Tiny Arizona Tribe May Receive Navajo Land

Evelyn James gazes out across a broad expanse of high desert, dreaming of a bright future for her tiny Indian tribe.

In her vision, these acres--now populated by sheep and sagebrush--will be the site of new homes and businesses for many of the nearly 300 members of the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

If a tentative agreement is approved by the Navajo Nation, which now governs the area, James’ tribe would have land of its own for the first time in generations.

It’s an exciting prospect, says James, the Paiute tribe’s president. It also is a daunting one.

“There needs to be police protection. There needs to be housing. There needs to be zoning. There needs to be some future for our tribal members. The land is very important to this tribe.”

The proposal to transfer several square miles from the Navajo Nation to the San Juan Southern Paiutes would be an unprecedented out-of-court settlement of an inter-tribal land issue. The deal must be approved by the Navajo Nation Council, and eventually by the U.S. Congress.

Although top officials from both tribes say they support the pact, they are reluctant to talk about its details.

Much of the reason is history. The smaller Paiute tribe was all but swallowed up by the Navajo tribe as Congress expanded the Navajos’ reservation in the 1930s. And some Navajos discriminated against Paiutes in the years before the Paiutes were formally recognized as a tribe in 1990, James said.

“The Paiutes relied on the Navajo economy to get by, but they were second-class citizens in that economy,” says Bill Quinn, who chronicled the Paiutes’ story as a Bureau of Indian Affairs historian in the 1980s. “They didn’t play on the same playing field as the Navajos. . . . That was remarkable to us, because we’d never seen it before, Indian to Indian.”

For American Indian tribes, land is power--and the Navajo Nation has the most land of any tribe in America, as well as the largest population. The San Juan Southern Paiutes, on the other hand, are the smallest tribe in Arizona.

Some Navajo council members say they oppose giving up any land to the Paiutes, although no Navajos live on the land in question. Others have objected to losing the right to graze sheep and cattle on the land.

“As with all issues concerning Indian lands, grazing and land use and resources above and below ground--those are always important,” says James Bilagody, a Navajo Nation Council delegate from Tuba City.

The tribes’ history as neighbors goes back several hundred years. At first, relations were generally peaceful, with Paiutes trading their woven baskets for Navajo goods and sheltering Navajos on the run from U.S. soldiers in the late 1800s, James says.

Congress made the land where the Paiutes lived part of the Navajo reservation in 1934. Federal officials then took a census of all Indians in the area, without noting their tribal affiliation.

The Navajo Nation used those census figures to draw up its own tribal rolls, labeling the Paiutes as Navajos. Since most Paiutes spoke neither English nor Navajo, they did not realize the error until years later, James says.

Although many Paiutes also intermarried with their Navajo neighbors, the tribe kept its identity, culture and language. James remembers arriving at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school as a girl and trying to speak the Paiute language to uncomprehending Navajos.

“We [Paiutes] always did things together,” James says. “That’s the great survival plan--staying together, doing things together.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, Paiutes became increasingly frustrated. It was hard to get services like job training from the Navajo Nation, James says. She and other tribal members then began a drive to be recognized by the federal government as a separate tribe.

“They [Paiutes] felt they were not getting served; they were getting used,” James says. “Why be with a tribe when you were treated like you were in the wrong position, like you were in the wrong group?”

Despite opposition from the Navajo Nation, the San Juan Southern Paiutes were granted federal recognition in 1990.

As the Paiutes started setting up their government, they also went to court to argue their right to land near Tuba City and around Navajo Mountain, on the Arizona-Utah border. A federal appeals court upheld the Paiutes’ claim, and negotiations began between the tribes.

Now many want to put the disputes behind them.

“We’ve always said that they’re our children, and we need to go back to living in peaceful harmony,” says Kerry Smallcanyon, head of the local Navajo government in Navajo Mountain. “Let us stand side by side and live together and not quarrel among each other.”

The Paiutes want harmony as well, but they want land too, James says.

“Our people need to enjoy their land and live where they would be enjoying themselves,” she says.