50 Years Ago: Navajos fight Hopi plans to evict 15 Navajo families

This is the month, 50 years ago, that the debate between the Navajos and Hopis got serious.

The Hopi Tribal Council had passed a resolution April 4 evicting 15 Navajo families who they said were living on their lands. They wanted them to leave their homes immediately, causing Navajo Tribal Chairman Raymond Nakai to go into overdrive.

These 15 families live on what was known as District 6, which the Navajo Tribe designated the Hopi Reservation.

The fact that the five families had lived there for as long as anyone could remember didn’t seem to make much difference. The Hopi Council said the land belonged to them and they had the right to remove them if they wanted to.

When the matter came up to the tribal council, members felt they needed to go outside the tribe for advice so they hired John Schuelke, a Gallup attorney, to give them advice.

This was an interesting decision because the council already had Norman Littell under contract to give them that kind of advice but council delegates had by that time begun questioning Littell’s judgment when it came to dispute with the Hopis.

Littell had been the one to recommend to the council some five years before to allow the Hopis to sue them for ownership of 1.8 million acres of Navajo land in the western portion of the reservation.

The tribe could have refused to accept the suit, which would have made it more difficult for the Hopis to force the issue. Littell, however, strongly recommended that the Navajos accept the suit because he had no doubts that the courts would give all of the land to the Navajos because there were so few Hopis living on the land.

Of course, that didn’t happen and by 1966, member of the tribal council were beginning to realize that they made a major mistake in following Littell’s advice.

When Schuelke appeared before the council, he recommended that the tribe do nothing to comply with he Hopi resolution. Instead, they should take the case to federal court and rely on the fairness of the court system to protect the rights of the Navajo families who had the misfortune to build their homes on lands that now belonged to the Hopis.

The Hopi leaders pointed out that the Secretary of the Interior “has determined that the ordinance, resolution and eviction notice were proper and within the authority of the Hopi Tribal Council.”

The Interior Department has sent its own notice to the families that they must exclude themselves from the Hopi Reservation.

“Should you fail to remove yourself and family members immediately, the matter of your expulsion will be referred to the Attorney General for appropriate legal action against you,” it read.

The problem facing Navajo tribal leaders was that the federal courts have already ruled that the land which the families lived on belonged to the Hopis so there was a question how the Navajos could oppose the move.

In other news, a pose made up primarily of Navajos, was formed on April 21, to go after two men who had reportedly broken into a number of hogans in the Pinedale area near Gallup and stolen a large number of items as well as shooting a goat.

php snippet=2]

Instead of relying on the sheriff’s office or the Navajo police to handle the investigation, a group of men in the Pinedale area decide to catch the thieves themselves.

One reason for the decision apparently stemmed from the fact that tracks were found at the hogans showing that the two men were on foot and were trying to escape by running away.

Several of the residents of the community considered themselves to be excellent trackers and they immediately began the search; the tracks went along a dirt road.

But they had only done a couple of hours of tracking when they had to stop because of darkness. Then in the morning, the tracking hit a major problem when strong winds came up, followed by rain, which made tracking impossible.

The Pinedale men, however, hadn’t given up and said they would resume the search as soon as a new lead came up.

The two men being sought by the trackers were still expected to be in the area unless they managed to get a ride. The trackers also suspected that the thieves were getting short of food.

The only items that were reportedly stolen during the break-ins were a small radio and enough food to provide two or three meals for the two men.

As for the goat, one theory was that the two men shot the goat for food and then when they tried to eat the meat, they realized that they had made a major mistake.

Trackers had been told to be careful since the two men were reportedly armed and dangerous,

State police have joined the effort, setting up roadblocks in the area to stop them if they try to get out by car.

In the second day of operation, sheriff deputies and Navajo police joined in the search, which now has gone as far as 12 miles from the hogans where the thefts occurred.

---