By Alain Briot

This photograph was taken in an area of Navajoland called theNew Lands.  It is located the furthest South of any area in Navajoland.  In this instance, looking at a map of Arizona, this location is about 100 miles north of St Johns and 40 miles south of Sanders. Neither town is very well known.  To use a better-known landmark, the new lands are south of I-40, the interstate that runs East-West in Northern Arizona, roughly following the path previously chosen for old US 66.

The New Lands are the result of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute.  The Hopi, whose relatively small reservation is located square in the middle of the much larger Navajo Reservation, have contested the exact boundaries of their reservation for years on the basis that the boundaries of their land were established first, and that the Navajo settled in Arizona long after the Hopi.  In the 1940’s, as a result of this dispute, a certain acreage of Navajo lands was turned o...