Vol. 9, No. 3, No Date 1986
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FREEDOM SOCIALIST 0 VOLUME 9, NUMBER 3 0 1986 1 story, David is a woman, many women, tional people of both nations and their the women of Big Mountain. tribal councils, which have allied with the energy moguls to clear the land for Creating a pretext exploitation. Congress passed Public Law 93-531- The Navajo and Hopi councils are the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act puppet governments, funded and con in 1974, supposedly to settle a "land trolled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, dispute" between the Hopis and Navajos which recognizes them as the only legiti over a 1.8 million acre Joint Use Area mate representatives of their peoples. (JUA) set aside in 1930 to be shared by The Navajo council was created in both tribes. This area is in the center of 1921. Its members were handpicked by the Navajo reservation which itself en the Department of the Interior and could circles the Hopi reservation. not meet without a representative of the In fact, the land dispute was the crea department present. Their chief function tion of Mormon-controlled interests in was to sign contracts with Standard Oil. the energy industry which hoped to cash The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act in on the energy crisis by mining coal in brought the Hopi council into existence. the JUA. A Navajo/Hopi range war was Since Hopi religion proscribed partici faked by a Mormon-run public relations pating in "foreign" politics, only those firm and used as the pretext to introduce who had converted to Mormonism took legislation favorable to mining interests. part in tribal elections. These were 10% The mastermind behind this campaign of the population. was John Boyden-a white former arch Disenfranchised, their indigenous, bishop in the Mormon church and at fiercely democratic governments made torney for both Peabody Coal and the powerless by a stroke of th:! pen, the Hopi tribal council. Hopi and Navajo people watched as The Settlement Act mandated the mining royalties enriched the families equal division of the JUA between the who ran the councils, as coal dust Navajos and Hopis, and the construc polluted the skies over the mesas, and as tion of a 300-mile barbed wire fence uranium mines poisoned the once marking the boundary. The Act also pristine waters. ordered a 90070 reduction of livestock In 1964 and 1966, both the Hopi and herds. a moratorium on all new con Navajo councils signed land leases with struction and improvements in the area, Peabody Coal in the JUA over the bitter and the removal of Navajos and Hopis protest of most tribal members. Now the on the "wrong side" of the fence by Hopi council hopes to reap millions by securing exclusive control of the land oc cupied by traditional Dine in the JUA. Portrait of Dine elder Katherine Navajo chairman Peterson Zah coop Smith, by Carolyn Brooks. erated with the relocation plan by nego tiating to get a rental agreement with the Hopis or land outside the reservation for Navajo resettlement. These efforts have orced relocation. The words bring failed, however, and he has vowed to to mind the Trail of Tears, Nazi o Hopi Reservation block further relocation. F concentration camps, and the in ternment of Japanese Americans during Former Joint Use o Area, Now Hopl Rebellion in the ranks World War II. Past atrocities, not pre Zah's Johnny-come-lately opposition sent and future ones. Former Joint Use Area, Now Navajo to resettlement is also the result of But on the Black Mesa surrounding 111 rebellion from within the ranks of the Big Mountain in northeastern Arizona, Black Mesa Coal Field Navajo nation. over 11,000 Dine (Navajo) are facing a In 1978, 500 Navajos met at Big new holocaust: removal by armed U.S. Peabody Coal Co . Lease Area Mountain to declare their independence troops from their ancestral homelands in from the misrepresentative Navajo trioal Uranium an area jointly held by the Navajo and • council. They called themselves the Big Hopi nations. III Mountain Independent Dine Nation. The U.S. media bills the government's role as peacemaker in a Hopi vs. Navajo ~•••••••• 1111." •• ~ Organized along the tradi tional matriarchal form of war. But the reality is very different at UTAH I COLORADO Navajo leadership, the na- Big Mountain. I tion is governed by women For over 50 years, mining companies Gl elders representing each clan. have sought to exploit the rich mineral -- -:;;"5" These elders have been resources that lie beneath the land now Exxon joined by representatives of occupied by the Navajos. To do this they * ~ the traditional kikmongwe first secured the assistance of the federal ; Hopi in opposing resettle- government, which in the 1920s and '30s o 25 ~ ment and further