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Leonard Benally speaks at the United Nations; August 2006

 

Human Rights Council

Working Group on Indigenous Peoples

Twenty-four session

31 July-4 August 2006

Item 4c

Greetings to the indigenous brothers and sisters and to the members of the honourable Working Group.

My name is Leonard Bennally of the Sovereign Dineh Nation , resident of Big Mountain, Black Mesa, Arizona, in North America.

Mr. Chairperson,

We have travelled a long road of political, legal, peaceful and economic struggle. The harsh realities of the life in this frustrated paradise kept the pot boiling from generation to generation. The government of the USA and Peabody Coal Company are trying to damage the prestige and our forces among the population. A good number of people would like to shatter completely the already fragile and cracking process and create grounds for the executor to execute a genocidal policy against us. The Senate Bill S-1003.

They are preparing to move us from isolation on the Hopi Partition Land unto the executing table to be executed in the process of annihilation. And now they are beginning to surround us politically and ideologically. The present conflict unmasks once again, the federal government, Hopi Rangers and the Hopi Tribal Police, as well as other Law Agencies   reveals their true character and purpose: indiscriminate repression, the violation of all human rights and the total lack of police ethics and honour.

A strategy war plan was set in place by the U.S. authorities with the following points:

  1. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the forced relocation program of 1974 have caused a lot of grave conditions for our people throughout the Hopi Partition Land area. The policy of extermination of July 7 th , 1876, almost a century to the day after the signing of the declaration of independence.
  2. The illegal livestock impounding of Dineh families living on the Hopi Partition Land.
  3. The desecration of the camp Anna Mae, sacred sun dance ceremonial site, August 17 th , 2001.
  4. U.S. national energy policy. The tremendous resources of coal and uranium, the lack of concern, technology and money for remediation led many bureaucrats and scientists to advocate the designation of our lands as "national sacrifice areas" to be killed on the altar of industrial and military energy needs with both Navajo and Hopi removed to another area.
  5. Senate Bill S-1003 is just the latest battle in an ongoing war arising out of industrial society and its voracious appetite for energy. Now they mock the march of our dead by flinging contemptuous coins at their feet. As long as they speak with contempt, how can there be peace in our land?

 

Recommendations to secure peace:

We urge the U.S. bodies to immediately stop the genocidal policy against us,

to stop wasting our scarce water resources.

We urge the respective United Nations and the US bodies to face that water must not be commercialised or privatised.

Our people needs free access to our own water.

We also urge the U.S. bodies to stop any form of desecration of our own motherland, the Black Mesa.

We have the constitutional right to express our religion and we want that right to be respected.

Peace is not possible in an atmosphere of deceit. Peace is born in freedom, it grows in justice and is a democracy for all.

So that much death will not be wasted, so that the truth will return to our land.

Thank for your attention.