This is from the UN website:

In 1974, the mining industry played a major role in passage of the Navajo-Hopi Settlement Act of 1974. This crucial piece of legislation resulted in the largest relocation of Native American people since the 1860's. The relocation effort has been a disaster. More than 12,000 people have been relocated over the past 22 years. Some were sent to cities where, unable to speak English or relate to a non-traditional economy, they quickly lost the small sums of money they were given at the time of the relocation. The rest were sent to the "New Lands", an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site contaminated by the nation's worst nuclear spill. But many families resisted orders to relocate, and 23 years later, several thousand still remain on their traditional homesites. This relocation has cost the U.S. taxpayers over $350 million.

The people affected by the legislation were never directly informed of its adoption, never allowed to testify in any Congressional hearing and never allowed to be represented in any way through the process. All the decisions that led to partition of their land were carried out and enacted by newly created male-dominated tribal councils located 100 miles away from the directly affected people.

With assistance from the U.S. government, the mining industry has supported a new faction on the reservations consisting of businessmen who profit from mining, large-scale cattle ranching, and other non-traditional economic activities. This faction controls the tribal governments and rejects traditional religious views about the sacredness of the land. It views the traditional Dineh living on the land as obstacles to the success of its business ventures. This faction is considered to be the sole legitimate voice of all the people and has been granted sovereign powers which deprive the people of fundamental civil rights.

Response to the Environmental Crisis

In 1996, Congress passed a law endorsing a 75-year lease arrangement that would allow a few of the families to remain as tenants on the land. The law sanctions the relocation of families not eligible for these leases and forces the families who sign the leases to live without benefit of civil and religious rights exercised by other Americans. In April 1997, when all efforts to obtain justice in the U.S. judicial system failed, and in order to get the relocation laws repealed, the Dineh filed a formal request for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to conduct an investigation of human rights violations against them by the U.S. government. Several visits to New York by Dineh helped create an Inter-faith coalition of faith-based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). A delegation of NGOs traveled to Black Mesa to witness the historic meeting between the traditional Dineh and Hopi people and Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Mr. Amor traveled to Black Mesa in early February 1998 to investigate charges of human rights violations by the U.S. government. This is the first time the U.S. is being formally investigated by the United Nations for violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief. It is the hope of the Dineh people that the UN will cite the U.S. for violations of International Human Rights law.

"The forcible relocation of over 10,000 Navajo people is a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations."

-- Leon Berger, Executive Director, Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation Commission upon resignation.

"I feel that in relocating these elderly people, we are as bad as the Nazis that ran the concentration camps in World War II."

-- Roger Lewis, federally appointed Relocation Commissioner upon resignation

"I believe that the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi people that followed from the passage in 1974 of Public Law 93-531 is a major violation of these people's human rights. Indeed this forced relocation of over 12,000 Native Americans is one of the worst cases of involuntary community resettlement that I have studied throughout the world over the past 40 years."

-- Thayer Scudder, Professor of Anthropology, California Institute of Technology in a letter to Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

This is from 2006

Feb. of 2008 article

Check back here at Docudharma, the same questions came up