Hanley Begay

Low Mountain Community

P.O. Box 1739

Chinle, AZ 86503

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

Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

Mr. Francis Deng, Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons

United Nations Commission on Human Rights

I was raised right here on Hopi Partition Land in Low Mountain community in 1943. My grandmother and grandfather were living up there. When I was age 15 I moved away to boarding school and came back periodically where my folks live up there. After graduating from High School I went away to the city, Denver, CO and I came back home and got married but I was displaced and didn't have no place to go - so I went to my grandmother's summer camp where crops were planted. But I couldn't stay there because there were no jobs so I stayed off reservation for work and took my wife and two kids with me. When the land dispute was in full gear and things were getting hot I came back home.

Eventually my grandparents relocated and gave up their homesites on Hopi Partition Land. They were threatened that if they did not relocate they would be hauled off like they did to the people that relocated from District 6 when this area was determined by the US government to be the exclusive the Hopi reservation. None of those people got any relocation benefits and many of them are homeless. They did this to the Kabinto and George family. They just took everything they owned out of their homes and just evicted them. The Hopis threatened to do this to my family and my other relatives and they became paranoid so they just moved from there. My grandparents relocated because they were scared. They never got any relocation benefits, they just moved away. This was in the early 1970's.

One of my aunts stayed up there with 1 child. Within the last 20 years she moved out because of the pressure and threats by the Hopi tribe. She got relocation benefits and my cousins down their little ones got benefits when they became of age. They didn't know where to go so they moved to our mother's homesite and my mother gave them permission to do this because of the threats.

My relatives in the New Lands got relocation benefits but many went there just because they had no where else to go. Most of them became alcoholics and they are dying off. I don't know why, maybe they don't know how to cope with all the problems. I see them once in a while when they die and we try to help them and their families as Navajos usually do.

I don't count as a person, nothing. I have no roots, no nothing. In fact that's what my people say to me because I do not have a home. I want to move back home but I can't because of the land dispute. I want to move where my mother lives but there is no space to me so I wonder where I can go. I am just displaced. My kids don't even have a place to call home.

I would like the United Nations to make the US government consider my plea for a place to live. I am displaced. I want a place to call home for me and for my children to call home with me. We would like to get back a piece of land anywhere. It is so hard with no place to call home. No roots. In that sense I am considered a man without land, roots and I don't count.

I am making this plea for me and for my family with me. That's it.

Yours sincerely,

Hanley Begay