The Land Bases of the Navajo Nation
The historical photograph above depicts the loneliness and hardship of post-reservation life after return from captivity at Fort Sumner, NM. During the years of captivity and the Long Walk (Hwéeldi), community life and social order unraveled. Prisoners were housed out in the open in inhuman conditions. Matriarchal relationships were broken down and never fully regained. There was tremendous loss of life.
Introduction to Reservation Land Base Formation
The Navajo Nation reservation land base came into being at different times. Lands established following hwéeldi in the 1868 Treaty on the signature of the U.S. President gave rise to the “trust responsibility” of the U.S. federal executive branch based on the promises in the Treaty itself. The promises applied to lands incrementally added by the U.S. President until 1918.
By general legislation in 1919, later specifically affirmed on March 3, 1927, Congress banned further Indian reservation expansion by the President. This began the modern extensive era of congressional power over Indian lands and congressional legislation on Indian affairs. Congress has added to the Navajo Nation land base incrementally and significantly, imposing conditions, and using powers and justifications through enacted laws based on Congressional votes and findings.
Care should be taken to distinguish general trust responsibility land from Congress enacted lands that carry different, and often highly restrictive conditions specific to that enacted land. In its push toward governing the reservation as a united whole, the Navajo Nation tribal government may have unnecessarily imposed area or activity-specific restrictions reservation-wide.
The Navajo people have been unable to express a unified vision for the desired future conditions of their community’s cultural, economic and social wellbeing. Even the expression of a vision runs into difficulties, constraints, due to multiple regulatory restrictions that have long lacked support for permanent, generational communities, and ignored the stewardship role of the people. Understanding origins of the present restrictions is a necessary beginning to expressing, and adopting this very necessary tribal vision.