Last week Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye spoke to the House Natural Resources Committee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs to gin up support for a bill that would unencumber tribal lands that have been fettered by preference right lease applications (PRLAs.)
HR 2402 would, said Begaye, end “one chapter of a four-decade-old federal statutory obligation to the Navajo Nation that was authorized in the Navajo Hopi Settlement Act of 1974.”
That act committed the federal government to provide the Navajo nation with unencumbered lands, i.e. lands that someone else didn’t have mineral rights to. The nation was permitted to select lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The nation in the 1980s selected several parcels, but it turned out they were encumbered by prior minerals rights. That land could not then be taken into trust. The existing law does not provide a way to deselect these lands and select others in their place.
The proposed law would do that by exchanging existing PRLAs for competitive coal leasing bidding rights, exchanging the rights for credits.
Begeye told lawmakers: “Ultimately, the passage of HR 2402 would bring closure to one element of the long, painful experience the Navajo people have faced due to the 1974 Navajo Hopi Land Settlement Act.” He added, “It fulfills a promise made by the federal government to the Navajo Nation 40 years ago.”