destruction unilaterally replaced the traditional I ~ of the land. Together they forms of government, based on clan Miles ~. form the basis of the resis- elders, with malleable tribal councils. NEW ~ tance movement at Big Over the years these councils have been ment and the Hopi council for help. .............. _________.....: __M_..E_X_IC;.;O.. Mountain. only too willing to negotiate mineral Forced relocation, the holocaust leases, and the elite who run the councils hatched in corporate boardrooms, has in Dirty deals have gotten rich doing it. fact gathered formidable support: it is July 8, 1986. (The 100 Hopi living on the The Relocation Commission, the Now, giant energy corporations like endorsed by Congress, covered up by the "Navajo side" moved in 1976.) This will federal agency charged with implement Peabody Coal, Kerr McGee, and Exxon press, and sanctioned by a phony tribal leave the Hopi-controlled land virtually ing the Navajo eviction, is a monument want unhampered access to the esti leadership. unpopulated and ready for strip mining. to fraud and genocidal cruelty. It has mated 44 billion tons of highgrade coal But this Goliath has met its David in been called an "unprecedented disaster" and deposits of oil, natural gas, and the proud and independent traditional Puppet governments by a former director, amid mounting uranium found on and around Big leaders of the Hopi and Navajo nations For over a century, the people of evidence of internal corruption, job dis Mountain. who have joined forces to fight reloca Black Mesa have shared the land peace crimination, and housing fraud. There's only one problem: the tradi tion. In the case of the Navajos, a matri fully. The agricultural Hopis live clus It was originally estimated that 3,300 tional Dine who live on the land will not archal society, this leadership comes tered in villages and the widely dispersed Navajos would be resettled by the com move voluntarily. from women elders whose militant de sheepherding Navajos everywhere else. mission. That figure was steadily in So once again the energy moguls have fense of their land, economy, and culture They have no quarrel. creased over the years to its present total turned to their servants in the govern- is sparking nationwide support. In this The real dispute is between the tradi- to page 29 2 FREEDOM SOCIALIST 0 VOLUME 9, NUMBER 301986 LETTERS I The real story Palestine written by an American, More on Miskitos I am a college student at the Joan Peters (Harper & Row, 1984). I want to congratulate you on your University of Pennsylvania, and, Peters manufactured "proof' that consistent and uncompromising because of capitalism's educational prior to 1948, there were no Arabs analysis of issues and events that are system, also work as a janitor at a living in what is now Israel, that the important to the revolutionary left. In local foundry. Enclosed is an order Palestinian people are a myth! particular I am glad to see some for your literature; if it is as good as In the U.S., this book was reviewed thoughtful criticism of the ill-advised your newspaper I am in for some only by pro-Israel supporters who policies ofthe Sandinistas toward the Volume 9, Number 3 1986 mighty fine reading. hailed its "findings." But in Britain, Miskitos and other indigenous I have one question. I read in the and even in Israel, it was denounced peoples of the Atlantic Coast in After Marcos 32 Workers Vanguard about a meeting for deliberate falsification of Nicaragua. To lend uncritical support Filipinos rejoice at the you had with some other Trotskyist statistics and quotations, and its use to the Nicaraguan Revolution, as overthrow of Reagan's pet groups. With the-WVbeing as biased of publicly discredited Israeli many left groups and other cheerlead dictator, Marcos. But can as it is, I wanted to ask what you propaganda from the I 950s-60s . ers would demand of their readers, Aquino's new government thought about the possibility of Two American researchers demonstrates a lack of integrity and bring democracy and regroupment among the different documented fraud in all the book's calls into question their position on prosperity to the Philip Trotskyists. I believe that if a demographic and historical informa Native Americans in this country as pines? Or is revolution at legitimate effort is made it could be tion but their findings were rejected welI as abroad. hand? a priceless contribution to the by the entire U.S. media (except In I hope your paper continues to American Trotskyist movement. These Times). Finally, The Nation avoid the we'll-talk-about-abuses R.P., Hamburg, PA (Oct. 1985) printed Edward Said's later bandwagon that has destroyed Trouble at the Top 4 expose, and Merip Reports (Oct. the credibility of many other You couldn't be more right on the Dec.