>>this is a translation from the German of an article published
>>in Germany in 1998. A number of European organizations have come out with
>>strong
>>support of the Dine' cause, and this article is a very good summary of the
>>Black Mesa situation.
>>
>>Public Forum, Nr. 20, 1998
>>
>>The Greed of the White Man
>>
>>The struggle of the Navajo Indians against the USA superpower
>>
>>by Harald Ihmig
>
>Translated by Alan Frankel
>>
>> The author is Professor of Theology at the Protestant Trade School for
>>Social Pedagogy of the Rauhes Haus in Hamburg. He traveled through the USA
>>and Central America within the framework of a field research semester.
>>
>> On a summer's day, armed rangers appear at the remote farm on the Indian
>>reservation in Arizona and confiscate the sheep in the pen. Chris, the boy
>>taking care of them, shouts: "Don't touch these sheep! I'm responsible for
>>them. They're our living. Taking away our sheep is taking away our life."
>>As he seems intent on "doing what must be done to keep these sheep from
being
>>taken away," the rangers take him away as well. This is not the first time
>>that the sheep have been taken away and Lawrence, Chris's uncle, forced to
>>buy back his possessions. Before we fall asleep under the open sky, he
tells
>>me that he has already paid $900 once before under the same conditions. A
>>gigantic sum for people who live on the milk, meat, and wool of their sheep,
>>who somehow find something to graze upon in the desert! He can at least be
>>happy not to be forcibly "resettled," with his house knocked down to the
>>ground, since the Navajo all of a sudden need a permit to remain where
>>they've lived for generations and where, as they say, "their umbilical cord
>>is buried." Repairing houses or building new ones has been forbidden for 30
>>years in any case.
>> The process of treating the Navajo in their ancestral land as undesired
>>aliens began with the Relocation Act of 1974. The official title itself,
>>"Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act," shows that the Americans are
>>painting the act of expulsion as the well-meaning mediation of a territorial
>>dispute between two Indian tribes. Continual frictions between the Navajo
>>and Hopi Indians following the creation of the reservation in northeast
>>Arizona in 1882 are being settled, according to this official version, by
>>splitting the land formerly used by both into two halves, with the approval
>>of both tribal councils. The Federal government has allowed itself to spend
>>almost half a billion dollars in its role as selfless mediator to allow
those
>>inhabitants residing in the wrong half to resettle elsewhere painlessly.
>> After the Accommodation Act of 1996 gave the remaining inflexible
>>inhabitants the chance to obtain the right to remain for 75 years, the
>>operation could be
>>considered closed. If only it were not for these traditional "Dineh", as
the
>>Navajo call themselves, who do not give in, who consider the land between
the
>>four mountains holy and have acquired in the meantime a colorful medley of
>>supporters. They told me an utterly different story. Indeed, upon reading
>>the official version, one runs up against things that do not square with one
>>another. Were tens of thousands of white people in the USA ever forcibly
>>resettled due to property conflicts? If the Hopi settle in villages in the
>>heights, growing grains on the surrounding fields, and this area around the
>>Mesas has already been handed over to them as District 6 for their exclusive
>>use, while the Navajo pasture their sheep by families strewn sparsely across
>>the wide lowlands, how is it that they dispute over land possession?
Why, in
>>an area supposedly used by both, must over 12,000 Navajos be resettled, but
>>only a few hundred Hopi? Why do tribal councils approve regulations
>>boycotted by their elders and opposed by courts and international
committees?
>> Chris leads me along neckbreaking paths to meet some of those who refuse
>>to budge, stubbornly proclaiming themselves a "Sovereign Dineh Nation."
>>Chris himself has lived for a while in Phoenix, learned English, and won
some
>>distance between himself and traditional customs; he listens to modern music
>>and chooses his own girlfriends. When we reach Pauline Whitesinger and Kee
>>Watchman, however, even the young automatically obey the unpretentious
>>self-worth and authority that these figures radiate. They decide what will
>>be said and when, and they set the rhythm of the meeting, including the
>>pauses in which nothing is said. Pauline, unconcerned by prohibitions,
is in
>>the midst of building a new hogan, one of these traditional houses of clay
>>and wood, cool in summer, warm in winter, unprepossessing from the outside,
>>comfortable from the inside. "We Hopi and Dineh were good neighbors," says
>>Kee Watchman, "and we married each other. We have the same religion: we
>>have inherited the earth and the elements of nature. The rangers were the
>>first to drive the people against each other. Now there are no more common
>>meetings." For him, there is no Hopi-Navajo Land Dispute. They have used
>>and passed on the land together since time immemorial.
