SPONSORING GENOCIDE
Senator McCain's Final Solution

Rena Babbitt Lane is a Dineh (Navajo) elder living on land on Black Mesa in
Arizona that has been inhabited by her Dineh ancestors for many centuries.
Living without electricity or running water, she and her husband sustain a
profoundly traditional life, and survive by raising sheep, weaving rugs from
their wool, and growing a few crops. On Tuesday, September 21, 1999, BIA
agents raided her homesite and confiscated 21 sheep, 2 goats, and 6 cows. She
was weaving and preparing a meal at the time, and did not even know the BIA
was there until later, when all her animals did not come home. She saw the
tracks of two impoundment trailers and a police vehicle where they had been
grazing, and knew they had been taken away. When she went to the BIA offices
the next day, they served her with papers stating that the rest of her
livestock will be confiscated in five days (Monday, September 27). The BIA is
confiscating without compensation everything she owns, leaving her to die in
the harsh winter soon to follow. If she survives until spring without her
livestock, she will be forcibly relocated to the "New Lands," an area that
was contaminated by the largest spill of nuclear waste in US history. Rena
Babbitt Lane, who is in her late seventies, was severely injured-her hand
broken-in a previous livestock impoundment. She has undergone surgery for a
heart condition, and wears a pacemaker.

The BIA offered her one way to save part of her herd and to avoid relocation.
She could sign an "Accommodation Agreement" that was included as part of PL
104-301, which was sponsored by Senator John McCain of Arizona. By signing
this agreement, she acknowledges the loss of her land title and agrees to
live as a tenant in her own house. Even by signing, however, she would not be
permitted to keep enough of her livestock to survive. Under the agreement,
she is not allowed to vote or to participate in the legal system except as a
defendant. She and people like her must live in a system in which they are
blatantly discriminated against because of their ethnic origin. Permits are
required for everything ranging from possessing firewood to performing
religious ceremonies. The people are not even allowed to bury their dead
according to their traditional religious beliefs. Government regulations
control who is allowed to live in her house and who is allowed to visit her.
Permits for scarce commodities like grazing permits are allocated according
to a priority list on which Dineh like Rena are placed at the bottom to
ensure they never receive any.

In an effort to obtain signatures on these leases and thereby make it appear
that a fair solution had been reached, Senator McCain and his followers in
Congress attached a provision to the law that grants the Hopi government $25
million if it can obtain signatures from 95 families on these leases - over
$260,000 per signature. The federal government then supported a campaign of
fraud and coercion to obtain signatures. People were told they would be
thrown in jail or evicted in the middle of the night if they refused to sign
when requested. Signatures were forged. Semi-official thugs empowered by the
US government even threatened to kill some of the elderly people if they
refused to sign. Despite this campaign, Rena and many of the families still
refused to sign, so the BIA has launched a final wave of attacks to
exterminate the resisters.
How It All Began
Senator McCain's law was intended to be the final solution to a problem that
began in 1882 when the US government created a reservation centered on the
Hopi villages at the southern tip of Black Mesa. The land surrounding the
Hopi, making up over 85% of the reservation, was inhabited by Dineh. In the
1930s, the US government proposed giving control over the reservation to a
government consisting exclusively of Hopi. Recognizing the problem that this
presented to the Dineh living on the reservation, the BIA proposed in 1940 to
partition the reservation so as to give the Hopi government control over a
small area in the middle and to give the Navajo government control over the
rest.

These plans were derailed when the nation's largest deposits of low-sulfur
coal were discovered on the land where the Dineh lived. An attorney named
John Boyden, who was simultaneously working for the Peabody Coal Company,
formed a Hopi government under his control in 1953 and won a settlement in
1963 giving him a 50% interest in the Dineh land. In 1974 with the strong
support of a consortium of energy companies, Boyden persuaded Congress to
pass PL 93-531 that divided the Dineh land into separate Hopi/Navajo regions
and ordered the relocation of all Dineh living on the Hopi Partitioned Lands.

Over the next 25 years, over 12,000 Dineh were forcibly relocated in a
program described by its former director Leon Berger as "a tragedy of
genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country
for many generations." Many were moved to the "New Lands," an area near
Chambers, AZ, too arid to support their livestock and contaminated by the
largest spill of radioactive waste in US history, which occurred when a
containment dam at a uranium mine burst upstream on the Rio Puerco, which
runs through the land. Others were moved into cities for which they lacked
survival skills, and where they became caught in a circle of homelessness,
alcoholism, and suicide.

While the 1974 law mandated relocation, it did not authorize the use of force
to remove those who refused to leave, and approximately 3,000 Dineh still
remain on their land despite all the efforts to evict them. In 1996, McCain
sponsored a bill that attempted to resolve the situation by offering some of
the families' leases that would allow them to remain as tenants on their land
without civil rights. The bill authorized the forcible relocation after
February 1, 2000, of those who were ineligible to sign or who refused to sign
the leases.

"We want everyone to know that the Navajos are not the ones taking our land,
but the United States. The Hopi and the Navajo made peace long ago, and
sealed their agreement spiritually with a medicine bundle. It is through the
puppet governments, the 'Tribal Councils' forced upon both nations by the
United States, that the illusion of a conflict has been created on the basis
of the false modern concept of land title." [Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of
the Hopi Fire Clan Tablets]
What You Can Do To Help
We urge all Americans to call upon Congress to repeal legislation that
legalizes ethnic cleansing, that arbitrarily confiscates the homes and
property of the poorest people in the country, and that strips people of
their civil rights solely because of their ethnic origin. Please contact your
representatives and remind them that the foundation of all policy toward
America's native peoples should be respect for their right to remain on their
ancestral land, to practice their traditional religion, and to enjoy the same
protections and civil rights offered to all other citizens.

For further information please contact: SOVEREIGN DINEH NATION
P.O.Box 1968 Kaibeto, AZ 86053 DINETAH29@aol.com