Anglo fights ban by Hopis

Bill Donovan
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — Marsha Monestersky, one of two Anglo women the Hopi
Tribe is trying to banish from Hopi Partitioned Lands, said
Wednesday she believes the Hopis have no right to make her leave.

"They have a weak case," she said. "I have the right to be here, and I
don't have to recognize their authority."

That may be the crux of the Hopi Tribe's case against Monestersky,
a human rights activist who has been living for the past eight
years as a volunteer in the HPL half of the Former Joint-Use Area
that was turned over to the Hopis in 1986. She said she first came
to the area in 1975 to help Hopi traditionalists with their work with
various United Nations organizations.

At a two-day hearing in Hopi court on March 28 and 29, Monestersky
was accused of being present on the HPL on several
occasions without a permit and for writing a check for $35 that
bounced in 1995.

"If they expel everyone who wrote a bad check, half the people here
would be gone," she said.

The bad check charge, she said, was "ridiculous."

During the hearing, Monestersky's attorney, Mick Harrison, got
Eugene Kaye, an aide to the tribal chairman, to admit the tribe has
made no move to exclude any others from HPL for bouncing a check.

Monestersky said the charge has a number of other problems, including
the fact that the tribe could not establish any criminal intent
in connection with the check, which is required under tribal law.

Also, even the tribe's version of the incident admits that it occurred
off the reservation, where Hopi laws do not apply, even if she had
been a Hopi, Monestersky said.

The check charge, she said, was an excuse the Hopis were using to
get her banished from the HPL forever.

"What they really wanted to do was stop me from working with
Navajo families here," she said, "and helping them stick up for their
rights."

For much of the past decade, Monestersky has been working as an
unpaid volunteer, helping Navajo families in the HPL try to cope
with livestock impoundment and the effects of the coal mining
operation by Peabody Coal Co.

She said she was able on a number of occasions to get the U.S.
Bureau of Indian Affairs to release impounded livestock after she
was able to prove the impoundment was not done legally. She also
has helped get testimony and draft affidavits from Navajo families
in their legal fight against Peabody's use of area groundwater for their
coal slurry.

This has not made her popular with government and coal mining
officials, she admitted.

"I have been working as a legal assistant," she said, "and I have
been the only one out here on many occasions when the Navajo
families have needed legal help."

That's why she believes the Hopis want her removed. That's also
why, she said, the exclusion hearings have also been held against
Arlene Hamilton, another Anglo who the Hopis say has refused to
recognize the authority of the Hopi Tribe over the HPL.

Monestersky views her plight as a freedom-of-speech issue, saying
she has fought to give Navajo families a voice in their concerns
over the way the Hopi Tribe has treated them.

This fight has generated support from Navajo families living on the
HPL.

Three Navajo elderly women, all grandmothers, testified at the
hearing, saying they all have adopted Monestersky into their families,
and praised her for the work she has done on their behalf as well as
for other Navajo families.

A hearing officer has until April 28 to decide what kind of
recommendation he will make in Monestersky's case.

Monestersky said if the final decision calls for her banishment, she
will continue her legal fight because she has no intention of
leaving her friends on the HPL.
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Bob Dorman, KD7FIZ
redorman@theofficenet.com
"The Activist Page"
http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/welcome.html

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