Hopi Elections Slated In April

By Tammy Gray-Searles
   Amidst continuing turmoil, dates have been set for election of the Hopi chairman and vice chairman.
   The Hopi primary election is scheduled for Monday, April 13, and the general election just one week later on April 20.
   The tribe is continuing to function without a chairman or vice chairman since the resignation of Chair-man Ben Nuvamsa on Dec. 31, however, whether it is legally functioning is likely to be determined by the courts.
   Nuvamsa issued an order upon leaving office that, among other things, the tribal council should not meet until a new chairman is elected.
   Tribal Secretary Mary Felter issued a memo stating that the chairman’s order was not valid and would not be followed, and some members of the tribal council have continued to hold meetings.
   According to Nuvamsa, all action taken at the meetings is invalid.
   “In any event,” Nuvamsa wrote, “there is no legal tribal council in place to conduct any official legisla-tive business of the Hopi Tribe until such time that a special election is held and a new chairman and vice chairman are elected and seated. Until then, any meetings of the council representatives are illegal and would only be considered ‘informal gatherings.’”
   Nuvamsa’s letter is in response to a recent decision by the council to hold a hearing to remove Nuvamsa as chairman due to “serious neglect of duty.” The former chairman responded that not only does he believe the hearing to be outside of the law, but also a waste of money since he has already resigned. According to Nuvamsa, he also has not been served with the required notice for the hearing outlining the charges against him.
   “The obvious point is that it is senseless to hold this hearing since I have resigned and am no longer the tribal chairman,” he noted.
   Nuvamasa also contends that at least five members of the council were illegally seated and are not eli-gible to participate in any proceedings of the council, and that there are seven representatives that should be recognized as members of the council, but are not.
   An attempted council meeting on Jan. 12 brought the issue to a head when community members in at-tendance were asked to leave so the council could meet in executive session. It is alleged during the meet-ing that one elected, but unrecognized, member of the council was physically removed from the meeting by police officers. A group called Hopi Organizational Political Initiative (H.O.P.I.) issued a press release de-tailing the alleged removal of Representative Alph Secakuku and questioning the involvement of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police officers in the incident.
   It is unclear what court action might take place regarding the alleged illegal council meetings or Nu-vamsa’s executive order calling for the shutdown of the tribal council, but legal challenges have been filed to a decision by the Office of Surface Mining to allow Peabody Coal Company life of mine access to the Black Mesa coal mine located partially on the Hopi Reservation.
   Nuvamsa has held that the Hopi tribe was not officially represented in the decision process because of the turmoil within the tribal government.
   He called on the tribal council members to allow the tribe to move forward through the holding of a special election for the positions of chairman and vice chairman.
   “Instead of holding a senseless ‘removal hearing’ let us move on with fixing our tribal government by holding a special election because only through a properly seated tribal leadership can we move to repair our government,” Nuvamsa wrote.