HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Bennett Freeze was a 43-year development ban on 1.5 million acres (610,000 ha) of
Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
lands by the US Federal Government. It was put in place in 1966 in order to promote negotiations over a land dispute between the Navajo and the
Hopi The Hopi are a Native American ethnic group who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 census, there are 19,338 Hopi in the country. The Hopi Tribe is a sovereign nation within the Unite ...
and lasted until 2009. It was named for the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal government of the United States, federal agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of the Interior. It is responsible for im ...
at the time, Robert L Bennett, and meant that in the "frozen" area, no development at all could occur. This included fixing roofs, building houses, constructing gas and water lines, and repairing roads.


Creation of the Navajo and Hopi Reservations

The Bennett Freeze has its origins in the treaty of Bear Springs of 1868 that established a reservation for many Navajo. This was the result when the Navajo tribe was at war with the
US army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
. As part of this conflict The
Kit Carson Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and n ...
Campaign sought to end traditional Navajo way of life through a
scorched earth policy A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, which usually includes obvious weapons, transport vehicles, communi ...
. Unable to live on their land, many took
Long Walk of the Navajo The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo ( nv, Hwéeldi), was the 1864 deportation and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the United States federal government. Navajos were forced to walk from t ...
to internment at
Fort Sumner Fort Sumner was a military fort in New Mexico Territory charged with the internment of Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 to 1868 at nearby Bosque Redondo. History On October 31, 1862, Congress authorized the construction of For ...
in
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
. In 1868, the Navajo signed a treaty with the US government which established a reservation. The initial boundaries were in part of their traditional land base. Other areas were added to in 1878 and 1880. In 1882, President
Chester A. Arthur Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He previously served as the 20th vice president under President James ...
created an area of land designated for the Hopi tribe and other tribes the Secretary of the Interior might settle on Hopi lands. It was decided the Hopi allotment would be a rectangle framed by lines of latitude and longitude, exactly one degree by one degree, and it left out the significant Hopi village of Moenkopi. It also included areas used by Navajos. Despite the legal uncertainties of property ownership in the overlapping portions of Hopi and Navajo land, the two tribes co-existed without incident for many decades to come. The sparsely-populated nature of the land in dispute and the differing traditional ways of life of the two tribes kept resource conflicts to a minimum.


The History of the Bennett Freeze

As a result of a 1966 Hopi-Navajo Land Claims case, the then-Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert L. Bennett created a development ban for Navajo living in the former Joint Use Area. The intent was to reduce tensions by essentially forcing Navajo families to leave the area. However, Navajo continued to reside in the contested area.


Mineral Rights

The land that makes up the Navajo Reservation contains rich deposits of
coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...
and
uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
. Generally considered barren
rangeland Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. Types of rangelands include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, savannas ...
at the time of its creation, the subterranean mineral richness of the area was not fully known or appreciated when the Navajo Reservation was first allotted by the US government, nor when it established the Hopi Reservation. In 1919, a mining consortium became interested in the coal potential of the western portion of the Navajo Nation. The uncertain nature of land ownership and the rights associated with it became a major issue for the Hopi, Navajo and private mining interests. Competition for the land continued, especially over large coal-containing areas under Black Mesa. As part of World War II and the Cold War, uranium was mined on both Navajo land and later in the Joint Use Area.


Joint Use Area

In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled in ''Healing v. Jones'' that there should be a "Joint Use Area" for both tribes, but tensions continued. The Freeze was intended to be a temporary measure to make the two tribes negotiate over the land, but an agreement was never reached. Under it, Hopi and Navajo would have to "agree upon any proposed economic activity in the area prior to undertaking that activity". This meant the start of many hardships for the thousands of Navajos and Hopi affected because the freeze essentially halted all economic development in the area. Additionally, there was constant conflict revolving around access to sacred sites. In 1966 the coal company
Peabody Coal Peabody Energy is a coal mining and energy company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its primary business consists of the mining, sale, and distribution of coal, which is purchased for use in electricity generation and steelmaking. Peabody ...
started mining on Black Mesa.


Changes in the Joint Use Area

In 1972, Assistant Secretary Interior Harrison Loesch tried to decrease the severity of the situation by "unfreezing" some of the areas. However, because these areas were primarily Hopi and therefore hardly any more Hopi territory was affected by the Freeze, the Hopi essentially had unilateral veto power for proposed projects. Recognizing this problem, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thomson gave his office the authority to override any improvement requests that the Hopi had rejected in 1976. The Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974 was a further attempt to reduce tensions by forcing Hopis off of lands reserved for Navajos and vice versa. Under this act, 6,000 Navajos had to leave their homes and once again, tensions were not reduced. Some claim that the primary beneficiary of this act were actually coal companies, specifically Peabody Coal, who would gain land access. They also posit that the conflict between the Hopi and Navajo was greatly exaggerated precisely to gain access to these resources. In 1980, the US government tried to intervene again. However, as the government itself admitted in Senate Report 100-462, "the result f past US actionshas been that the Native Americans living in the Bennett Freeze region reside in conditions that have not changed since 1966 and need to be improved". In 2005, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) introduced Senate Bill 1003: Navajo-Hopi Land Settlements of 2005. The bill passed the senate and included provisions such as amendments to the "Joint Use Area" established in 1880. In 2009, the development ban was lifted by President Obama. In 2010, Representative
Ann Kirkpatrick Ann Leila Kirkpatrick (born March 24, 1950) is an American politician and retired attorney serving as the United States representative from since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2013 to ...
(D-Arizona) introduced legislation to allocate more funds to the former Bennett Freeze area, but the bill has not passed.


Impact of Bennett Freeze

The ban, which lasted 40 years, affected the lives of nearly 10,000 Navajo people who lived in the affected area. Now, around 20,000 people live in the formerly frozen area. Although the development freeze has been lifted since 2009, people in the area continue to suffer. Only 24% of the houses in the area are habitable, almost 60% do not have electricity, and the majority do not have access to potable running water. The legacy of the Bennett Freeze still looms over the region and deeply affects the day-to-day lives of its residents. In testimony before Congress, Nelson Gorman, Jr., Speaker of the
Navajo Nation Council The Navajo Nation Council ( nv, Béésh bąąh dah siʼání) is the legislative branch of the Navajo Nation government. The council meets four times per year, with additional special sessions, at the Navajo Nation Council Chamber, which is in Wi ...
, likened it to "the deplorable conditions approximating those found only in underdeveloped third world countries." (https://archive.org/stream/developmentneeds00unit/developmentneeds00unit_djvu.txt) With the advent of the
Atomic Age The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the ''Trinity'' test in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, during World War II. Although nuclear chain reactio ...
in the 1940s and the subsequent onset of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
,
uranium mining on the Navajo Nation Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weakl ...
began. This has left a legacy of high
cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
rates and other adverse health impacts, such as tainted wells and
aquifer An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characterist ...
s, that is still affecting the current residents of the area. The mine extracted as much as 1.3 billion gallons of water from the Navajo aquifer annually, and an estimated 45 billion gallons in Black Mesa's life cycle.


References

*Ward Churchill. ''Land Rights Reader: Struggle for the Land.'' Common Courage, 1993. *''Four Corners Sustainable Futures Initiative: Phase I Preliminary Report.'' Northern Arizona University, 2011. *http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Public_Law_111-18 *http://www.bia.gov/WhoWeAre/BIA/index.htm {{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett Freeze, The United States federal Indian policy 1966 in Arizona Navajo Nation