The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute
The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute

Author: David M. Brugge

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13:

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In 1882 President Chester A. Arthur signed an executive order that created a joint-occupation reservation for both Hopis and western Navajos in present-day Arizona. This policy was the start of a century-long land dispute between the two tribes. The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute recounts the origins and history of the legal battle between the two peoples for control of the 1882 reservation, focusing on the federal court case, Healing v. Jones, in which the author served as a consultant for the Navajo Nation. Although the federal government wanted to relocate impoverished Navajos from the disputed land, Brugge firmly believed that a fair court hearing would reinforce the Navajo claim. His account of Healing vs. Jones - events leading to the case, the court case itself, and the aftermath of the judge's decision - tries to balance the extreme positions staked out by advocates for the Hopis and the Navajos. Brugge argues that, to this day, the Navajos suffer stereotyping and prejudice, both of which were decisive in the tragic outcome of the legal battle. Lawyers for the Hopis, he contends, exploited ethnic hatred to the benefit of their client tribe and to the detriment of the Navajos.

The Wind Won't Know Me
The Wind Won't Know Me

Author: Emily Benedek

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 9780394554297

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Told in a sympathetic, emotional and powerful way from an Indian perspective and largely in Indian voices, this is a riveting account of the ongoing battle between the Navajos and the Hopis over two million acres of disputed Arizona land--a disastrous story of United States intervention in Native American affairs. 16 pages of photographs.

Bitter Water
Bitter Water

Author: Malcolm D. Benally

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2011-05-15

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0816506620

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Many know that the removal and relocation of Indigenous peoples from traditional lands is a part of the United States’ colonial past, but few know that—in an expansive corner of northeastern Arizona—the saga continues. The 1974 Settlement Act officially divided a reservation established almost a century earlier between the Diné (Navajo) and the Hopi, and legally granted the contested land to the Hopi. To date, the U.S. government has relocated between 12,000 and 14,000 Diné from Hopi Partitioned Lands, and the Diné—both there and elsewhere—continue to live with the legacy of this relocation. Bitter Water presents the narratives of four Diné women who have resisted removal but who have watched as their communities and lifeways have changed dramatically. The book, based on 25 hours of filmed personal testimony, features the women’s candid discussions of their efforts to carry on a traditional way of life in a contemporary world that includes relocation and partitioned lands; encroaching Western values and culture; and devastating mineral extraction and development in the Black Mesa region of Arizona. Though their accounts are framed by insightful writings by both Benally and Diné historian Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Benally lets the stories of the four women elders speak for themselves. Scholars, media, and other outsiders have all told their versions of this story, but this is the first book that centers on the stories of women who have lived it—in their own words in Navajo as well as the English translation. The result is a living history of a contested cultural landscape and the unique worldview of women determined to maintain their traditions and lifeways, which are so intimately connected to the land. This book is more than a collection of stories, poetry, and prose. It is a chronicle of resistance as spoken from the hearts of those who have lived it.

Comics and Conquest
Comics and Conquest

Author: Rhiannon Koehler

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2023-11-21

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1421447436

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The untold story of Navajo and Hopi resistance and solidarity in the face of forced removal by the US government, as documented by tribal editorial cartoons. For generations, US politicians and energy companies attempted to gain access to the coal and uranium in the Four Corners region, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. The land on which they found billions of tons of high-grade coal in 1909, however, was reserved for the Navajo (Diné) and Hopi peoples and not accessible to extractive enterprise. Despite Diné and Hopi protests, US officials gained access to the coal-rich land on Black Mesa in Arizona by purposely fabricating and fueling conflict between the Diné and the Hopi. In Comics and Conquest, historian Rhiannon Koehler documents the story of this conflict through an engaging analysis of historical Navajo and Hopi editorial cartoons. Despite the false narrative that the conflict was driven by inter-tribal animosity and that the subsequent forced removals of thousands of Indigenous peoples were part of a plan to keep the peace, the cartoons that Koehler shares reveal a rich history of artistic activism and Hopi-Diné solidarity against this land grab. The content and claims featured in political cartoons published in the tribal newspapers Qua'Toqti and the Navajo Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s were some of the most critical tools for both coping with the threats of industry and exposing the history of exploitation as it carries on into the present. The conflict, popularly known as the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute, was presented in mainstream media as an egregious threat to US interests. Acutely aware of their land's value and the minerals and other resources on it, Diné and Hopi political cartoonists used their medium to assert their protest and agency, identify the true instigators of the dispute, and expose and counter the myth that the conflict had intertribal origins. Koehler shows how tribal activism and media ultimately resulted in international recognition of the harms perpetrated by the federal government on Diné and Hopi soil.