(Arizona)
Navajo woman vows jail rather than break her link to the land
(AP) - Grace Smith, Navajo, vows to go to jail rather
than submit to a U.S. policy that she said would mean the death
of many members of her tribe. Her crime: She refuses to leave her
home in Teesto, AZ.
Smith lives in an area near Big Mountain in northeast
Arizona that was given to the Hopi by the U.S. government in
1986. As many as 10,000 Dine'h (Navajo for The People) live in
the area.
Smith, speaking at the 44th Annual World Affairs
Conference at the University of Colorado, said the land has been
the traditional homeland of the Dine'h for thousands of years.
She said her people don't separate their religion from everyday
life, and their religion is inextricably linked to the land.
"It is the substance of one's progeny," said Leo Griep-
Ruiz, a member of the International Mayan League. "It's very hard
to describe - to the people who don't see future generations in
the soil they touch - our connection with the land."
Smith said the land - not just any land, but the
ancestral land - is necessary for prayer. And separation from that
land will bring illness to the Dine'h as well as natural
disaster. The eruption of Mount St. Helens is only the first
example, she said.
The U.S. government maintains the relocation necessary to
keep the more numerous Dine'h from encroaching on Hopi land. But
Smith thinks the government has a different motive, and she said
many traditional Hopi are against the relocation. Smith said the
government has given coal-rich land to the Hopi because that
tribe's council will allow the coal to be mined.
She said the land was originally given to the Indians
because it was a useless desert. "The buttes and mountains are
water barrels," she said. "So we knew how to survive." However,
when uranium, coal and oil were discovered, the government's
policy changed.
When the tribal elders - not the tribal council, which
Smith said is viewed as an extension of the U.S. government by
traditional Dine'h - asked her to be their eyes, voice and ears,
"I took that challenge in leading the fight against culture
genocide."
After insisting on meeting with members of the U.S.
Congress rather than their aides, she said Arizona Sen. John
McCain "almost threw us out of his office." So Smith and her
companions went to the United Nations, where they filed a
complaint that her human rights were being violated and asked for
a resolution demanding the suspension of the relocation.
"We want no longer to be a part of the U.S. government,"
Smith said. "We are getting nothing more than human ruin here."
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\ hopi@scicom.alphacdc.com | MAN WOMAN JOLLY RANCHER /