Elderly Navajo Indians
>> Threatened With Starvation
>> "Sovereign Dineh Nation Faces
>> Livestock Impoundments on Black Mesa"
>>
>> by Carol Halberstadt
>> Saturday, February 20, 1999
>>
>> Copyright ¸ 1999 Halberstadt
>> All Rights Reserved
>>
>>
>>
>> Big Mountain, Arizona - The U.S. Bureau of Indian
>affairs (BIA) has launched a massive campaign of livestock
>confiscation targeting the elderly Dineh (Navajo) families who
>reside on the Hopi Partitioned Lands created by the 1974 Navajo-Hopi
>Settlement Act. This area, larger than the state of Rhode Island, is
>the poorest region of the U.S., with an annual per capita income
>lower than in many Third World countries. The elderly people rely
>upon their livestock for survival, living a traditional subsistence
>lifestyle on lands their families have inhabited for hundreds of
>years.
>>
>> The BIA ended a self-imposed two-year moratorium on
>livestock confiscation in January by mailing notices to all owners
>of livestock without valid permits, with impoundments scheduled to
>begin on Feb. 15, 1999. People who have not signed leases with the
>Hopi Tribe are not eligible for permits. Many who signed leases
>received allocations far below the number needed for survival. The
>BIA claims their sole purpose is to protect deteriorating range
>conditions. The people claim that the problem is BIA range
>management policies outlawing their traditional use of separate
>summer/winter camps, which sustained herds 4-10 times larger prior
>to BIA intervention. This current BIA livestock impoundment
>continues 25 years of abuse and harassment aimed at expelling the
>people of Black Mesa from their homeland.
>>
>> While the BIA claims that range management is an
>independent issue, the targets of the impoundment campaign are the
>same people threatened by other policies resulting from the 1974
>Relocation Act. Over 12,000 people have already been forcibly
>expelled from their homes, and many government policies have been
>designed to drive out those remaining on their land.
>>
>> For 30 years, the people have been subject to a freeze
>on housing improvements that has made it illegal even to fix a
>broken window. The government routinely confiscates their firewood
>in winter, and the people have been stripped of their civil rights.
>>
>> It is imperative that these people be protected by the
>same rights afforded to all Americans and that the world know what
>is happening here. The people threatened by the planned BIA
>livestock confiscation are all elderly people who have no means of
>survival other than their traditional herding. Zonnie Whitehair, the
>owner of the largest herd in the area, is faced with the
>confiscation of her entire flock of 200 sheep. Her husband, Oscar,
>died in December, and if her herd is taken, she has said that she
>will soon follow. Roberta Blackgoat, like many other grandmothers,
>faces the possible confiscation of her entire herd. In addition to
>losing their primary food source, the grandmothers would lose their
>source of wool to weave rugs that provide their only funds for
>survival. As she has stated in reference to the BIA policy, "This is
>not range management--it is murder."
>
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