>> From the beginning, traditional Dineh and Hopi have fought against
>>division
>>of the land and
>>resettlement. The lines of conflict do not run, as the postcolonial power
>>would have it, along a tribal boundary between rebellious natives now marked
>>by a barbed-wire fence over 400 kilometers in length. The Hopi elder Thomas
>>Banyacya confirms, "The Navajo help the Hopi to take care of the land.
We do
>>not want them to go. This is their holy land as well." From whom do the
>>"old-fashioned" woman and man want to shield their land?
>>
>> When one takes some time to study the history of the conflict, it
becomes
>>apparent that the disputes have a strange way of piling up around the
>>appearance in the 1950s of the Mormon lawyer John Boyden, hired by the
leading
>>Mormonized Sekaquaptewa clan, who reactivates the Hopi tribal council and
>>initiates in its name a series of suits, contracts, and laws. Boyden brings
>>an interest into play carefully left unmentioned in the official documents:
>>He also represents the Peabody Coal Company, a firm of which the Mormon
>>Church owns eight percent. In 1966, he secures a 36-year lease. The Black
>>Mesa, the northern part of the reservation, is the largest open-cast coal
>>mine in the world, with an estimated deposit of 20 billion tons of
low-sulfur
>>coal. The leasing of the land is made palatable to the tribal council by
>>yearly payments of about 50 million dollars. Now Peabody pumps five billion
>>liters of pure water out of the ground each year in order to cheaply force
>>coal
>>sludge
>>to the Mojave power plant 280 miles away to serve Las Vegas and Southern
>>California's immense demands for energy.
>>
>> Feisty, elderly Katherine Smith from Big Mountain in the middle of the
>>Black Mesa tells us how the inhabitants see things: "I live about 30 miles
>>from the Peabody coal mine, where they've put a fence around us. According
>>to the law, we're in prison. We cannot repair our house, even when the
>>windows break. We're not allowed to do it since it's against the law,
>>against the flag. And our house is so old that all of our floors are
falling
>>apart, and all because of the mine. You know, they explode the ground with
>>dynamite so that the houses shake. We still have sheep, a horse, a cow
and a
>>goat. That's what we live on. Good breeders can live from their sheep,
from
>>their wool. That's how we get money to buy food or gas, and that's how the
>>people in Washington, D.C., are trying to do us in. The stick our sheep in
>>the pen and the horse and the cow, and they're not allowed out again. If
they
>>break out, they take them away from us. They call that 'impoundment,'
and we
>>have to buy our own animals back." Nor do shovels and bulldozers come to a
>>halt before burial places and holy sites.
>> The resistance of the traditional Dineh and Hopi has not been directed
>>only against the effects of the coal mining, but also, from the beginning,
>>against mining as such. Back in 1970, the Hopi leaders explained: "The
>>greed of the white man for material possessions and power has made him blind
>>to the suffering that he brings on Mother Earth with his search for that
>>which he calls natural resources... Today the holy land where the Hopi live
>>is being violated by people who want to have the coal and water from our
soil
>>in order to create more energy for the cities of the white man. This cannot
>>go on any further, for Mother Nature will react in such a way that almost
all
>>humans will experience the end of life as we know it."
>> In addition to ecological effects -- air pollution, sinking groundwater
>>levels, contaminated springs -- and the intrusion into religious
relationship
>>with the land came deliberate harassment, which was to make the life of the
>>remaining Navajo difficult: the prohibitions on building and repair,
>>confiscation of herds, and imprisonment at the hands of the paramilitary
>>ranger troops. It was not the first time that the Indians had the dubious
>>luck of seeing the apparently worthless wasteland that belonged to them
>>suddenly prove to be valuable, whether it be for coal, uranium, or water
>>content, as a location for an observatory, or as an area for atomic testing.
>> John Boyden, who himself has earned millions in this business,
represents
>>what can be seen as a coalition of profiteers, among them segments of
>>assimilated Indians. They enjoy political protection. When this background
>>is recognized, the supposed Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute emerges as a
conflict in
>>which the commercial exploitation of the land is being pushed through
against
>>those of its inhabitants to whom the land is holy and who want to watch over
>>it. The Relocation Act of 1974 does nothing to make this context visible.
