Public Forum, Nr. 20, 1998

The Greed of the White Man

The struggle of the Navajo Indians against the USA superpower

by Harald Ihmig

The author is Professor of Theology at the Protestant Institute for Social
Work of the Rauhes Haus in Hamburg. He traveled through the USA and Central
America within the framework of a field research semester.

On a summer's day, armed rangers appear at the remote farm on the Indian
reservation in Arizona and confiscate the sheep in the corral. Chris, the
boy taking care of them, shouts "Don't touch these sheep! I'm responsible
for them. They're our living. Taking away our sheep is taking away our
life." As he seems intent on "doing what must be done to keep these sheep
from being taken away," the rangers take him away as well.

This is not the first time that the sheep have been taken away and
Lawrence, Chris's uncle, forced to buy back his possessions. Before we fall
asleep under the open sky, he tells me that he has already paid $900 once
before under the same conditions. A gigantic sum for people who live on the
milk, meat, and wool of their sheep, who somehow find something to graze upon
in the desert! He can at least be happy not to be forcibly "resettled," with
his house knocked down to the ground, since the Navajo all of a sudden need a
permit to remain where they've lived for generations and where, as they say,
"their umbilical cord is buried." Repairing houses or building new ones has
been forbidden for 30 years in any case.

The process of treating the Navajo in their ancestral land as undesired
aliens began with the Relocation Act of 1974. The official title itself,
"Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act," shows that the Americans are
painting the act of expulsion as the well-meaning mediation of a territorial
dispute between two Indian tribes. Continual frictions between the Navajo
and Hopi Indians following the creation of the reservation in northeast
Arizona in 1882 are being settled, according to this official version, by
splitting the land formerly used by both into two halves, with the approval
of both tribal councils. The Federal government has allowed itself to spend
almost half a billion dollars in its role as selfless mediator to allow those
inhabitants residing in the wrong half to resettle elsewhere painlessly.
After the Accomodation Act of 1996 gave the remaining inflexible inhabitants
the chance to obtain the right to remain for 75 years, the operation could be
considered closed. If only it were not for these traditional "Dineh", as the
Navajo call themselves, who do not give in, who consider the land between the
four mountains holy and have acquired in the meantime a colorful medley of
supporters. They told me an utterly different story. Indeed, upon reading
the official version, one runs up against things that do not square with one
another. Were tens of thousands of white people in the USA ever forcibly
resettled due to property conflicts? If the Hopi settle in villages in the
heights, growing grains on the surrounding fields, and this area around the
Mesas has already been handed over to them as District 6 for their exclusive
use, while the Navajo pasture their sheep by families strewn sparsely across
the wide lowlands, how is it that they dispute over land possession? Why, in
an area supposedly used by both, must over 12,000 Navajos be resettled, but
only a few hundred Hopi? Why do tribal councils approve regulations
boycotted by their elders and appealed in courts and international
committees?

Chris leads me along neck-breaking paths to meet some of those who refuse
to budge, stubbornly proclaiming themselves a "Sovereign Dineh Nation." Chris
himself has lived for a while in Phoenix, learned English, and won some
distance between himself and traditional customs; he listens to modern music
and chooses his girlfriends himself. When we reach Pauline Whitesinger and
Kee Watchman, however, even the young automatically obey the unpretentious
self-worth and authority that these figures radiate. They decide what will
be said and when, and they set the rhythm of the meeting, including the
pauses in which nothing is said. Pauline, unconcerned by prohibitions, is in
the midst of building a new hogan, one of these traditional houses of clay
and wood, cool in summer, warm in winter, unprepossessing from the outside,
comfortable from the inside. "We Hopi and Dineh were good neighbors," says
Kee Watchman, "and we married each other. We have the same religion: we
have inherited the earth and the elements of nature. The rangers were the
first to drive the people against each other. Now there are no more common
meetings." For him, there is no Hopi-Navajo Land Dispute. They have used
and passed on the land together since time immemorial. From the beginning,
traditional Dineh and Hopi have fought against division of the land and
resettlement. The lines of conflict do not run, as the post-colonial power
would have it, along a tribal boundary between rebellious natives now marked
by a barbed-wire fence over 400 kilometers in length. The Hopi elder Thomas
Banyacya confirms, "The Navajo help the Hopi to take care of the land. We do
not want them to go. This is their holy land as well." From whom do the
"old-fashioned" woman and man want to shield their land?

