Big Mountain Sign c. 1985

Big Mountain Sign c. 1985, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

This picture is from around 1985 when we lived in Tuba City and Barry worked for Navajo Hopi Legal Aid representing over 14,000 Dine affected by the genocide of relocation.
The sign reads - Entering Sovereign Dine Nation.
Read the article below about the suffering the Navajo people endured and continue to endure from being wrenched from their ancestral homelands where their umbilical cords are buried.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2329/2448580036_95ddcc3183.jpg?v=0

This is the hogan of a Shima (grandmother) in the Joint Use Area near Tec Ya Toh who dried her grandchildren's shoes on the roof of her simple but beautiful hogan.
This is an ongoing struggle for the Dine in the Hopi Navajo Joint Use Area. Keep checking One Earth Blog for more history, news and updates on this and the Bennett Freeze Area, another land dispute between the Navajo and Hopi and for other info on indigenous arts and politics across the Americas.
Charleen Touchette at TouchArt.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
April 28, 2008

Genocide at Big Mountain: The Extermination of the Traditional Dineh Sheepherders

by John Steinbach (703) 369-7427 - jsteinbach@igc.org

They hold the earth with their feet and keep it with their hands. The earth feeds them. On Black Mesa, she is thirsty, and thin. Her heart beats black with coal, her heart is laid open but the people hold her. They sing her to live-- their hands would heal her still. (Carol Snyder Halberstadt)

From South America to Canada, the campaign of oppression against the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, begun over 500 years ago, continues unabated. Indian People are under attack on many fronts: "sportsmans rights" clubs; multinational corporations; federal, state and local governments; a dying nuclear industry- the list is long. The rights of Indian People, such as economic and cultural rights, land rights, hunting and fishing rights, and sovereignty rights are being destroyed by a corporate system which represents the antithesis of land-based peoples' values. The example of the traditional Dineh (Navajo) sheepherders of Black Mesa/Big Mountain is emblematic of the numerous threats facing indigenous peoples worldwide.

Traditional Dineh and Hopi Indians living in the Navajo/Hopi Joint Use Area( JUA) are resisting Public Law 93-531, which orders the forced removal of over 12,000 traditional Dineh(and over 100 Hopi) from their ancestral lands, and Public Law 104-301, written by Senator John McCain(R. AZ), which authorizes their final expulsion by February 1, 2000. According to anthropologists, such relocations of indigenous peoples have never succeeded and are tantamount to cultural and physical genocide. Dr. Thayer Scudder, internationally respected authority on indigenous people, says: "Such removals are literally life threatening, with drastically increased rates of alcoholism and mental illness.... Indeed this forced removal of over 12,000 Native Americans is one of the worst cases of involuntary community resettlement that I have studied throughout the world over the past forty years." Leon Berger, former Executive Director of the Navajo-Hopi Resettlement Commission resigned in protest saying: "The forcible relocation of over 10,000 Navajo people is a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations." Expulsion of the Dineh from their ancestral lands, the nation's largest relocation of indigenous people since the 1800s, is being carried out to pave the way for the expropriation of vast deposits of low sulfur coal(estimated in excess of 18 billion tons), oil and natural gas, ground water and other valuable resources buried beneath Black Mesa.

Roberta Blackgoat, a Black Mesa Clan Mother in her 80s, lives in a traditional way taught by her mother and grandmothers. Like her ancestors she is a sheepherder- shearing , cleaning, carding and spinning the wool, and collecting herbs to create natural dyes. She hand weaves the best Navajo rugs in the world, her only means of subsistence. The trees, animals, springs and mountains are sacred to her. Her umbilical cord, like those of her grandparents and grandchildren, is buried on the land. Her way of life is being systematically destroyed.

If they come and drag us all away from the land, it will destroy our way of life. That is genocide. If they leave me here, but take away my community, it is still genocide. If they wait until I die and then mine the land, the land will still be destroyed. If there is no land and no community, I have nothing to leave my grandchildren. If I accept this, there will be no Dineh, there will be no land. That is why I will never accept it ... I can never accept it. I will die fighting this law." (Roberta Blackgoat, elder matriarch).

