We, Ourselves, Need to Dream Our Future
Why Have We Not Dreamed?
Can the federal and Navajo Nation governments accommodate how we, ourselves, arrange our cultural stewardships of our land and one another? The surprising answer is yes. The problem is we have never provided a vision of how we need our future relations with each other and with our reservation lands.
The Navajo Nation has, all this time, not even attempted to set forth a tribal vision. There are a number of reasons why. The reasons encompass how the reservation was formed–large land base portions formed over time that are each subject to different federal policies and regulations. Further impeding a tribal vision is the more than one hundred years of a federal governmental land use management system that have taken land stewardship away from community control. This century-long system includes the lease and permit method of giving possession of parcels of land to individuals for limited times and limited purposes that divide family members and fragment land away from cooperative undertakings that are permanent and intergenerational. Finally, there is our history of Hwéeldi and the communal trauma — our collective nightmare — of livestock reduction.
The system has been oppressive. Yet, even the federal government understands the need for change, and has long provided mechanisms for tribes to envision, following which deep reforms may be made.
There are 2 mechanisms for communities and the Tribe to provide this vision–through the Integrated Resource Management Plan (IRMP), which is a “high level” governmental document in which ought to be set forth the tribal vision for the land use for future generations; and through Community Land Use Plans (CLUPs) that are made at the Navajo Nation Chapter level, and which ought to encompass the tribal vision and further express local community visions.
Envisioning a Shared Destination on the Basis of Navajo Nation Values
Land use plans that do not set forth a tribal vision of shared destination, and which do not express the values of the Navajo Nation, are essentially useless as a foundation on which actions may be based. No one but the Diné people can express the values and the vision.
According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs–
A plan is simply a map of how we wish to reach a vision; a shared destination to which we wish our actions to take us. Without that vision of the intended destination, a plan will lead us nowhere . . . The tribe’s vision is a statement guided by the values of those creating it. In Indian Country, components of the vision are based on cultural issues which reflect traditional values.
2001 BIA Guidance for Developing an Integrated Resource Management Plan in Indian Country, pages 5-9 and 5-10.
Thus far, CLUPs and IRMPs have been left to outside and BIA consultants to create. These consultants have prepared data-filled documents rather than a map towards our vision. These consultants have neither the knowledge nor the authority to make this vision for us. There has been no vision component in Navajo Nation land use planning.
So long as our vision is missing, the consultants assisting in our CLUPs and IRMPs have no choice but to emphasize existing laws and regulations that have long misunderstood our communal land use roots and future.
Significance of Hwéeldi
Perhaps another obstacle to envisioning is the notion that land not beneficially used is part of someone’s customary use area. This consideration is based on our collective historical tragedy of Hwéeldi. We all know that continuous use of ancestral land had been permanently interrupted when, in 1863, the U.S. Cavalry marched through our Country attacking and killing Diné at our camps, slaughtering livestock, burning hogans and crops, and virtually destroying any property and food supply our people would need to survive. 8,500 Diné were rounded up and death-marched on foot over 400 miles to captivity at Fort Sumner (Hwéeldi) in eastern New Mexico.
The few who eluded capture hid, unable to farm due to continuing raids of the U.S. Cavalry. Untended customary lands came to be reserved for the captives’ return. More than 2,000 Diné died in captivity, not counting those who perished on the forced march. Upon release, countless Diné simply dispersed. Customary land remains permanently unclaimed by ancestral users who never returned.
When we envision, this part of our history must be confronted.
Lawyers Cannot Help Us Until We Envision
Lawyers need a unified vision from us in order to make needed systemic reforms to serve as the foundation for our Navajo Nation’s future. The goal is to have our clear vision, however impractical, and however illegal it may presently seem, especially if it seems out of reach. The need for a unified tribal vision is even set forth by the BIA as the needed basis for any land use plan, especially a plan that provides a roadmap of cultural, societal and natural resources use for future generations. The BIA itself states in its 2001 Guidance for Developing an Integrated Resource Management Plan in Indian Country, pages 5-9 and 5-10, that “our vision is the shared destination. A land use plan is simply a map of how we wish to reach that shared destination. Without that vision of the intended destination, a plan will lead us nowhere.”
BIA consultants, or other external consultant, will not be able to create our vision. This is why our plans seem to contain merely data. Our plans seem unhelpful in supporting our community cultural and land practices into the future.
In our Journey Narratives, we emerged through darkness, beauty, disorder, then to our present heroic tests asked of each of us, not only to preserve our Diné way of life, but the existence of the Fourth World.
Many lawyers already understand that change needs to happen. If we do not put forward our visions, there is nothing lawyers can do.
If we do not dream, others who are not from our community will put forward their dream with limited understanding of us.
In our visions and dreams — 102 years in the future, waking up and walking outside of our homes on the Navajo Nation — what do we see, how do we feel?