When one takes some time to study the history of the conflict, it becomes
apparent that the disputes have a strange way of piling up around the
appearance in the 50's of the Mormon lawyer John Boyden, hired by the leading
Mormonized Sekaquaptewa clan, who reactivates the Hopi tribal council and
initiates in its name a series of suites, contracts, and laws. Boyden brings
an interest into play carefully left unmentioned in the official documents:
He also represents the Peabody Coal Company, a firm of which the Mormon
Church owns eight percent. In 1966, he secures a 36-year lease. The Black
Mesa, the northern part of the reservation, is the largest open-cast coal
mine in the world with an estimated deposit of 20 billion tons of low-sulfur
coal. The leasing of the land is made palatable to the tribal council by
yearly payments of about 50 million dollars. Now Peabody pumps five billion
liters of pure water out of the ground in order to cheaply force coal sludge
to the Mojave power plant 280 miles away to serve Las Vegas and Southern
California's immense demands for energy.

Feisty, elderly Katherine Smith from Big Mountain in the middle of the Black
Mesa tells us how the inhabitants see things: "I live about 30 miles from
the Peabody coal mine, where they've put a fence around us. According to the
law, we're in prison. We cannot repair our house, even when the windows
break. We're not allowed to do it since it's against the law, against the
flag. And our house is so old that all of our floors are falling apart, and
all because of the mine. You know, they explode the ground with dynamite so
that the houses shake. We still have sheep, a horse, a cow and a goat.
That's what we live on. Good breeders can live from their sheep, from their
wool. That's how we get gold to buy food or gas, and that's how the people
in Washington, D.C. are trying to do us in. The stick our sheep in the pen
and the horse and the cow, and they're not allowed out again. If the break
out, they take them away from us. They call that 'impoundment,' and we have
to buy our own animals back." Nor do shovels and bulldozers come to a halt
before burial places and holy sites.

The resistance of the traditional Dineh and Hopi has not been directed only
against the effects of the coal mining, but also, from the beginning, against
mining as such. Back in 1970, the Hopi leaders explained: "The greed of the
white man for material possessions and power has made him blind to the
suffering that he brings on Mother Earth with his search for that which he
calls natural resources... Today the holy land where the Hopi live is being
violated by people who want to have the coal and water from our soil in order
to create more energy for the cities of the white man. This cannot go on any
further, for Mother Nature will react in such a way that almost all humans
will experience the end of life as we know it."

In addition to ecological effects -- air pollution, sinking groundwater
levels, contaminated springs -- and the intrusion into religious relationship
with the land came deliberate harassment, which was to make the life of the
remaining Navajo difficult: the prohibitions on building and repair,
confiscation of herds, and imprisonment at the hands of the paramilitary
ranger troops. It was not the first time that the Indians had the dubious
luck of seeing the apparently worthless wasteland that belonged to them
suddenly prove to be valuable, whether it be for coal, uranium, or water
content, as a location for an observatory, or as an area for atomic testing.
John Boyden, who himself has earned millions in this business, represents
what can be seen as a coalition of profiteers, among them segments of
assimilated Indians. They enjoy political protection. When this background
is recognized, the supposed Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute emerges as a conflict in
which the commercial exploitation of the land is being pushed through against
those of its inhabitants to whom the land is holy and who want to watch over
it. The Relocation Act of 1974 does nothing to make this context visible.
Boyden hires a public relations firm based, as he is, in Salt Lake City, that
mounts a big campaign, not shrinking from spreading false information, that
succeeds in propagating in public the image of permanent violent hostilities
and the threat of a war over pasture land. In other words, he invents the
Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. The Arab oil embargo and a hysterical desire for
self-sufficiency in the USA create pressure for the securing of resources.
Against this background, the "mediation" of 1974 can be read as the fatal
project -- funded by taxes -- for purging the settlement area of the Black
Mesa of its inhabitants standing in the way of commercial development. "The
US government think we are nothing. We have no rights. Our leaders fail to
protect our rights -- in the name of profit. They just sacrifice us," rails
Maxine Kescolli.

