SPONSORING GENOCIDE
Senator McCain's Final Solution
Rena Babbitt Lane is a Dineh (Navajo) elder living on land
on Black Mesa in
Arizona that has been inhabited by her Dineh ancestors for many
centuries.
Living without electricity or running water, she and her husband
sustain a
profoundly traditional life, and survive by raising sheep, weaving
rugs from
their wool, and growing a few crops. On Tuesday, September 21,
1999, BIA
agents raided her homesite and confiscated 21 sheep, 2 goats,
and 6 cows. She
was weaving and preparing a meal at the time, and did not even
know the BIA
was there until later, when all her animals did not come home.
She saw the
tracks of two impoundment trailers and a police vehicle where
they had been
grazing, and knew they had been taken away. When she went to the
BIA offices
the next day, they served her with papers stating that the rest
of her
livestock will be confiscated in five days (Monday, September
27). The BIA is
confiscating without compensation everything she owns, leaving
her to die in
the harsh winter soon to follow. If she survives until spring
without her
livestock, she will be forcibly relocated to the "New Lands,"
an area that
was contaminated by the largest spill of nuclear waste in US history.
Rena
Babbitt Lane, who is in her late seventies, was severely injured-her
hand
broken-in a previous livestock impoundment. She has undergone
surgery for a
heart condition, and wears a pacemaker.
The BIA offered her one way to save part of her herd and to
avoid relocation.
She could sign an "Accommodation Agreement" that was
included as part of PL
104-301, which was sponsored by Senator John McCain of Arizona.
By signing
this agreement, she acknowledges the loss of her land title and
agrees to
live as a tenant in her own house. Even by signing, however, she
would not be
permitted to keep enough of her livestock to survive. Under the
agreement,
she is not allowed to vote or to participate in the legal system
except as a
defendant. She and people like her must live in a system in which
they are
blatantly discriminated against because of their ethnic origin.
Permits are
required for everything ranging from possessing firewood to performing
religious ceremonies. The people are not even allowed to bury
their dead
according to their traditional religious beliefs. Government regulations
control who is allowed to live in her house and who is allowed
to visit her.
Permits for scarce commodities like grazing permits are allocated
according
to a priority list on which Dineh like Rena are placed at the
bottom to
ensure they never receive any.
In an effort to obtain signatures on these leases and thereby
make it appear
that a fair solution had been reached, Senator McCain and his
followers in
Congress attached a provision to the law that grants the Hopi
government $25
million if it can obtain signatures from 95 families on these
leases - over
$260,000 per signature. The federal government then supported
a campaign of
fraud and coercion to obtain signatures. People were told they
would be
thrown in jail or evicted in the middle of the night if they refused
to sign
when requested. Signatures were forged. Semi-official thugs empowered
by the
US government even threatened to kill some of the elderly people
if they
refused to sign. Despite this campaign, Rena and many of the families
still
refused to sign, so the BIA has launched a final wave of attacks
to
exterminate the resisters.
How It All Began
Senator McCain's law was intended to be the final solution to
a problem that
began in 1882 when the US government created a reservation centered
on the
Hopi villages at the southern tip of Black Mesa. The land surrounding
the
Hopi, making up over 85% of the reservation, was inhabited by
Dineh. In the
1930s, the US government proposed giving control over the reservation
to a
government consisting exclusively of Hopi. Recognizing the problem
that this
presented to the Dineh living on the reservation, the BIA proposed
in 1940 to
partition the reservation so as to give the Hopi government control
over a
small area in the middle and to give the Navajo government control
over the
rest.
These plans were derailed when the nation's largest deposits
of low-sulfur
coal were discovered on the land where the Dineh lived. An attorney
named
John Boyden, who was simultaneously working for the Peabody Coal
Company,
formed a Hopi government under his control in 1953 and won a settlement
in
1963 giving him a 50% interest in the Dineh land. In 1974 with
the strong
support of a consortium of energy companies, Boyden persuaded
Congress to
pass PL 93-531 that divided the Dineh land into separate Hopi/Navajo
regions
and ordered the relocation of all Dineh living on the Hopi Partitioned
Lands.
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.
While the 1974 law mandated relocation, it did not authorize
the use of force
to remove those who refused to leave, and approximately 3,000
Dineh still
remain on their land despite all the efforts to evict them. In
1996, McCain
sponsored a bill that attempted to resolve the situation by offering
some of
the families' leases that would allow them to remain as tenants
on their land
without civil rights. The bill authorized the forcible relocation
after
February 1, 2000, of those who were ineligible to sign or who
refused to sign
the leases.
"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]
What You Can Do To Help
We urge all Americans to call upon Congress to repeal legislation
that
legalizes ethnic cleansing, that arbitrarily confiscates the homes
and
property of the poorest people in the country, and that strips
people of
their civil rights solely because of their ethnic origin. Please
contact your
representatives and remind them that the foundation of all policy
toward
America's native peoples should be respect for their right to
remain on their
ancestral land, to practice their traditional religion, and to
enjoy the same
protections and civil rights offered to all other citizens.
For further information please contact: SOVEREIGN DINEH NATION
P.O.Box 1968 Kaibeto, AZ 86053 DINETAH29@aol.com