ONHIR also provided each family with a permit to graze their animals on fenced range units. One permit covered about 20 cows. Much of the reservation, where cattle tended to roam freely and grazing quotas weren’t strictly enforced, was overgrazed. The idea on the New Lands was to manage the land more sustainably.
But many relocatees weren’t sold. Some, including Yazzie’s grandparents, remembered stock reductions during the Great Depression, when government agents shot sheep in front of their owners, purportedly to reduce overgrazing. Following the culling, the feds implemented the reservation’s first permitting system. The program, designed without local input, cemented distrust for such protocols.
The forced relocation, with its new rules, seemed taken from the same book. Yazzie said officials didn’t properly explain the reasons for the permits, particularly to elders. So, when Yazzie’s grandparents were forced to abandon a majority of their animals, it made the move even more painful. “Because you’ve already had to relocate these people and they were resistant in leaving and now you want to tell them how to manage their cattle and how to manage the land,” Yazzie said.
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Relocated animals arriving on the New Lands were a smorgasbord of different sizes and colors—black, white, red and tan—which indicated muddled genetics, unpredictable meat quality. People rarely vaccinated cattle or tracked nutrition.
“This area was known for low volume, low quality, poor image and high-risk livestock,” Inman said.
Many Navajo producers didn’t raise animals as a commodity—rather, livestock served a subsistence role. At the sale barn, white buyers often took advantage of Navajo producers. A cow would fetch $500, hundreds of dollars below market rates.
The New Lands sits in Apache county, one of the poorest in the U.S., with few job opportunities. Younger relocatees, who wanted to hold on to traditions but also to make money off the livestock, grew frustrated. The thinking, Yazzie said, was “When will we ever be compatible with the Bilagáana, the white man? Like, how do we create opportunity for our Native people?”
July 01, 2020 at 12:15AM
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