation at the White House marks a pivotal moment in the Navajo Nation’s quest for justice,” said NNWO Director Justin Ahasteen. “Tribal leaders remain steadfast in their commitment to advocate for meaningful reform within ONHIR and ensure that the federal government upholds its obligations to Navajo families.”