A History of Genocide

For hundreds of years, the Dineh and Hopi have been oppressed by European colonizers, first by Spaniards seeking gold and silver, and later by American settlers seeking land. As more and more land was stolen from the Indians, tensions mounted and the U.S. Calvary was instructed to put down the resistance. In 1864, following a three year "war" reminiscent of the scorched earth campaigns carried out against the people of Central America, Colonel Kit Carson crushed the Dineh. After destroying all livestock, crops and structures, Carson cornered the approximately 8,000 starving survivors and forced them 400 miles eastward, across the New Mexico desert in the dead of winter, on 'The Longest Walk.' The Dineh were confined under deplorable conditions for four long years in a Fort Sumner concentration camp, and in 1868, were driven back west and assigned a Navajo Reservation that included only a small fraction of their former lands.

In 1882, the Hopi Reservation was created just east of the Navajo Reservation. Artificial boundaries having little meaning to traditional peoples, the Hopi and Dineh continued to live peacefully side by side, just as they had for hundreds of years. Soon Mormon settlers became a ubiquitous presence on and near the reservation, expropriating the best land for their settlements and literally kidnapping Indian children in order to 'civilize' them. "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 Paul Bloom's Sundance Report -- July 30, 1999) This process of cultural genocide, in slightly different form, continues to this day.

Resource Exploitation of Native Lands

When oil was discovered on the Navajo Reservation in 1921, the federal government attempted unsuccessfully to 'negotiate' oil leases through its puppet 'chiefs,' but the Dineh refused to permit what they considered desecration of Mother Earth. The BIA was then instructed to form a Navajo Tribal Council that would agree "to vote broad authority to lease the land" for oil drilling. After several years of futile search, a small group of Navajo men were found who agreed to permit oil drilling. The federal government immediately recognized the new Navajo Tribal Council, whose first official action was to delegate all mineral leasing authority to the BIA. Despite overwhelming opposition from the Dineh people, this power grab became the model for the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act(IRA), which mandated the creation of Tribal Councils for all federally recognized tribes. Most of these new Tribal Councils were(and still are) dominated by 'assimilated' individuals, themselves often the victims of BIA and Mormon schools, who, in the opinion of many traditional Indian leaders, have more in common with their oppressors than with the people. Despite high sounding rhetoric about 'democracy' and 'tribal independence,' the IRA institutionalized federal control and signaled a new era in the exploitation and expropriation of Indian Lands.

The newly formed Navajo Tribal Council wasted little time throwing open the the doors to resource exploitation. Under the BIA's thumb, the Council negotiated petroleum leases, followed by coal, water and uranium leases. The Hopi Tribal Council was less successful because of resistance by the traditional Hopi, and soon ceased to function. In the early 1950s, coal was discovered on Hopi lands and John Boyden, a lawyer for Peabody Coal and Archbishop in the Mormon Church(a major Peabody shareholder), reconstituted the Hopi Tribal Council, which immediately proceeded to sign leases for strip mining and high tension rights of way. Boyden handled all the Hopi Tribal Council's coal lease negotiations through the 1970s, raking in millions of dollars while working simultaneously for Peabody Coal. Foreseeing the impending environmental disaster, traditional Dineh and Hopi opposed their Tribal Councils' energy policies.

Environmental Catastrophe

The Four Corners region of the southwest, once a pristine semi-desert high plateau with a great diversity of plants, animals and indigenous cultures, today is one of the most polluted areas in the nation. Located within the region are: a network of high tension lines passing directly over the ancient Hopi villages; the nation's only coal slurry pipeline, operating without a permit and sucking 3 million gallons of irreplaceable aquifer water each day; the Four Corners electrical power complex, spewing 350 tons of sulfur compounds and 250 tons of nitrogen compounds each day; Four gigantic coal strip mines, including the nation's largest; and numerous abandoned uranium mines and mills, leaving millions of tons of radioactive and toxic tailings to blow in desert winds.

