Advertisement
lists.topica.com/dir/
reply to this post
RavenBlueWol...
online status 120 friends
March 09, 2004 - 10:10 AM
Re: Yet more sites and info!
DINEH RELOCATION RESISTANCE
Last Changed Feb 13, 2002
If this page is not already in a frame, and your browser supports frames, then click HERE
topica
Join BIGMTLIST!
The Latest Atrocity Against the Dineh
STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT BEGAYE ON THE BULLDOZING OF HPL SUNDANCE CEREMONY
SITE BY THE HOPI TRIBE
Window Rock, Navajo Nation (Arizona)--
The Hopi government ís decision to bulldoze the Sundance ceremony site at
Big Mountain is deplorable. In the strongest terms, I object to such a
violent action against the Navajo families who reside on Big Mountain
and who participate, as a part of their spiritual beliefs, in the
Sundance ceremony. The Hopi government appears to be persecuting these
families for their religious beliefs, as well as for their heartfelt
desire to stay on their ancestral lands and to continue their
traditional ways.
The Sundance ceremony has been performed at Big Mountain for a number of
years at the request of the Big Mountain Navajo families. It has become
an important part of their spiritual lives. Like all peoples, including
the Hopis, the Navajo families on Big Mountain should have the freedom
to practice their non-violent beliefs without governmental interference.
Native peoples have, all too often, seen their sacred places damaged or
destroyed by non-Natives. It is shocking to see one Native government
do the same to another Native community. The Hopi government's action
seemed to have been intended to intimidate, by a show of force, all the
Navajo families who continue to reside on Navajo ancestral lands within
the Hopi Partitioned Lands. Let me remind the Hopi government that the
Israeli military uses a similar tactic of bulldozing homes in
Palestinian villages. The outcome of that strategy has not brought
peace to the Middle-East.
I understand that the Hopi government is frustrated. The Land Dispute
has taken its toll on everybody--just ask those Navajo families who live
on the HPL and have sought spiritual strength through the Sundance
ceremony. They feel the Land Dispute's harshness more than anyone else.
I also understand that the Hopi government claims legal jurisdiction
over the Sundance. But I question whether that jurisdiction gives the
Hopi government the moral right to act as violently as they have.
I raise my objections directly with the Hopi leadership. The politics
of destruction can start a terrible downward spiral that we must stop
now. At this point, the first step is to secure the release of any
Navajos who were detained by the Hopi police. Then I would ask that the
Hopi government apologize. In return, I will commit to working with the
Hopi government to address its reasonable concerns. We must build
bridges of trust, not walls of fear and intimidation. We must rely on
reason and diplomacy, and the law, not acts of force, to resolve our
disputes.
The actions of the Hopi government have cast a long shadow over all the
Navajos who reside on the HPL, as well as put chilling effect on the
relationship of our two nations. Nonetheless, our two people are here,
together, as neighbors --this is the Creator's will. We should honor
that will with good hearts, good intentions and good actions.
ARTICLES:
Camp Anna Mae Sundance, A Wash Inside Their Eyes
History Of Many Morning Raids
Interferance with the sacred Sundance
Photos sent in by Morning Star Gali in Flagstaff
Photo #1 Photo #2 Photo #3 Photo #4 Photo #5 Photo #6 Photo #7 Photo #8
Photographs of arbor after Hopi destruction
These photos sent in by Danielle Ashike
Photo #9 Photo #10 Photo #11
Additional photos posted on SENAA web site
Support Organizations for Dineh Relocation Resistance
Action Resource Center
Box 2104
Venice, CA 90294
310-396-3254 (voice) / 310.392.9965 (fax)
Mauro DeOliveira
meyesol@eudoramail.com
Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS)
P.O. Box 23501
Flagstaff, AZ 86002
v-mail: (520) 773-8086
e-mail: blackmesais@yahoo.com
WebSite: www.blackmesais.org
BMIS is a collective of individuals acting to support
the sovereignty of Dine people, who face forced relocation,
environmental devastation and cultural extinction by the
hands multinational corporations, U.S. and tribal governments.
Southern California Big Mountain Support Group
directaction@siegesoft.com
pager at (714)621-9241
SENAA International
Al Swilling, Founder
SENAA International: senaa@senaa.org
Indigenous Support Coalition of Oregon (ISCO)
Beth Newberry
PO Box 11715
Eugene, OR 97440
(541) 683-2789
bigmnt@efn.org
Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land
Migrations
Carol Snyder Halberstadt
P.O. Box 543
Newton, MA 02456
carol@migrations.com
A nonprofit enterprise of the weavers of Black Mesa.
The weavers receive a fair price for their work,
and buyers can make a tax-deductible contribution to a
fund under the auspices of SEE.
Northern Arizona Indigenous Peoples Legal Defense Fund
Social and Environmental Entrepeneurs (SEE) is the fiscal agent.
Steve Sugarman 310-456-3534
Social and Environment Entrepeneurs (SEE) email - steve@saveourplanet.org
20110 Rockport Way
Malibu, CA 90265 -5340
Twin Cities Big Mountain Support Group
blackngrin@hotmail.com
(612) 362-5964
Friends of Big Mountain
18 Highland Ave.
Northampton, MA 01060
bambam@anthro.umass.edu
featherbridge@hotmail.com
Paul Bloom's July 2001 Sundance Report
INDIAN LAW RESOURCE CENTER
601 E Street Southwest
Washington D.C. 20003
(202) 547-2800
Robert T. Coulter, Esq.,Executive Director
Steven M. Tullberg, Esq.
Curtis G. Berkey, Esq.
BEHIND THE BIG MOUNTAIN RELOCATIONS: NEW EVIDENCE ABOUT MINERAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS OF THE HOPI TRIBAL COUNCIL
There is now clear evidence that the Hopi Tribal Council has plans to exploit coal resources in the Big Mountain area. This is the area from which Navajos are being forcibly relocated in the so-called Hopi-Navajo dispute. For many years there has been a debate about the reasons for relocation of Hopis and Navajos from that area. Although many believe that mineral development plans are the main reason, the previously available evidence has not been conclusive.
The attached map entitled " Hopi Reservation-Mineral Development Plan" shows that Big Mountain is in an area called a "Proposed Coal Mining/Slurry Pipeline Area." (The other map helps clarify exactly where Big Mountain is located). This map was prepared by the Hopi Tribal Council, the federally recognized governing body of the Hopi Tribe. In the past, the Hopi Tribal Council has claimed that mineral development plans have nothing to do with their efforts to evict Navajos from Big Mountain. This map is " Map F." in a court document entitled "Statement of Claims of the Hopi Tribe" that was prepared by the Hopi Tribal Council's lawyers. It is one of several maps that were prepared for the Arizona Superior Court for the County of Apache in Case No. 6417. In that case, the Arizona court will decide how to al- locate water in the Little Colorado River System.
The Hopi Tribal Council presented the map in order to show the Arizona court that the Tribe has plans for using large amounts of water in future commercial and industrial development. The Arizona court is asked to reserve sufficient water resources for the Hopi Tribe to carry out this development. Here is how the Hopi Tribal Council's plans and water claims are described in the court papers:
G.2. Future mininq and slurry.
There is sufficient coal of high quality on Hopi Partitioned Lands for two additional mines and slurry pipelines should the Tribe so choose. The water for slurries and mining would be approximately 8,120 acre- feet per year. The exact location of wells and the dis- tance from which the water would be drawn cannot cur- rently be known, nor can contractual arrangements as to its use. The Hopi Tribe accordingly claims 8,120 acre- feet per year of groundwater for future mining and slurry activities.
The general location of the coal and possible well fields are shown on Map F.
G.3. Other mineral and industrial use.
The Hopi Tribe claims 21,000 acre-feet of groundwater annually for other mineral and industrial uses; 16,000 acre-feet annually for a 1,000 megawatt coal powered electrical generating station; 5,000 acre- feet annually for development of oil, gas and minerals other than coal including manufacturing of fertilizer or other products from such minerals.
Much coal mining is planned for the Big Mountain area--a large addition to the strip-mining now underway further north at Black Mesa. A great increase of water use is also being con- sidered. This water is used to flush pulverized coal through a slurry pipeline to a distant power plant in Nevada. Today, the Black Mesa coal slurry uses about 4,650 acre feet of water per
year. Many times that amount would be needed if the development plans were implemented. (An acre-foot of water is the amount of water that would stand one foot deep over one acre). The Hopi Tribal Council almost certainly has in its files more detailed studies and plans. Otherwise it could not confi- dently state to the court that there is "sufficient coal of high quality on Hopi Partitioned Lands for two additional mines and slurry pipelines..."
In light of this newly discovered evidence, there should be a fresh assessment of what Hopi mineral development plans indi- cate about the true motives for Hopi-Navajo relocation from the Big Mountain area. Just as important, there should be careful consideration of what such plans mean for the future of the Hopi people.
In addition, there should be new demands for clarification of the federal government's role in these plans. Under federal law, all leases involving Big Mountain coal and water would have to be approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Federal offi- cials have likely been involved in the planning process, and their files, too, might have the information that the public needs to make informed decisions about these important matters. It is time that everyone involved be more forthright about mineral development plans in Hopi country. The well-being of both Hopis and Navajos is at stake. March 22, 1989
Confidential maps and memos, supplied by Peabody Watch, Arizona, relating to the Peabody Western Coal Company's mining expansion plans. The whole set and be dwnloaded in a zipped file by clicking here.
The following six pages are from the minutes of the HTC and PWCC ´s October 19, 1988 meeting written by Reverend Caleb Johnson of the Hopi Tribe.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Maps
Map 1-
Original copy of Peabody ´s "Confidential" map, without our legend and markers *.
Map 2-
Our (Peabody Watch Arizona) legend (KW) = WEPO COAL AREAS and makers (KW)
Map 3-
Copy of the HPL ´s map and to focus in the "Proposed South Mesa Area" to illustrate just how close its southern boundaries are in the proximity of the "Proposed South Mesa Area" is where hundreds of Dine ´h resisting families are still residing, and as the PWCCs "Confidential" map clearly illustrates, embraces the western range of Big Mountain Herself.
