After exposing the Navajo Nation's selling its aboriginal land claims, John Redhouse was censored by Navajo Times
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, July 15, 2025
WINDOW ROCK, Arizona -- When John Redhouse, Dine', wrote about the Navajo Nation extinguishing Navajo aboriginal land claims for 86 cents an acre -- it ended his time as a columnist at Navajo Times. It was a bold move to expose it in 1981.
Dr. Jennifer Denetdale, Dine' historian, said she discovered Redhouse's column during her research for her PhD. Her comments came as Redhouse launched his new book on bordertown racism and the torture murder of Navajos in Farmington, New Mexico.
Redhouse describes what happened, as a result of his column published by Navajo Times on March 5, 1981.
"At the time I wrote the column, the Navajo Tribal Council and tribal chairman Peter MacDonald had not yet sold out to the federal government. But they later did and received from the government $14.8 million (or 86 cents an acre) to extinguish its aboriginal land claim title."
"The three non-Indian law firms, approved by the Secretary of Interior to represent the Navajo Tribe, then took their guaranteed 10 percent contingency fee of the fed’s money settlement which was based on the estimated value of the stolen Indian land 'at the time of taking' in 1868," Redhouse told Censored News.
In the column, Redhouse describes the reasons the United States government wanted Navajos land that was rich in minerals, and the resulting forced removal of Navajos to Fort Sumner and the Treaty of 1868.
As a result of the column, Navajo Times followed with an article, and announced that the newspaper would no longer publish the weekly column of John Redhouse, because of pressure from "top Navajo tribal officials."
The censorship was noticed.
Tim Giago, who was a columnist at the Daily Times in Farmington, at the time, wrote about the censorship and questioned who owns Navajo Times.
"Does the tribal administration own the Navajo Times, or do the people of the Navajo Nation own it?" wrote Giago, who published Lakota Times and created Indian Country Today.
The facts revisited open a window to history.
"Does the tribal administration own the Navajo Times, or do the people of the Navajo Nation own it?" wrote Giago, who published Lakota Times and created Indian Country Today.
The facts revisited open a window to history.
Today, Redhouse shares the column, "Dissenting Opinion," originally published March 5, 1981.
Censored News series on the book launch of John Redhouse in Pyramid Lake, Nevada; Albuquerque; and Farmington, New Mexico.
Redhouse's new book is Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s.
Copyright John Redhouse, Censored News
4 comments:
On Sept.30,1978, the Indian Claims Commission issued "The Final Report of the Indian Claims
In the Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission, a sentence in the last paragraph told it all. It said, "The Indian Claims Commission went a long step in this direction but could offer only money." This statement tells me that it was a kangaroo Court based on the Doctrine of Discovery (Johnson v. M"Intosh).
The Indian Claims Commission wasn't a court, it was a panel of white men. It didn't honor the Treaties because "it could offer only money. The only job of the Indian Claims Commission was to leave money on the table and as they left they were to tell our elders, fresh out of the boarding school, "Take the money, you are not selling the land". And they could do that with a straight face because they were standing on the Doctrine of Discovery (You don't own any land to sell). The reality of American law is that it is founded on myth. As American law books proclaim, "The title of the government acquired by discovery is superior to that of the aborigines".
The Indian Claims Commission was very much like the 1973 movie , "The Sting" which had con artists setting up an elaborate fake off-track betting parlor in order to swindle a man out of a million dollars. In the same way the government set up an elaborate system that looked like a court of law with lawyers and expert witnesses but absent was a jury. Also missing was due process of law and equal protection under the law. Looking back, The Indian Claims Commission was race law---a law just for a certain racial segment of society.
What was the end game of the Indian Claims Commission? What happened to the tribes that didn't take the bait? You can look to the Lakota that never touched the original 17 or 19 million the ICC left on the table. That money over the last 50 years has grown in interest to somewhere between 2 and 3 billion dollars. The diabolical way the government deals with Indians is revealed in the fact that once the Lakota take that money, they will have indeed sold the Great Sioux Nation by accepting "settlement" money. And all that talk about "take the money you're not selling the land" was all Doctrine of Discovery double talk.
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