Navajo-Hopi
Observer- Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Editor:
We are
not surprised at the Supreme Court’s decision to deny us our religious
freedom and to deny us the right to live on our ancestral homeland. They
continue to deny us water, they have continued to contaminate our land
and water, and they are denying us food by livestock impoundments. This
is another way to justify their starvation tactics that they use on us
out here.
They want
to eliminate us, humiliate us, slander us, criticize us and deny us our
basic fundamental human rights. But we know who we are, indigenous to
this continent. We know we are the indigenous people by our birthrights,
to our motherland Big Mountain.
And we
have been here 510 years, living and struggling through the four invasions.
We see them as the Spanish invasion, the European invasion, the Kit Carson
invasion and relocation/holocaust.
So brothers and sisters, this is our inheritance from our ancestors to
all the people who are in resistance to the oppression at Big Mountain.
Yes, we are the little people out here on Big Mountain, but we are indigenous
to this territory, we know our own history, and no court, no man-made
or corporate laws, will break our spirit.
We shall
remain and we shall resist.
The government
and the corporations are using the media and newspapers to attack us over
and over again to scare and frighten the old and the young people out
here.
Yes, psychologically
they are trying to wipe us out and exterminate us because we are in the
way. But as indigenous people, the whole of Black Mesa is our soul and
altar. The land is part of us and we are a part of the land and we have
been like that for thousands of years here at Big Mountain.
The Almighty
government and their accomplices are rejoicing to their decision but we
do not believe that any Hopi traditional people are rejoicing about religious
freedom violations on our land.
It is very
disturbing for the Independent thinkers that are still living on the land,
but not everybody has jumped onto the bandwagon of despair yet. We will
plant our corn and we will harvest our corn, and as long as the wind still
blows and the water still flows, then we will still walk this land four
seasons forever and for generations to come for all mankind, especially
for indigenous peoples who struggle for their land and culture. We will
continue to walk the path that our ancestors left us, praying our ceremonial
ways, on our ancestral homeland for the indigenous people, for all humanity.
We will protect the indigenous land from mineral and water extraction
and exploitation.
In solidarity
with all indigenous resistance throughout the western hemisphere, justice,
freedom, liberty and honor.
Respectfully,
from the southeast foothills of Big Mountain,
Leonard Benally
Resistor
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