Map 4-
Part of several maps in the water rights litigation, Phelps Dodge vs. The Hopi Tribe in Apache County Court, case number 6417 Map F. This particular map has an arrow pointing at 7 o ´clock direction, was inserted by us.
SDN UPDATE: AN OVERVIEW OF THE DINEH (NAVAJO) CRISIS
REPORT FROM HARALD IHMIG ON BLACK MESA
(Translated from the German by Alan Frankel)
February 25, 2000
The lights that shine at night on the northern edge of Black Mesa spread no hope. They are the greedy eyes of voracious bulldozers, which ceaselessly tear the liver out of the body of Mother Earth, as the Dineh say. One need not be born on this plateau, bare and yet full of so many kinds of life, to be won over by the land with its restful expanses, its gathered humans, and its rare plants that listen to prayers and heal. Here, where everything has a name and is woven into stories, the violent invasion of a world apart fills a visitor with pain and anger. Now the Peabody Coal Company is digging the coal and water out of Black Mesa. Every day, millions of gallons are pumped out in order to carry the black gold away to Nevada. Only in small amounts does the mine give coal and water back to the inhabitants whom it has robbed on a grand scale. Now that the camps are locked up and the springs have been conquered, the people depend on the trickle from the mine that is burying their lives. They -- and now we as well -- live without electricity or running water. Only a few cell phones and a single, fragile gateway to the Internet by way of windmill and gas generator maintain contact with the outside world, from which they anticipate help.
The tribal council, by contrast, has been able to equip its modern headquarters in distant Window Rock with the help of lease payments (originally less than 2%, now 12.5%). A federal court has just decided that although the Navajo were indeed cheated by an official from the Ministry of the Interior and his Peabody crony in the negotiation of royalties, the fraud can be brushed off with the enlightening comment that the representatives of the US agency are not obligated to act in the interest of the Navajo.
On February 17, when we latecomers -- Lea from Incomindios, Uta and I from FIAN, Corinna from Tuebingen -- had just barely arrived, the Dineh elders met with their presidents, or, more accurately, with their (white) principal attorney, who shared the throne of the podium and listened from above to the demands of his subordinates. Nevertheless, a dialog was achieved. However, the elders have the impression that Kelsey Begay, their president, listens more to the Hopi tribal council than to them. In the past, he has said openly that after 25 years of opposition to their "resettlement," they should finally swallow this bitter pill. For those receiving this advice, however, the pill is not only bitter, but poisonous.
Nor does he extend any welcome to "outsiders," "non-Indian supporters" like us. The Hopi press even explains that international human rights activists are alcoholics and the worst terrorists in the world. Currently most resisters and their supporters are being forced away.
Now off to San Francisco for a new trial in the Manybeads Case, which has been dragging on since 1988 and is attempting to overturn the Relocation Act, which legalizes the uprooting of a culture bound to the land, by appealing to constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. Next, the non-signers want to pay a visit to presidential candidate McCain, who calls himself a friend of the Indians but was involved substantially in the Accommodation Agreement of 1996; it guarantees their limited presence -- under threat of expulsion. Others want to demand a response from him still earlier, in Tucson. Most of our little "terrorist gang" will take part in these demonstrations. I am involved for the time being with a "domestic policy" problem, the improvement of the communication among the Dineh themselves -- a problem that needs a solution just as urgently as the pressures from outside.
This will have an impact on our reporting. Reports from San Francisco will follow, the second reports from Marion and Harald Mueller should have arrived, Timo has performed video interviews with Roberta Blackgoat and Louise Benally (at a a demonstration in Flagstaff). Please bear with us, as we cannot put our many impressions into words so quickly!
With the contributions from the [Society for Threatened Peoples] and Incomindios, we gave the Sovereign Dineh Nation a used all-terrain car. The contributions from Elke and Britta and their friends went into a big tent which will stay in the Anna Mae camp, along with Stefan's big gas stove. With the contribution from the One-World Network, Timo bought a camcorder that will also remain with the Dineh. The remaining contributions from Silke and friends and the PDS should serve, in my opinion, to make the voices of the elders heard and give them a point of contact with the outside world, if this should turn out to be their first wish.
The sun still rises every morning above the wild expanse of the steppe landscape, in which the few humans are easily lost to the eye; we find their trail only after many false starts along the winding dirt roads. There is, far and wide, no trace of Hopi settlers in the Hopi-Partitioned land. We cannot figure out why there should be no more room for the Dineh elders, children, and grandchildren and their small sheep and goat herds in the scattered yards in their homeland in which they are rooted like plants. But their culture, their desire to live in their own way, is not dying out; if it goes under, it will only be because the Dineh themselves have been killed off. There is still hope, because there is still resistance.
Brief Introduction
Roberta Blackgoat at Accomodation Agreement hearings in Pheonix, Feb. of '97
photo credit - Donna Cassano
This is about the largest forced relocation of American Indians in the 20th century to make way for Peabody Western Coal Company to strip mine the ancestral lands of the Dineh. This is being done with the aid of the corrupt US and tribal governments. The Dineh who have refused to leave their land and relocate to government supplied land (the site of a major radioactive spill) are being harassed with illegal eviction notices and livestock confiscations, deprived of their well water and firewood, and forced to live in constant fear. Last February a United Nations investigator came to Big Mountain and interviewed the Dineh about the religious intolerance to which they have been subjugated. His report will be presented in Geneva this spring.
A good article for background information on this issue can be found at:
Caught in a tangled web of US-Indian history
GENOCIDE ON BLACK MESA
The US Begins its Final Solution to a Land Dispute
Anna and Ella Begay are two Dineh (Navajo) sisters who live alone in a 10 foot by 12 foot shelter on desolate land in Coal Mine Mesa, in northeastern Arizona. While the traditional Dineh do not keep track of their age in years, the women are both probably over the age of 80. Ella is deaf and partially disabled. Living without electricity or running water, they survive by herding a few sheep and coaxing a few crops from the arid soil. Their only transportation is their two horses. Three donkeys haul water and firewood for them and also help plow their small field. By most standards, the sisters are among the poorest people in the US, and they must fight for daily survival using ancient methods at an age when most Americans can rely upon retirement checks. But they possess the strength that has enabled their people to live in harmony with this rugged yet beautiful terrain for thousands of years.
Anna and Ella Begay. Photos by Carlos Begay
On Tuesday, February 23, 1999, an army of 13 armed police officers and U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officials arrived over the desert trails in six police vehicles and two impoundment trucks. The squadron confiscated the sisters' horses and donkeys from their corral. The sisters lost their only possessions and the key to their survival on these harsh lands. Without their livestock, the chances that the elderly sisters will survive another year are diminished - which is the exact purpose of the attack.
Begay's home and corral. Photos by Carlos Begay
The US has begun what it hopes will be the final steps in a campaign to exterminate Dineh families who became trespassers on their traditional land as a result of a 1974 law pushed through Congress by the coal-fired power industry. The industry believed that the eviction of all residents of an area larger than the state of Rhode Island would simplify their access to the continent's richest deposits of low-sulfur coal. The land title was transferred to the Hopi Tribal Government, which at the time was dominated by John Boyden, a white attorney also working for the Peabody Coal Company. The tribal government was originally installed by the US for the purpose of granting mineral leases despite the strong objections of traditional Hopi and continues to receive 80% of its funding from Peabody Coal.
Over the next 25 years, over 12,000 Dineh were forcibly relocated in a program described by its former director Leon Berger as "a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations". Many were moved to the "New Lands", an area near Chambers, AZ, too arid to support their livestock and contaminated by the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history, which occurred when a containment dam at a uranium mine burst upstream on the Rio Puerco, which runs through the land. Others were moved into cities for which they lacked survival skills, and where they became caught in a circle of homelessness, alcoholism, and suicide.
Several thousand Dineh still remain on their ancestral land in defiance of all government attempts to drive them away. The US has forbidden them to make any repairs on their homes - even to repair broken windows - and some have taken shelter in bunkers dug into the earth. Firewood is confiscated in winter, and law enforcement officials harass and threaten them with eviction and jail sentences.
Joan Yellowhair's bunker. Photo by Carlos Begay
A law passed by Congress in 1996 requires the US to complete the eviction process by February 1, 2000. Some families were offered leases that allowed them to remain as tenants upon their land with no civil rights and without a means of survival. Those who refused to sign or who were not eligible will be evicted in the next 11 months.
The first step in the US eviction campaign is the removal of livestock. The targets are elderly people who survive by herding sheep as their families have done for hundreds of years. Their livestock is the centerpiece of their daily lives in which their culture and religion are interwoven with their land and animals. The herds have a different significance to the US government. It is the key to the people being able to maintain a fiercely independent lifestyle living in remote areas without electricity, running water, telephones, or assistance from the government. The government hopes that destroying their herds will turn them into helpless dependents upon the government who will be unable to resist the eviction process.
The livestock campaign is based on permits issued under terms set up in the 1996 law. People who either have refused or were ineligible to sign leases are not allowed permits for their livestock. People who signed leases are eligible for permits, but even they have found that many of their livestock will be taken, as the number of permits issued is less than needed to cover their livestock. The BIA began sending notices in January notifying families of its intention to begin removing non-permitted animals, and the confiscations are now underway.
The confiscation attacks took place at several other homes during the week, and over the next few months they will occur hundreds of times as the federal and tribal authorities remove all un-permitted animals from the region. Most of the people targeted for these attacks are over the age of 65, and some are over 90. They live in terror - not knowing when they wake up each morning if this will be the day when the authorities target their home.
Resistance to impoundments is treated severely. Rena Babbitt Lane, who lost livestock in a confiscation on Monday, February 22, had her hand broken when she tried to stop a previous impoundment. Other people have experienced beatings or been arrested when they tried to resist confiscations in the past. But past confrontations took place in connection with minor issues such as access to grazing areas. The campaign now being launched is targeted at the permanent elimination of the herds and ultimately with the removal of the people, so that the level of tension and desperation has escalated. For the last four years, the police have been training in weapons and tactics which will be used in the eviction campaign over the next year.
