what they’re doin’ to our mother earth:
the unseen scenes that facilitate LA’s ‘progress’
-Coal Mine Mesa, AZ
“It’s very bad, what they’re doin’ to our mother earth” say Roy Bilagody, a Dine’ (Navajo) Indian born on the wrong side of a legislative incision that sliced in half what was formerly the “Joint Use Area”—shared by Dine’ and Hopi peoples—in 1974. Since that time, 14,000 Dine’ have accepted mandated relocation. Bilagody’s family left in the 1980’s. Their abandoned homes still stand indignant above the heavily traveled Rt. 264, fences and power lines crowding in on them from all angles. Bilagody says that noone in his family has been allowed to return to the site in order to practice the religious ceremonies that root them to the land of their ancestors. Further down the road, we cross the barbed wire fence that marks the transition to the Navajo Partitioned Land (NPL), where Roy has made a home just on the other side. Across the highway from his new home, a small graveyard crowds the fence, where bodies of HPL Dine’ seemingly yearn to be buried with their ancestors. Since 1977, no burials have been allowed on the HPL side. As we pull into Bilagody’s driveway, we run over a large piece of paper drifting in the desert breeze. “That’s the plans for the next place the government wants to move me,” he jokes. In the last year, Tribal Government officials have informed him that the line in fact goes through his new horse corral, which he has been building for several years—again, he will have to move.
But what are they doing to our mother earth? And who are they? Bilagody, himself employed by the Peabody Coal’s Black Mesa strip mine, points up the complexity of the situation. Among the huge rifts exacted by the pressure of the discovery of overwhelming energy resources on Black Mesa in the 1950’s are ones that cut through individual human beings.
The mine has been virtually the only employment opportunity for Navajos living in the area since it opened in 1970. It will continue to be so, because a piece of legislation called the “Bennett Freeze” that went into affect just after its construction effectively bans all new construction and even minor improvements on homes. Yet the mine has expanded in small increments over the years, benefited by directly and indirectly forced abandonment of the homeland by the Dine’. Although Peabody officials emphatically deny any connection to the relocation process, no expansion would have been possible if people had been able to hold their lands in the face of direct pressure from numerous fronts. And as recently as 1991, a Peabody spokesman by the name of Sullivan commented on the relocation of 11 families to make way for an expansion, “We’re not in the relocation business—it’s just an adjunct to our mining operations.” In 1988, Peabody proposed an expansion of their lease by 54,000 acres across an area that would come right up to Big Mountain, the hub of the resistance effort, engulfing perhaps a third of the remaining homesites on the HPL. The proposal was blocked by the Hopi Tribe for reasons that are unclear. After the news of the proposal was leaked by a sympathetic traditional Hopi, Peabody officials met with Big Mountain elders to assure them that their home would not be mined. Few were convinced.
Somehow, life goes on on the HPL. Pauline Whitesinger, who gained notoriety in 1977 for shooting over the heads of a fencing crew attempting to divide her land is still planting her corn, telling people that there is no word for “relocation” in her language, and terrorizing her sheepherders with her temper. They were all supposed to be gone by 1986, but three deadlines later, a number of dine’ hold fast on their land. The majority of the homesites were railroaded into 75 year leases by the Hopi Tribe in 1996-7 under what is called either the “Accomodation Agreement” or the “Domination Agreement” depending on who’s homesite you are visiting. This bill, which was signed off by Clinton, was supposed to resolve the land dispute. This has not at all been the case. Rick Fellows, a supporter of the resistance since the early 80’s, calls the AA a “brilliant move by the opposition”. The rift between “signers” and “non-signers” has crippled community continuity among HPL residents, not only from homesite to homesite, but within families themselves. The Hopi Tribal Council and its Navajo “liaisons”, thirsty for a 50 million dollar bounty that was promised by the Federal and Navajo governments for getting signatures from 85% of the households, resorted to a variety of unethical tactics to coax signatures from a population that in general cannot read, write nor speak English. The bounty was collected this June. The AA also seems to have sabotaged the “Manybeads” case, which has been slogging through the courts since 1988. Manybeads challenges that relocating the Dine’ interferes with their right to religious freedom, in that their religion is so deeply rooted in the land and the sacred sites of Black Mesa. In handing down the dismissal of the case in April of this year, the 9th District Court acknowledges the legitimacy of the claim, but argues that the Hopi Tribe, as a third party to the case, stands to lose too much because of the settled Accomodation Agreement which would be disturbed by granting resistors immunity from relocation.
The 12 households who refused the AA may have bypassed their last chance at “doing it by the books”. The eviction process has been forwarded to the US District Attorney’s office in Phoenix. The Hopi Tribe and Senator John McCain have both expressed interest in the expedient removal of those who have refused to comply by the federal government.
Overt legal attempts aside, the powers that be (namely the incestuous ring of BIA, Peabody Coal and the Tribal Governments) continue to explore creative new ways of making life unbearable for HPL residents. The old standby has been livestock impoundments. Not unlike the elimination of the buffalo or Kit Carson’s infamous campaign against Navajo peach trees in the 1860’s, over-regulation and impoundment of the sheep and cattle of HPL residents has been a tremendously effective tactic of coercing them to vacate. Families have committed undue amounts of energy to trying to maintain a reasonable herd in the face of the pressure. Calling to mind identification with the American Indian Movement, which trickled out too soon to be of much use to the HPL, resistor John Benally commented as we watched his cattle wander through a distant canyon, “The animals have their own way of ‘range management’…There ain’t gonna be no impoundments this summer. I’m in Geronimo’s Cadillac”. But BIA pressure has all but eliminated the sustainable family farm on Black Mesa. Whereas families have traditionally relied on herds of 3-500 head of sheep for nourishment and proper ceremony, the AA allows for around 10 sheep per head of household.
As the summer of 2000 rolls to a close, HPL residents have just received a new wave of impoundment notices. Hopi officials have begun demanding that weavers obtain permits to practice their traditional craft, heretofore to be subject to taxation. The HPL residents are a people without representation in the government that taxes and regulates them, because of their ethnicity. Peabody Coal continues to enforce a policy barring photography in and around the mine. LA continues to tick on power supplied by Black Mesa Coal. The Alameda Corridor is constructed with this power, inviting new questions and a new need for vigilance and awareness of the connectedness of it all.