Land is most important to Indian people. In 1974, the U.S. Congress ordered 10,000 Navajo to leave their land by 28 Jul 1986. Mae Horseson, a Navajo woman, tells a special House committee that she cannot pay for a home outside the Navajo land, because she has no education or job. The U.S. government created reservations for the Hopi and Navajo in the nineteenth century, and allowed Navajo to stay on Hopi land, yet today the government is spending half a billion dollars to separate them. Hosteen Nez, who moved off the reservation after his house was burned down, has a hard time surviving. He must pay taxes, and pay for water and food, but he has little money. The Hopi are descendants of the Pueblo People, and even today they live near the sacred pueblos on the mesas of Arizona and practice ancient rituals. The Navajos migrated into these same lands centuries ago and settled in the mountains around the Hopis. Traditionally hunters and gatherers, the Navajos became shepherds, developed the art of weaving wool, grew corn, and became rooted to the land, but now half of them have been ordered to relocate. Jane Biakeddy, an old Navajo woman, says the land was put there for her people. They use local herbs to cure illnesses and ailments, and dye wool. If they are taken away from their land, they will lose their culture, as well as their souls. However, Arizona Representative Morris K. Udall says the Navajos should adjust to their new land, which is as good as their old land, and get on with life. For the Indians, this is another instance of suffering for the white man’s greed. In the nineteenth century, settlers moving West considered Indian lands their own; Kit Carson killed many Navajos and burned their villages. When the U.S. government forced Navajos to walk to internment camps, many of them died along the way. Eventually the Navajos were settled on reservations, where they gave up the warrior life and became herdsmen. The Hopis did not mind as long as the Navajos did not disturb them. However, the Hopis had their own problems. The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) ruled their reservation and forced their children to go to English-speaking, Christian schools. If Hopis resisted, they were sent to prison. The BIA divided the Hopi lands, where 500 Navajo families lived, and allowed more Navajo to move in. Fermina Banyacya, a Hopi woman, says that despite reports of resentment, the tribes became dependent upon each other and worked together. Later, however, oil and valuable minerals were discovered on the reservation, and Hopi elders resisted any effort to allow companies in to extract them. In the 1930s, the BIA countered the elders by establishing their own Indian tribal councils to sign contracts. Nancy Evans, a Navajo woman, says the purpose of these councils was to serve oil and mining corporations, not the Indians. After World War II, the growth of desert cities like Los Angeles, CA, and Las Vegas, NV, required new sources of fuel, and the government turned to Hopi lands. John S. Boyden, an attorney, convinced the BIA to appoint him the Hopis’ general counsel, and he signed contracts with the Peabody Coal Company, that gave the tribes only a tiny percentage of the value of their minerals and oil. They should have become wealthy, but remained poor. Hundreds of Hopi families were forced to relocate, as Peabody strip-mined and polluted the land, including the Indians’ sacred mountains. After the corporations departed, they left contamination that created birth defects among the Indians. Still, the U.S. Department of the Interior returned with new contracts and brought Hopi representatives to fool old, trusting Hopi into signing. John Boyden lobbied for a bill to partition Hopi land in order to keep the Hopis and Navajos from killing each other, though traditional Hopi leaders said there was no animosity between the tribes. Harrison Loesch, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior, pushed the bill through Congress, then left the government to become a vice president of Peabody Coal. In 1974, despite the growing activism of Dennis Banks’s American Indian Movement, Congress passed Public Law #93-531 and President Gerald Ford signed it into law. Crews arrived on Hopi land to build barbed wire fences separating not only Hopis from Navajos, but families from their relatives and watering holes. Many Hopis and Navajos had to relocate to the “correct” side of the fence. To force Navajos off the land, the government used tractors to destroy the vegetation. Livestock were impounded, and family herds were reduced below what the government itself called “subsistence level.” A Navajo boy, Joel Ashike, becomes so “out of the balance,” that three generations of his family conduct ceremonies to heal him. American taxpayers spend half a billion dollars to move 3,000 families into new tract housing, where they have to pay money for the amenities of the white man’s civilization. Laura Nez, an old Hopi, says living in her new home is like being in jail. Congressman Udall says the idea that Indians cannot relocate is simplistic, because people are asked to relocate all the time due to freeways and other projects. Navajo Chilson McCabe says he went to war for the U.S., but after he came back home, the government seized his herd, and he was forced to move to Flagstaff, many miles away, and become a mechanic. Once he left the reservation, his family was no longer eligible for relocation payments. Indians went to Washington, D.C. to protest, but Congress refused to repeal Public Law #93-531. As the final date of separation approaches, many Navajos remain on Hopi land, however, and will not move until they are physically taken away.