Rena Babbitt Lane with broken hand. Photo by her husband, John Lane.
The BIA publicly claims that the program is motivated only by a need to protect the rangeland for the benefit of the community. But as demonstrated in community meetings February 20-23 attended by most of the affected families, the policy is strongly opposed by the people whose interest the government claims to be protecting. Within the local community, the claim that the invasion is connected to ecology is not believed. The fact that the government began sending eviction notices to many families at the same time that it started the confiscation process indicates the true purpose of the program.
The Dineh ask other US citizens and people throughout the world to pressure the US government to stop the genocide. The Dineh have lived on their ancestral lands for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of the Europeans on this continent, and believe that it is their right to remain on these lands and to pursue their traditional religion and way of life. The US claims that it is resolving a land dispute between Dineh and Hopi people, but the people have no quarrel:
"We want everyone to know that the Navajos are not the ones taking our land, but the United States. The Hopi and the Navajo made peace long ago, and sealed their agreement spiritually with a medicine bundle. It is through the puppet governments, the 'Tribal Councils' forced upon both nations by the United States, that the illusion of a conflict has been created on the basis of the false modern concept of land title."
[Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablets]
The problems in the region were caused by US and corporate intervention, and the US has the obligation to correct these problems in a way that respects the right of the Dineh to continue their traditional way of life on their ancestral lands.
Thanks to Bill Sebastian for the above article
Thorough Background
The Case of the People of Sovereign Dineh Nation Submitted to Women's Environment Development Organization (WEDO)
Submission to the First Session of the International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights and the Environment
Paul Bloom's Sundance Report -- July 21, 1999 (Revised July 30)
"Never in this country will you go to church and see policemen outside taking your license numbers and your pictures." Joe Chasing Horse, Sundance Chief.
Sunday, July 18, saw the end of a four year cycle of Sundances at Camp Anna Mae on Big Mountain, Arizona, one of two Sundance ceremonies brought by the Lakota people to the Dineh (Navajo) threatened with imminent removal from their lands by the U.S. government.
Named for murdered American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Aquash, Camp Anna Mae designates an area of high desert land inhabited for centuries by people who suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of a line drawn in 1974 by an ignorant Congress heavily lobbied by Peabody Coal Co.
Besides its religious significance, this year's Sundance inadvertently became a massive demonstration of peaceful civil disobedience by all in attendance, residents, dancers, and supporters, who defied threats of fines and prosecution by the U.S.-created Hopi Tribal Council in order to attend.
As many as six cars of Hopi Rangers, Bureau of Indian Affairs police, and sheriffs of Navajo County maintained an around the clock vigil at the entrance of the camp. FBI and ATF agents reportedly visited the site as well. At the beginning of the 25 mile dirt road from Highway 264 another crew of Hopi Rangers stopped, questioned, I.D.-checked, and threatened people with fines and jail if they went to the Sundance. Some local residents were flatly turned away. No one knows how many stayed home to avoid the roadblocks, or how many were arrested on warrant checks or for other reasons. Notices designating Camp Anna Mae as a closed area were posted along the road.
In addition, "technicians" or "monitors" from the Hopi Land Team strutted aggressively around the Sundance area, ostensibly to ensure safe fires and sanitary conditions, harassing people in the kitchen and at the camps in arrogant displays of authority. These are the same thugs who accompany Hopi Rangers and heavily armed BIA police on recurrent raids to confiscate livestock of the resisters, those traditional Dineh who have refused to sign a restrictive lease authorized in 1996 by a U.S. Congress trying to settle a series of lawsuits by the Hopi Tribe.
Synchronized with these efforts was a campaign of misinformation, including false news reports planted on local radio of shots fired on the land, and radio spots on at least one commercial Flagstaff station warning people not to attend the Sundance because of threats of violence.
With the Sundance purification rites set to begin on 14 July, Hopi Tribal Council Chairman Wayne Taylor, Jr. issued an executive order dated 2 July declaring a drought emergency and extreme fire danger, and forbidding open fires within residential areas, and overnight camping on "undeveloped (sic) areas outside of Village areas."
On 9 July the chairman issued another executive order declaring a Hantavirus alert, proscribing camping in "underdeveloped (sic) areas" and asserting that no entrance would be permitted into "restricted (closed) areas."
In a letter the same day to sponsor and host of the Sundance and longtime resister Ruth Benally, Chairman Taylor, Jr. asserted that "the entire Hopi Reservation is closed to all access, except as authorized by the Hopi Tribe. All individuals entering and remaining on Hopi land without authorization of the Hopi Tribe will be subject to exclusion, assessment of penalties, and prosecution under the laws of the Tribe."
The Sundance is a religious ceremony of sacrifice and purification in which dancers abstain from food and water for four days, dancing from sunrise to sunset while drum-mers sing ancient prayers and families and friends watch (and dance) from the arbor. It's an experience of indescribable power and emotion. This was the twelfth year of the Sundance at the Joe and Alice Benally Memorial Sundance Grounds at Camp Anna Mae, the end of the third four year cycle.
Nevertheless the July 14 Navajo Hopi Observer, an independent paper, published a front page article by the Hopi Tribe Land Team which, among other slanders, depicted the Sundance ceremony as a "well-orchestrated effort to bait the Hopi Tribe into a hostile media situation."
More than 500 people from dozens of Indian nations and tribes plus non-Indian supporters from all over the world, including Japan, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, voted with their feet to refute the Hopi Tribal Council's desperate efforts to squash the Sundance. Their presence was a triumphant rebuke to an orchestrated campaign of lies and intimidation.
The original Hopi Tribal Council had been imposed by manipulation and deceit on the Hopi (the name means "peaceful") under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. By 1943 it had dissolved for lack of support. It was revived in the early 1950's by John Boyden, Peabody company lawyer and bishop of the Mormon Church. Over the protests of traditional Hopi, with the help of wealthy Mormon Hopi cattle ranchers, he convened a more durable tribal government.
The Indian Placement Service represented one of the Mormon Church's most successful and controversial programs. From 1949 to 1976 over 20,000 Indian children were taken into white families to live during the school year, going back to their reservation homes during the summer, and often returning to the same "foster" families each year. From its inception, the Hopi Tribal Council has been dominated by Mormons and alumni of this program.
The Mormon Church, extremely secretive about its assets, holds enormous investments in public utilities, including Arizona Public Service, and is reported to have been a majority shareholder in Peabody Coal Co.
Traditional Hopi still voice their opposition to the powerful Tribal Council, which has been maneuvering to assert its possession of the Hopi Partitioned Lands since the 1986 deadline originally mandated by Public Law 93-531 under the false premise of resolving a land dispute. They take strong exception to the assault on their Navajo neighbors with whom they have shared land, traded, intermarried, and disputed for centuries, as neighboring peoples have done since the dawn of human society.
On the second day of the Sundance, at the same time as egregious violations of basic respect and religious freedom were being perpetrated by the Hopi Land Team and various police agencies, five members of the Hopi Tribal Council travelled to the Sundance arbor to share the sacred pipe with several of the dancers in full view of everyone in the arbor.
Was this politics? Curiosity? Courtesy? Or does it augur a change of heart? Are lines being drawn between those in the Hopi tribal government who perceive the humanitarian disaster entailed by the policy of relocation, and those idealogues who are devoting themselves to waging low intensity warfare in a campaign of ethnic cleansing?
The engine of law doesn't pause to consider these and other questions. As they did at Waco, at meetings in Washington D.C. and closer to the land, law enforcement agencies are preparing plans for removal of the remaining resisters, now scheduled for February 2000.
Feb. '97 photo credit - Donna Cassano
Alice Robertson Benally
Oct 30 1923 - May 21 1997
Late husbnd Joe Benally
Traditionalists voice who did alot for her people - leader of resistancy - she was arrested 3 times to extent of knowledge, authorities took everything from her.
Picture was taken at 'Big Lie House' (same location as earlier Roberta Blackgoat photo)
JOHN BENALLY (Alice Benally's son) STATEMENT. MARCH 1999AD
My name is John Benally and I am ' Where the water meets together' Clan and born for edge water, my patrilineal clan is Apache Clan. My matrilineal Grandfather is 'Many Goat Clan'.
We need all the support we can at this time, a pressure on the BIA, the Dept of Interior. We are threatened with loosing our way of life by relocating to the outside world. It is very important that we preserve our culture and ways of life. We can't live in western world. Our choices.. our ways of life.. being on land excercising our belief and we don't want any U.S. Government interferance with our life. This is on behalf of all the ways on Indian land in this hemisphere. We don't like the human abuse, natural resource abuse thats happening in our nation. As we are all aware as five fingered family... we are ALL aware that we are losing all the differant atmosphere and depletion of our ozone, to where we're liable to sacrifice under these consequences. We all know that once everything was in balance and pure, now we all know it's out of balance. Climate, global changes are happening, it's here, greenhouse effect is here.These are my awareness's and my concern.. then I think we are all in the same boat. So act now, pressure the United States Government to tell them that they're liable for it. That means industrial nation, fossil fuel addiction, and nuclear addict.
And thankyou very much.
PRESS RELEASE: LIVESTOCK IMPOUNDMENTS
For further information please contact:
Sovereign Dineh Nation (520) 673-3461 or (508) 540-8980
February 16, 1999
Big Mountain, AZ: The US Bureau of Indian affairs (BIA) launched a massive campaign of livestock confiscation targeting the elderly Dineh families who reside on the Hopi Partitioned Lands created by the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Settlement Act. This area, larger than the state of Rhode Island, is the poorest region of the US, with an annual per capita income lower than many third world countries. The elderly people rely upon their livestock for their survival, living a traditional subsistence lifestyle on lands their families have inhabited for hundreds of years.
