Deadline Looms in Hopi-Navajo Land Dispute

PHOENIX â€”  Late-night consultations with medicine men. Frantic calls to lawyers. Religious ceremonies seeking spiritual guidance. The clock is ticking louder and louder for hundreds of Navajos living on Hopi land.

Navajo families have until midnight tonight to either sign leases acknowledging the land in northern Arizona is Hopi or put themselves in line for eviction.

After decades of fighting over the rugged patch of desert, the decision is an agonizing one. With dozens of overlapping lawsuits, continuing legal developments in federal court and lawyers coming on and off the case, Navajos say they don’t know whose advice to take.

Lawyers and leaders from both tribes and government officials have been trekking to one remote hogan after another to explain the lease and advise people about their legal options. In many families, the elders making the decisions do not speak English and are unskilled in non-Indian law.

Rumors abound about the lease agreement and whether the Hopi will limit the Navajos’ agricultural or religious life. Although the land was legally declared Hopi more than 20 years ago, the case has been tied up in the courts since then.

The leases, or “accommodation agreements,� were approved by Congress last fall as a solution to the land feud. They came about after the Navajos sued the federal government in the 1970s, saying their historical religious attachment to the land gave them the right to live there--despite the fact that courts had ruled the area Hopi.