The business of legalized expulsion does not run as smoothly as planned,
however. One year later, when the legally determined demarcation line is
drawn, Katherine Smith grabbed her shotgun and dismantled the fence
single-handedly. In 1986, the greatest part by far of the Dineh remained in
the Hopi Partitioned Land, President Reagan personally stepped in to prevent
the ugly, unforgettable image of forced deportation of elderly and their
families in the presence of 2000 supporters, the image of "a 70-year-old
Dineh grandmother openly involved in an armed conflict with the armed forces
of the United States of America," as one of the opponents caricatured it.
Instead, a long, wearying process was initiated in order to give the
threatened forced measure the appearance of a voluntary decision via a
compromise. This led to an Accommodation Agreement and its legal
ratification in the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act of 1996. This
built the bridge for the stubborn Dineh to secure their land for 75 years by
signing a lease with option to renew, but the lease limits living areas (1.2
hectares), farmland (10 ha), and cattle herd size and makes the expansion of
pasture land, the collection of herbs and wood, and the visiting of holy
sites dependent upon permits.

The Dineh are also subjugated to civil and criminal Hopi jurisdiction, with
which they are well experienced. Few would sign such a contract voluntarily;
a Dineh assembly rejected the agreement by a vote of 207 to 1. "We don't want
someone to supervise us while we sing our prayers. We want to have peace and
harmony. We want to be free on our own land to do what the holy people who
brought us here gave us to do. We want our children to grow up and be at
home here. We want our roots and seeds to be here. We want our clan here
from generation to generation. We do not want to lose our identity." (Avery
Denny, medicine man, Dine' College, Tsaile, AZ)

Confronted with this farsighted thinking in terms of generations, the age-old
technique of individually pacifying those immediately affected fails to go
far enough. The signatures often had to be collected with a great deal of
coaxing, generally beefed up with increased reprisals, in order to be
accepted as the lesser evil. In order to avoid the oppression and the
imminent forced resettlement, most of the remaining Dineh ended up signing or
choosing "voluntary" resettlement by the imposed deadline of 31 March 1997.
Contrary to the promises, a minority of those resettled were placed in lands
of equal value, many in an urban environment which they could not handle, or
even in the area around the Rio Puerco (the so-called "New Lands"),
contaminated in 1979 by America's worst radioactive pollution (Church Rock,
spill of a uranium tailings dam).

To the frustration of the advocates of a simple solution, however, not
everyone went. Despite the quantitative success of a mixed strategy of
pressure and promises, the small remainder of those remaining is turning out
to be a problem that could be embarrassing. Their refusal to yield is
interfering with the solution of the problem by the gradual disappearance of
of those affected. In addition, they represent those expelled, of whom more
than 12,000 are registered, and up to 30,000 are estimated, and prevent the
injustice done to them from being swept under the rug. They bring the
cultural conflict to a focal point. The tough kernel of their resistance is
proving itself to be their religion. This is what prevents them from
surrendering to the daily pressure to give in or even to join in the profits.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that their claims of civil rights
infringement on the part of the USA focus on religious intolerance, even
though they also complain of offenses against their ecological, social, and
political rights. The unyielding resistance of the traditional Dineh and
their numerous supporters had an astonishing success in the beginning of
February 1998 in bringing about the on-site visit of Abdelfattah Amor, the
Tunisian special correspondent of the UN human rights commission. In any
case, this was the first time that the USA was subjected to such an
investigation on its own soil. Whether the UNO will actually bring itself to
pick a fight with the USA over civil rights violations is doubtful. However,
the official version that would paint the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute as being
wisely mediated by the government will hardly hold up under the new public
examination. The delegation of large non-governmental organizations,
including the world congress of churches, the national church council, and
the United Methodist Church, which were witnesses to the meeting with the
Dineh elders, will also do its part. Kee Watchman, one of the Dineh
speakers, put his radical opposition to the interference of the federal
government and his own "self-rule" concisely: "The tribal councils are
created by the government. We reject them, since they introduce laws made by
humans."

In his eyes, the churches are no better, since they are focused on
assimilation, especially the Mormons who are rumored to have stolen Indian
children in order to change the way they are raised. Now what is the law not
made by humans followed by these traditional Indians? "As Dineh, we see
things as a whole," is the description chosen by Avery Denny. "Many people
call it a 'primitive attitude' or a 'savage attitude,' but that is our
intelligence: entering mutual relationships with nature and the elements,
with the energy in these different creations, the natural resources we
have... We still believe in the natural cosmic order of life, which still
guides and rules our life, and we call it 'natural law'... It is the air we
breathe, that is our belief, which gives us life. If that's not what it were
for, the air would be dead. The water we drink, that is our belief. And the
nutrition, the pollen we take and eat, taht is our food, and that is our
medicine. That is how we remain healthy, that is our well-being. And then
the fire, the light we have, the sunshine, the fire that burns in our hogans,
represents our homeland..."

Even Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya does not let himself be steered off course by
the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. Although his own tribal council is entangled
in the coalition of profiteers, he can make out the real authorities and the
cultural driving force of the conflict: "The Great Spirit made us the
administrators of this land. This is what our prayers and ceremonies are
concerned with. You, on the other hand, are poisoning and raping and
destroying the land with your coal mining, the uranium extraction and the
power plants -- all on holy land! And you are trying to chase off the last
few Indians so that nothing will stand in the way of this dirty business...
There is no Hopi-Navajo land dispute. There is only the boundless greed of
the white man. We, the traditional, do not recognize the Hopi and Navajo
tribal councils established by your government as puppets so that you can
sign over your land. And only because the energy companies want the coal and
especially the uranium to make nuclear weapons. The white man is the one who
must go."

The staged land dispute seems to me the fatal undertaking of replacing this
feeling of belonging with the concept of property. The Hopi leder Martin
Gashweseoma has made the point at issue clear: "Everyone should know that
it's not the Navajos who taking away our land but the United States. Hopi
and Navajo concluded peace long ago and sealed their agreement with a
medicine bundle. Through the puppet governments, the tribal councils forced
on us by the United States, the illusion of a conflict has been created on
the basis of a false modern concept of land title." Boyden, with his
juristic concept of property, meaning exclusive and total disposal, and his
legal appropriation strategy, started the dispute and with it a dirty game in
which losers and winners will play it out until everyone has lost. The USA
claims that it, not the Indians, is the full owner of the land and degrades
them feudalistically to mere tenants, to whom the land can be handed over or
from whom it can be withdrawn, according to its own interests. The
coalition of profiteers is degrading the land to a commercially exploitable
resource, with no regard for the human and animal inhabitants who live in it.

A small group of resolute Dineh is fighting out a battle against the USA, a
world power. In doing so, they represent more than the demand for autonomy
of a small minority. The religious bond of these ancient believers in the
land that is to be held as holy stands fundamentally opposed to license to
evaluate land strictly according to market value and the principle of
unlimited exploitation. Whether a modern human rights idea and organization,
even when it includes religious, social, and ecological rights, can protect
or even keep alive an indigenous culture like those of the Dineh is in
question. The call for help of these people, who are fighting not only for
their survival, but for the survival of another form of coexistence of earth
and human, deserves not to echo unheard.