The BIA ended a self-imposed two-year moratorium on livestock confiscation in January by mailing notices to all owners of livestock without valid permits, with impoundments scheduled to begin on February 15, 1999. People who have not signed the leases with the Hopi Tribe are not eligible for permits. People who signed leases received allocations far below the number needed for survival. The BIA claims that their sole purpose is to protect deteriorating range conditions. The people claim that the source of the problem is BIA range management policies that outlawed their traditional practice of using separate summer/winter camps that had enabled them to sustain herd sizes 4-10 times larger prior to BIA intervention. Furthermore, when government policies disturb a traditional culture that has been self-sustaining for hundreds of years, genocide should not be considered as an acceptable mechanism to correct the problems resulting from those policies.
While the BIA claims that the range management is an independent issue, the targets of the impoundment campaign are the same people threatened by other policies resulting from the 1974 Relocation Act. Over 12,000 people have already been forcibly relocated from the region, and many government policies have been designed with the purpose of making life impossible for those remaining on their land. The people have been subject to a freeze on housing improvements for 30 years that has made it illegal even to fix a broken window. The government routinely confiscates their firewood in winter, and the people have been stripped of their civil rights.
The people threatened by the planned BIA livestock confiscation are all elderly people who have no means of survival other than their traditional herding. Zonnie Whitehair, the owner of the largest herd in the area, is faced with the confiscation of her entire herd of 200 sheep. Her husband, Oscar, died in December, and if her herd is taken, she has said that she will soon follow. Roberta Blackgoat, like many other grandmothers, faces the possible confiscation of her entire herd. In addition to losing their primary food source, the grandmothers lose their source of wool to weave rugs that provide their only source of funds for other provisions. As she has stated in reference to the BIA policy, "This is not range management - it is murder".
Marsha Monestersky
Consultant to Sovereign Dineh Nation and
Co-Chair of the NGO Human Rights Caucus at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
Keams Canyon - U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs - Impoundment Yard
Rough/abusive handling of Dineh livestock during illegal confiscations
Click below for veterinary inspection reports
Document #1
Document #2
Document #3
Animals are ill-treated
PHOTOS: Mabel Benally's livestock killed by Peabody water runoff
GRAVE DESECRATION
On October 10, 1997, Ataid Y. Lake, a Dineh elder and matriarch living on both HPL and NPL, in the mining permit area, confronted Peabody bulldozers. She told the vehicle operators that there were sacred shrines and burial sites there. She and other elders were threatened and told not to interfere with their operations. The vehicle operators went ahead and bulldozed.
On October 15, 1997, she discovered they had destroyed a sacred shrine and unearthed two human skeletons, 1 ancient Anasazi and 1 Dineh. As of April 1998, human remains are still being uncovered. Ms. Lake is standing guard, trying to protect them from being removed and reburied against her will. She continues to be denied the right to protect her sacred shrines and grave sites.
Ataid Y. Lake says, "Ceremonial hogans of our families have been bulldozed by the Hopi Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Rangers and Peabody Coal Company. Many of them had people living inside of them. There used to be a talking rock with a hole in it. The medicine men used it. People who lost their mind in jail, in war went to the talking rock and it would echo their voice. My grandfather used it to help people a lot. Peabody bulldozed it. There were burial sites here but they are all covered up by the mine. Peabody asked me if I wanted them to remove the remains from their graves. I said no, I told them that their remains should not be disturbed. I said I wanted it protected. But Peabody went ahead and bulldozed it. We still have burial sites and archeological sites we want to protect. We don't want this area mined. There are archeological and burial sites here."
Photos taken at Ataid Y. Lake's bulldozed hogan site
This summer, a cemetery by Ataid Y Lake and Maxine Kescoli was bulldozed. Human remains still lay scattered. We don't even know what happens to the remains that are removed. Next to the bulldozed area is a site where we make offerings and have held many ceremonies. When we pass on to the spirit world we can't even be buried on our land. We are powerless to protect even the burial sites of our ancestors These actions are being conducted and condoned in flagrant violation or our religion. After removal of the remains, many of the Anasazi burials sites are not even covered up. There is a sweat lodge in the area that was destroyed, they did not even bother to take the rake they used with them. This bulldozed area is currently 100 yards from an occupied dwelling.
Protests by our elders living in the region only resulted in threats and harassment by the tribes as agents of the coal mine. Our elders are being forced to stand by and witness the destruction, helpless to protect their sacred sites and cemeteries
In July, an area on Hopi Partition Land was cleared in advance of mining activities. Our old trees are energy for the people and we make offerings to these places. If these areas are all clear cut they are taking away our rights to our energy and natural resources, plants, hills, and springs. This cleared region is currently 100 yards from sacred springs on Glenna Begay's customary use area. They were planted there by Medicine people and contain a year-round water resource
Sections of the road that NGOs traveled from Kayenta to the Begay residence is now closed off and we are forced to use an alternative public road. Most of this construction was completed before a permit was ever issued by the US government's Office of Surface Mining. It Contains sharp turns, intersects with arid joins a mine haul road used by heavy equipment. Our children ride on school buses through this area and we are concerned because they are endangered. Big rocks used to line the road is destroying our vehicles and causes us to get flat tires frequently, sometimes we get as many as two or three flat tires at one time. We were never consulted before this road was constructed and we never gave our consent.
No one tells us about the mining operations and we have no voice in negotiations that take place behind closed doors by corrupt tribal and US governmental officials We are suffering from a Navajo Nation that has witnessed 4 presidents in the last six months due to convictions for ethics violations; an investigator from the Ethics and Rules office that was convicted for criminal sexual assault of his 15 year old daughter; numerous tribal council officials found guilty of pocketing tribal funds; office workers downloadinq pornography: approval of permits by officials that allows the destruction of our sacred shrines, homes and cemeteries.
It is these and other issues that we wish to bring to the attention of the UN and NGOs. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples. It is time now, finally, for Justice.
UN Special Rapporteur Mr. Amor at Big Mountain Meeting in Glenna Begay's Hogan
Photo courtesy of Sol Communications
Report of Mr. Amor to the UN in Geneva
BEFORE AMOR VISIT
The following two reports were presented to Mr. Amor by an SGI- USA deligation on the east coast. For more information on SGI, visit SGI-USA
ACTIVITY REPORT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM-(1)
ACTIVITY REPORT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM-(2)
Letter to Amor ref. Exercise of Religion for Prisoners
Letter to Amor ref. Native American Prisoners Rights Advocacy Coalition
RESOLUTION OF THE CACTUS VALLEY-RED WILLOW SPRING COMMUNITY
RESOLUTION OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE OF THE NAVAJO NATION COUNCIL
Jan 16, 1998 New York Meeting: Dineh, NGO, UN reps
AFTER AMOR VISIT
A Woman Warrior Puts Faith in Words
PRESS CONFERENCE: UN MEETINGS ON RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN THE U.S.
UN Human Rights Delegation Holds Hearings on Forced Relocation and Religious Persecution of the Dineh people
DINEH RESISTORS DENIED FIREWOOD BY HOPI RANGERS
Kyoto Campaign: Human Rights and Global Climate Change
Leiderman Treaty Proposal (revised)
OTHER BIG MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHS
In Memory of Alvin Clinton, Resister from Star Mountain
LINKS
1. Affinity - Big Mountain
2. Arizona Wildcat article April 4, 1995
3. Help Needed for Huck and Genevieve Greyeyes
4. Big Mountain Background
5. BIG Mountain GRAFitti BRiDGe
6. Big Mountain Support Group - JAPAN E-mail
7. Black Mesa Contacts
8. Black Mesa Indigenous Support
9. Black Mesa, the O.S.M., and the Dineh
10. BLACK MESA WEAVERS FOR LIFE AND LAND
11. Dineh Project / Video Documentation Fund
12. EIJ Fall 95: Green Hope on Black Mesa
13. FWB, April 1994
14. FWB, Spring/Summer 1996 - Americas
15. High Country News -- August 05, 1996: Two tribes, two religions, vie for a place in the desert
16. High Country News -- October 31, 1994
17. Iahushua Big Mountain Page
18. KOLA
19. League of Indigenous Soverign Nations of the Western Hemisphere (LISN)
20. Letter to Kevin Gover, Director, US Bureau of Indian Affairs
21. MIGRATIONS
22. Native American Support Group of New York City
23. NATIVE-L (August 1993): Long Struggle at Big Mountain
24. NATIVE-L (July 1995): Peabody W.C.C. Kayenta Mine Permit Renewal Application (#AZ0001C)
25. NATIVE-L (April 1996): Dineh residents hail Hopi partition land decision
26. NAVAJO-HOPI Land Dispute, history, maps, links
27. Oct. '98 Impoundment Alert
28. THE DINEH
29. The World Uranium Hearing
30. Timeline for the Big Mountain-Black Mesa region
31. Title 25,CHAPTER 14 USC Sec. 636 Adoption of constitution by Navajo Tribe
32. Traditional Navajos Stand Their Ground
33. University of Arizona Press - Navajo Multi-Household Social Units
34. **NOW LOCAL LINK** Voices from a Troubled Land
35. What? Magazine- Big Mountain Resistance
Related Legal Documents
1. History of court proceedings: Masayesva, et al v. Haskie, et al;Docket #90-15304
2. History of court proceedings: Manybeads, et al v. USA, et al;Docket #90-15003
3. MOUNT GRAHAM V. THOMAS Docket #96-16017 (07-23-96)
4. Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Papers
5. Public Law 93-531 Summary
6. VERNON MASAYESVA vs. PETERSON ZAH Docket #93-15109
7. 11/14/95 Peabody Coal and Ferrell Secakuku v. Navajo Nation
Receive email when this page changes
Click Here
" Powered by Netmind "
To Join, E-mail SENAA. Click HERE.
This SENAA's Dine'h Support Ring site
is owned by Robert Dorman.
This Web Ring does NOT gather any information about you, your web site, or your visitors. Your privacy is respected and protected.
[ Previous | Members List | Next | Skip Next ]
Many Feathers Web Ring
[ Join Now | Ring Hub | Random | << Prev | Next >> ]
HOME
reply to this post
^ top of page | back >>
related listings what is this?
Create a tribe listing to see it posted next to discussion topics.
Create a Listing
2004 Tribe Networks, Inc. P.O. Box 410326, San Francisco, CA 94141
About Help Privacy Policy Terms of Use
reply to this post
RavenBlueWol...
online status 120 friends
March 09, 2004 - 10:10 AM
Re: Yet more sites and info!
