Baby, I Love Your Way
#BigMountain
https://youtu.be/utXwIqQj7oE

Diné elders resist eviction from Big Mountain

Debra O'Gara and Guerry Hoddersen, August 1986

"Forced relocation. The words bring to mind the Trail of Tears, Nazi concentration camps, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Past atrocities, not present and future ones.

"But on the #BlackMesa surrounding Big Mountain in northeastern Arizona, over 11,000 #Diné (Navajo) are facing a new holocaust: removal by armed U.S. troops from their ancestral homelands in an area jointly held by the Navajo and Hopi nations.

"The U.S. media bills the government’s role as peacemaker in a #Hopi vs. #Navajo war. But the reality is very different at Big Mountain.

"For over 50 years, #mining companies have sought to exploit the rich mineral resources that lie beneath the land now occupied by the #Navajos. To do this they first secured the assistance of the federal government, which in the 1920s and ’30s unilaterally replaced the traditional forms of government, based on clan elders, with malleable tribal councils. Over the years these councils have been only too willing to negotiate mineral leases, and the elite who run the councils have gotten rich doing it.

"Now, giant energy #corporations like #PeabodyCoal, #KerrMcGee, and #Exxon want unhampered access to the estimated 44 billion tons of high-grade #coal and deposits of oil, natural gas, and #uranium found on and around #BigMountain.

"There’s only one problem: the traditional Diné who live on the land will not move voluntarily.

"So once again the energy moguls have turned to their servants in the government and the Hopi council for help.

"Forced relocation, the holocaust hatched in corporate boardrooms, has in fact gathered formidable support: it is endorsed by Congress, covered up by the press, and sanctioned by a phony tribal leadership."
#CulturalGenocide #ForcedRelocation #NativeAmericans #EnvironmentalRacism #ThackerPass
https://socialism.com/fs-article/dine-elders-resist-eviction-from-big-mountain/

Documentary: Vanishing Prayer (2004)

A 15-minute documentary about how Native American Grandmothers and Elders at #BIgMountain, both #Dineh/#Navajo and #Hopi, resisted relocation by #PeabodyCoal, who wanted to mine on their land, and used legal precedents from #Colonialism (as well as corrupt tribal leaders appointed by the #BIA), to force people off their land.
#NativeAmericans #Genocide #Mining #Lithium #BlackMesa #ThackerPass #EnvironmentalRacism

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs2DXHUKASA

What's going on with #ThackPass isn't new. Peabody Coal wanted to mine in Hopi-Dineh territory, so they got their government allies (including John McCain) to help pass legislation that amounted to genocide. The UN was called in, and documented the #HumanRights violations being committed. Here's some background from 2002. And no, this isn't an exaggeration, as I was helping to send supplies to Dineh grandmothers who were part of the resistance.

UNHRC Big Mountain Statement to the World

By Roberta Blackgoat & Kee Watchman

"We would like to make and reaffirm an understanding about what our #Dineh (#Navajo Indians) Peoples in struggle on #BlackMesa are facing daily. They face unyielding threats of #evictions, complete denial of rights, confiscations of livestock, and #destruction of their prayer gathering places. This type of daily living has drastically eliminated many valuable lives of human beings especially among the traditional elder populations.

"The cause and factors of our current struggle, however, go back beyond the United States government’s creation of an Executive Order of 1882, which set aside an Indian reservation that encompassed the overlapping territories of Dineh and Hopis. Our initial request for this understanding therefore is that, our existence includes our struggle to maintain our sovereignty, our religion and that, our history dates back to the times of the Spanish colonial conquest and finally, to the American #colonization which brought about a ‘death march’ known today as, The Long Walk of 1864. Half of our Dineh population was annihilated within a 15-year period of military invasions by the United States army, and an episode of that aggression occurred upon our ancestral homelands of the #BigMountain region. For some of our ancestors at that time, they were in exile or in captivity in a concentration camp in New Mexico, and little did they know that our Treaty of 1868 with the US would not be honored.

"Then, just a few generations after since our forefathers and foremothers believed they were free, the uprooting of our livelihood and the explorations of the resources beneath our pathways began a repeat of history. On a daily basis, we are once again forced onto another Long Walk: our foods are taken away from us and we only subsist on rations, we are left to spent winters in the cold because of restrictions from gathering firewood, we are denied accessibility to adequate drinking water, our young generations’ identity are stolen from them, and the old and frail are left behind to be defeated by anxiety and depression from hopelessness. These are the results of the Executive Order of 1974 along with its recent amendments. Public Law 93-531 of 1974 adjudicated the partitioning of the 1882 Reservation and the immediate removal of Dineh residents caught on the 'wrong side' of the demarcation boundary."

#NativeAmericans #CulturalGenocide #EnvironmentalRacism #LandBack

Read more:
http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/Articles2002/UNHRC0204-05BMstatement.htm

Trees at the top of #BigMountain were crusted with six inches of snow, frost, and frozen fog… so we employed our best ski pole sculpting skills to summon the snow trolls.
#skiing #snow #mountain

Danny Blackgoat Soars to Spirit World
Saturday, December 24, 2022
via Censored News

"Danny Blackgoat, so nof Roberta Blackgoat, longtime resister to relocation and government oppression, soars to Spirit World."
#BigMountain #NativeAmerican #Indigenous

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2022/12/danny-blackgoat-soars-to-spirit-world.html