 |
Black
Mesa Indigenous Support
P.O.
Box 23501, Flagstaff, Arizona 86002
Message Voice Mail: 928.773.8086 Email: blackmesais@riseup.net Newsletter:blackmesais@lists.riseup.net |
(In the following report,
"Hopi Tribe" refers to a
tribal government imposed by the United States over
the objections of traditional Hopi, and still opposed
by many Hopis who support those Dineh facing
relocation.)
In the tradition of resistance
to relocation, a Spring
Survival Gathering was held in honor of the late
Roberta Blackgoat, resistance leader and traditional
matriarch, on her ancestral land at Big Mountain, just
a few miles as the crow flies south of the Peabody
Black Mesa coal mine.
Driving over 26 miles of
dirt road, up and down steep
canyons, across sandy washes, through a green desert
bright with flowers and swept by spring winds, it's
easy to forget that water is in crisis throughout the
southwest. Many wells at Big Mountain and in nearby
Hopi villages have run dry, which people of both
tribes believe is due to the depletion of the ancient
Navajo aquifer which underlies Black Mesa, a depletion
caused by coal slurry lines which drain 5 million
gallons of water a day from the aquifer.
The nearby Colorado River
has itself been taxed to the
limit by demands from such burgeoning cities as
Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, an uncontrolled
growth spurred by investors and developers, supported
in part by coal mined from the Black Mesa, and
threatening millions of people with drought and other
consequences of non-viability.
The gathering was treated
with hostility by the Hopi
tribal government, and visited daily by armed Hopi
Rangers accompanied on one occasion by the FBI. In
addition, non-signers of the Accommodation Agreement
still living on Hopi Partitioned Lands were visited at
their homes by Hopi Field Monitors and questioned
about the gathering.
This hostile police presence
is a fact of life on the
HPL, part of a strategy to drive traditional Dineh
(Navajo) from lands awarded to the Hopi Tribe under a
1974 law (PL 93-531) passed by an ill-informed
Congress at the behest of Peabody Coal Company.
People living on the wrong
side of the line which
Congress drew in 1974, both signers and non-signers of
the Accommodation Agreement, face a bewildering array
of government and bureaucratic forces. A woman at the
gathering who lives near the coal mine expressed her
frustrations. After obtaining approval from her Navajo
chapter house to fund winterization of her mother's
home which has a leaking floor and roof, she was then
told "if we go and fund that, we're afraid the Hopi
Tribe will come and file a lawsuit." Thus far, no
repairs.
She has made countless
requests to the Hopi Tribe for
electricity, easily shunted from nearby coal mine
wires. The same hostile tribal government has for 10
years also ignored her requests to gravel her road or
repair her dams, and has arbitrarily withheld
essential firewood permits.
To gather wood from their
own backyards. HPL residents
must travel 50 or more miles to apply for permits, and
every month a new permit is required. Permits aren't
granted automatically. Non-signers in particular face
delays and indifference. Failure to produce a permit
at the demand of Rangers or Range Monitors can result
in confiscation of firewood and/or chainsaws.
Any new construction on
the HPL must be approved by
the Hopi Tribe or is subject to removal. One resister
testified at the gathering that he was forced to
abandon his house when it became unlivable after Hopi
Rangers punched through the foundation attempting to
arrest supporters who had non-violently blocked a
bulldozer threatening the house. Since his house was
located near Hopi cattle grazing land, and he himself
was the object of close police scrutiny, he despaired
of making the necessary repairs covertly, or of being
granted a permit.
And, of course, livestock
confiscation, based on
arbitrary quotas imposed by the Hopi Tribe, remains a
constant threat aimed at the heart of HPL residents'
ability to survive. One day, as one of the Rangers who
had come to check on the gathering turned to depart,
Pauline Whitesinger, elder and longtime leader of the
resistance, yelled after him: "Bring some meat next
time. You guys have confiscated enough!"