DINEH RELOCATION RESISTANCE
Last Changed Feb 13, 2002
If this page is not already in a frame, and your browser supports frames, then click HERE
topica
Join BIGMTLIST!
The Latest Atrocity Against the Dineh
STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT BEGAYE ON THE BULLDOZING OF HPL SUNDANCE CEREMONY
SITE BY THE HOPI TRIBE
Window Rock, Navajo Nation (Arizona)--
The Hopi government ís decision to bulldoze the Sundance ceremony site at
Big Mountain is deplorable. In the strongest terms, I object to such a
violent action against the Navajo families who reside on Big Mountain
and who participate, as a part of their spiritual beliefs, in the
Sundance ceremony. The Hopi government appears to be persecuting these
families for their religious beliefs, as well as for their heartfelt
desire to stay on their ancestral lands and to continue their
traditional ways.
The Sundance ceremony has been performed at Big Mountain for a number of
years at the request of the Big Mountain Navajo families. It has become
an important part of their spiritual lives. Like all peoples, including
the Hopis, the Navajo families on Big Mountain should have the freedom
to practice their non-violent beliefs without governmental interference.
Native peoples have, all too often, seen their sacred places damaged or
destroyed by non-Natives. It is shocking to see one Native government
do the same to another Native community. The Hopi government's action
seemed to have been intended to intimidate, by a show of force, all the
Navajo families who continue to reside on Navajo ancestral lands within
the Hopi Partitioned Lands. Let me remind the Hopi government that the
Israeli military uses a similar tactic of bulldozing homes in
Palestinian villages. The outcome of that strategy has not brought
peace to the Middle-East.
I understand that the Hopi government is frustrated. The Land Dispute
has taken its toll on everybody--just ask those Navajo families who live
on the HPL and have sought spiritual strength through the Sundance
ceremony. They feel the Land Dispute's harshness more than anyone else.
I also understand that the Hopi government claims legal jurisdiction
over the Sundance. But I question whether that jurisdiction gives the
Hopi government the moral right to act as violently as they have.
I raise my objections directly with the Hopi leadership. The politics
of destruction can start a terrible downward spiral that we must stop
now. At this point, the first step is to secure the release of any
Navajos who were detained by the Hopi police. Then I would ask that the
Hopi government apologize. In return, I will commit to working with the
Hopi government to address its reasonable concerns. We must build
bridges of trust, not walls of fear and intimidation. We must rely on
reason and diplomacy, and the law, not acts of force, to resolve our
disputes.
The actions of the Hopi government have cast a long shadow over all the
Navajos who reside on the HPL, as well as put chilling effect on the
relationship of our two nations. Nonetheless, our two people are here,
together, as neighbors --this is the Creator's will. We should honor
that will with good hearts, good intentions and good actions.
ARTICLES:
Camp Anna Mae Sundance, A Wash Inside Their Eyes
History Of Many Morning Raids
Interferance with the sacred Sundance
Photos sent in by Morning Star Gali in Flagstaff
Photo #1 Photo #2 Photo #3 Photo #4 Photo #5 Photo #6 Photo #7 Photo #8
Photographs of arbor after Hopi destruction
These photos sent in by Danielle Ashike
Photo #9 Photo #10 Photo #11
Additional photos posted on SENAA web site
Support Organizations for Dineh Relocation Resistance
Action Resource Center
Box 2104
Venice, CA 90294
310-396-3254 (voice) / 310.392.9965 (fax)
Mauro DeOliveira
meyesol@eudoramail.com
Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS)
P.O. Box 23501
Flagstaff, AZ 86002
v-mail: (520) 773-8086
e-mail: blackmesais@yahoo.com
WebSite: www.blackmesais.org
BMIS is a collective of individuals acting to support
the sovereignty of Dine people, who face forced relocation,
environmental devastation and cultural extinction by the
hands multinational corporations, U.S. and tribal governments.
Southern California Big Mountain Support Group
directaction@siegesoft.com
pager at (714)621-9241
SENAA International
Al Swilling, Founder
SENAA International: senaa@senaa.org
Indigenous Support Coalition of Oregon (ISCO)
Beth Newberry
PO Box 11715
Eugene, OR 97440
(541) 683-2789
bigmnt@efn.org
Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land
Migrations
Carol Snyder Halberstadt
P.O. Box 543
Newton, MA 02456
carol@migrations.com
A nonprofit enterprise of the weavers of Black Mesa.
The weavers receive a fair price for their work,
and buyers can make a tax-deductible contribution to a
fund under the auspices of SEE.
Northern Arizona Indigenous Peoples Legal Defense Fund
Social and Environmental Entrepeneurs (SEE) is the fiscal agent.
Steve Sugarman 310-456-3534
Social and Environment Entrepeneurs (SEE) email - steve@saveourplanet.org
20110 Rockport Way
Malibu, CA 90265 -5340
Twin Cities Big Mountain Support Group
blackngrin@hotmail.com
(612) 362-5964
Friends of Big Mountain
18 Highland Ave.
Northampton, MA 01060
bambam@anthro.umass.edu
featherbridge@hotmail.com
Paul Bloom's July 2001 Sundance Report
INDIAN LAW RESOURCE CENTER
601 E Street Southwest
Washington D.C. 20003
(202) 547-2800
Robert T. Coulter, Esq.,Executive Director
Steven M. Tullberg, Esq.
Curtis G. Berkey, Esq.
BEHIND THE BIG MOUNTAIN RELOCATIONS: NEW EVIDENCE ABOUT MINERAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS OF THE HOPI TRIBAL COUNCIL
There is now clear evidence that the Hopi Tribal Council has plans to exploit coal resources in the Big Mountain area. This is the area from which Navajos are being forcibly relocated in the so-called Hopi-Navajo dispute. For many years there has been a debate about the reasons for relocation of Hopis and Navajos from that area. Although many believe that mineral development plans are the main reason, the previously available evidence has not been conclusive.
The attached map entitled " Hopi Reservation-Mineral Development Plan" shows that Big Mountain is in an area called a "Proposed Coal Mining/Slurry Pipeline Area." (The other map helps clarify exactly where Big Mountain is located). This map was prepared by the Hopi Tribal Council, the federally recognized governing body of the Hopi Tribe. In the past, the Hopi Tribal Council has claimed that mineral development plans have nothing to do with their efforts to evict Navajos from Big Mountain. This map is " Map F." in a court document entitled "Statement of Claims of the Hopi Tribe" that was prepared by the Hopi Tribal Council's lawyers. It is one of several maps that were prepared for the Arizona Superior Court for the County of Apache in Case No. 6417. In that case, the Arizona court will decide how to al- locate water in the Little Colorado River System.
The Hopi Tribal Council presented the map in order to show the Arizona court that the Tribe has plans for using large amounts of water in future commercial and industrial development. The Arizona court is asked to reserve sufficient water resources for the Hopi Tribe to carry out this development. Here is how the Hopi Tribal Council's plans and water claims are described in the court papers:
G.2. Future mininq and slurry.
There is sufficient coal of high quality on Hopi Partitioned Lands for two additional mines and slurry pipelines should the Tribe so choose. The water for slurries and mining would be approximately 8,120 acre- feet per year. The exact location of wells and the dis- tance from which the water would be drawn cannot cur- rently be known, nor can contractual arrangements as to its use. The Hopi Tribe accordingly claims 8,120 acre- feet per year of groundwater for future mining and slurry activities.
The general location of the coal and possible well fields are shown on Map F.
G.3. Other mineral and industrial use.
The Hopi Tribe claims 21,000 acre-feet of groundwater annually for other mineral and industrial uses; 16,000 acre-feet annually for a 1,000 megawatt coal powered electrical generating station; 5,000 acre- feet annually for development of oil, gas and minerals other than coal including manufacturing of fertilizer or other products from such minerals.
Much coal mining is planned for the Big Mountain area--a large addition to the strip-mining now underway further north at Black Mesa. A great increase of water use is also being con- sidered. This water is used to flush pulverized coal through a slurry pipeline to a distant power plant in Nevada. Today, the Black Mesa coal slurry uses about 4,650 acre feet of water per
year. Many times that amount would be needed if the development plans were implemented. (An acre-foot of water is the amount of water that would stand one foot deep over one acre). The Hopi Tribal Council almost certainly has in its files more detailed studies and plans. Otherwise it could not confi- dently state to the court that there is "sufficient coal of high quality on Hopi Partitioned Lands for two additional mines and slurry pipelines..."
In light of this newly discovered evidence, there should be a fresh assessment of what Hopi mineral development plans indi- cate about the true motives for Hopi-Navajo relocation from the Big Mountain area. Just as important, there should be careful consideration of what such plans mean for the future of the Hopi people.
In addition, there should be new demands for clarification of the federal government's role in these plans. Under federal law, all leases involving Big Mountain coal and water would have to be approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Federal offi- cials have likely been involved in the planning process, and their files, too, might have the information that the public needs to make informed decisions about these important matters. It is time that everyone involved be more forthright about mineral development plans in Hopi country. The well-being of both Hopis and Navajos is at stake. March 22, 1989
Confidential maps and memos, supplied by Peabody Watch, Arizona, relating to the Peabody Western Coal Company's mining expansion plans. The whole set and be dwnloaded in a zipped file by clicking here.
The following six pages are from the minutes of the HTC and PWCC ´s October 19, 1988 meeting written by Reverend Caleb Johnson of the Hopi Tribe.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Maps
Map 1-
Original copy of Peabody ´s "Confidential" map, without our legend and markers *.
Map 2-
Our (Peabody Watch Arizona) legend (KW) = WEPO COAL AREAS and makers (KW)
Map 3-
Copy of the HPL ´s map and to focus in the "Proposed South Mesa Area" to illustrate just how close its southern boundaries are in the proximity of the "Proposed South Mesa Area" is where hundreds of Dine ´h resisting families are still residing, and as the PWCCs "Confidential" map clearly illustrates, embraces the western range of Big Mountain Herself.
