Speaker offers resolution to end Glen Canyon MOA

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — A memorandum of agreement to develop the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and adjacent tribal lands probably was a good deal for Navajo back in 1970 when it was signed, but not anymore.

Navajo Nation Council Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan, in a report Tuesday to the Resources Committee, said the MOA between the National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management and the Navajo Nation is perhaps one of the major reasons why Navajo has not made any type of development on the Navajo side at Lake Powell.

“The Navajo Nation is pretty much committed to economic development on the Navajo Reservation. The speaker and other members of the Navajo Nation Council are looking at the feasibility of major development near Lake Powell,” Morgan said.

And now, because the federal government allegedly has not lived up to a provision within the MOA, Morgan has introduced a resolution calling for its termination.

“One major area that we found in the 1970 memorandum of agreement is there is supposed to be a concession to Navajo Nation on a portion of Rainbow Bridge. In the agreement there is also a provision that if such doesn’t take place, the Navajo Nation can call for a termination of the agreement,” he said.

The proposed legislation to terminate the agreement is the result of several meetings with the National Park Service at Glen Canyon, Morgan said. “The first attempt was to amend the MOA. That didn’t go very far.”

He said agreements such as the MOA have held back the Navajo Nation from going into large developments.

Chapters near Lake Powell, such as Navajo Mountain, are in support of development, according to Morgan, while LeChee Chapter’s interpretation “is that the Navajo Nation — maybe the speaker’s office — is working on developing the area. But we’re not there yet.”

Ivan Gamble, a member of LeChee Chapter, said recently that he and LeChee Delegate Tommy Tsosie ended up at a meeting in Gallup during the July 2007 summer session attended by Morgan, Chief of Staff Pat Sandoval, several of the standing committee chairmen, Judge Marcella King, billionaire B.J. “Red” McCombs, and a business associate, Bob Honts.

“What they said was they wanted to have 40,000 acres of land for development within LeChee, Kaibeto, and Inscription House chapters to be able to put five hotels, three golf courses and three casinos,” Gamble said. “Their whole plan was they wanted to be able to take several acres of land and build homes there for multimillionaires from the East Coast hugging Navajo Canyon, and that these people could have 75 year leases.”

Two months ago, Gamble was invited to a meeting which Morgan reportedly had requested with the park service regarding the Glen Canyon boundary. Honts, Morgan, several members of the speaker’s office, Delegate Ervin Keeswood, Glen Canyon and park service representatives were among those in attendance. At that meeting, Gamble said he learned that the land area now requested for development is 50,000 acres.

“My family’s land, all my aunts’ and uncles’ land, my grandparents’ land, that’s all part of where they want to develop this. But they’ve never told the local people, and everybody knows that on Navajo you have to get the local consent to be able to do anything, and without it, you have no project.

“Our ancestors hid over along the river; they never went on the Long Walk. That’s where we’ve always been, for six generations since then. And here they are trying to sell our land to these developers.

“We’re not against development, but we think that we need to have a say in all the development that occurs in our chapter, and 50,000 acres is one-fourth of LeChee Chapter. We’re not going to give that much land up.”

Regarding Morgan’s legislation to terminate the MOA, Resources Chairman George Arthur said, “As reported by the Speaker, this is a discussion that has been going on for several months. At various points and times, I have been a part of the discussion and also have taken part in the discussion at the national level.

“This legislation is to say to the park service and the Department of the Interior that we are no longer interested in this agreement that was put in place back in the 1970s. In essence, you could probably go to the extent of saying that somebody failed to meet their contractual obligations, and it wasn’t the Navajo Nation.”

A Sept. 5 memorandum from the Office of the Controller states that according to a review by Navajo Department of Justice regarding the Rainbow Bridge concession fee, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the legislation to transfer fees to the Navajo Nation. However, it failed at the Senate level and legislation to legally transfer the fee to the Nation never materialized, therefore, the Nation never received any revenue for the concession fee.

Morgan told the committee, “We are working on seeing a major development on the Navajo Nation,” but added, “Let’s concentrate on resolving issues with this agreement first.”

In a memo to Arthur regarding the legislation, Morgan said the National Park Service is incorrectly interpreting the MOA as granting it land use review and approval authority over all development on Navajo within one mile of the Glen Canyon National Recreation boundary.

By incorrectly interpreting the agreement, the park service “is thus directly challenging the sovereign authority of the Navajo Nation to govern land use decisions on tribal lands.