The well documented health and environmental consequences of such ecological abuse have been devastating. The birth defect rate among the Navajo is higher than on other reservations, and, despite a low smoking rate, the incidence of lung cancer in Navajo uranium miners is among the world's highest. There have been other serious health problems observed on the Navajo and Hopi reservations including high rates of infant mortality and spontaneous abortions, respiratory, heart, diabetes and other degenerative diseases, and premature aging and death. Environmental effects include vast areas of land permanently denuded of vegetation by strip mining; poisoned water; radioactive contamination of land, air and water; rapidly dropping water tables which especially threaten the Hopi farming villages situated high atop the mesas; and air pollution often worse than major urban areas.

The intensive resource exploitation of arid regions in the west such as Black Mesa, the Black Hills(the sacred Paha Sapa of the Lakota), and the Northern Crow Reservation, has had severe environmental consequences. In 1974, the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) warned of the dangers of strip mining in such environmentally fragile regions. The NAS cautioned that mineral extraction in such areas would cause irreversible environmental damage, resulting in de facto "National Sacrifice Areas," most of them situated on Indian land. The litany of health and environmental effects suffered by the Navajo and Hopi people is repeated for Pine Ridge and many other Indian communities. The mineral resources being carved from Indian lands are not being used for the benefit of Indian People. To the contrary, profits from the exploitation of Four Corners and other Indian lands have accrued to the multinational corporations. The electricity generated at Four Corners supplies cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix, while thousands of Dineh do without electricity, running water and telephones. The land and economic base of Indian People inexorably is being destroyed.

Relocation / Extermination

During the mid-twentieth century, the expropriation of Indian Lands accelerated. The Indian Claims Commission Act declared that stolen Indian lands could never be recovered, and compensated victimized tribes with pennies on the dollar. In 1936, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes established grazing districts on the Hopi and Navajo reservations, expanding the Hopi Reservation and effectively creating the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area(JUA). In the mid-1950s, Boyden persuaded the Hopi Tribal Council to file suit for control of the entire JUA, and, when that strategy failed, successfully pursued a partition strategy through Congress. In 1974, Congress passed the Navajo Hopi Relocation Act, PL 93-531, physically dividing the 1.8 million square acre JUA with a 300 mile barbed wire fence. More than 12,000 traditional Dineh were purged from the Hopi Partition Land (HPL), but over 100 families comprising several thousand individuals continue to resist. In 1996, Congress authorized their final expulsion by February 1, 2000

Relocation has been carried out under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Originally estimated to involve 3,500 people and cost $30 million, relocation estimates have ballooned to over 15,000 people and a cost of $2 billion. According to Big Mountain News; "The result of the relocation has been to convert proud, happy self-sufficent people into bewildered, miserable refugees." Former Relocation Commissioner Roger Lewis resigned in disgust saying, "The Commission is as bad as the people who ran the Nazi concentration camps in World War 2." In March, 1985, the House Appropriations Committee released a scathing indictment of the relocation. Among its findings were:

• Dineh still on the land suffer "intolerable conditions;"

• The Reservation is already "overcrowded and overgrazed," leaving no room for relocatees;

• Relocatees are often defrauded when they sell their new homes;

• Relocatees are often forced off the Reservation into hostile border towns, "no matter the given slim chance of success;"

• Relocation counseling programs have never been implemented

• No amount of counseling can enable traditional Dineh to adapt;

• Relocation Commission reports are often contradictory and misleading;

• Traditional Dineh relocatees "have no logical place to go."

Despite this report, Congress remains woefully ignorant, depending for their information on 'fact sheets' from the BIA.

The forced expulsion over the past quarter century is continuing and accelerating. Ninety percent of the sheep and livestock, the sole economic base of traditional Dineh culture, have been confiscated and in 1999 the BIA, for the first time, has been authorized to confiscate all livestock. There is a ban on all new construction or repairs, forcing some families to live in underground bunkers. Firewood collection is prohibited without a permit, and is being confiscated during the winter. The Hopi Rangers and BIA Police have been stockpiling and training in SWAT weapons and tactics in preparation for the impending final solution. During 1999, BIA police and Hopi rangers prevented supporters from delivering supplies to the Black Mesa resisters, and shut down the 16th Annual Sun Dance. In a letter to longtime resister Ruth Benally, Hopi Tribal Council Chairman Wayne Taylor, Jr. declared: "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." This physical and economic coercion continues to have a devastating effect.

