A group of about 20 Eastern Agency ranchers say the three-party agreement governing grazing land on Eastern Navajo has broken down and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is filling the power vacuum without consulting grazing permitees.
“What’s heard from our government officials seem to be just threats,” said Albert Shirley of Iyanbito, New Mexico, one of the spokesmen for the group. “Numerous people have grievances and there’s no due process.”
At the center of the problem is the demise of the local land board, which represents the Navajo Nation in the 1965 memorandum of understanding that oversees grazing in Eastern Agency.
According to the ranchers, the power and compensation of the elected land boards has been steadily eroded to the point that a lot of land board members aren’t showing up for meetings and there’s no quorum.
The land boards are supposed to mediate disputes and make recommendations to the BIA, which has the ultimate authority to issue grazing permits.
But the ranchers say in the absence of the land boards, the BIA’s natural resource specialist in the area, Effie Delmar, is making bizarre decisions without consulting the locals or even telling them. The most egregious example of BIA overstep, according to the ranchers, is in Iyanbito Chapter where Delmar allegedly canceled several grazing permits without the knowledge of the permittees, consolidated them and gave the resulting large permit to one family.
Wilbur Murphy, who was on the district land board at that time, said the board had opposed the move and local rancher Arnold Collins added that Iyanbito had passed a chapter resolution against it.
According to Emery Chee of Baahaali, New Mexico, the permits in question had been in the same families for decades before they were canceled.
“This was not their land just yesterday,” he noted.
The joint land board in Huerfano, New Mexico, overturned the BIA’s decision, but the family who was awarded the permit is still grazing livestock there, according to Murphy...
MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment