HOUSE MEMORIAL 91

49th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2009

INTRODUCED BY

Ray Begaye

A MEMORIAL

RELATING TO THE UTAH NAVAJO PEOPLE; REQUESTING THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO PLACE TRUSTEESHIP OF THE UTAH NAVAJO TRUST FUND IN THE HANDS OF UTAH NAVAJOS; REQUESTING THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO ACKNOWLEDGE HUMAN RIGHTS INJUSTICES.

     WHEREAS, the Navajo or Diné people have lived throughout Diné Bikéyah, or Navajoland, embracing the four corners of the current states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah, for many, many generations; and

     WHEREAS, the government of the United States of America laid claim to the lands of the southwestern United States after the Mexican-American war, which ended in 1848; and

     WHEREAS, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that the United States and Mexico signed to end the Mexican-American war guaranteed the rights of the Navajo people, whose ancestral homeland is in southeastern Utah, west of the Colorado river; and

     WHEREAS, in 1864, two-thirds of the Navajo population, or approximately eight thousand souls, were forced on the long walk from their Navajo homeland, three hundred miles across New Mexico, to Fort Sumner, many of them dying of exposure and starvation during the walk and upon arrival; and

     WHEREAS, some Navajo people, such as the K'aayellii Dineh band of southeastern Utah, fled captivity at that time; and

     WHEREAS, the Utah Navajo people who evaded the surrender and long walk of 1848 did not enter into the treaties that the other Navajo people entered in 1868, when they returned from Fort Sumner; and

     WHEREAS, the United States congress passed a law in 1933 that was to set aside permanently certain lands in southeastern Utah for the benefit of the Utah Navajo people; and

     WHEREAS, despite the 1933 law, the United States government conveyed Utah Navajo lands in southern Utah and in northern Arizona to the United States government, taking fifty-three thousand acres of tribal land while restricting access to territory belonging in the Navajo homeland; and

     WHEREAS, when the Utah Navajo people were deprived of their land and mineral rights, the state of Utah was named as trustee of thirty-seven and one-half percent of royalties from oil and gas extraction on their lands, to be held in trust on their behalf; and

     WHEREAS, the Utah Navajo people have realized little benefit from the property held in trust on their behalf; and

     WHEREAS, the Utah Navajo people have a right to acknowledgment of the human rights injustices against them, the theft of their land and the misuse of their rightful property;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the New Mexico delegation to the United States congress be requested to acknowledge the right to self-determination of the Utah Navajo people by turning over trusteeship of the trust held in their name; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the egregious abuses of the human rights of the Utah Navajo and all Navajo people be acknowledged and atoned for publicly by the United States congress; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the governor of the state of New Mexico, the governor of Utah, the president of the Navajo Nation, the members of the New Mexico and Utah congressional delegations, the United States secretary of energy, the United States secretary of defense, the director of the federal bureau of land management, the chairman of the United States senate committee on Indian affairs and the chairman of the United States house of representatives committee on natural resources.