Dear Friends,
As most of you know we are conducting a letter writing campaign
in support
of the Dine'h (Navaho) Elders who are resisting forced relocation
on Black
Mesa. This week we are targeting VP Gore, since he has the (effective)
Democratic party's nomination for president. He also has investments
in
Occidental, who are drilling on U'wa land against their wishes.
Please let
him know that this is unacceptable!
Use the letter we have provided below or write one of your
own. His e-mail
address is also below. Please cc a copy of your letter to
bambam@anthro.umass.edu so that we can track our success. If
you can,
please forward this letter to friends, family and relevant listserves.
If you do not wish to recieve these not-more-than-weekly letters,
please
indicate so in a note to this address. Thank you for supporting
the Dine'h!
Thomas Taaffe
Listserve Manager
The Friends of Big Mountain
bambam@anthro.umass.edu
Vice President Gore's E-mail: vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Vice President Gore
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
April 2, 2000
Dear Mr. Vice President,
I am writing to you to express my deep concern for the fate
of the Dineh
(Navajo) Elders and other Dineh who are resisting forced
relocation from
their ancestral lands in Black Mesa, Arizona, a concern shared
by thousands
around the world, and even most recently by the European Parliament.
Please
urge President Clinton to issue an Executive Order forbidding
any
forced evictions of Dineh resistors from the Hopi Partitioned
Lands (HPL).
On February 1, 2000, land title for the lands in question passed
into the
hands of the Hopi Tribal Council; as did the responsibility for
the
relocation of the Dineh resistors. The Hopi Tribal Council
is an entity of
questionable origin whose existence has served to be that of a
signer of
strip-mining leases for Peabody Coal Company. These are leases
that
continue to be vigorously
opposed by the traditional people of both the Hopi and Dineh
Nations, and
always have been. Both the traditional Hopi, and traditional Dineh
have
said for decades that their respective Tribal Councils do not
represent them
at all.
The so-called Hopi-Navajo Land Dispute was nothing
but a fiction devised
by a PR firm and John Boyden, a lawyer for the Peabody Coal Company
and the
Hopi Tribal Council, and was subsequently used to pressure Congress
and
various courts to transfer land title to the Hopi Tribal Council.
The Hopi Tribal Council has a history of using its Tribal
Police (with the
full cooperation and direction of Bureau of Indian Affairs officials)
to
harass, intimidate, and physically harm the Dineh and their
livestock as a
method to drive these people off their ancestral lands. The subsistence
lifestyle of these people has already been made difficult enough
by
excessive livestock impoundments and the Bennett Freeze,
(PL 93-531) which
will not allow the Dineh to repair their homes or outhouses
in any way, nor
allow them to gather firewood to heat their homes in the freezing
winters,
nor even gather medicinal herbs and plants. The Dineh are
being denied not
only their right to live, but their right to practice their religious
and
cultural path.
The Accommodation Agreement and land lease solutions
to these problems are
completely inadequate and irrelevant. Essentially, the ability
of the Dine
h for self-determination will be at the whim of the Hopi Tribal
Council and
BIA officials, not only insofar as how they live on their land,
but also how
they practice their religion.
The most horrifying aspect of this relocation, is the fact
that the lands
that the Dineh are being relocated to are completely poisoned
with
radiation from the worst nuclear disaster this country has ever
experienced.
People who have already been relocated to these New Lands
have begun
showing high cancer and birth defect rates. Yes, even the children
are
suffering.
Is this relocation process a new form of legalized genocide,
which is
being supported by the U.S. government, and funded by the American
taxpayers? To date this relocation effort has cost the American
taxpayers
500 million dollars. I must ask you, do you support this kind
of treatment
of indigenous peoples in this country, this legalized genocide?
I am sure
that the citizens of this country would be outraged to know what
kind of
projects their tax dollars really go into supporting, as am I.
Mr. Vice
President, you are in a unique position to end this suffering,
and the
suffering of indigenous people around the world at the hands of
corporate
greed, for several reasons.
First of all, as the Vice President you are a person with great
responsibility and influence.
Secondly, as a publicly stated defender of the environment,
(and author of a
book during your time as a Senator on these issues, Earth in the
Balance)
you have for many years expressed your disapproval of both the
degradation
of the environment, and the treatment of indigenous peoples
by First World
nations.
Thirdly, since your family is heavily invested in Occidental
Petroleum, you
must be aware of the opposition of the Uwa indigenous people
of Columbia to
the proposed oil drilling on their sacred lands, and the similarities
of
their case to the Dineh case.
Given your publicly stated opinions about both environmental
and indigenous
issues, I am sure you are as deeply concerned as I that the Dineh
and Uwa
peoples, their religions, cultures, languages, arts, wisdom, and
their lands
are kept from harm. The people of the Earth have volumes to learn
from the
wisdom of its guardians, the indigenous people, because any destruction
of
the Earth or its inhabitants will affect us all.
Mr. Vice President, you are currently pursuing election as
this
countrys President, and soon your responsibility to its
public will
increase exponentially. I urge you to begin to heal the wounds
caused by
centuries of misguided government policy and relations withits
indigenous
people. I urge you to adhere to your responsibility as a leader
of this
country, and your responsibility to safeguard the well-being of
its
peoples. I urge you to take immediate action to stop the relocation
of the
Dineh, and end oppression of indigenous peoples everywhere.
When others are oppressed, no one is truly free.
I wish to thank you in advance for your immediate attention
to this matter,
and look forward to hearing your reply.
Sincerely,
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For more information on this on-going human rights crisis in the
United States, visit my web page at http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/pagea~1.htm