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>http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JF00/fence.html
>Magazine.  1/31/2000
>
>Wrong Side of the Fence
>As the deadline for their forced relocation approaches, a handful of Navajos
>struggle to hold their place on the sacred earth.
>
>by B.J. Bergman
>January/February 2000
>
>Nobody wants to make a martyr of Roberta Blackgoat, a puckish,
>silver-haired Navajo elder in failing health. But the law's the law.
>
>The law says Blackgoat has until February 1 to leave her house,
>her land, her spiritual bedrock. Despite the deadline, Blackgoat says
>she can never leave. It's what she's been saying since 1974, when
>Congress effectively revoked her right to live on Big Mountain, a
>remote patch of high desert her ancestors called home before the
>arrival of the conquistadors. As a traditional Navajo, or Diné,
>Blackgoat believes her people were placed here by a higher authority,
>and that this is where she is meant to live and die. Summoning a
>sly, grandmotherly guilelessness, she invites those who want her
>to move -- a list that includes top Hopi tribal officials, the U.S.
>Justice and Interior departments, and Senator John McCain -- to
>"sue the Creator."
>
>Blackgoat is among the last holdouts against the most sweeping
>forced relocation to take place in the United States since the World
>War II internment of Japanese Americans. Together with more
>than 13,000 other Diné, it has been her misfortune to dwell on the
>wrong half of the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area, a 1.8-million-acre
>section of northeastern Arizona that a federal court split in two in
>1977. The partition, mandated by Congress three years earlier,
>made the Navajos squatters on what was suddenly -- history and
>demographics notwithstanding -- the property of the Hopi tribe.
>
>For most Diné living on the Hopi portion of the Joint Use Area, the
>partition was the final blow. In the preceding years, a federal court
>had ordered an 85 to 90 percent reduction in their livestock herds,
>and banned new construction or even repairs to existing structures.
>Faced with what they have dubbed a "surrender or starve campaign,"
>at least 12,000 Diné have left their homes over the last two decades.
>Some went to nearby cities like Flagstaff and Gallup, or towns at the
>edge of the sprawling 17-million-acre Navajo reservation. Others
>settled in government-issue houses on the so-called New Lands,
>a collection of ranches to the southeast acquired expressly for
>displaced Navajos. Lifelong subsistence sheepherders, the
>relocatees struggled to cope with this new world of bank accounts
>and bill collectors, and more than a third lost their houses within a
>few years.
>
>A thousand or so Diné, meanwhile, refused to budge. In 1996 -- as
>expenditures for the relocation program surpassed the $300 million
>mark -- the United States and Hopi governments offered the remaining
>Navajos a last-ditch alternative to eviction. Instead of leaving, families
>eligible for relocation benefits could sign a 75-year lease that would
>permit them to stay, albeit under the watchful eyes of a Hopi Tribal
>Council that had long viewed them as trespassers. Given this
>Hobson's choice, more than 100 families opted to lease. A few --
>residents of 13 homesites, representing extended families numbering
>in the hundreds -- have continued to say no.
>
>As the deadline looms, federal officials insist they'll do all they can to
>avert a showdown with the resisters, saying no one will be evicted
>without a court hearing. But activists who have taken up the Diné's
>cause fear the worst, and some are making plans to head for Arizona
>in time to try to prevent it. That the drama has no clear villain -- some
>blame Congress, some the coal industry, others a lingering land
>dispute between the tribes themselves -- only underscores the
>tragedy still playing itself out.
>
>Big Mountain sits atop a rolling tableland called Black Mesa, beneath
>which lie an estimated 20 billion tons of high-quality, low-sulfur coal.
>To the Diné and their supporters -- a far-flung network of activists who
>fear the loss of yet another ancient, indigenous culture -- coal is the
>unmistakable source of the troubles in this endlessly anguished land.
>They assert it was John Boyden, a well-connected Utah lawyer with
>ties to both the Hopi Tribal Council and the Peabody Western Coal
>Company, who in the 1970s seized on century-old tensions between
>neighboring tribes to concoct a phony range war, then pushed
>Congress into dispossessing some of the last surviving traditional
>Navajos in the name of property rights. Peabody, they say, craved the
>coal that Southwestern power brokers sought as fuel for the
>burgeoning, air-conditioned American Sun Belt. The future lay in
>Black Mesa's vast mineral wealth, and the Diné were in the way.
>
>Though Peabody actively mines coal from Black Mesa, paying the
>Hopi and Navajo tribal governments a combined $45 million a year
>in royalties and other fees for the privilege, the company notes that
>it currently has no legal rights to mine on Big Mountain and claims
>that it has no plans to do so. Both tribal governments explicitly absolve
>the company of responsibility for the trauma of relocation.
