Historic Pact Gives Hopis 500,000 Acres in Arizona : Settlement: Interior Dept. backs land accord with Navajos. Angry Gov. Symington says he will fight plan.

For centuries, the Hopis made pilgrimages to the land for religious ceremonies, eagle feather gathering, herb collecting and farming.

Yet only Navajo lived on the disputed high plateau country of northeast Arizona, and the tribes could never work out who had authority over the territory.

Not even congressional action in 1882 solved the problem.

All that changed on Wednesday when the U.S. Interior Department announced tentative approval of a historic agreement to hand over more than 500,000 acres of federal, state and private land in Arizona to the Hopi Indians.

“For the first time we have an agreement in principle between the two tribes,” said Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. “We cannot pass up this once-in-a-century opportunity to settle this bitter dispute.”

In a landmark move toward conciliation, the Hopi and Navajo tribal councils on Monday agreed to the proposal, reached after 18 months of secret negotiations involving the Interior Department and mediated by U.S. Magistrate Harry R. McCue of San Diego.

Hopi tribal leaders declined to comment on the settlement. But Duane Beyal, spokesman for the Navajo Tribal Council, compared the agreement to “the falling down of the Iron Curtain.”

“It’s amazing that the tribes could agree on anything,” Beyal said. “It’s a tremendous step toward resolving problems that have persisted for more than 100 years.”

In Arizona, however, the governor expressed outrage over the transfer of state lands to the tribes. People who own lots in the land affected by the proposed switch also expressed concern.

“If there was ever a flagrant violation of state rights this is it and I am going to do everything in my power to defeat the agreement,” said Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said his state was left out of the negotiations.

The dispute has historic roots and has simmered for decades. Most recently, after the Navajos refused to leave Hopi lands, the federal government undertook a relocation effort that was the nation’s largest forced relocation of people since Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. About 2,300 Navajo families were moved in a program that cost taxpayers $350 million over the last 18 years, federal officials said.

It also caused incalculable anguish for Indians caught in a tragedy that pitted the tribal needs of the Hopi--whose lands were taken over by the Navajo generations ago--against the needs of Navajos, whose ancestors did the taking.

The deeply spiritual Hopi have lived in the Southwest for more than 2,000 years. The tribe has more than 9,000 members, many of whom live on three mesa topped with ancient Hopi villages built of stones, not adobe. The Hopi village of Old Oraibi is the oldest continuously inhabited site in North America.

The nomadic Navajo came much later, arriving in what is now the Four Corners region between 1500 and 1700.

Because of the tribes’ different natures, scholars say, conflicts were inevitable. Navajos periodically raided the Hopi villages.

In 1863, the United States intervened. Army troops led by Kit Carson forced about 2,000 Navajos to relocate to Ft. Sumner, in eastern New Mexico. They were eventually joined by 6,100 others in a painful pilgrimage now remembered as the Long Walk.

Later, in a warning that presaged their current conflict, federal Indian agents spoke of Navajo encroachment on Hopi lands. But their cries went unheeded in Washington.

It was not until 1882 that a 2.5-million acre Hopi reservation, in northern Arizona, was set aside by executive order of President Chester Alan Arthur.

Nearly a century later, in 1974, Congress passed the Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation Act, dividing in half 1.8 million acres of designated joint-use territory between the tribes. The law also mandated the relocations.

As a result, 2,300 Navajo families, and all 23 Hopi families living on the disputed land, have moved. But 150 Navajo families have refused to leave.

In 1988, Navajo attorney Lee Brooke Phillips filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the squatters asking that the courts allow them to stay on Hopi land for religious purposes. Essentially, the case, called Jenny Manybeads vs. the United States of America, argued that relocation violated his client’s religious freedom.

“My clients believe that they have been placed on their particular land and instructed to stay there,” said Phillips. “It is their spiritual belief that if they move they will lose the purpose of their existence . . . that the windows to the supernatural world would be forever cut off.”

The U.S. District Court ruled against the Navajos and the case was appealed to the 9th Circuit Court, which declined to rule on the matter but appointed Magistrate McCue as federal mediator on May 10, 1991.

Negotiations were intense. For the Hopis, whose 700,000-acre reservation is surrounded by Navajo territory--the issue involved an affront to their sovereignty. For certain Navajo residents it involved a harsh existence and freedom of religion. For both tribes it had been an expensive dispute that prevented them from looking at the future and focusing on their needs.

“For 18 months I was living and working with Indians, sometimes in places without electricity or motels,” McCue said. “Now, both tribes have agreed, and it puts an end to relocation of Navajo families. All we need now is congressional action to implement this settlement.”

Objections came from Arizona, however, where Symington quickly announced his opposition.

“In some circles this may not be the politically correct thing to do,” he said, “but this land grab is something we just can’t tolerate.”

Under terms of the agreement, the federal government would cede 200,000 acres under National Forest Service jurisdiction, 165,000 acres of state lands, 165,000 acres of private holdings and 8,000 acres of public lands controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Lujan said.

The private land holdings include the CO Bar Ranch, which is owned by 60 members of the Babbitt family, including former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who is said to be a candidate for a Cabinet post in the Clinton Administration.

Lujan also said the Hopis have agreed to lease, for 75 years, three-acre home sites and 10 acres of grazing land to each of 150 Navajo families on Hopi territory that have refused to relocate as a 1974 federal law mandated. The federal government has agreed to pay the tribes $15 million to offset the loss of use of portions of their land.

In addition, at least eight tribal lawsuits against the federal government would be dismissed, Lujan said.

Interior Department and U.S. Justice Department officials valued the land component of the settlement at $28 an acre, or about $11.5 million.

“There will be public hearings and ample opportunities during the legislative process for people to express their concerns,” Lujan said. “We certainly do not propose solving one long and painful Indian land claims problem by creating an equally painful land claims controversy for others.”

Yet, as word spread about the proposed plan to end the dispute between the Hopi and Navajo tribes, people in nearby Flagstaff, in northern Arizona, tried to grasp what it would mean for them.

“I’m appalled at the condescending behavior of our government trying to pull this off,” said Wendell Rossman, a local architect who has property in the affected region. “This was forged behind closed doors.”

But Navajo attorney Phillips suggested that such fears were unfounded.

“This is not some secret plot to steal everybody’s land,” he said.

Correspondent Mary Tolan, in Flagstaff, contributed to this story.

New Land for the Hopis?

The proposed settlement would let 150 Navajo families remain for 75 years on land that would be given to the Hopis. The Hopis would get new land north and southeast of Flagstaff.