The response made it seem as though police were targeting dangerous criminals — terrorists, even. But they were actually detaining impoverished Navajo (Dine’) elders accused of owning too many sheep.
For the past month Hopi rangers and agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) have been entering people’s land and holding them at gunpoint, with few warrants and little respect for due process. Community members say they live in fear because of this extreme intimidation in the Hopi Partitioned Lands in northern Arizona.
The Hopi tribe and the BIA say that over four dozen people have exceeded their permitted limit of 28 sheep per household, which will lead to overgrazing. Even if that were true — and many people doubt the claim — it would hardly justify the excessively intimidating approach to the problem. So far, three people have been arrested and more than 300 sheep impounded. Exorbitant fees are levied for people to recover their sheep, which the elderly Navajo residents depend on for their livelihood.
The residents of Black Mesa believe this most recent assault on their livelihood is being funded and instigated by the federal government through the Department of Interior and the BIA as part of an ongoing effort to maintain access to vast coal reserves on their ancestral homelands.
In September the U.S. government signed a settlement with the Navajo Nation to pay over half a billion dollars in compensation for the government’s mismanagement of tribal trust resources. At the signing, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell cited President Barack Obama’s desire to improve the nation-to-nation relationship between tribes and the federal government. While this public relations move made national headlines, the simultaneous harassment of Navajo elders and the deliberate effort to deprive them of their ability to remain on their lands did not.
1 comment:
Yes, I saw that on the Navajo Churro Sheep Association Newsletter (as I was a member but no more). The government was very heavy handed, especially toward the elderly lady.
But think and read this if you have the opportunity on the Navajo Churro sheep forum, April 18,2014, no.2631, a Navajo churro sheep breeder sent a post, addressed to me, that ran my blood cold. Her first sentence was" This might be of interest to you Monique, I am working with FERUS, an environment group from France right now on a grant to include our Catahoolas with their Patous" fast forward, "it has been an interesting project for me"
FERUS is an extremely aggressive pro loup, bears and lynx that has caused so much damage to sheep growers in France and other parts of Europe so much so that growers are demonstrating and fighting to amend the Bern convention. The Bern convention is a document protection wild life and predators.
A grant? in Euros or in Dollars. Do we know if it is Ferus? or is it some one representing him/her self as Ferus?
The fact that some terrorist infiltrating organization under the guise of ecologists saver of bio diversity is not as far fetched as one think.
My answer to this lunacy can be found on the forum, April 10, no. 2635. I told her that her project was full of crap and that I was not interested. was thrown under the train for using bad word.
So, yes, I agree that the raid on a grandmother was excessive but let's not forget that there are indeed terrorist infiltrating the U.S. to do us harm.
Monique
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