>>Boyden hires a public relations firm based, as he is, in Salt Lake City,
which
>>mounts a big campaign, not shrinking from spreading false information, and
>>which
>>succeeds in propagating in public the image of permanent violent hostilities
>>and the threat of a war over pasture land. In other words, he invents the
>>Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. The Arab oil embargo and a hysterical desire for
>>self-sufficiency in the USA create pressure for the securing of resources.
>> Against this background, the "mediation" of 1974 can be read as the
fatal
>>project -- funded by taxes -- for purging the settlement area of the Black
>>Mesa of its inhabitants standing in the way of commercial development. "The
>>US government think we are nothing. We have no rights. Our leaders fail to
>>protect our rights -- in the name of profit. They just sacrifice us," rails
>>Maxine Kescolli.
>> The business of legalized expulsion does not run as smoothly as planned,
>>however. One year later, when the legally determined demarcation line is
>>drawn, Katherine Smith grabbed her shotgun and dismantled the fence
>>single-handedly. In 1986, the greatest part by far of the Dineh remained on
>>the Hopi Partitioned Land, and President Reagan personally stepped in to
>>prevent
>>the ugly, unforgettable image of forced deportation in the presence of 2,000
>>supporters of elderly with their families, the image of "a 70-year-old Dineh
>>grandmother openly involved in an armed conflict with the armed forces of
the
>>United States of America," as one of the opponents caricatured it. Instead,
>>a long, wearying process was initiated in order to give the threatened
forced
>>measure the appearance of a voluntary decision via a compromise. This
led to
>>an Accommodation Agreement and its legal ratification in the Navajo-Hopi
Land
>>Dispute Settlement Act of 1996. This built the bridge for the stubborn
Dineh
>>to secure their land for 75 years by signing a lease with option to renew,
>>but the lease limits living areas (1.2 hectares[3 acres]), farmland (10
>>acres),
>>and
>>livestock herd size and makes the expansion of pasture land, the
collection of
>>herbs and wood, and the visiting of holy sites dependent upon permits.
>>
>> The Dineh are also subjugated to civil and criminal Hopi jurisdiction,
>>with which they are well experienced. Few would sign such a contract
>>voluntarily; a Dineh assembly rejected the agreement by a vote of 207 to 1.
>>"We don't want someone to supervise us while we sing our prayers. We
want to
>>have peace and harmony. We want to be free on our own land to do what the
>>holy people who brought us here gave us to do. We want our children to grow
>>up and be at home here. We want our roots and seeds to be here. We want
our
>>clan here from generation to generation. We do not want to lose our
>>identity." (Avery Denny, medicine man [Dine' College, Tsaile, AZ])
>> Confronted with this farsighted thinking in terms of generations, the
>>age-old technique of individually pacifying those immediately affected fails
>>to go far enough. The signatures often had to be collected with a great
deal
>>of coaxing, generally beefed up with increased reprisals, in order to be
>>accepted as the lesser evil. In order to avoid the oppression and the
>>imminent forced resettlement, most of the remaining Dineh ended up
signing or
>>choosing "voluntary" resettlement by the imposed deadline of 31 March 1997.
>>Contrary to the promises, only a minority of those resettled were placed in
>>lands
>>of equal value, many were relocated to an urban environment which they
>>could not
>>handle, or
>>were settled in the area around the Rio Puerco [so-called "New Lands"],
>>contaminated in 1979 by America's worst radioactive pollution
>>(Church Rock [spill of a uranium tailings dam]).
>> To the frustration of the advocates of a simple solution, however, not
>>everyone went. Despite the quantitative success of a mixed strategy of
>>pressure and promises, the small remainder of those remaining is turning out
>>to be a problem that could be embarrassing. Their refusal to yield is
>>interfering with the solution of the problem through their gradual
>>disappearance.
>>In addition, they represent those expelled, of whom more
>>than 12,000 are registered, and up to 30,000 are estimated, and prevent the
>>injustice done to them from being swept under the rug. They bring the
>>cultural conflict to a focal point. The tough kernel of their resistance is
>>proving itself to be their religion. This is what prevents them from
>>surrendering to the daily pressure to give in or even to join in the
profits.
