Legal battle over Navajo ranch land continues

Navajo ranchers who are in danger of losing their land under a competitive bid process still are wrangling in court. A trial for ranchers Loretta and Raymond Morris, who lease 5,500 acres of ranch land north of Crownpoint, is Tuesday in Crownpoint District Court. Albuquerque-based attorney James Zion, who is representing the defendants, argues that the agriculture department ignored its own regulations calling for a review of a rancher's qualifications before granting a bid. "What the department wanted to do was to switch the program to where they could take public land and put it out to bid to the highest bidder," Zion said. "That actually makes a lot of sense. But what they wanted to do and what they did was two different things." The bid process, established amid allegations of bribery and favoritism among Navajo politicians, aimed to correct the way the Navajo ranching system worked, Zion said. The change came about after an audit revealed flaws in the system, leading to removal of key officials. The process, however, jeopardized the livelihoods of at least 27 longtime ranchers who leased land from the Nation for generations. The new bid process, however, cut short leases when the department accepted closed bids for nearly 350,000 acres of ranch land to the highest bidders. Instead of following Navajo statutes, which called for the department to review seven qualifications of potential ranchers and to go to bid only if two or more qualified ranchers were eying the land, the department simply granted leases to high bidders, ignoring grazing capacity or ranching experience, Zion said...more