Francis Tso

P.O. Box 210

Hotevilla, AZ 86030

 

To: Ms. Mary Robinson, High Commissioner for Human Rights

Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

Mr. Francis Deng, Special Rapporteur for Internally Displaced Persons

United Nations Commission on Human Rights

Habitat-Right to housing

 

Re: Non-signer of the 75-year lease Agreement

 

In our generation you have a lot of stories of people moving with the season. That was an important part of the life cycle to do that. It is this freedom that we want in this life. It is important to have livestock. All connected with the life cycle. It is our food source.

 

Why would anyone want to take food off our table. It is not right to do that. It is a human rights.

 

We want to keep our life the way it was 100 years before the Europeans came to our land. There was no pollution of any kind. We want to keep things natural. We need trees. We need plant life. It's our medicine and our home. Together with all those we are tied in a medicine bundle of the Four sacred mountains and that is what the elders carry on for each generation to come. When you pass on these teachings someone is giving you a home.

 

Our community is under assault. Peabody Coal Company is destroying sacred shrines and there is a lot of destruction on Black Mesa. Recently, they destroyed a sacred shrine. And one of the sacred shrines was hauled off to the Smithsonian museum after World War II.

 

All that violations. They violated the natural law and they are going to hear it from the nature because they have done something wrong. Maybe they don't realize.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Francis Tso