Map 4-
Part of several maps in the water rights litigation, Phelps Dodge vs. The Hopi Tribe in Apache County Court, case number 6417 Map F. This particular map has an arrow pointing at 7 o ´clock direction, was inserted by us.
SDN UPDATE: AN OVERVIEW OF THE DINEH (NAVAJO) CRISIS
REPORT FROM HARALD IHMIG ON BLACK MESA
(Translated from the German by Alan Frankel)
February 25, 2000
The lights that shine at night on the northern edge of Black Mesa spread no hope. They are the greedy eyes of voracious bulldozers, which ceaselessly tear the liver out of the body of Mother Earth, as the Dineh say. One need not be born on this plateau, bare and yet full of so many kinds of life, to be won over by the land with its restful expanses, its gathered humans, and its rare plants that listen to prayers and heal. Here, where everything has a name and is woven into stories, the violent invasion of a world apart fills a visitor with pain and anger. Now the Peabody Coal Company is digging the coal and water out of Black Mesa. Every day, millions of gallons are pumped out in order to carry the black gold away to Nevada. Only in small amounts does the mine give coal and water back to the inhabitants whom it has robbed on a grand scale. Now that the camps are locked up and the springs have been conquered, the people depend on the trickle from the mine that is burying their lives. They -- and now we as well -- live without electricity or running water. Only a few cell phones and a single, fragile gateway to the Internet by way of windmill and gas generator maintain contact with the outside world, from which they anticipate help.
The tribal council, by contrast, has been able to equip its modern headquarters in distant Window Rock with the help of lease payments (originally less than 2%, now 12.5%). A federal court has just decided that although the Navajo were indeed cheated by an official from the Ministry of the Interior and his Peabody crony in the negotiation of royalties, the fraud can be brushed off with the enlightening comment that the representatives of the US agency are not obligated to act in the interest of the Navajo.
On February 17, when we latecomers -- Lea from Incomindios, Uta and I from FIAN, Corinna from Tuebingen -- had just barely arrived, the Dineh elders met with their presidents, or, more accurately, with their (white) principal attorney, who shared the throne of the podium and listened from above to the demands of his subordinates. Nevertheless, a dialog was achieved. However, the elders have the impression that Kelsey Begay, their president, listens more to the Hopi tribal council than to them. In the past, he has said openly that after 25 years of opposition to their "resettlement," they should finally swallow this bitter pill. For those receiving this advice, however, the pill is not only bitter, but poisonous.
Nor does he extend any welcome to "outsiders," "non-Indian supporters" like us. The Hopi press even explains that international human rights activists are alcoholics and the worst terrorists in the world. Currently most resisters and their supporters are being forced away.
Now off to San Francisco for a new trial in the Manybeads Case, which has been dragging on since 1988 and is attempting to overturn the Relocation Act, which legalizes the uprooting of a culture bound to the land, by appealing to constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. Next, the non-signers want to pay a visit to presidential candidate McCain, who calls himself a friend of the Indians but was involved substantially in the Accommodation Agreement of 1996; it guarantees their limited presence -- under threat of expulsion. Others want to demand a response from him still earlier, in Tucson. Most of our little "terrorist gang" will take part in these demonstrations. I am involved for the time being with a "domestic policy" problem, the improvement of the communication among the Dineh themselves -- a problem that needs a solution just as urgently as the pressures from outside.
This will have an impact on our reporting. Reports from San Francisco will follow, the second reports from Marion and Harald Mueller should have arrived, Timo has performed video interviews with Roberta Blackgoat and Louise Benally (at a a demonstration in Flagstaff). Please bear with us, as we cannot put our many impressions into words so quickly!
With the contributions from the [Society for Threatened Peoples] and Incomindios, we gave the Sovereign Dineh Nation a used all-terrain car. The contributions from Elke and Britta and their friends went into a big tent which will stay in the Anna Mae camp, along with Stefan's big gas stove. With the contribution from the One-World Network, Timo bought a camcorder that will also remain with the Dineh. The remaining contributions from Silke and friends and the PDS should serve, in my opinion, to make the voices of the elders heard and give them a point of contact with the outside world, if this should turn out to be their first wish.
The sun still rises every morning above the wild expanse of the steppe landscape, in which the few humans are easily lost to the eye; we find their trail only after many false starts along the winding dirt roads. There is, far and wide, no trace of Hopi settlers in the Hopi-Partitioned land. We cannot figure out why there should be no more room for the Dineh elders, children, and grandchildren and their small sheep and goat herds in the scattered yards in their homeland in which they are rooted like plants. But their culture, their desire to live in their own way, is not dying out; if it goes under, it will only be because the Dineh themselves have been killed off. There is still hope, because there is still resistance.
Brief Introduction
Roberta Blackgoat at Accomodation Agreement hearings in Pheonix, Feb. of '97
photo credit - Donna Cassano
This is about the largest forced relocation of American Indians in the 20th century to make way for Peabody Western Coal Company to strip mine the ancestral lands of the Dineh. This is being done with the aid of the corrupt US and tribal governments. The Dineh who have refused to leave their land and relocate to government supplied land (the site of a major radioactive spill) are being harassed with illegal eviction notices and livestock confiscations, deprived of their well water and firewood, and forced to live in constant fear. Last February a United Nations investigator came to Big Mountain and interviewed the Dineh about the religious intolerance to which they have been subjugated. His report will be presented in Geneva this spring.
A good article for background information on this issue can be found at:
Caught in a tangled web of US-Indian history
GENOCIDE ON BLACK MESA
The US Begins its Final Solution to a Land Dispute
Anna and Ella Begay are two Dineh (Navajo) sisters who live alone in a 10 foot by 12 foot shelter on desolate land in Coal Mine Mesa, in northeastern Arizona. While the traditional Dineh do not keep track of their age in years, the women are both probably over the age of 80. Ella is deaf and partially disabled. Living without electricity or running water, they survive by herding a few sheep and coaxing a few crops from the arid soil. Their only transportation is their two horses. Three donkeys haul water and firewood for them and also help plow their small field. By most standards, the sisters are among the poorest people in the US, and they must fight for daily survival using ancient methods at an age when most Americans can rely upon retirement checks. But they possess the strength that has enabled their people to live in harmony with this rugged yet beautiful terrain for thousands of years.
Anna and Ella Begay. Photos by Carlos Begay
On Tuesday, February 23, 1999, an army of 13 armed police officers and U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officials arrived over the desert trails in six police vehicles and two impoundment trucks. The squadron confiscated the sisters' horses and donkeys from their corral. The sisters lost their only possessions and the key to their survival on these harsh lands. Without their livestock, the chances that the elderly sisters will survive another year are diminished - which is the exact purpose of the attack.
Begay's home and corral. Photos by Carlos Begay
The US has begun what it hopes will be the final steps in a campaign to exterminate Dineh families who became trespassers on their traditional land as a result of a 1974 law pushed through Congress by the coal-fired power industry. The industry believed that the eviction of all residents of an area larger than the state of Rhode Island would simplify their access to the continent's richest deposits of low-sulfur coal. The land title was transferred to the Hopi Tribal Government, which at the time was dominated by John Boyden, a white attorney also working for the Peabody Coal Company. The tribal government was originally installed by the US for the purpose of granting mineral leases despite the strong objections of traditional Hopi and continues to receive 80% of its funding from Peabody Coal.
Over the next 25 years, over 12,000 Dineh were forcibly relocated in a program described by its former director Leon Berger as "a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations". Many were moved to the "New Lands", an area near Chambers, AZ, too arid to support their livestock and contaminated by the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history, which occurred when a containment dam at a uranium mine burst upstream on the Rio Puerco, which runs through the land. Others were moved into cities for which they lacked survival skills, and where they became caught in a circle of homelessness, alcoholism, and suicide.
Several thousand Dineh still remain on their ancestral land in defiance of all government attempts to drive them away. The US has forbidden them to make any repairs on their homes - even to repair broken windows - and some have taken shelter in bunkers dug into the earth. Firewood is confiscated in winter, and law enforcement officials harass and threaten them with eviction and jail sentences.
Joan Yellowhair's bunker. Photo by Carlos Begay
A law passed by Congress in 1996 requires the US to complete the eviction process by February 1, 2000. Some families were offered leases that allowed them to remain as tenants upon their land with no civil rights and without a means of survival. Those who refused to sign or who were not eligible will be evicted in the next 11 months.
The first step in the US eviction campaign is the removal of livestock. The targets are elderly people who survive by herding sheep as their families have done for hundreds of years. Their livestock is the centerpiece of their daily lives in which their culture and religion are interwoven with their land and animals. The herds have a different significance to the US government. It is the key to the people being able to maintain a fiercely independent lifestyle living in remote areas without electricity, running water, telephones, or assistance from the government. The government hopes that destroying their herds will turn them into helpless dependents upon the government who will be unable to resist the eviction process.
The livestock campaign is based on permits issued under terms set up in the 1996 law. People who either have refused or were ineligible to sign leases are not allowed permits for their livestock. People who signed leases are eligible for permits, but even they have found that many of their livestock will be taken, as the number of permits issued is less than needed to cover their livestock. The BIA began sending notices in January notifying families of its intention to begin removing non-permitted animals, and the confiscations are now underway.
The confiscation attacks took place at several other homes during the week, and over the next few months they will occur hundreds of times as the federal and tribal authorities remove all un-permitted animals from the region. Most of the people targeted for these attacks are over the age of 65, and some are over 90. They live in terror - not knowing when they wake up each morning if this will be the day when the authorities target their home.
Resistance to impoundments is treated severely. Rena Babbitt Lane, who lost livestock in a confiscation on Monday, February 22, had her hand broken when she tried to stop a previous impoundment. Other people have experienced beatings or been arrested when they tried to resist confiscations in the past. But past confrontations took place in connection with minor issues such as access to grazing areas. The campaign now being launched is targeted at the permanent elimination of the herds and ultimately with the removal of the people, so that the level of tension and desperation has escalated. For the last four years, the police have been training in weapons and tactics which will be used in the eviction campaign over the next year.
