Compare Constellations

Cover of pamphlet, "Resistance at Big Mountain: 8, 000 Navajos to be Forcibly Uprooted, " published by the Big Mountain Support Committee. (Box 1, Folder 2).

Navajo and Hopi have held equivocal rights to the same lands dating at least as far back as President Chester Arthur's executive order of 1882, which established the Hopi Indian Reservation. The executive order granted territory to the Hopis, but also permitted the settlement of other Indians on the lands. Navajo continued to move into the area. More than a century of controversy later, legislation and court cases have still not resolved the issue.

In 1962, the U.S. District Court for Arizona ruled that the land could be jointly used by the Navajo and Hopi, but that the court lacked jurisdiction to divide the land. The tribes could not reach agreement dividing the 1.8 million acres of disputed land, and joint use was not a viable solution. In 1973, the federal government took responsibility for resolving the dispute, since they had allowed the Navajo to settle there, and had granted them grazing permits to certain areas. In 1974, PL 93-531, known as the Navajo-Hopi Indian Land Settlement Act, or the Relocation Act was enacted. The legislation provided a six-month negotiation period for the two tribes to attempt to reach an agreement over division of the land. If no agreement was reached in that time, the court was authorized to partition the area based on a mediator's recommendation of what was "fair and equitable." The court accepted a mediator's partition line on February 10, 1977, requiring thousands of Navajos and nearly 100 Hopi to be evicted from their homelands.

The people affected by relocation wanted their story told. In the winter of 1984, Hopi Elder, Thomas Banyacya arranged for Anita Parlow to meet with Hopis and Navajos opposed to relocation. Banyacya had read Parlow's book, A Song for Sacred Mountain, an oral history of Sioux people and their link to Bear Butte, a sacred shrine on the periphery of the Balck Hills in South Dakota. He invited her to consider doing a similar project about the Navajo-Hopi land dispute. An agreement was formalized with the Christic Institute, a public interest law firm, to sponsor the project. The project became known as the Sacred Lands Project, and Parlow served as project director.

In 1985, Parlow began conducting interviews and collecting research materials for the project. She interviewed people on the Joint Use Area and the Hopi mesas for a total of eight months over two years. Most interviews were with Navajos, however, several Hopi leaders were also interviewed. The interviews revealed that resistance to relocation was based largely on religious beliefs linking traditional peoples with the land. Thus, the issue was shown to be one of human rights and human rights violations as well as title to lands. Parlow's work culminated in the book, Cry Sacred Ground: Big Mountain U.S.A.