Genocide on Black Mesa: Big Mountain Fri, 4 Feb 2000 04:32:33 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - *STRIDER* BIG MOUNTAIN DINEH RELOCATION RESISTANCE http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/pagea~1.htm 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 BIG MOUNTAIN DINEH RELOCATION RESISTANCE http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/pagea~1.htm ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-02.04.00-04:32:33-4843