>
>Whatever the cause of her suffering, Roberta Blackgoat is finished
>with lawyers, Navajo tribal leaders, and people from the government.
>Posted on her front door is this handwritten notice:
>
>ENTERING SOVEREIGN DINÉ NATION
>THIN ROCK MESA
>ALL PEOPLE WHO RESPECT THE LAND, LIFE & LAWS OF THE
>DINÉ ARE WELCOME
>WARNING: ALL FEDERAL, STATE & TRIBAL PERSONNEL: YOUR
>AUTHORITY DOES NOT APPLY HERE:
>ALL YOUR ACTINOS WILL BE COUNTER-ACTED
>
>Blackgoat and 68 other Black Mesa residents declared their
>independence in 1979, charging that the United States and Navajo
>tribal governments had "violated the sacred laws of the Diné Nation
>by allowing exploitation of natural resources." Now 83, Blackgoat is
>small and frail. Her hearing is almost gone, her sight impaired, her
>voice barely above a whisper. Her squat, stone house is without
>electricity or running water. The nearest paved road is an hour away;
>in winter, the maze of rutted dirt truck trails hereabouts is nearly
>unnavigable.
>
>Like other Diné, Blackgoat subsists on her sheep and her corn and
>her weavings, which she sells through a collective comprising four
>generations of Navajo women. Because she has refused to sign a
>lease, she is forbidden to gather firewood, or even maintain the
>pair of outhouses hidden among the junipers, without a permit from
>the Hopi tribe. Her sheep and goats are subject to impoundment by
>the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which retains range-management
>responsibilities throughout much of the Hopi half of the Joint Use
>Area -- the Hopi Partitioned Land, or HPL. And still she stays. She
>does so, she says, "for the whole universe."
>
>"They're greedy to get the minerals out from here. But we need to
>have Mother Earth to be healed," says Blackgoat, one of the few Diné
>elders with a working command of English. She explains that the
>Navajos' ceremonial hogan, an east-facing round hut of wood and
>mud, mirrors the geography of Black Mesa and its surrounding Four
>Sacred Mountains. This coal-rich mesa is the altar of the Diné. The
>coal is Mother Earth's liver.
>
>"What we've been told is that you, the Diné people, are gonna sit on
>the Mother Earth's liver and the heart and the lung," Blackgoat says.
>"This is where you have to hang on tight, real, real tight. This is what
>the sacred prayer and the sacred song is telling you. Can't be break
>it, can't be leave it behind and go to another place. This is gonna
>keep you here. You gonna be strong enough to hold this song and
>carry it on to your children, grandchildren, on, on through the
>generations."
>
>But only a few Diné have found the strength to hang on for the past
>quarter century. One of these, Pauline Whitesinger, became an
>enduring symbol of the resistance in 1977, when she chased off a
>work crew that was trying to route a barbwire partition fence through
>her grazing land. Now in her 70s, Whitesinger admits she's been
>worn down by the years of livestock impoundments and constant
>visits from the BIA, the relocation office, the Hopi tribe, and the sundry
>other entities that have taken an unwelcome interest in her future.
>
>"They have different uniforms," she says, speaking to a visitor in
>Diné through an interpreter. "Some have blue uniforms. Some have
>tan-colored uniforms. Sometimes they come with a suit." She sends
>them all away. But she is tired.
>
>"I feel sick at times. At times I can't eat and I can't sleep," she says. "I
>think of this every day. I think of what's gonna happen or when are they
>gonna come and take me. Because of these things I fear for my life.
>I fear every day what's gonna happen."
>
>The roots of the Navajo relocation date back to 1882, when President
>Chester Arthur set aside a 2.5- million-acre rectangle covered with
>juniper, piñon, and sage for the Hopis "and such other Indians as
>the Secretary of the Interior may see fit to settle thereon." Those other
>Indians turned out to be mainly Navajos, some of whom had already
>been there for centuries, and many of whom had arrived following
>their release from the New Mexico internment camp where Colonel
>Kit Carson had forced them after the Long Walk of 1864. Before long,
>the agrarian, sedentary Hopis, the first to settle the area, were encircled
>by the pasturing, far more populous Navajos.
>
>Eighty years after Arthur's executive order, a three-judge federal panel,
>ruling that the government had tacitly settled Navajos on most of the
>original reservation, gave the Hopi tribe exclusive rights to a 650,000-
>acre triangle in the southern portion. The remaining land, the Joint Use
>Area, would be shared equally by the two tribes.
>
>But influential Hopis felt they had shared too much already. With lawyer
>Boyden's help, the Hopi Tribal Council -- the governing body sanctioned
>by the federal government, but never recognized by Hopi religious
>leaders -- began a relentless push for formal partition of the newly
>designated Joint Use Area, demanding property rights to half of its
>1.8 million acres. Seizing this opportunity, Boyden launched a public
>relations blitz to create the impression that Navajo overgrazing of
>Hopi territory was about to ignite a range war. He then crafted a bill
>to split the Joint Use Area evenly: Navajos on the so-called Hopi
>Partitioned Land would have to relocate, as would any Hopis on
>the Navajo Partitioned Land (NPL). Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater
>steered the resulting Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act through a
>Congress pleased to defer to him on an obscure dispute in his
>own back yard. Goldwater guessed that 6,000 Navajos would
>need to be removed from the HPL, an effort, he said, that would
>last 12 years and cost taxpayers $40 million. President Gerald Ford
>signed the bill into law in December 1974.
>
>Fewer than 100 Hopis lived on the NPL, and they left without incident.
>Things went less smoothly on the HPL. In 1991, a group of Navajos
>filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the U.S. government, alleging
>violation of their religious freedom. The suit, known as the Manybeads
>case, prompted the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to name a
>federal mediator to seek a belated compromise. Years of negotiations
>eventually yielded an "accommodation agreement" that, once approved
>by Congress, would allow Navajos still on the HPL to remain there
>under Hopi jurisdiction.
>
>In 1996, John McCain, Goldwater's successor as Arizona's senior
>senator, authored the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act, which
>ratified the accommodation agreement and set a February 2000 deadline
>for the feds to deliver "quiet possession" of the area into the hands of
>the Hopis.
>
>"I am encouraged that the terms of this settlement, including the
>long-term leases to Navajo families, also will lead to a resolution of
>the longstanding tensions between the Hopi Tribe and those Navajo
>families who wish to remain on the Hopi Partitioned Lands," McCain
>wrote to a colleague in the months prior to the bill's passage in
>October 1996.
>
>His optimism was premature.
>
>Many Diné insist that tensions on the hopi Partitioned Land, far from
>being resolved, are escalating. And many are finally giving up. Of the
>112 households holding 75-year leases as 1999 began, at least 50
>have already relinquished their right to remain, and have asked the
>relocation office to move them to new housing off the HPL.
>
>Kee Watchman, the Diné delegate to the U.N. Human Rights
>Commission, is himself a reluctant leaseholder. "Our human rights,
>our religious rights have been totally violated," he says, adding that
>despite the change of heart of so many leaseholders, many Diné
>believe they have no choice but to stay on their traditional lands, even
>if that means living under Hopi rule. "What they were saying is, 'I think
>the best thing to do is to sign the accommodation agreement so we
>can still sit on our lands and then we can still fight for our rights.
>Otherwise, if we are evicted, there's no way we can fight back.'"
>
>Eugene Kaye, the Hopi chief of staff, bristles at the mention of Navajos'
>rights. "People forget that we have rights out here as well," he says.
>"It's our land, and on any land that's yours you should have jurisdiction.
>And a few people shouldn't really be upstaging what we feel is good for
>the Hopi people and anybody who wants to stay here under our laws."
>
>Watchman isn't the only leaseholder who finds life under accommodation
>onerous. Many Diné -- who regard sheep as a gift from the Creator --
>live in constant fear of having their livestock impounded by the BIA,
>which enforces a ceiling on the number of animals Navajos on the
>HPL may possess. That limit, set in stone by McCain's legislation,
>authorizes somewhat more sheep than the Diné were allowed
>before the agreement, but far fewer than they say they need for meat,
>wool, and ceremonial purposes.
>
>It's also far below the true carrying capacity of the land, according to
>some Navajos. "I can just go out there and look at the range and figure
>that out," says Roman Bitsuie, who heads the Navajo-Hopi Land
>Commission, an agency of the Navajo tribe."It doesn't take any scientist
>to do that. If you know the land, you can tell."
>
>Beyond grazing issues, some signers resent the daily pressures of
>Hopi governance. Leaseholders, for example, face revocation of their
>lease for three convictions in 15 years of such infractions as cutting
>green timber without a permit. Accustomed to open spaces, they feel
>boxed in by their three-acre homesites. They're angered by a restriction
>on burying their dead on the HPL, and they fear that ancient holy sites
>may be destroyed, as they say has happened in the existing Peabody
>lease area to the north. (Peabody claims it turns over to the tribes any
>artifacts it unearths.) Like the resisters, many are convinced the Hopis
>and the BIA are out to drive them off the land to make way for future
>mining expansion.
>
>"The elderlies are speaking for their rights, pleading, 'Don't do this to
>us, the land is very sick,'" Watchman says, adding that the forces that
>control his fate "don't want to listen. They look at the money. They don't
>respect our religion. The only way is for the coal mine to be stopped,
>totally."
>
>Peabody operates two adjoining strip mines, yielding about 12 million
>tons of coal annually, under agreements with the two tribes. The Navajo
>Nation reaps nearly $30 million annually for its mineral rights, and the
>Hopi tribe gets approximately $10 million. The contracts run through
>2005 and 2011, respectively, with options that could extend them for
>another 15 years.
>
>Beth Sutton, Peabody's spokeswoman, insists the firm has no plans
>to move southward into Big Mountain, dismissing such talk as
>"absolutely ludicrous and absolutely untrue" -- conspiracy-mongering
>by "antimining groups." But Hopi official Kaye won't rule out the
>possibility that his tribe will eventually lease its portion of Black Mesa
>for mining, calling that a decision "for people and leaders that are
>coming behind us."
>
>In any case, he says, Peabody has nothing to do with what's happening
>now on the HPL, which is "an issue between the families and us,
>nobody else." And he has little sympathy for those who refuse to accept
>accommodation.
>
>"To me, it's no longer a dispute, because the court's already settled this.
>It belongs to the Hopi Nation. So that part's already decided," he says.
>"So what else is there to look at? How can you say that you're not going
>to move when it belongs to somebody else?"
>
>Yet the core dispute -- between the laws of commerce and property
>and what the Diné believe to be the laws of the Creator -- may lie
>beyond the jurisdiction of Congress and the courts. To Roberta
>Blackgoat and other resisters, any suggestion that they might leave
>the land is unthinkable. "They're digging the Mother Earth's liver,"
>says Blackgoat. "The sacred song is going and they're digging,
>digging, digging."
>
>And the clock is ticking.
>
>Last April, McCain wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno and Interior
>Secretary Bruce Babbitt, urging them "to proceed carefully in the
>coming months to settle the relocation of remaining Navajo families
>in a timely and orderly process," and to keep him apprised of their
>plans for ending the 25-year standoff.
>
>"Obviously, everybody has the interest in mind that we need to be very
>careful," says Jill Peters, McCain's aide for Indian affairs. "We don't
>want anybody to have to face forceful actions or for things to lead to any
>violent encounters between federal officials and the tribal members, or
>those who are supporting the tribal members."
>
>According to the Justice Department, it's up to the U.S. attorney's office
>in Arizona to serve nonsigners with formal eviction notices once the
>deadline arrives. After that, resisters would get their day in court. Cathy
>Colbert, the department's spokeswoman in Phoenix, says the process
>could take "weeks or months," and that the deadline is "not a turning
>point at which something dramatic has to happen."
>
>"We don't see February the first as any kind of magical number," says
>Colbert. The Navajo resisters, she adds, "do not have to fear that
>something is going to happen to them or that they'll wake up in the
>middle of the night to find that they're being moved."
>
>Yet if the government hopes to avoid making martyrs of Roberta
>Blackgoat and her fellow resisters, the question is how long it can
>put off the day of reckoning. "There has to be a transfer of those areas
>to the Hopi tribe, and obviously the people there in that process either
>sign the lease agreement or relocate," says McCain aide Peters.
>"There really is no in-between at this point."
>
>The resisters' supporters would seem to agree with the last point,
>at least, which is why they say they're mobilizing to get activists to
>the HPL to thwart any attempt at physical eviction. Blackgoat and
>Whitesinger, meanwhile, await the knock on the door, singing and
>praying that they may live out their lives as Diné on Big Mountain.
>
>"I don't see why he doesn't like Indians -- he's living on Indian dust,"
>Blackgoat says of McCain, whom she blames for pressing the
>relocation deadline. "Like I mentioned to a Hopi man [who] came
>up to me and said, 'This is not your land.' But now how can it be that
>it's not my land when my great-great-great-ancestors been born here,
>and they've been buried here and they're over here where I live. And
>you could see in all these graveyard sites, all the bodies have turned
>to dust. Our great-ancestors' dust is right here. Their prayer is still
>here, their holy song is still here. It's been carried on, on, on, and
>it's still here. So this is what is holding us tight here."
>
>Sometime soon, under the law, the song must end.
 

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