>> Therefore, it is no coincidence that their claims of civil rights
>>infringement on the part of the USA focus on religious intolerance, even
>>though they also complain of offenses against their ecological, social, and
>>political rights. The unyielding resistance of the traditional Dineh and
>>their numerous supporters had an astonishing success in the beginning of
>>February of this year [February 1998] in bringing about the on-site visit of
>>Abdelfattah Amor, the Tunisian special rapporteur of the UN Commission on
>>Human
>>Rights. In any case, this was the first time that the USA was subjected
>>to such an investigation on its own soil. Whether the UNO will actually
>>bring itself to pick a fight with the USA over civil rights violations is
>>doubtful. However, the official version that would paint the Navajo-Hopi
>>Land Dispute as being wisely mediated by the government will hardly hold up
>>under the new public examination. The delegation of large nongovernmental
>>organizations (NGOs), including the World Congress of Churches, the national
>>church
>>council, and the United Methodist Church, which were witnesses to the
meeting
>>with the Dineh elders, will also do its part. Kee Watchman, one of the
Dineh
>>speakers, put his radical opposition to the interference of the federal
>>government and his own "self-rule" concisely: "The tribal councils are
>>created by the government. We reject them, since they introduce laws
made by
>>humans."
>>
>> In his eyes, the churches are no better, since they are focused on
>>assimilation, especially the Mormons who are rumored to have stolen Indian
>>children in order to change the way they are raised. Now what is the law
not
>>made by humans followed by these traditional Indians? "As Dineh, we see
>>things as a whole," is the description chosen by Avery Denny, who teaches at
>>a Dineh college. "Many people call it a 'primitive attitude' or a 'savage
>>attitude,' but that is our intelligence: entering mutual relationships with
>>nature and the elements, with the energy in these different creations, the
>>natural resources we have... We still believe in the natural cosmic order of
>>life, which still guides and rules our life, and we call it 'natural law'...
>>It is the air we breathe, that is our belief, which gives us life. If
that's
>>not what it were for, the air would be dead. The water we drink, that is
our
>>belief. And the nutrition, the pollen we take and eat, that is our food,
and
>>that is our medicine. That is how we remain healthy, that is our
well-being.
>>And then the fire, the light we have, the sunshine, the fire that burns in
>>our hogans, represents our homeland..."
>> Even Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya does not let himself be steered off
>>course by the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. Although his own tribal council is
>>entangled in the coalition of profiteers, he can make out the real
>>authorities and the cultural driving force of the conflict: "The Great
>>Spirit made us the administrators of this land. This is what our prayers
and
>>ceremonies are concerned with. You, on the other hand, are poisoning and
>>raping and destroying the land with your coal mining, the uranium extraction
>>and the power plants -- all on holy land! And you are trying to chase off
>>the last few Indians so that nothing will stand in the way of this dirty
>>business... There is no Hopi-Navajo land dispute. There is only the
>>boundless greed of the white man. We, the traditional, do not recognize the
>>Hopi and Navajo tribal councils established by your government as puppets so
>>that you can sign over your land. And only because the energy companies
want
>>the coal and especially the uranium to make nuclear weapons. The white man
>>is the one who must go."
>> The staged land dispute seems to me the fatal undertaking of replacing
>>this feeling of belonging with the concept of property. The Hopi leader,
>>Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablets, has made the
>>point at
>>issue clear:
>>"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."
>> Boyden, with his juristic concept of property, meaning disposal pure
and
>>simple, and his legal confiscation strategy, started the dispute and with
>>it a dirty game in
>>which losers and winners will play it out until everyone has lost. The USA
>>claims that it, not the Indians, is the full owner of the land and degrades
>>them feudalistically to mere tenants, to whom the land can be handed over or
>>from whom it can be withdrawn, according to its own interests. The
coalition
>>of profiteers is degrading the land to a commercially exploitable resource,
>>with no regard for the inhabitants who live in it.
>> A small group of resolute Dineh is fighting out a battle against the
USA,
>>a world power. In doing so, they represent more than the demand for
autonomy
>>of a small minority. The religious bond of these ancient believers in the
>>land that is to be held as holy stands fundamentally opposed to license to
>>evaluate land strictly according to market value and the principle of
>>unlimited exploitation. Whether a modern human rights idea and
organization,
>>even when it includes religious, social, and ecological rights, can protect
>>or even keep alive an indigenous culture like those of the Dineh is in
>>question. The call for help of these people, who are fighting not only for
>>their survival, but of the survival of another form of coexistence of earth
>>and human, deserves not to echo unheard.
>>
>
>-- Carol S. Halberstadt, Migrations (carol@migrations.com)
>Native American art and crafts
>http://www.migrations.com