New council districts plan no easy task

It would be nice, say election officials, if reapportionment of Navajo Nation Council districts was easy and could be done in a few weeks.

But it can't and that's why the Navajo Election Administration is trying to convince the Navajo Nation Supreme Court to reverse its decision requiring an election on council reduction within the next six months.

If voters approve the ballot question to reduce the council from 88 to 24 seats, the lame duck council would have to come up with new council district boundaries in time for the November 2010 general election.

Just how hard is it to accomplish that?

The last time council districts were redrawn - more than 15 years ago - it took several council sessions before enough delegates could agree on a plan, and the plan still did not satisfy a lot of the delegates.

Then, in 2002, when it was time to devise a reapportionment plan based on the 2000 U.S. Census, the council basically agreed to spend 10 years developing it.

At that time, council members agreed on one thing - to come up with a fair reapportionment plan, a lot of other issues would have to be decided first.

Probably the biggest question is whether the reapportionment plan should be based on chapter membership or residency within chapter boundaries. With over half the enrolled members of the tribe living in cities, the answer is not an easy one.

In past reapportionments, population figures were based on voter registration and this, in turn, is divided according to chapter membership. That membership follows a tribal member no matter where he or she lives.

This worked when most Navajos lived in or near their home chapters but in the 1950s, more and more Navajos began moving away from home to places like Window Rock where the majority of government jobs were located, or to border communities.

And as the population rapidly outstripped job creation in and around the reservation, more tribal members were moving far away.

By 2002, some members of the Navajo Nation Council were saying that it didn't make a lot of sense to require tribal members to be tied to the chapter where they or their parents were born since their ties to that chapter could be almost non-existent.

It would be better, these delegates said, to allow reservation residents to enroll in the chapters where they live. This, however, was opposed by the smaller chapters, which feared their population numbers would shrink while population centers like Fort Defiance, Tuba City and Shiprock would gain even greater political clout.

Meanwhile, the growing number of urban Navajos - the Navajo population in Phoenix is now estimated to be more than 24,000, or four to five times that of the largest reservation community - were arguing that they should have their own representation on the council. Delegates elected to represent the chapters do not address the needs of Navajos in cities.

So the council wanted to determine "whether or not Navajos living off Navajo trust lands or allotments should be represented in the Navajo Nation government by a council delegate or some other form of representation."

That's also the case with Navajos living in the Hopi Partitioned Lands who complain that their needs are largely ignored.

Another problem that continues to come up when any reapportionment plan is proposed is that chapter boundaries are not well defined in many cases, giving rise to a number of territory disputes that have been going on for decades between chapters.

The council wanted to resolve this question before a new reapportionment map was done.

And, finally, the council wanted a decision made on what kind of data would be used in developing a reapportionment plan. Should it be based on the U.S. Census, which counts the number of chapter residents, or on tribal voter rolls, which include chapter members living outside Navajo lands?

The last reapportionment plan, done in 1995, used a combination of the two.

Kelsey Begaye, who was president in 2002, wrote a letter to then Speaker Ed T. Begay, noting that residency patterns on the reservation were changing.

"There appears to be a shift in population from the eastern and northern agencies," he wrote. "This migration will likely occur again over the next 10 years."

Begaye also pointed out that despite all the tools and data available to the council at that time, "it is impossible to obtain an absolutely accurate count of people."

He also said he felt the most accurate data available to the tribe at that time was the 2000 Census since the tribal voter registration rolls did not include Navajos under voting age.

In the seven years since these issues were raised, say election officials, not one of them has been resolved.

If a fair and accurate reapportionment is to be done, each one must be addressed, said Edison Wauneka, director of the Navajo Election Administration.

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