Relocated Navajos question feds

By: Felicia Fonseca

SANDERS, Ariz. — Unlike most of the vast, impoverished Navajo Nation, in this town all the roads are paved, schools and clinics are a short drive away, and everyone has electricity and running water in their homes.

Those modern conveniences are what lured hundreds of Navajo families to the "new lands" — ranch land the federal government bought in the early 1980s as part of a massive project to relocate thousands of Navajos from Hopi land and hundreds of Hopis from Navajo land.

Now, a quarter century and $400 million later, the federal Office of Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation is winding down what has become one of the largest relocation efforts in U.S. history. The office expects to move the last of the group — some 40 families — by next year.

The community of relocated Navajos near Sanders calls itself Nahata' Dziil, or "planning with strength," and to some, the so-called New Lands is a success story. The relocated families, they say, mostly are doing well and the community has a bright future.

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