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U.S. taxpayer dollars maintain the Indian Wars: heavily armed Indian law personnel confiscating Dineh owned sheep. |
Excessive
Laws to Livestock Confiscation at Big Mountain on Black Mesa
--contributing writers: Tree with
Black Mesa Indigenous Support, and Kat with SheepDogNation Media, August 2015.
We all have to live with regulations whether
we live in the urban or rural areas, and permits may apply as to how many pets
we should have to how much livestock we can range. What the Hopi tribe is up to
is also like any county/state authority that regulate ranching particularly
involving horses and cattle. This current situation in Big Mountain involves,
in part, the Hopi rangers doing their annual livestock assessment, however for
the Dineh sheep and goat herders, it is unique because it involves culture and
identity. It is also important to understand that because of this unique
factor, Dineh (Navajos) are attempting to resist this 'range management'
practices just as they have resisted the relocation program. The BIA Police and
tribal rangers have reoriented their livestock confiscation approaches against
these Dineh. There is now a standby alert system to agency-wide, Special
Operation Services and this makes the enforcement more excessive.
These Dineh resisters to a
federal mandatory, relocation law have been subjected to livestock count
and impoundments this past week and more are expected to continue, perhaps into
next month. Livestock counts and impoundments are used also as a tool to
harass, demoralize, terminate the economic and cultural backbone, monitor
family home site activities, and to pressure all Dineh to vacate their
ancestral homelands.
Eventually this policy of force removal will
not create new Hopi lands as the Law states, but it makes way for
Peabody Coal Company to expand and exploit the remaining coal deposits.
Peabody's role here is major as compared to all other natural resource
extraction in Arizona, it is a long term multinational corporate investment
that extends to 2055-60. The now 50 year old mining leases at Black Mesa has
nearly exhausted its operation and Peabody hopes to expand new lease areas into
the still, culturally-intact, Big Mountain region.
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Grandma Rena (L) a resident of Big Mountain's Horse Corral area. Her son (R), Jerry. |
There a few Dineh elders resisters that have
withheld their sovereign and ancient obligations to their sacred Mountain Soil
Bundle which is believed to represent the complete authority over animal
husbandry, sustainable and eco-conscious live styles, farming, and rituals. The
federal, both tribal and state, consider these particular resisters as
‘extremist’ and trespassers. These traditional resisters have refused to get ‘legal’
permits or temporary resident status. Pauline Whitesinger who passed away in
2014 was just one of those hardcore resister and leader. Rena Babbit Lane is
still remaining strong as one of the last true sovereign Indian, and just this
week she was told to be prepared for that BIA invasion to confiscate her
animals. Her son, Jerry, is the one that was just acquitted. Grandma Rena is in
her 90s, and it is unimaginable how a grandma this old, who withholds much
wisdom, a soft spoken and kind individual be tortured further. Does this
country, the U.S. and its fossil fuel addicted citizens, truly believe in destroying
all earth based humans in order to control global real estates and the
electrical power grids?
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Etta became the lone Matriarch after both her parents passed-on in 2014. |
This recent attack happened on the 152nd
anniversary of the start of the US Army's scorch the earth policy against the
Dineh, in which a bounty was placed on all ‘Navajo’ livestock in an attempt to
starve them into submission, and resulted in the massive forced relocation,
known as the Long Walk. Big Mountain elder, John Katenay’s story, "My great grandmother told us that she was
just little (1863) when they hid in the thick woods because the army came upon
them. They couldn’t escape with the herd, but they could only listen as the
soldiers cut open the bellies of live goats, goats wailed as soldiers laughed,
and as her mother cried..."
“We are in a battleground, the endless battleground of the
Partitioned Lands. This is the front of the line and when it comes, your family
there is no yes or no, you have to stand up for your family and your relatives.
This is what I was taught. The
past was never really forgotten of the way the U.S. Government treated my
people. It is still going on, it is still alive. We will fight- not with
violence or armor, but with the old ways. This is a stand for people to
know who we are and how we live as Dineh.”--Gerald Blackrock, October 2014.
“They came as before like having no mercy, they counted the
sheep and goats. One of the police filled out sheets of paper and I was given a
copy. Their interpreter simply told me ‘your herd is over the limit again!’
They did not say how much is over nor suggested to me anything about how to
reduce it to the limit. They did not want any conversation and they all left. After
that, I heard that one of my cousins, Ruby, got her sheep impounded but they
were able to get most of them back. They probably had to pay a lot of money in
order to get them back. The BIA Hopi land agency just want the money, and this
is how we are force to give them monies every year!” –Etta Begay, August 20, 2015
Dineh residents in
resistance however are made to be voiceless and nonexistent, and are again asking
world citizens to demand an immediate halt to this forced, herd reductions and
that the relocation law be repealed so that, they be recognized as true
determined group of peoples and to be allowed to remain with any cultural
content that are retrievable including the said ancestral
lands. Please, call the numbers below to demand a moratorium on the
impoundments of Dineh livestock and the nullification of P.L. 93-531, a law too
expensive for taxpayers and that was created under debunked circumstances. Also
email blackmesais@gmail.com to find out more about the human rights
observation and the volunteer home-stay sheepherding program.
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Sample of a reduced herd near Etta's homestead, one lone goat, and the multiple trail grooves before the impoundments of 2014. |
Call to Action:
- Participate in
community organizing geared toward sustainability, Peace, stopping
militarization, Indigenous sovereign rights and protecting sacred sites, then
join vigils or marches at federal buildings by showing your support for Dineh
elders: “U.S. Peabody Out of Big Mountain!”
- Donate funds here, to Black Mesa
Indigenous Support which facilitates networks and on land support. So, come out to herd sheep and monitor human
rights violations (email blackmesais@gmail.com)
- Support Native
Resistance and the endangered indigenous ways. ***Share, forward this request
far and wide!
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Call: