Bombing Arizona
(Omar Jabara <mailto:ojabara@sprynet.com>ojabara@sprynet.com
is a Denver-area
public affairs specialist living in Westminster--06-30-99)
Now that we have succeeded in halting most of the ethnic cleansing
in Kosovo,
we need to fly NATO's warplanes stateside to bomb the S.N.O.T
(Systematic
Native Oppression & Torment) out of Arizona. The reason? Ethnic
cleansing
by your old Uncle Sam.
By February 1, 2000, all remaining Navajo Indians (about 3000
elders) on
what are called Hopi Partition Lands in the four corners region
of Arizona
are to be "relocated" from their tribal homes to a desolate
tract of land
on the Rio Puerco, just downstream from the worst uranium mine
disaster
in U.S. history (Church Rock Mill). To date, 10,000 Navajos--known
as Dineh
in their language--have been exiled to this site, with 25% of
the first
group resettled in 1980 dying within the first six months of arriving
at
the "New Lands." The remaining survivors suffer from
increased rates of
birth defects and poisoned livestock.
In order to force the remaining Navajo elders from Big Mountain,
the government
forbids them from repairing their homes, denies them access to
fresh water,
and confiscates their livestock and firewood. In fact, Alice Begay,
a great
grandmother whose family has lived at Big Mountain for generations,
had
to buy back her cow from a livestock auction earlier this month
after the
federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) seized it from her.
You see, it all starts in 1863 when Colonel Kit Carson and
the U.S. Army
went on a rampage to exterminate the Navajo who had been residing
in the
Big Mountain region for the last 600 years. After Carson spent
weeks killing
thousands of Indians, the survivors were forced to march 400 miles
on the
infamous "Long Walk" to Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico.
Those who escaped
Carson's grip hid in the canyons of the Big Mountain region currently
inhabited
by the Navajo and the Hopi peoples.
The Hopi, an agrarian people, occupy permanent settlements
in the lowlands
of the area relying largely on farming. The Navajo rely on sheep-herding
and dry-crop farming. In 1974, President Ford signed a bill partitioning
the Big Mountain area and ordered the Navajo to leave. This was
done in
spite of a 1962 U.S. District Court ruling that the lands in question
were
a Joint Use Area (JUA) cooperatively developed by both Hopi and
Navajo
peoples (with the exception of the small portion occupied by the
Hopi settlements).
So why would the government care if the Navajo lived there
or not, especially
since many Hopi elders believe that the Navajo have just as much
right
as they do? Just follow the money: It turns out that during the
1940s and
1950s, massive deposits of low-sulfur coal, oil, and uranium were
discovered
in the mountains and canyons occupied by the Navajo. The Peabody
Western
Coal Company began operating a 103-square mile coal strip in the
area in
the mid-1960s (after first displacing 200 Navajo families).
The Navajo and Hopi tribal councils--created by the feds--get
royalties
from Peabody's mining operations but those Navajo living in the
mining
permit area get nothing (estimates show they live on top of 18
billion
tons of coal just six feet beneath the surface). In 1964, with
the Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA) acting as an "agent" for the
Navajo, Peabody paid
less than 2% in royalties to the Navajo under its original lease
with the
tribe. In 1984, the tribe sought to adjust the royalty rate to
20 percent
to reflect market standards. The Department of Interior, which
includes
the BIA, approved the increased royalty rate but Peabody (the
world's largest
private coal producer) pressured then-Interior Secretary Donald
Hodel into
overturning the decision. Last week, the Navajo announced they
were fighting
back with a $600 million lawsuit against Peabody for shortchanging
the
tribe since 1984.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit won't prevent the expulsions of the
Navajo elders
from Big Mountain. If you want to help, please call 1-888-41-PRAYER,
or,
e-mail <mailto:sdnation@earthlink.net>sdnation@earthlink.com.
For more
information on this issue, visit the Navaho web site at <http://www.solcommunications.com/dineh.html
>www.solcommunications.com/dineh.html.
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