ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the failure of the United States government to take into account Navajo and Hopi beliefs and values. The Navajos, with a much heavier dependency on livestock, especially sheep and goats, lived in nuclear and extended family units spaced out over the landscape, herding their stock back and forth from their home esteads and moving seasonally from one pasture area to another. The Secretary of the Interior had two apparent choices: to use his power to “settle” the Navajos living in the Executive Order Area (EOA) and thus give them rights in a share of the reservation, whether jointly with the Hopi or by dividing the EOA; or to remove the Navajos from the EOA. The Solicitor of the Department of the Interior had provided an opinion that the rights, including rights to minerals, of Hopis and those Navajos who had settled in the EOA in good faith before 1936 were co-extensive.