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SANDERS - Unlike most of the vast, impoverished Navajo Nation, in this town, all the roads are paved, schools and clinics are a short drive away, and everyone has electricity and running water in their homes.

Those modern conveniences are what lured hundreds of Navajo families to the "New Lands" - ranch land the federal government bought in the early 1980s as part of a massive project to relocate thousands of Navajos from Hopi land and hundreds of Hopis from Navajo land.

Now, a quarter century and $514 million later, the federal Office of Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation is winding down what has become one of the largest relocation efforts in U.S. history. The office expects to move the last of the group - some 40 families - by next year.

The community of relocated Navajos near Sanders calls itself Nahata' Dziil, or "planning with strength," and to some, the so-called New Lands is a success story. The families, they say, are mostly doing well and the community has a bright future.

But there are persistent critics, along with some families who have balked at the idea, refusing to move from their own land in eastern Arizona that their families inhabited for generations. And now the question looms: Can the New Lands remain self-sufficient once the federal program ends?

In 1882, President Chester Arthur designated 2.5 million acres in northern Arizona for the Hopi Tribe and other Indians.

Before then, Navajos had been herding sheep on the land in the years since they returned from the Long Walk, as the Navajos call their forced relocation and imprisonment in eastern New Mexico in the mid-1860s.

The Hopi Tribe went to court in 1958 seeking return of the land the tribe claimed, and in 1962, a federal court in Arizona deemed 1.8 million acres a joint-use area.

Twelve years later, Congress approved the Navajo-Hopi settlement and ordered the tribes to work out their differences over the land. That never happened, and four years later, Congress divided the 1.8 million acres and ordered members of each tribe to leave the other's land.

When the federal government proposed relocation as the solution, some Navajos armed themselves and threatened bloodshed if anyone tried to move them.

Moving is not a concept widely embraced in the Navajo culture. Navajos often bury their children's umbilical cords in the land to tie them to it.

"We get used to our surrounding so much because we're part of our surrounding," said Peterson Zah, a former Navajo chairman and president, whose tenure was dominated by the relocation project. "You live in the spiritual way, with all the plants and the vegetation, the trees, the animal life, those kind of things people generally don't experience."

But whether they liked it or not, Navajos complied with the law.

Glenna Thompson said Navajos often asked their creator to allow them to stay.

"We prayed that we wouldn't be forced to move because that's where our hearts are and that's where we wanted to stay," she said.

Some signed accommodation agreements to remain on Hopi land under that tribe's jurisdiction. Some relocated to much smaller plots across the reservation.

While big-city life was an easy transition for some who worked and whose children went to school off the reservation, studies found that others lost their homes because they could not pay water and utility bills - basic amenities they had been living without.

Ram Herder, 89, thought he might enjoy himself in the New Lands. But he finds himself concerned with water quality and the soil that he says is sandier than in Howell Mesa, where he grew up. What the future holds for his children and grandchildren is another concern.

"I enjoyed life. I feel satisfied with my life," he said through an interpreter. "The matter is 20, 30 years into the future, how our grandchildren will feel. Are they going to blame us that we decided to come here?"

Eilene Tsosie, 22, has similar thoughts of how her generation will handle life away from the traditional reservation.

What made it successful, though, is that families moved together, she said.

Tsosie has been working to create an archive of interviews, documents and photos in hopes of connecting people like her to their past.

"I don't think the answer to it is to erase everything," she said. "If you can show them this community is their own, they'll take more responsibility in development."

About 400 Navajo families, the largest concentration of relocatees, live in Sanders, a suburban-type setting along Interstate 40 near the New Mexico state line.

Bringing along their livestock was important for many Navajo families who grew up herding sheep, using the wool to weave blankets and rugs and the meat in meals.

Livestock must be vaccinated and twice-yearly counts keep people from having too many animals.

The rules are more restrictive than Navajos were used to. On the rest of the reservation, livestock roam often without boundaries. The community is set to elect a commission in November that would have the authority to issue site leases. Its economic-development corporation, which is planning a shopping center, recently held its first meeting.

Development is advancing, "and it seems like they're ready to go," said Nathan Begay, manager of the Nahata' Dziil Chapter, similar to a town government.

"But they're dependent on the government," he said. "It seems like they don't want to let that go."

The older generation might never fully adapt to life on the New Lands.

"Mentally, for us older folks that moved down here, it still hurts," said Clarence Bedonie, 53, who helps manage the livestock in Sanders.

As he walks around the hills, he sometimes thinks he never should have left.

"But I didn't make that decision for myself," he says. "For the kids, I didn't want them to be tied to the traditional rez."

Ram Herder, 89, feeds sheep on his home site in Sanders. Despite widespread poverty in much of the Navajo Nation, life in Sanders is robust.

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