El Morro National Monument, Cibola County
Current Population: 2,200
Language: Navajo
Early Societal Structure: Seminomadic, Bands - Kinship
Location: 168,000 acres in Cibola and McKinley Counties, 100 miles south of the "Big Rez"(147,632 acres belong to the Navajo Nation)
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Less than half the land located within Ramah's borders is tribal trust land. Ramah is the most heavily checkerboarded chapter of the Navajo.
The land of the Tł'ohchiní is physically separated from the "Big Rez" - located 100 miles south of the rest of the Navajo Reservation. Ramah is also its own reservation with its own relationship with the BIA, and is considered a. separate Band.
Ongoing Aggression
The Tł'ohchiní people were rounded up and forced on the Long Walk of the Navajo and incarcerated near Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo. The treaty that established the Navajo reservation failed to include the Ramah Band's homeland.
In 1882, armed Mormons arrived with the intent of converting the Navajo and Zuni. They arrived heavily armed and forcefully took the most fertile land from the Tł'ohchiní. They founded the town of Ramah, naming it after a village in the Old Testament's Book of Joshua. Ramah's population is around 400. Colonizers have tried to displace the Tł'ohchiní ever since they arrived - even going so far as lobbying Congress for forced removal.
Independent
In the years from 1868 through the 1960s, the Ramah Navajo acted independently of the Navajo Nation. Although part of the Navajo Nation since the 1960s, they accomplished some "firsts." They founded the Pine Hill community with its Pine Hill Navajo School and health clinic. Community leaders, professionals, and Michael Gross, a lawyer from the East who had begun to work in legal services for Native Americans, obtained funding directly from the U.S. Congress in the early 1970s for the school and clinic.
Although the Ramah Band of Navajo had lived on their lands for several centuries up to the 1970s, their rights to them had not been fully secured under United States law since a transfer by the U.S. government had not occurred. The Navajo on these lands were not eligible for the services and benefits provided by the governmental agencies and departments to federally recognized tribes on trust lands.
In 1979, the volunteer, Jan Crull, Jr. succeeded, securing Public Law 96-333. He also taught the Ramah Navajo how to obtain all mineral rights underlying the lands he had secured for them with Public Law 97-434.
Unique Relationship with BIA
The BIA eventually set up a Ramah office, and since 1986, the Tł'ohchiní have been able to work directly with the federal government, s change that has been supported by the Navajo Nation. The Ramah Navajo has the unique status of being an independently governed community.
Billy the Kid?
A man calling himself John Miller, his wife Isadora, and their adopted Navajo son set up a ranch on the edge of the reservation in 1881 -- the year Billy the Kid was supposedly shot to death. There were rumors Miller was Billy the Kind. He claimed this to be true ahile dying but it has never been confirmed.
Much like the To'Hajiilee, people in Ramah claim to not get much support from the Navajo Nation. They incorporated their school board so they can receive grant money.
Due to the Mormon history, there has only been one attempt to open a bar in Ramah. Despite this, the area has high rates of alcoholism, as well as high rates of crime and unemployment. Ramah is the Wild West in the modern era. It was written that Ramah attracts "homesteader families, regular folks, hippies, Radical Faeries, Ramah Navajos, Zuni Puebloans, nihilistic survivalists, reclusivists, people who like their privacy, people who enjoy living simply, and many other Ôoutcasts' who live on the fringes of society."
In a presentation submitted in opposition of Executive Order 13781, which included the reorganization of BIA, Chapter President David Jose said "While the Ramah Navajos are true Navajos and always will be, we live under unique historical and geographic circumstances. The present relationships with the Interior and IHS foster our survival as a distinct community, with its own traditions, bonds, and history."