Rena Babbitt Lane with broken hand. Photo by her husband, John Lane.
The BIA publicly claims that the program is motivated only by a need to protect the rangeland for the benefit of the community. But as demonstrated in community meetings February 20-23 attended by most of the affected families, the policy is strongly opposed by the people whose interest the government claims to be protecting. Within the local community, the claim that the invasion is connected to ecology is not believed. The fact that the government began sending eviction notices to many families at the same time that it started the confiscation process indicates the true purpose of the program.
The Dineh ask other US citizens and people throughout the world to pressure the US government to stop the genocide. The Dineh have lived on their ancestral lands for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of the Europeans on this continent, and believe that it is their right to remain on these lands and to pursue their traditional religion and way of life. The US claims that it is resolving a land dispute between Dineh and Hopi people, but the people have no quarrel:
"We want everyone to know that the Navajos are not the ones taking our land, but the United States. The Hopi and the Navajo made peace long ago, and sealed their agreement spiritually with a medicine bundle. It is through the puppet governments, the 'Tribal Councils' forced upon both nations by the United States, that the illusion of a conflict has been created on the basis of the false modern concept of land title."
[Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablets]
The problems in the region were caused by US and corporate intervention, and the US has the obligation to correct these problems in a way that respects the right of the Dineh to continue their traditional way of life on their ancestral lands.
Thanks to Bill Sebastian for the above article
Thorough Background
The Case of the People of Sovereign Dineh Nation Submitted to Women's Environment Development Organization (WEDO)
Submission to the First Session of the International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights and the Environment
Paul Bloom's Sundance Report -- July 21, 1999 (Revised July 30)
"Never in this country will you go to church and see policemen outside taking your license numbers and your pictures." Joe Chasing Horse, Sundance Chief.
Sunday, July 18, saw the end of a four year cycle of Sundances at Camp Anna Mae on Big Mountain, Arizona, one of two Sundance ceremonies brought by the Lakota people to the Dineh (Navajo) threatened with imminent removal from their lands by the U.S. government.
Named for murdered American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Aquash, Camp Anna Mae designates an area of high desert land inhabited for centuries by people who suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of a line drawn in 1974 by an ignorant Congress heavily lobbied by Peabody Coal Co.
Besides its religious significance, this year's Sundance inadvertently became a massive demonstration of peaceful civil disobedience by all in attendance, residents, dancers, and supporters, who defied threats of fines and prosecution by the U.S.-created Hopi Tribal Council in order to attend.
As many as six cars of Hopi Rangers, Bureau of Indian Affairs police, and sheriffs of Navajo County maintained an around the clock vigil at the entrance of the camp. FBI and ATF agents reportedly visited the site as well. At the beginning of the 25 mile dirt road from Highway 264 another crew of Hopi Rangers stopped, questioned, I.D.-checked, and threatened people with fines and jail if they went to the Sundance. Some local residents were flatly turned away. No one knows how many stayed home to avoid the roadblocks, or how many were arrested on warrant checks or for other reasons. Notices designating Camp Anna Mae as a closed area were posted along the road.
In addition, "technicians" or "monitors" from the Hopi Land Team strutted aggressively around the Sundance area, ostensibly to ensure safe fires and sanitary conditions, harassing people in the kitchen and at the camps in arrogant displays of authority. These are the same thugs who accompany Hopi Rangers and heavily armed BIA police on recurrent raids to confiscate livestock of the resisters, those traditional Dineh who have refused to sign a restrictive lease authorized in 1996 by a U.S. Congress trying to settle a series of lawsuits by the Hopi Tribe.
Synchronized with these efforts was a campaign of misinformation, including false news reports planted on local radio of shots fired on the land, and radio spots on at least one commercial Flagstaff station warning people not to attend the Sundance because of threats of violence.
With the Sundance purification rites set to begin on 14 July, Hopi Tribal Council Chairman Wayne Taylor, Jr. issued an executive order dated 2 July declaring a drought emergency and extreme fire danger, and forbidding open fires within residential areas, and overnight camping on "undeveloped (sic) areas outside of Village areas."
On 9 July the chairman issued another executive order declaring a Hantavirus alert, proscribing camping in "underdeveloped (sic) areas" and asserting that no entrance would be permitted into "restricted (closed) areas."
In a letter the same day to sponsor and host of the Sundance and longtime resister Ruth Benally, Chairman Taylor, Jr. asserted that "the entire Hopi Reservation is closed to all access, except as authorized by the Hopi Tribe. All individuals entering and remaining on Hopi land without authorization of the Hopi Tribe will be subject to exclusion, assessment of penalties, and prosecution under the laws of the Tribe."
The Sundance is a religious ceremony of sacrifice and purification in which dancers abstain from food and water for four days, dancing from sunrise to sunset while drum-mers sing ancient prayers and families and friends watch (and dance) from the arbor. It's an experience of indescribable power and emotion. This was the twelfth year of the Sundance at the Joe and Alice Benally Memorial Sundance Grounds at Camp Anna Mae, the end of the third four year cycle.
Nevertheless the July 14 Navajo Hopi Observer, an independent paper, published a front page article by the Hopi Tribe Land Team which, among other slanders, depicted the Sundance ceremony as a "well-orchestrated effort to bait the Hopi Tribe into a hostile media situation."
More than 500 people from dozens of Indian nations and tribes plus non-Indian supporters from all over the world, including Japan, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, voted with their feet to refute the Hopi Tribal Council's desperate efforts to squash the Sundance. Their presence was a triumphant rebuke to an orchestrated campaign of lies and intimidation.
The original Hopi Tribal Council had been imposed by manipulation and deceit on the Hopi (the name means "peaceful") under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. By 1943 it had dissolved for lack of support. It was revived in the early 1950's by John Boyden, Peabody company lawyer and bishop of the Mormon Church. Over the protests of traditional Hopi, with the help of wealthy Mormon Hopi cattle ranchers, he convened a more durable tribal government.
The Indian Placement Service represented one of the Mormon Church's most successful and controversial programs. From 1949 to 1976 over 20,000 Indian children were taken into white families to live during the school year, going back to their reservation homes during the summer, and often returning to the same "foster" families each year. From its inception, the Hopi Tribal Council has been dominated by Mormons and alumni of this program.
The Mormon Church, extremely secretive about its assets, holds enormous investments in public utilities, including Arizona Public Service, and is reported to have been a majority shareholder in Peabody Coal Co.
Traditional Hopi still voice their opposition to the powerful Tribal Council, which has been maneuvering to assert its possession of the Hopi Partitioned Lands since the 1986 deadline originally mandated by Public Law 93-531 under the false premise of resolving a land dispute. They take strong exception to the assault on their Navajo neighbors with whom they have shared land, traded, intermarried, and disputed for centuries, as neighboring peoples have done since the dawn of human society.
On the second day of the Sundance, at the same time as egregious violations of basic respect and religious freedom were being perpetrated by the Hopi Land Team and various police agencies, five members of the Hopi Tribal Council travelled to the Sundance arbor to share the sacred pipe with several of the dancers in full view of everyone in the arbor.
Was this politics? Curiosity? Courtesy? Or does it augur a change of heart? Are lines being drawn between those in the Hopi tribal government who perceive the humanitarian disaster entailed by the policy of relocation, and those idealogues who are devoting themselves to waging low intensity warfare in a campaign of ethnic cleansing?
The engine of law doesn't pause to consider these and other questions. As they did at Waco, at meetings in Washington D.C. and closer to the land, law enforcement agencies are preparing plans for removal of the remaining resisters, now scheduled for February 2000.
Feb. '97 photo credit - Donna Cassano
Alice Robertson Benally
Oct 30 1923 - May 21 1997
Late husbnd Joe Benally
Traditionalists voice who did alot for her people - leader of resistancy - she was arrested 3 times to extent of knowledge, authorities took everything from her.
Picture was taken at 'Big Lie House' (same location as earlier Roberta Blackgoat photo)
JOHN BENALLY (Alice Benally's son) STATEMENT. MARCH 1999AD
My name is John Benally and I am ' Where the water meets together' Clan and born for edge water, my patrilineal clan is Apache Clan. My matrilineal Grandfather is 'Many Goat Clan'.
We need all the support we can at this time, a pressure on the BIA, the Dept of Interior. We are threatened with loosing our way of life by relocating to the outside world. It is very important that we preserve our culture and ways of life. We can't live in western world. Our choices.. our ways of life.. being on land excercising our belief and we don't want any U.S. Government interferance with our life. This is on behalf of all the ways on Indian land in this hemisphere. We don't like the human abuse, natural resource abuse thats happening in our nation. As we are all aware as five fingered family... we are ALL aware that we are losing all the differant atmosphere and depletion of our ozone, to where we're liable to sacrifice under these consequences. We all know that once everything was in balance and pure, now we all know it's out of balance. Climate, global changes are happening, it's here, greenhouse effect is here.These are my awareness's and my concern.. then I think we are all in the same boat. So act now, pressure the United States Government to tell them that they're liable for it. That means industrial nation, fossil fuel addiction, and nuclear addict.
And thankyou very much.
PRESS RELEASE: LIVESTOCK IMPOUNDMENTS
For further information please contact:
Sovereign Dineh Nation (520) 673-3461 or (508) 540-8980
February 16, 1999
Big Mountain, AZ: The US Bureau of Indian affairs (BIA) launched a massive campaign of livestock confiscation targeting the elderly Dineh families who reside on the Hopi Partitioned Lands created by the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Settlement Act. This area, larger than the state of Rhode Island, is the poorest region of the US, with an annual per capita income lower than many third world countries. The elderly people rely upon their livestock for their survival, living a traditional subsistence lifestyle on lands their families have inhabited for hundreds of years.
The BIA ended a self-imposed two-year moratorium on livestock confiscation in January by mailing notices to all owners of livestock without valid permits, with impoundments scheduled to begin on February 15, 1999. People who have not signed the leases with the Hopi Tribe are not eligible for permits. People who signed leases received allocations far below the number needed for survival. The BIA claims that their sole purpose is to protect deteriorating range conditions. The people claim that the source of the problem is BIA range management policies that outlawed their traditional practice of using separate summer/winter camps that had enabled them to sustain herd sizes 4-10 times larger prior to BIA intervention. Furthermore, when government policies disturb a traditional culture that has been self-sustaining for hundreds of years, genocide should not be considered as an acceptable mechanism to correct the problems resulting from those policies.