Many of the Dineh who relocated have lost everything and now live in squalor, dependent on government handouts. Lacking basic survival skills, thousands were forced into border towns such as Gallup, NM, where most soon lost their new homes, becoming ensnared in a cycle of "homelessness, welfare, alcoholism and suicide." Thousands more have been relocated to "the New Lands," a desert region on the Puerco River totally unfit for sheep herding. In 1979, a uranium tailings dam broke sending 100 million gallons of radioactive water hundreds of miles down the Puerco and Little Colorado Rivers, inundating the New Lands. According to a report released in June, 1999 by Robert Webb, hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey "The surface water of the Puerco River has at times been between 10 and 100 times beyond the maximum allowable level for radioactivity." Chris Shuey, Coordinator of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, NM said, "The government is forcing Navajos off their land to an area where there is not adequate safe water available... The water quality of the Rio Puerco is characterized by concentrations of radioactive materials and heavy metals that exceed federal and state drinking water standards up to 100 times higher than Arizona maximum limits." Dineh children playing in and around this unremediated Superfund site they call home are continually exposed to uranium, thorium, radon and other radioactive elements, as well as a toxic soup of heavy metals.

John McCain and Bill Clinton

In 1996, after more than 20 years of unsuccessful relocation efforts, the Hopi Tribal Council prevailed on Senator John McCain(R-AZ) to draft legislation authorizing the forced expulsion of all Dineh from the Hopi Partition Land by February 1, 2000. PL 104-301 was signed into law by President Bill Clinton . The law contained an "accommodation agreement" provision which permits the Dineh to live under a 75 year 'lifetime lease' in their own houses with three acres of land. This provision strips them of all political rights, leaving them at the tender mercy of their Hopi Tribal Council tormentors. Not allowed to vote or participate in the legal system (except as a defendant), government regulations strictly control every aspect of their personal lives. Permits are required for everything from collecting firewood and digging wells, to practicing their religion and burying their dead according to traditional ways. Permits for grazing sheep and livestock, are allocated according to a priority list(up to a maximum of 25 sheep, far fewer than subsistence level) thus ensuring the Black Mesa Dineh can never be economically self-sufficient.

In order to obtain signatures on the 'lifetime leases,' Congress provided the Hopi Tribal Council a $25 million grant if it succeeded in obtaining the signatures of 85% of the Dineh resisters(95 out of 112 families). This bribe inevitably resulted in a campaign of fraud and coercion carried out by the Hopi Tribal Council and the BIA. Dineh people were told that they would be arrested and evicted in the middle of the night, signatures were forged, and death threats made. Still many of the families refused to sign, and the expulsion campaign has escalated during the past year. An example is the family of Rena Babbitt Lane who like most of the resisters lives without electricity, phones and running water, raising her sheep, weaving rugs and gardening. On Tuesday, September 21, 1999, BIA agents raided her home and confiscated 17 sheep, 3 goats, and 6 cows. When she protested, she was served with papers informing her that on September 28, the remainder of her livestock would be confiscated without compensation, leaving her to face the brutal Black Mesa winter destitute. Rena, in her late 70s, has a heart condition which requires her to wear a pacemaker and has a seriously broken hand as a result of a previous BIA impoundment altercation. Her terrifying experience undoubtedly will be repeated again and again in a final extermination campaign. April 22, 1999 John McCain wrote: "I rite to urge the Departments of Justice and Interior to proceed carefully in the coming months to settle the relocation of remaining Navajo families in a timely and orderly process... I understand that the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation sent 90-day notices to the remaining Navajo families who have not signed the Accommodation Agreement... I ask that you submit in writing to me the actions that the Department of Justice will take in the coming months to ensure compliance with P.L. 104 301."

