Relocation office funded, but future is murky
Big Mountain protesters fighting relocation in the 1980s as part of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute. Photo by Kenji Kawano.
DURANGO, Colo.
The Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation, which was supposed to finish relocating people in 1986, has been funded for another fiscal year.
The office, which is responsible for helping relocatees from the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Land Partition to obtain housing and restart their lives, received $8.75 million for fiscal 2019, according to the Navajo Nation Washington Office. This is down from last year’s $15.4 million, but that’s because the office was given more than usual in fiscal 2018, according to ONHIR’s attorney, Larry Ruzow.
“Congress increased our appropriation to enable us to remove a backlog of homes” that needed to be built, he said. The office was planning to close last year, but was funded through fiscal 2019 to complete some unfinished business and await the outcome of court cases, Ruzow explained.
To read the full article, pick up your copy of the Navajo Times at your nearest newsstand Thursday mornings!
Are you a digital subscriber? Read the most recent three weeks of stories by logging in to your online account.
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow