SPONSORING GENOCIDE

Senator John McCain's Final Solution

Rena Babbitt Lane is a Dineh (Navajo) elder living on land on
Black Mesa in Arizona that has been inhabited by her Dineh ancestors
for many centuries. Living without electricity or running water, she
and her husband sustain a profoundly traditional life, and survive by
raising sheep, weaving rugs from their wool, and growing a few crops. 
On Tuesday, September 21, 1999, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents
raided her homesite and confiscated 17 sheep, 3 goats, and 6 cows. She
was weaving and preparing a meal at the time, and did not even know the
BIA was there until later, when all her animals did not come home. She
saw the tracks of two impoundment trailers and a police vehicle where
they had been grazing, and knew they had been taken away. When she went
to the BIA offices the next day, they served her with papers stating
that the rest of her livestock will be confiscated in five days
(Tuesday, September 28). The BIA is confiscating without compensation
everything she owns, leaving her to die in the harsh winter soon to
follow. If she survives until spring without her livestock, she will be
forcibly relocated to the "New Lands," an area that was contaminated by
the largest spill of nuclear waste in US history. Rena Babbitt Lane,
who is in her late seventies, was severely injured--her hand broken--in
a previous livestock impoundment. She has undergone surgery for a 
heart condition, and wears a pacemaker.

 

The BIA offered her one way to save part of her herd and to avoid
relocation. She could sign an "Accommodation Agreement" that was
included as part of PL 104-301, which was sponsored by Senator John
McCain of Arizona. By signing this agreement, she acknowledges the loss
of her land title and agrees to live as a tenant in her own house.
Under the agreement, she is not allowed to vote or to participate in
the legal system except as a defendant. She and people like her must
live in a system in which they are blatantly discriminated against
because of their ethnic origin. Permits are required for everything
ranging from possessing firewood to performing religious ceremonies.
The people are not even allowed to bury their dead according to their
traditional religious beliefs. Government regulations control who is
allowed to live in her house and who is allowed to visit her. Permits
for scarce commodities like grazing permits are allocated according to
a priority list on which Dineh like Rena are placed at the bottom to
insure they never receive any.

 

In an effort to obtain signatures on these leases and thereby make it
appear that a fair solution had been reached, McCain and his followers
in Congress attached a provision to the law that grants the Hopi
government $25 million if it can obtain signatures from 95 families on
these leases--over $260,000 per signature. The federal government then
supported a campaign of fraud and coercion to obtain signatures. People
were told they would be thrown in jail or evicted in the middle of the
night if they refused to sign when requested. Signatures were forged.
Semiofficial thugs empowered by the US government even threatened to
kill some of the elderly people if they refused to sign. Despite this
campaign, Rena and many of the families still refused to sign, so the
BIA has launched a final wave of attacks to exterminate the resisters.

 
How It All Began 

Senator McCain's law was intended to be the final solution to a
problem that began in 1882 when the US government created a reservation
centered on the Hopi villages at the southern tip of Black Mesa. The
land surrounding the Hopi, making up over 85% of the reservation, was
inhabited by Dineh. In the 1930s, the US government proposed giving
control over the reservation to a government consisting exclusively of
Hopi. Recognizing the problem that this presented to the Dineh living
on the reservation, the BIA proposed in 1943 to partition the
reservation so as to give the Hopi government control over a small area
in the middle and to give the Navajo government control over the rest.

 These plans were derailed when the nation's largest deposits of
low-sulfur coal were discovered on the land where the Dineh lived. An
attorney named John Boyden, who was simultaneously working for the
Peabody Coal Company, formed a Hopi government under his control in
1953 and won a settlement in 1963 giving him a 50% interest in the
Dineh land. In 1974 with the strong support of a consortium of energy
companies, Boyden persuaded Congress to pass PL 93-531 which divided
the Dineh land into separate Hopi/Navajo regions and ordered the
relocation of all Dineh living on the Hopi Partitioned Lands.

