Wind Won't Know Me: A History of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute

This is an excellent, well-researched, well-written book about a very complex issue. I recommend it to anyone interested in the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute, or to anyone living in the Four Corners states. What is the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute? Well, over three quarters of the land that used to belong to the Hopi tribe has gradually, since the 1860s, been taken from them and given to the Navajo. Now, of the sprawling reservation at the center of the Four Corners states--Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, the states whose corners all meet at one point--only the reservation's small, misshapen center, the small hole of a big donut, is Hopi reservation. The rest, on all sides of the Hopi, is Navajo. In the early-1970s, Congress enacted a law that gave the Hopis back some of their land, but by that time, the land had been lived on by generations of Navajos and become sacred to them. Some of the Navajos left, and were relocated into shoddy houses with dry wells and no roads to reach them, and many sold or traded their new houses to unethical real estate agents, and ended up with little or nothing. Most other Navajos refused to give their land back, and were then forbidden to make any repairs to their homes, or to build on their land. The Hopi reasoned that the land wasn't the Navajos' to maintain, and hoped the building freeze would drive them out. But the Navajos remained. Navajos whose homes were unfinished had to live in what was already there, and Navajos whose homes were damaged couldn't repair them. Many ended up living in houses with broken doors, broken windows, and holes in their roofs, which rain and snow could blow into. The building freeze went on for over a quarter century, but now the Navajos have finally been granted permission to repair their homes and build on their property, and the two tribes are working hard at getting along. Each tribe has been wronged, and finding a compromise hasn't been easy. This book does a wonderful job of examing this issue, and if the book has any faults at all, it's that the author seems unable to hide that she has a slight(?) preference for the Navajos' side over the Hopis'. Overall though, this book is great. Scholarly, but nor boring. Factual, but always interesting. It's full of very real people, very real problems, and very good writing.

I bought this book while I was driving through Northern Arizona and headed into the area described by the dispute. This book is a moving account of how the anglo practice of drawing borders and lines on the land has affected two ancient peoples. It also aids in showing Native Americans as the heterogeneous group that they really are. We (and I include myself in this group) have a tendency to look at Native Americans as a single group, at least within a single geographical region. The history of Hopi-Navajo interactions is an example of different peoples with different world views who were able to co-exist for generations before the formulation of artificial boundaries. We also see the pressures on traditional practicies by economic imperitives. I strongly reccommend this book for anyone interested in the recent history of Native Americans and the Southwest.