While the BIA claims that the range management is an independent issue, the targets of the impoundment campaign are the same people threatened by other policies resulting from the 1974 Relocation Act. Over 12,000 people have already been forcibly relocated from the region, and many government policies have been designed with the purpose of making life impossible for those remaining on their land. The people have been subject to a freeze on housing improvements for 30 years that has made it illegal even to fix a broken window. The government routinely confiscates their firewood in winter, and the people have been stripped of their civil rights.
The people threatened by the planned BIA livestock confiscation are all elderly people who have no means of survival other than their traditional herding. Zonnie Whitehair, the owner of the largest herd in the area, is faced with the confiscation of her entire herd of 200 sheep. Her husband, Oscar, died in December, and if her herd is taken, she has said that she will soon follow. Roberta Blackgoat, like many other grandmothers, faces the possible confiscation of her entire herd. In addition to losing their primary food source, the grandmothers lose their source of wool to weave rugs that provide their only source of funds for other provisions. As she has stated in reference to the BIA policy, "This is not range management - it is murder".
Marsha Monestersky
Consultant to Sovereign Dineh Nation and
Co-Chair of the NGO Human Rights Caucus at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
Keams Canyon - U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs - Impoundment Yard
Rough/abusive handling of Dineh livestock during illegal confiscations
Click below for veterinary inspection reports
Document #1
Document #2
Document #3
Animals are ill-treated
PHOTOS: Mabel Benally's livestock killed by Peabody water runoff
GRAVE DESECRATION
On October 10, 1997, Ataid Y. Lake, a Dineh elder and matriarch living on both HPL and NPL, in the mining permit area, confronted Peabody bulldozers. She told the vehicle operators that there were sacred shrines and burial sites there. She and other elders were threatened and told not to interfere with their operations. The vehicle operators went ahead and bulldozed.
On October 15, 1997, she discovered they had destroyed a sacred shrine and unearthed two human skeletons, 1 ancient Anasazi and 1 Dineh. As of April 1998, human remains are still being uncovered. Ms. Lake is standing guard, trying to protect them from being removed and reburied against her will. She continues to be denied the right to protect her sacred shrines and grave sites.
Ataid Y. Lake says, "Ceremonial hogans of our families have been bulldozed by the Hopi Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Rangers and Peabody Coal Company. Many of them had people living inside of them. There used to be a talking rock with a hole in it. The medicine men used it. People who lost their mind in jail, in war went to the talking rock and it would echo their voice. My grandfather used it to help people a lot. Peabody bulldozed it. There were burial sites here but they are all covered up by the mine. Peabody asked me if I wanted them to remove the remains from their graves. I said no, I told them that their remains should not be disturbed. I said I wanted it protected. But Peabody went ahead and bulldozed it. We still have burial sites and archeological sites we want to protect. We don't want this area mined. There are archeological and burial sites here."
Photos taken at Ataid Y. Lake's bulldozed hogan site
This summer, a cemetery by Ataid Y Lake and Maxine Kescoli was bulldozed. Human remains still lay scattered. We don't even know what happens to the remains that are removed. Next to the bulldozed area is a site where we make offerings and have held many ceremonies. When we pass on to the spirit world we can't even be buried on our land. We are powerless to protect even the burial sites of our ancestors These actions are being conducted and condoned in flagrant violation or our religion. After removal of the remains, many of the Anasazi burials sites are not even covered up. There is a sweat lodge in the area that was destroyed, they did not even bother to take the rake they used with them. This bulldozed area is currently 100 yards from an occupied dwelling.
Protests by our elders living in the region only resulted in threats and harassment by the tribes as agents of the coal mine. Our elders are being forced to stand by and witness the destruction, helpless to protect their sacred sites and cemeteries
In July, an area on Hopi Partition Land was cleared in advance of mining activities. Our old trees are energy for the people and we make offerings to these places. If these areas are all clear cut they are taking away our rights to our energy and natural resources, plants, hills, and springs. This cleared region is currently 100 yards from sacred springs on Glenna Begay's customary use area. They were planted there by Medicine people and contain a year-round water resource
Sections of the road that NGOs traveled from Kayenta to the Begay residence is now closed off and we are forced to use an alternative public road. Most of this construction was completed before a permit was ever issued by the US government's Office of Surface Mining. It Contains sharp turns, intersects with arid joins a mine haul road used by heavy equipment. Our children ride on school buses through this area and we are concerned because they are endangered. Big rocks used to line the road is destroying our vehicles and causes us to get flat tires frequently, sometimes we get as many as two or three flat tires at one time. We were never consulted before this road was constructed and we never gave our consent.
No one tells us about the mining operations and we have no voice in negotiations that take place behind closed doors by corrupt tribal and US governmental officials We are suffering from a Navajo Nation that has witnessed 4 presidents in the last six months due to convictions for ethics violations; an investigator from the Ethics and Rules office that was convicted for criminal sexual assault of his 15 year old daughter; numerous tribal council officials found guilty of pocketing tribal funds; office workers downloadinq pornography: approval of permits by officials that allows the destruction of our sacred shrines, homes and cemeteries.
It is these and other issues that we wish to bring to the attention of the UN and NGOs. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples. It is time now, finally, for Justice.
UN Special Rapporteur Mr. Amor at Big Mountain Meeting in Glenna Begay's Hogan
Photo courtesy of Sol Communications
Report of Mr. Amor to the UN in Geneva
BEFORE AMOR VISIT
The following two reports were presented to Mr. Amor by an SGI- USA deligation on the east coast. For more information on SGI, visit SGI-USA
ACTIVITY REPORT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM-(1)
ACTIVITY REPORT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM-(2)
Letter to Amor ref. Exercise of Religion for Prisoners
Letter to Amor ref. Native American Prisoners Rights Advocacy Coalition
RESOLUTION OF THE CACTUS VALLEY-RED WILLOW SPRING COMMUNITY
RESOLUTION OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE OF THE NAVAJO NATION COUNCIL
Jan 16, 1998 New York Meeting: Dineh, NGO, UN reps
AFTER AMOR VISIT
A Woman Warrior Puts Faith in Words
PRESS CONFERENCE: UN MEETINGS ON RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN THE U.S.
UN Human Rights Delegation Holds Hearings on Forced Relocation and Religious Persecution of the Dineh people
DINEH RESISTORS DENIED FIREWOOD BY HOPI RANGERS
Kyoto Campaign: Human Rights and Global Climate Change
Leiderman Treaty Proposal (revised)
OTHER BIG MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHS
In Memory of Alvin Clinton, Resister from Star Mountain
LINKS
1. Affinity - Big Mountain
2. Arizona Wildcat article April 4, 1995
3. Help Needed for Huck and Genevieve Greyeyes
4. Big Mountain Background
5. BIG Mountain GRAFitti BRiDGe
6. Big Mountain Support Group - JAPAN E-mail
7. Black Mesa Contacts
8. Black Mesa Indigenous Support
9. Black Mesa, the O.S.M., and the Dineh
10. BLACK MESA WEAVERS FOR LIFE AND LAND
11. Dineh Project / Video Documentation Fund
12. EIJ Fall 95: Green Hope on Black Mesa
13. FWB, April 1994
14. FWB, Spring/Summer 1996 - Americas
15. High Country News -- August 05, 1996: Two tribes, two religions, vie for a place in the desert
16. High Country News -- October 31, 1994
17. Iahushua Big Mountain Page
18. KOLA
19. League of Indigenous Soverign Nations of the Western Hemisphere (LISN)
20. Letter to Kevin Gover, Director, US Bureau of Indian Affairs
21. MIGRATIONS
22. Native American Support Group of New York City
23. NATIVE-L (August 1993): Long Struggle at Big Mountain
24. NATIVE-L (July 1995): Peabody W.C.C. Kayenta Mine Permit Renewal Application (#AZ0001C)
25. NATIVE-L (April 1996): Dineh residents hail Hopi partition land decision
26. NAVAJO-HOPI Land Dispute, history, maps, links
27. Oct. '98 Impoundment Alert
28. THE DINEH
29. The World Uranium Hearing
30. Timeline for the Big Mountain-Black Mesa region
31. Title 25,CHAPTER 14 USC Sec. 636 Adoption of constitution by Navajo Tribe
32. Traditional Navajos Stand Their Ground
33. University of Arizona Press - Navajo Multi-Household Social Units
34. **NOW LOCAL LINK** Voices from a Troubled Land
35. What? Magazine- Big Mountain Resistance
Related Legal Documents
1. History of court proceedings: Masayesva, et al v. Haskie, et al;Docket #90-15304
2. History of court proceedings: Manybeads, et al v. USA, et al;Docket #90-15003
3. MOUNT GRAHAM V. THOMAS Docket #96-16017 (07-23-96)
4. Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Papers
5. Public Law 93-531 Summary
6. VERNON MASAYESVA vs. PETERSON ZAH Docket #93-15109
7. 11/14/95 Peabody Coal and Ferrell Secakuku v. Navajo Nation
Receive email when this page changes
Click Here
" Powered by Netmind "
To Join, E-mail SENAA. Click HERE.
This SENAA's Dine'h Support Ring site
is owned by Robert Dorman.
This Web Ring does NOT gather any information about you, your web site, or your visitors. Your privacy is respected and protected.
[ Previous | Members List | Next | Skip Next ]
Many Feathers Web Ring
[ Join Now | Ring Hub | Random | << Prev | Next >> ]
HOME
reply to this post
^ top of page | back >>
related listings what is this?
Create a tribe listing to see it posted next to discussion topics.
Create a Listing
2004 Tribe Networks, Inc. P.O. Box 410326, San Francisco, CA 94141
About Help Privacy Policy Terms of Use
posted by:
|
Indiana
|
Advertisement
Advertisement
