Ranchers win case over Navajo eviction

A district court judge on Monday dismissed a case against Loretta Morris, who faced eviction from the ranch land she and her husband, Raymond Morris, leased from the Navajo Nation for the last 40 years. Tohajiilee District Court Judge William Platero, in a lengthy oral ruling, dismissed the case after finding that the method used by the Nation to award leases to the highest bidders was invalid. "I wasn't surprised, but I was pleased," Albuquerque attorney James W. Zion said of the ruling. Zion represented Morris in the case. "The question was, where do we go from here?'" The Navajo Nation has five days to decide whether it will appeal the ruling, Zion said. "They have until midnight Monday to file," he said. "In the meantime, I think our next step needs to be following up with a letter to the president pushing reform on the ranch program." Morris complained last year when the Nation introduced a new, closed-bid lease process and effectively auctioned off nearly 350,000 acres of ranch land to the highest bidders. Many long-time ranchers who were forced from their lands — and their livelihoods — left quietly. According to an audit of the ranch program, the tribe has 25 ranches in Arizona and New Mexico, divided into 78 ranch units and totaling about 1.6 million acres of tribal land. Ranchers of 21 of those units lost their rights to the land in the closed-bid process in January 2010...more