Boyden secretly worked for Peabody at the same time he was representing the Hopi.

"Boyden was a powerful figure in southwestern politics and society for decades. He was a bishop in the Mormon Church and a tenacious, skilled trial lawyer. He also represented the Hopi. The tribe, it seemed, couldn't have wished for a more potent ally. For years Boyden tried to persuade the Hopi to open their land to mining interests. Traditionalists in the tribe rejected the idea out of hand. One of them, Thomas Banyacya, said, "You will make us a landless, homeless people. This is the only land we have." Not to be rebuffed, Boyden helped assemble a tribal council more sympathetic to his own views. On May 16, 1966, Boyden presented it with a lease proposal he had prepared for the council members to sign. According to Charles Wilkinson, a professor of law at the University of Colorado who has studied Boyden's career, Boyden failed to tell the council that Peabody would be operating the largest strip mines in the country on their land. Moreover, he said little or nothing about the huge quantities of water the company would need.

Boyden also neglected to tell the tribe that its coal would help fuel the development boom in the Southwest. With cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas then on the brink of explosive growth, the tribe could have exerted enormous leverage to extract the best possible price for its coal and water. Instead, Boyden's agreement sold the tribe's coal and water rights for absurdly low prices. The Hopi and the Navajo received a royalty rate that was half what the U.S. government received for coal mined on public lands. The water deal was worse -- if there even was a deal. Masayesva says there is no evidence that anyone from the tribe signed a lease that gave Peabody access to the reservation's aquifers.

"There is no record," declares Masayesva. "We hired a law firm to investigate. They couldn't find any record where the tribe ever approved a sale of that water."

Why did Boyden fail to protect the interests of his impoverished clients, who even today suffer an unemployment rate that hovers around 50 percent? The mystery wasn't solved until many years after Boyden's death in 1980. One of Wilkinson's research assistants uncovered a startling fact while studying a collection of Boyden's papers in 1992: Boyden secretly worked for Peabody at the same time he was representing the Hopi. Billing records and correspondence with Peabody executives show that Boyden's association with the company lasted from 1964 through 1971. Boyden's chief concern during those years was not the welfare of the Hopi but the development of the Southwest, which would have been impossible without access to the tribe's coal and water."

-NRDC OnEarth: A Thirsty Nation, Fall 2004-

For more information please visit http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/04fal/blackmesa1.asp