POSITION STATEMENT OF THE BLACK MESA RESIDENTS REGARDING THE NAVAJO/HOPI
LAND SETTLEMENT.
On Wednesday, December 06, 1995, Navajo Nation Attorney General Herb Yazzie
and attorney Lee Phillips met with Hopi Tribal officials in Flagstaff, AZ to
discuss a compromise agreement approved by the Hopi Tribal Council on
November 27, 1995.
The "Accomodation Agreement" (Agreement) that has been touted as "the best
deal" for Navajo Families living on the Hopi Partition Land (HPL) is
FRAUDULENT. Because its predecessor, the Agreement-In-Principle (AIP), has
died on its own terms, the Agreement is nothing more than a
misrepresentation of the on-going reality.
Let history correctly show that Lee Phillips has deceived and misled those
he claims to represent. He DOES NOT represent the traditional Dineh
resistors of Black Mesa who have rejected the ploys of those at the
negotiating table and have refused to give credence to the puppet
governments of the Navajo and Hopi tribes as well as the U.S. Government
and Peabody Western Coal Company (PWCC).
We, the traditional Dineh (and Hopi) people maintain "there is no land
dispute or tribal warfare, therefore, there is no need for mediation!"
The real issue is the on-going illegal activities during this illegal and
immoral land grab. There are daily low-altitude overflights by PWCC, night
time grid pattern air(plane) surveillance and periodic house level F-16
fly-bys, use of a military painted helicopter for increased co-ordinated
livestock round-ups, (a Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force?); confiscation of
wood and wood cutting tools; harassment of Navajos who repair their run-down
homes-- all the way to Hopi Tribal Court; stepped up harassment of Navajos
on HPL by "Hopi Rangers" and Field Monitors, Bureau of Indian Affairs Police
and federal informants; and the list goes on.
Where is Phillips on these and other cases too numerous to mention? He is
too busy railroading many traditional elders who do not understand the
English Language or the procedures of this hoax mediation into signing off
our ancestors and future generation to this agreement.
The mediation process itself has allowed these inhuman activities to
escalate and is the reason why the U.S. and both tribal governments chose to
ignore the plight of Navajos on HPL. It has also allowed unprecedented
environmental devastation on Black Mesa and the unparraleled desecration of
burial sites, shrines, medicinal and food plant gathering sites, Anasazu
sites, etc.
Black Mesa residents have obtained a lawyer who represents them in court
and otherwise to establish working relationships with the three governments
involved. For example, recently he was instrumental in the release of
impounded livestock for locals. This was done in a respectful manner making
an informal relationship possible.
HPL Navajos who sit at the negotiation table DO NOT represent all of us who
reside on HPL. We do not recognize this foreign system that brings death to
the land and the people. Whoever signs on to this Agreement, let it only
apply to them, not to those HPL residents who refuse to be a part of this
underhanded trickery.
The Spiritual (religous) issues are not addressed by any party to this
agreement.
The present Administration DOES NOT support us as HPL residents, if it
did, President Albert Hale would have lived up to his campaign promise to
provide funding for our legal representation.
The absence of environmental justice on Black Mesa makes it clear that
PWCC's wanton destruction of our sacred land must cease, both tribes stand
to lose everything if PWCC is allowed to continue to operate under current
conditions i.e. unpermitted slurry line and rail transport line and illegal
mining permits.
The Agreement signals the return of the brutality that created Public Law
93-531. The "Relocation Act of 1974" must be repealed or amended and the
forced relocation of Dineh and Hopi people must stop. The traditional
peoples must be protected at every level.
Those of us who reside on the HPL know their are no rights or due process
for Navajo families who reject the mediation process. Most certainly, there
is no protection for our spiritual and religous concerns.
No progress has been made under the ridiculous and unacceptable terms of
the Accommodation Agreement.
Dineh Alliance
PO Box 180, Pinon. AZ 86510
(520) 607 1449
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Comments from NativeNet listowner, Gary Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us):
I have hastily created an index to various articles on the Navajo-Hopi
land dispute to provide some background on this matter. You can access
these articles via the Web URL:
http://bioc02.uthscsa.edu/~gst/nl/navajo-hopi.html
The process by which the index was created is a manual one, and is some-
what laborious. I need to do more work on the index to exclude those
articles that don't really pertain to the subject and to add dates to
all of them (they go back to the summer of 1991), so I expect this index
to have more value in time. The main aim is to provide for those who are
interested in getting some background in this subject a means of doing so.
I hope to be able to index other important subjects as time goes on. Thus
far, I have done only this index and one on the issue of the recent Ogoni
executions in Nigeria. I am also preparing one on the subject of the
Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) that was the source of controversy
in a discussion thread on NATIVE-L a couple of months ago, but which has
been talked about from time to time on NATIVE-L over the past several years.
Again, the URL for the NativeNet Web page is:
http://www.fdl.cc.mn.us/natnet
You can find whatever index pages there are pertaining to various issues
either under the geographical subject areas or under what is currently
labelled "issue-oriented references" on the page referred to under the
"references" link from the main home page.