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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Clinton approves Big Mountain evictions

By Mahtowin

On Oct. 11, President Bill Clinton signed into law the so-called "Navajo- Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act of 1996." He signed it despite telephone calls and telegrams from Native activists and supporters around the country urging a veto.

This act, which received little attention in the mainstream media, codifies a Dec. 31, 1996 deadline. After that date, some 3,000 remaining Dineh (Navajo) people living at Big Mountain, Ariz., can be forcibly relocated.

For more than a decade, the traditional Hopi and Dineh, many of them elders, have resisted the efforts of the U.S. government and its puppet tribal governments to relocate them. The law Clinton signed gives control of the land to the Hopi tribal government, a tool of the mining corporations.

A critical and often ignored aspect of this land dispute is the fact that beneath Big Mountain are massive coal deposits in which Peabody Coal and other energy corporations have economic interests.

Energy corporations vs. Native people

The lands in the Big Mountain area of northern Arizona- once considered arid and worthless-contain the continent's richest supply of mineral wealth.

For over 10 years, a small group of Native people have been waging a heroic struggle against huge corporations involved in the biggest energy projects in the United States.

To the traditional Dineh and Hopi people, the earth is sacred. They could not allow mining anymore than they would tolerate the rape of their own mother.

When the Peabody Coal Company's public-relations and lobbying firm invented a "Hopi-Navajo land dispute," no one in the government bothered to listen to the voices of thousands of Hopi and Dineh people who had peacefully coexisted in the region for hundreds of years.

The energy companies used the U.S. government to form tribal councils controlled by their own lawyers. The main purpose was to sign leases allowing them to take what they wanted.

The puppet tribal governments worked hand in hand with big energy corporations such as the transnational Peabody Coal Company to push thousands of traditional people off their ancestral lands.

In the mid-1980s, Congress passed a law requiring 10,000 traditional Dineh to be forcibly relocated from their homes. This was the second biggest such relocation in the United States in the 20^th century. The biggest was the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Elders correctly warned, "To relocate means to die."

People whose lives were based on their relationship with the land were dumped into cities, often without compensation, and forever forbidden to return to the land their families had occupied for generations.

People became homeless. There were significant increases in alcoholism, suicide, family break-up and emotional abuse.

Many traditional people were relocated to the "New Lands." This is an area poisoned by 1.5 million tons of uranium ore that was processed and left in contaminated waste piles covering 72 acres next to the San Juan River near Shiprock, N.M.

Resistance at Big Mountain will continue

The law Clinton signed recognizes the Hopi tribal government's right to exercise jurisdiction over the lands in the Big Mountain area where Dineh families reside. In effect, this means that the Hopi Tribal Council can now legally call upon its Hopi Rangers-who, in conjunction with federal marshals and Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, can begin the relocation of the Dineh as of the end of this year.

Dec. 31, 1996, is also the deadline by which the remaining Dineh must either sign a restrictive new lease agreement or move off the land. The vast majority of the Dineh have no interest in signing such a lease.

While it is not absolutely certain that relocation efforts will begin immediately after Dec. 31, this threat has been clearly expressed all year long. In general there has been a heightened level of harassment this past year.

Hopi tribal cops have seized livestock from resisters and harassed supporters who came in last summer for a Sun Dance.

Despite this harassment, many traditional residents continue to resist. They refuse to accept living under Hopi Tribal Council jurisdiction.

They also refuse to accept the concept that someone can limit the time they can remain on their ancestral land.

Accepting the agreement would mean that the people would hand down their problems to their children and their children's children. This is one of the last traditional strongholds and must be preserved. And their presence protects their sacred land from expanded mining activities.

Many expect a formal call soon for international aid for the resistance at Big Mountain.

The voice of the people must be heard to ensure the protection and survival of the people of Big Mountain. The struggle is to protect the land and to save a traditional way of life from corporate interests. Toxic contamination, cultural destruction, and environmental racism will not be tolerated!

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