50 Years Ago

Navajo Tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald held a press conference this week to announce actions to solve problems surrounding the Fourth of July celebration and this year’ tribal fair.

During the summer of 1972, I began seeing something that never happened before in the history of the Navajo Tribe – the exodus of employed non-Indians.

The decision by Hopi and federal authorities to tear down a Navajo meeting hall on exclusive Hopi territory on June 1, 1972, made headlines throughout New Mexico and Arizona with the Associated Press saying that this was another jolt to attempts by the Navajo leadership to maintain peace on the lands disputed between the two tribes.

A representative of the Malpaso Film Company stopped by the Navajo Times and talked to Chet MacRorie, the paper’s managing editor, trying to find out the process to allow filming on the Navajo Reservation.

The situation between the Hopis and the Navajos over 1.8 million acres of disputed land in the western portion of the Navajo Reservation continued with non-Indian Hopi rangers impounding Navajo sheep almost on a daily basis with the occasional arrest of Navajo livestock owners who “trespassed” on Hopi land to move their sheep back to Navajo lands.