"We want everyone to know that the Navajos are not the ones
taking our land, but the United States. The Hopi and the Navajo made
peace long ago, and sealed their agreement spiritually with a medicine
bundle. It is through the puppet governments, the 'Tribal Councils'
forced upon both nations by the United States, that the illusion of a
conflict has been created on the basis of the false modern concept of
land title." [Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan
Tablets]

Over the next 25 years, more than 12,000 Dineh were forcibly
relocated in a program described by its former director Leon Berger as
"a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the
conscience of this country for many generations." Many were moved to
the "New Lands," an area near Chambers, AZ, too arid to support their
livestock and contaminated by the largest spill of radioactive waste in
US history, which occurred when a containment dam at a uranium mine
burst upstream on the Rio Puerco, which runs through the land. Others
were moved into cities for which they lacked survival skills, and where
they became caught in a circle of homelessness, alcoholism, and
suicide.

While the 1974 law mandated relocation, it did not authorize the use of
force to remove those who refused to leave, and approximately 3,000
Dineh still remain on their land despite all the efforts to evict them.
In 1996, McCain sponsored a bill which attempted to resolve the
situation by offering some of the families leases that would allow them
to remain as tenants on their land without civil rights. The bill
authorized the forcible relocation after February 1, 2000, of those who
were ineligible to sign or who refused to sign the leases.

What You Can Do To Help

We urge all Americans to call upon Congress to repeal
legislation that legalizes ethnic cleansing, that arbitrarily
confiscates the homes and property of the poorest people in the
country, and that strips people of their civil rights solely because of
their ethnic origin. Please contact your representatives and remind
them that the foundation of all policy toward America's native peoples
should be respect for their right to remain on their ancestral land, to
practice their traditional religion, and to enjoy the same protections
and civil rights offered to all other citizens.


Further information on the issue can be obtained from:
http://www.solcommunications.com
http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/pagea~1.htm

SOVEREIGN DINEH NATION
P.O.Box 1968 Kaibeto, AZ 86053
 DINETAH29@aol.com
___________________________________________________________

What you can do:

Write letters to Sen. McCain and his campaign headquarters. Let
McCain know that like the 1970s, students and people from all walks of
life are involved in a movement that will not stop, following him
during his presidential campaign, until he gives justice to these
people. Then he can become a hero. 

Tell McCain that he has the power to remedy the injustices done to the
Dineh and take responsibility for all that has happened. In 1996,
Congress looked to him, as the senior senator from the home state of
Arizona, for guidance on this issue. He had the choice then of whether
to continue the programs of the past or to develop legislation that
revoked the policies of ethnocide and destruction, and provided humane
solutions. By choosing to embrace the policies of the past, he
inherited responsibility for their impact during the last 25 years,
endorsing a war of attrition against the Dineh (the slow beating down
of a people). Now he has the choice and the responsibility to undo
these tragic laws. 

McCain was the sponsor of Senate Bill 1973: Navajo-Hopi Relocation Act
of 1996, which ultimately became P.L. 104-301. He wrote the
introduction to the bill, and it was pushed through Congress by him.
The bill was disguised as a settlement that would prevent relocation,
so that McCain's introduction to the bill sounds like his only interest
is in preventing relocation. However, it was clear to everyone at the
time that the bill would ultimately have the effect of authorizing
relocation. As a consequence of this bill being passed into law,
everything that the Dineh said would happen has occurred: 

--the extortion of signatures

--the pending relocation

--the livestock permitting system, leaving families without protection
for their herds, their sole means of survival

--ratifying a settlement agreement under which the Dineh families who
signed leases are not allowed to vote or participate in the government
that controls them--entitled to no civil rights.

 We urge people to contact McCain's campaign as concerned citizens and
ask the following questions:

--Do you believe it is appropriate for Congress to continue policies
that are based on land title established by a coal company? 

--Are you willing to consider legislation that revises the land title
to reflect the traditional occupancy and use?

--Most other nations now recognize the rights of indigenous people to
remain on their traditional land. S 1973, which you sponsored, requires
the relocation next year of people whose families have occupied this
land for hundreds of years. Why do you believe that the U.S. should not
recognize their right to remain on their land?

--Do you believe that the confiscation of their livestock, the sole
means of survival of elderly people, benefits the U.S. government?

--Would you call for a moratorium on the livestock confiscations? 

--Why do you feel that Native Americans are not entitled to civil
rights?

--Would you meet with the Dineh grandmothers and let their voices be
heard for the first time?

--You have the choice now to become a hero in creating a just solution
or of repeating the continuing pattern of abuse of indigenous people
into the new millennium. What is your choice?


Thank you.
Carol, Rita & Bill