Dineh (Navajo) elders and youth, traveling from Big Mountain, and throughout
the Black Mesa region of the Navajo Nation will hold a Prayer vigil and
demonstration beginning 8:30 am, Wednesday, August 14, in front of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit, 121 Spear St., San Francisco. At 12:00
noon, a press conference and demonstration will be held at 450 Golden Gate.
Elders and youth are traveling a distance of two thousand miles, to tell
Ninth circuit Court that they reject the proposed Accommodation Agreement,
75-year lease being imposed upon them by the Hopi and the U.S. government.
The resisters have been denied legal representation throughout the
negotiations. Attorney Lee Phillips, who is paid by the Navajo Nation to
"represent " the families, states that he only represents the people that
want to sign the Agreement, which has been rejected by ratios of 250:1. He
has also refused to provide any information regarding the final Mediation
hearing in San Francisco to the people whose lives depend on its results.
Roberta Blackgoat, Chairperson for Sovereign Dineh Nation says, "The Hopi
and Dineh people do not have a quarrel, but 22 years ago, a group of mining
and power companies deceived the U.S. government into thinking there was a
'range war' between us and that the solution was to evict everyone who lived
in the areas which they wished to mine. So Congress intervened." Since
1974, hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent on Relocation of over
10,000 traditional Dine' from their ancestral homeland, while those who
resist have been denied access to safe drinking water, home improvement and
construction, even in cases of demonstrated medical need.
Recently Dineh resisters won a major victory, delaying a vote on S.1973 "The
Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act of 1996" one day before Congress
went on recess. This bill if passed would have caused the 104th Session of
Congress to be remembered as the second Session of Congress to commit a
travesty of justice against the Dine' people. What the Senate Select
Committee on Indian Affairs has called a fair hearing for them is a hearing
at a location several of thousands of miles from where they live, for which
they were given less than five days notice.
Behind closed doors huddle a group of people interested only in money.
Outside these doors stand the families whose ancestral homes will become the
property of a hostile government, who will have their means of survival
taken away by grazing restrictions that deny then the minimum needed to
support themselves in the traditional way that their families have lived for
hundreds of years, and who will subject the rule of a foreign government
which has been promised $50.2 million dollars by the US government under the
Senate bill #1973, if it can force the people into leaving or signing an
Agreement which they do not want.
Now is the time for the people to be heard. And now is the time for human,
civil, religious and constitutional rights violations perpetrated against
the Dineh to stop. Please attend this prayer vigil and press conference.
PRAYER CEREMONY 121 Spear Street 8:30 A.M. TO 9:30 A.M.
PRESS CONFERENCE 450 GOLDEN GATE AVE U.S. FEDERAL BLDG 12:00 NOON
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Comments from NativeNet listowner, Gary Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us):
Again, I would like to remind readers that we have not heard much from
representatives of the Hopi people who have asserted what they feel to
be their rights in this situation. I hope that at some point it will
become possible to get more from the other side. It is not clear that
this situation is nearly as simple as this article would indicate or
that all that's involved is the U.S. government acting against the Dine'
and Hopi peoples; it is clear, though, that there *is* a dispute between
at least some Dine' and Hopi. Some bibliographic information regarding
the history of the dispute is available via an article that can be
obtained by means of the Web URL:
http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9207/0017.html
There is also information regarding a thesis that has been written on the
subject which takes into account the Hopi point of view. Details on how
to obtain a copy of that thesis are available via:
http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/miscdoc/havens-thesis.html