Shirley: Stay away from Navajo AG

By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — The Navajo Nation Council is set to meet for a special session on Monday when it will consider removing Louis Denetsosie as the nation’s attorney general.

The legislation to remove the attorney general is being sponsored by Council delegates Young Jeff Tom, Smith Lake/Mariano Lake, and Lawrence Platero, Tohajiilee.
President Joe Shirley issued a memorandum to the Council’s 88 delegates on Wednesday cautioning them against removing Denetsosie.

“The Nation is at a critical phase in several legal areas,” Shirley wrote in the memo. “The dismissal of its Attorney General could cause much of the progress our Nation has achieved in several sensitive legal areas to be lost.”

Shirley wrote that the proposed legislation “is indisputably a reaction to the April 29, 2008, legal opinion” he sought regarding the initiative he is seeking to place on the November ballot to reduce the number of Council delegates from 88 to 24 and to obtain line item veto power on appropriations items.

Denetsosie issued an opinion April 29 that a simple majority or 50 percent-plus-one of the electorate — and not a super majority or a majority in each voting precinct — was needed for the initiatives to pass.

“As the Nation’s Chief Legal Officer and in accordance with the Nation’s Department of Justice plan of operation, Mr. Denetsosie has a duty to review and evaluate all legal possibilities when a legal opinion is sought,” Shirley stated.
Shirley wrote that Denetsosie had a duty to analyze the question based upon Diné Fundamental Laws and said that the attorney general “fulfilled his obligation and performed his duty in a proper, impartial and professionally indifferent way.”

“If there is any concern about the Attorney General’s analysis, the Courts of the Navajo Nation is the rightful venue to settle such issues rather than the legislative body,” Shirley wrote.

Though the Council has twice before tried to remove the attorney general with one attempt resulting in a reprimand of him, the president wrote that Denetsosie has “an exemplary record” as attorney general, citing the San Juan River Settlement agreement, the settlement of the 1934 litigation that lifted the 40-year-old Bennett Freeze, and other instances where Denetsosie negotiated on behalf of the tribe.
Denetsosie is currently involved in several important cases, the president wrote. He “is supervising the Navajo Nation v. Peabody lawsuit involving interference with the trustee and racketeering, Navajo Nation v. United States involving breach of trust and inverse condemnation for imposing the Bennett Freeze, Navajo Nation v. United States involving the trust asset mismanagement litigation, uranium cleanup issues at Churchrock and Tuba City, Radiation Exposure Compensation Act amendments, and many other critically important matters that have strengthened the Nation’s sovereignty and protected the Navajo Nation’s interests.”