Media Disinformation

Most media reports about the Big Mountain/Black Mesa atrocity describe the issue as 'Indian Vs. Indian,' and report that the U.S. Government is merely mediating a longstanding dispute between the Hopi and Navajo. Typical press accounts read as if written by a press agent for the BIA. The reality is much more complex and sinister, involving a cast of characters that includes the federal government, the Tribal Councils, Peabody Coal, the Mormon Church, surrounding state governments fighting over water rights, and most importantly the traditional Hopi and Dineh. The modern myth of Hopi Vs. Navajo was invented by the Hopi Tribal Council and its corporate allies in order to justify the campaign to physically partition the JUA. On July 21, 1975, the Washington Post published an expose of the phony 'range war' fabricated during the early 1970s by the Hopi Tribal Council, their lawyer, John Boyden, and a Salt Lake City public relations firm Evans and Associates, which also represented W.E.S.T., a consortium of 22 energy and resource corporations. To this day, most press accounts treat the 'Navajo/Hopi dispute' as a reality, while ignoring the well documented role played by Peabody Coal and its allies.

The mainstream press downplays the vibrant role of traditional Dineh culture, and the impact of forced expulsion. Unlike western culture which emphasizes private property rights, Dineh culture emphasizes respect and stewardship for the land; the culture and religion interwoven with the land and animals. According to activist Bill Sebastian, This land ethic "...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." Pauline Whitesinger, a Dineh Elder and resistance leader declares, "In the Dineh tongue, there is no word for 'relocation,' to move away means to disappear and never be seen again."

For hundreds of years, long before the European invasion, Dineh and Hopi lived together as neighbors, and like all neighbors have sometimes had disagreements. But according to the traditional elders, the two peoples have always settled their differences peacefully, trading together, intermarrying, and holding festivals together. According to Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablets, "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.... the illusion of a conflict has been created on the basis of the false modern concept of land title." The so called 'dispute' really boils down to resource corporations pitting elite Navajo and Hopi Tribal Councils against each other to the detriment of the people.

Resisting Genocide

It is critical that widespread public opposition to the genocide at Big Mountain/Black Mesa be continued and escalated after the February 1 deadline. The strategy of the government and its corporate allies is to continue the current harassment and coercion, maintaining and increasing economic and psychological pressure, while assuring the public that there will be no forced removals. The ongoing struggle for Black Mesa will be fought in Congress, the courts, and increasingly in the streets. The Indian People of the United States were driven to the brink of extinction by 500 years of European invasion and corporate exploitation; they need and deserve the full support of all people working for a more just and peaceful world.

The Dineh people themselves are leading the Big Mountain struggle. Elders like Roberta Blackgoat and Pauline Whitesinger have traveled around the world in an attempt to educate people about the terrible injustice being perpetrated at Black Mesa. In 1988, Jenny Manybeads filed suit in U.S. Federal Court under the Freedom of Religion Act claiming that forced relocation is in violation of the land centered Dineh religion. In 1994, the Sovereign Dineh Nation made the nation's first Environmental Justice complaint. In 1996, Judge Ramon Child ruled that Peabody Coal had to shut down their largest strip mine because it impacted on the Dineh People of Black Mesa without their permission. He was subsequently forced into "early retirement" and his landmark decision was overturned, with the Navajo and Hopi Nations intervening on the side of Peabody. In February, 1998, Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, visited the Dineh resisters in preparation for a forthcoming special report on human rights violations in the United States. Many supporters have traveled to Black Mesa, providing supplies and material support, while thousands more, worldwide, demand a halt to the relocation.

Traditional Hopi support their Dineh neighbors. To them, the Dineh are the guardians of the Hopi mesas and ancestral ways. Hopi have traveled around the world with the Dineh grandmothers, speaking out against the genocide at Black Mesa. Europeans have much to learn from the Dineh and Hopi, who often refer to them as "our younger sisters and brothers." People of conscience must support the Dineh resisters, not just to prevent the eradication of these ancient cultures, but because land based peoples like the Hopi and Dineh provide a key to the creation of a world based on respect for human dignity, and honor for Mother Earth. "The Black Mesa region is the last traditional (Dineh) stronghold and must he preserved... The Navajo traditionalists view their land as representing the essence of their being.

In other words, they view themselves as an integral part of the environment- the mountains, the vegetation and the animals that share the land. Everything has a name, a place, a sex and role within the Navajo frame of reference. All of these things are part of what is considered sacred and occupies a place on the sacred land and contributes to the balanced ecological, cultural niche." (From the First Session of the International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights & the Environment)