yden began petitioning the Secretary of the Interior to partition the JUA.The land was officially partitioned in 1974 by mandate of P.L. 93-531 - also known as the "Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974" - without the input or consent of those from both tribes actually occupying the land in question. The partition equally divided the JUA into the Navajo Partitioned Lands (NPL) and the Hopi Partitioned Lands (HPL). About 12,000 Navajo were stranded on newly declared Hopi land and, likewise, about 300 Hopi families found themselves on Navajo land. Many hold the belief that government-sponsored and styled tribal council and influential energy interests contrived the JUA dispute to promote congressional action. The US has subsequently spent over $400 million to relocate the families to tract housing in nearby cities. The disproportionate amount of Navajo forced to relocate heightened age-old anxieties between the Navajo and Hopi. The Navajo are still at the center of the relocation controversy as many traditional Dineh families have chosen to remain within the HPL in defiance of 1974's P.L. 93-531. "The Navajo traditionalists view their land as representing the essence of their being," says Jennie Joe of the Native American Research and Training Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who conducted a study from 1981 to 1984. "They view themselves as an integral part of the environment - the mountains, the vegetation and the animals. The threat of being removed from this ecological [and] cultural niche has adversely affected the health and spiritual well-being of many." As a result, the Navajo have traditionally been viewed as the transgressed and the Hopis the transgressors in the eyes of the media, fueling the tensions further.In response to the Navajo slanted coverage, Eugene Kaye, chief of staff for the Hopi Tribe says, "Hopi felt the same way the Navajos did. But we have not felt we gave up our religion by moving off t...
