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

Benedek, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080613125X ISBN 13: 9780806131252

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999

Synopsis

For the past twenty-five years, our country’s last Indian war has been raging in the Joint Use Area around Big Mountain and Coal Mine Mesa, Arizona. There Navajos are pitted against their Hopi neighbors--and against a United States government that has divided the land between the two tribes and then decreed that Indians living on the "wrong" side must move. With the narrative sweep and emotional veracity of a great novel, Emily Benedek recounts the tortuous progress of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute and portrays the lives it has consumed.

About this title

About the Author:

Emily Benedek is the author of Beyond the Four Corners of the World: A Navajo Woman?s Journey, published by the University of Oklahoma Press. She lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

Public Law 93-531, the Navajo-Hopi Settlement Act passed by Congress in 1974, set off a chain of events that has brought misery and uncertainty to thousands of Native Americans, has thus far cost the federal government more than $40,000,000 and has caused litigation that continues. Calling for the partition of tribal lands, the law involved the relocation of members of both tribes. The land dispute is seen as a struggle over cultural values between the sheepherding Navajo and the farming Hopi who also use the land in religious ceremonies. Benedek, who covered the story for Newsweek, details the background of the two million acres in question, profiles the tribes, assesses the Relocation Commission as incompetent and corrupt and describes the roles played by bungling bureaucrats and lawyers who have garnered huge fees from the proceedings. Focussing on events of 1985-1986, this account exemplifies government intervention at its worst. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080613125X
• ISBN 13: 9780806131252
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 456