Navaho-Hopi Joint Use Area
Dove Waterflow, Arizona
August 27-29, 1982

COMMUNIQUE NO. 5

Mr. Ivan Sidney, Chairman
Hopi Tribal Council
New Oraibi, Arizona

Brother:

The Traditional Elders Circle and their representatives in Council send you and the Council greetings. We are concerned over the conflict created by Public Law 93-531 through federal legislation. This law has created disruption of thousands of lives to the extent of their physical and mental well-being.

The quesiton of land is an old problem with our people. Land has been the issue between the invaders from the east and the natural world peoples for approximately 490 years. The Elders Circle in the year 1982 is concerned and outraged that the dispute over the Joint Use Area by the Navajo and Hopi tribal councils has now regressed to the point of Indian tribal councils fighting over sacred lands. Land issues have never been a problem to those grassroots Hopi and Navajo peoples who have lived side by side in this area with strong friendship. The Hopi and Navajo people have expressed their desire to continue to share this land.

We call upon you to reconsider and question the ethics and the morality of the United States and their representative leadership in Congress who are responsible for the introduction of the above dangerous and racist legislation of once more removing Indian people from their homeland which they have occupied since time immemorial. The extreme wrong being committed against the Hopi/Navajo people has bared before the world the ethnocidal and racist policies of the United States that have historically been, and continue to be, the policies for Indian people today.

We protest in the most severe terms the denial of the most basic human rights of indigenous people. We are a horribly oppressed people in our own land. The Elders Circle calls upon you to insure continued and cooperative land use between the Hopi and Navajo people as they band together spiritually. The Circle of Elders offers you assistance in an effort to resolve the present crisis of the act of genocide and ethnocide against your people and the seventh generation to come. In the spirit of oneness. In support of the Navajo and Hopi residents.

We are respectfully,

The Traditional Circle of Elders