Navajo Times, 2/29/2000
Dineh HPL residents call on McCain for accountability, support
By WENDY R. YOUNG, Navajo Times Correspondent
TUCSON, February 26, 2000 On Tuesday, the
same day that
Senator John McCain won the primary in Arizona, four Dineh HPL
residents
held a press conference outside his Tucson office calling for
accountability
and support.
McCain has been intimately involved with the land
dispute in his
roles as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
and as
Arizona Senator
In October 1996, he pushed Public Law 104-301 through
Congress,
making the Accommodation Agreement a requirement for Dineh residents.
Non-signers would be evicted. This law passed five months before
the Federal
Court fairness hearings were held to determine whether the AA
was a just
settlement to the Manybeads lawsuit.
Passage of the law defied the concerns of numerous
Dineh HPL
residents documented in letters sent to McCain, the Senate Committee
on
Indian Affairs, and other Congressional members letters
which never
received any response other than being reported in the federal
record
Sen. McCain, as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee
on Indian
Affairs, sent a letter to Flagstaff Attorney Lee Brooke Phillips
dated April
10, 1996. The letter indicates that he put his faith in Phillips
who
represented the Dineh HPL residents in the Manybeads lawsuit negotiations
and two pro-AA residents who appeared before Congress on March
28, 1996
rather than in the many letters he received from people from the
land during
the months thereafter.
In the letter, he and Senator Kyl raised some of
the questions
that other concerned residents had asserted continuously. Phillips
position
remained, after the AA was ratified and later signed by the majority
homesites, that the AA was the best possible compromise that
could be
agreed upon among the Dineh HPL residents and the Hopi Tribal
government
after years of negotiation
On Tuesday, Dineh HPL resident and AA signer Kee Watchman
said
of McCain, Its kind of difficult for me to understand
where he stands
because the way I have seen they have passed the Senator Bill
1973 [PL
104-301] when we been trying to ask them not to pass. But he did
it. Never
came back to sit down with the Dineh people. He done it, so to
me it seems
like they have no respect for my Indigenous Peoples of the Black
Mesa area.
They have no respect for the right of the Indigenous Peoples and
the Human
Rights
Over the years, Dineh HPL residents and other Dineh
people have
asked how this veteran could be forcing so many Dineh veterans
and their
families off this land they fought for or even gave their lives
for. Many
Dineh people served in this countrys defense with McCain
I want the land that I live on back and that
way the future
generations will have a place to go to, said Genevieve Greyeyes
about her
current residency in the Coal Mine Chapter area of the Dineh HPL.
He
[McCain] has to listen. I want to get my land back in a way that
I live
peacefully, she said through translator and Dineh HPL resident
Tom Bedoni
Her husband, Huck Greyeyes, described how life has
been full of
turmoil since the Relocation Act passed in 1974, and how living
under Hopi
and BIA jurisdiction has been devastating for his extended family
and the
Dineh HPL communities
We even get harassed for bringing firewood
to warm our homes,
Greyeyes said.
In the late 1970s and 80s, life with the Relocation
Act under
Hopi and BIA jurisdiction became so unbearable that all of the
Greyeyes
close relatives and neighbors left. Huck Greyeyes described, Their
way of
life is destroyed. Your Alter, your spiritual prayer is taken
away from
you, and their relocated relatives are left heart-broken
We been suffering all this time. Even our homes
were bulldozed.
It bothered us physically and mentally, Huck Greyeyes said,
referring in
part to an historical and significant multi-generation ceremonial
hogan that
the Office of Hopi Lands disassembled in April 1996 against the
Greyeyes
wishes.
The Hopi Tribe later told the elderly couple that
the structure
had become Hopi Tribal property when Genevieve Greyeyes
recently deceased
brother had relocated from it. Genevieves father had built
the hogan for
her parents wedding, and it was in use for a ceremony at
the time Hopi
officials took it down.
After signing the Accommodation Agreement in March
1997, the
Greyeyes could legally build on their ancestral homesite for the
first time
since the 1974 Congressional Act, and just this year they finally
had the
resources they needed to re-construct the hogan
Before we lived under Hopi government, we had
livestock,
cattle, sheep, but now their permit numbers are not enough
to support the
family, Huck Greyeyes said. These days Hopi Tribal Council
and United
States government, theyre telling us no.
Kee Watchman remembers when officials from the U.S.,
Hopi and
Navajo governments and attorneys visited residents in their homes
just
before the 1997 deadline to sign. Good things was being
offering to these
people. Up to this day, everything has been changed, he
explained
first-hand.
People have been told You need to cut
down your animals,
instead of to increase their animals, as residents had been
led to believe
at informational meetings before the AA deadline to sign, Watchman
said
Copyright © 1999-2000, The Navajo Times
___________________________________
<snip>
... many prayers ...
dn: daily news code for auto placement
William "Sky" Crosby, director E C C O
Environmental and Cultural Conservation Organization
Tucson, Az
tel 520 749 0585