It was a small gathering,
reflective of the distances
supporters and local residents had to travel,
reflecting as well a certain weariness that has
settled in many hearts since the destruction of the
Sundance arbor by Hopi bulldozers in August, 2001, and
also reflecting some disunity that has been fostered
and exacerbated by the pressures of trying to live and
raise families in the harsh conditions of an occupied
territory.
At one point in the meeting,
some of the elders were
having trouble deciding on a site for the next meeting
and, after banging their heads together for awhile,
sisters Catherine Smith and Pauline Whitesinger, with
laughter in their twinkiling eyes, pleaded with Danny
Blackgoat who was hosting the gathering that they
didn't want to be leaders anymore, that it was time
for the elders to pass on the mantle of leadership
onto the next generation.
That moment, poignant and
whimsical at the same time,
revealed what a crucible this gathering was. Here, on
occupied territory, under clouds which threaten all of
us, were gathered youth and elders whose very
existence on their ancestral lands is an act of
resistance, and supporters who had travelled for a
brief visit from as far away as France, as well as
those who have spent years on the land serving the
resistance, some even having learned to speak the
difficult Dineh language. Together we were able to
laugh, and look through the clouds to distant stars,
understanding that we have no choice but to apply
ourselves to our common resistance with all the forces
of our being, for the sake of future generations.
We laughed together, prayed
together, ploughed the
land together, herded sheep together, cooked together,
ate together, and confronted intruders together.
On Thursday Catherine Smith,
who is half deaf, wearing
sunglasses after an operation for cataracts, told us
that two Hopi Rangers had come to her house that
morning to ask about the gathering. "I think they are
checking every home," she said. "Yesterday I lost my
other ear, so it's good that the Rangers were talking
to me today, because I couldn't hear them."
The next day, an FBI agent
drove up accompanied by
three Hopi Rangers in two cars. He was wearing a
bulletproof vest. When Danny Blackgoat, seated on a
wooden bench, refused to talk with him privately, he
was forced to address our host while standing in the
center of a circle of twenty or thirty people, cameras
and tape recorders buzzing.
"The reason I'm here
is because we've had an
allegation that a bunch of non-Indians are squatting
on Hopi land," he began. "The reason we're involved is
because the Hopis would have a problem evicting
non-Indians."
He proceeded to fire off
questions to our host with
cavalier disrespect: "How old are you? Do you have a
house here? Do you have a census number?" Danny
Blackgoat sat with his hands folded above his head,
staring him in the eye, answering with amazing
deference and respect. There was a deep anguish
visible in his face and in the crowd, that such a
violation could occur here at his ancestral home where
he was raised, thirty years after his struggle for the
land was launched, and just over a year since the
passing of his mother, Roberta Blackgoat.
"Are You Hopi? Navajo?"
"What nationality are you?" he asked the agent slowly.
"I'm pretty much Illinois
redneck, a little bit of
everything. Cherokee, Irish, German, whatever happened
to be there at the time," was the flip reply.
For an agonizing twenty
minutes, with great dignity,
he politely fielded a volley of impertinent questions.
Finally Pauline Whitesinger spoke up, addressing the
FBI agent. Danny Blackgoat translated:
"She says you look
like a Navajo, not a Hopi. She says
bring a traditional Hopi with you if you're going to
come here again. She says you're a white person. So is
this person you're with, and that and that. None of
you are Hopi leaders. If they come and tell me this is
their land, then i'll listen to them. This land, the
Hopis don't want it. I've been conversing with a Hopi
who says we don't want this land here. It was taken
for no reason."
"Does she have a question?" the agent interrupted.
After a pause, Pauline gazed at him.
"As to what you say,
that there are some non-Indians
squatting here, I want to tell you that there's been
non-Indians squatting on Native American lands since
1492. And your rent is due. So stop harassing us. This
is our land."
(Special thanks to Danny
Blackgoat and Bahe Katenay
for their patience, humor, generosity, and wisdom.)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover