Forgotten People
P.O. Box 41
Kykotsmovi, AZ
86039
Phone: (928) 797-9468
John Boyden served as attorney for Peabody Coal
Company and the Hopi Tribe at the same time and committed Fraud on the Court by
not telling the courts about 2 lawsuits litigated at the same time to sell the
land including the acreage of HPL and the value of the coal beneath the ground
as a taking by the US government before the Indian Claims Commission and getting
half the land back in the former Joint Use Area in Healing v. Jones.
John Boyden negotiated contracts to provide energy and
water for southwestern cities: Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Boyden’s conflict of interest is documented
by Charles Wilkinson in ‘Conquest and Endurance in the American Southwest,’ by
Indian Law Resource Center in ‘Docket 196,’ and by John Dougherty in ‘Dark Days
on Black Mesa.’
Forced relocation by the US government is too
high a price to pay to steal our lands so far-away cities can prosper. Even
though we have the right to vote as citizens, a 1974 U.S. Appeals Court ruling
(Healing v. Jones) said we only have rights through our tribes and not as
individuals. Instead of being able to
own property, the Navajo and Hopi tribal councils have the authority to lease
lands on behalf of their tribal members.
Both tribes estimate $10 billion in coal deposits beneath our land. Water used to support mining operations is
depleting and degrading pristine ice age water from our sole source aquifer.
Leon Berger who resigned from the U.S. Office
of Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation U.S. Office of Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation
(ONHIR), an executive commission that reports directly to the President said,
“Some 15,000 Navajos have been forcibly relocated at a cost of 2.5 billion
taxpayer dollars. He said, “Peabody Coal is now in a beautiful position because
the government is relocating people, and it is much easier to mine land where
there are no people.”
According to Thayer Scudder, a CalTech
professor and world’s leading relocation expert, “This is the largest forced
relocation in the U.S. A tangled web of laws lets the U.S. Department of
Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs impound Navajo sheep and arrest us for simply
repairing our homes and bulldoze repaired homes.”
Ever since the mine started we have been living
without electricity and running water.
Water sources have been capped off, surface and groundwater supplies depleted,
washes contaminated from arsenic and other heavy metals. The humans and the animals in Big Mountain
and Black Mesa do not have any safe drinking water and we are forced to travel
long distances or drink water we suspect is contaminated. Too many of our people have died without a
health assessment done of respiratory problems, black lung, silicosis, cancer,
kidney failure, despair and suicide in the name and pursuit of coal and high
royalties.
The
U.S. Department of Energy calls our lands a “National Sacrifice Area” and is at
the heart of the global warming issue. Our communities are a microcosm of the
global problem. The energy is produced on our lands using our resources, yet we
receive no benefits from this activity. We suffer the local costs of this
production, such as environmental damage to our land, degradation and
diminution of our water resources and interference with sovereignty. We find that our traditional lifestyle hangs
at the edge of survival in an arid climate, and scientists predict that global
warming will cause a permanent drought and dust bowl in the American Southwest,
making our way of life impossible.
Peabody coal is burned at the
Navajo Generating Station (NGS) and is used to provide electricity and water to
Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Most of the energy generated is used to
pump Central Arizona Project (CAP) water for a heavily subsidized water project
that is used on heavily subsidized crops to its end west of Tucson where
millions of gallons of CO River water pumped across 300 miles of desert,
propelled by power generated by Peabody coal is dumped on a dry lake bed.
Peabody and NGS are using our water while we do not
have a drop of water to drink. The US Department of the Interior Bureau of
Indian Affairs capped off all the water wells in our region allegedly to
protect public health because of uranium and arsenic contamination but we
suspect without access to the data is because of harassment. The springs we used to rely on ran dry due to
Peabody’s pumping our sole source aquifer to slurry coal.
Wars of the future will be fought over water,
as they are over oil today, as water, our Blue
Gold, the source of human survival, enters the global
marketplace. Currently, President
Our liberty is being sacrificed for an economic
bonanza based on fraud and corruption.
Our justice has been prostituted by hand outs, hopelessness, and
conformity elevated to the status of the National Security doctrines. We are the historical lot of the
dispossessed. Democracy has been whitewashed with imported detergent that
allows reclaimed sewer water to get dumped on our Sacred San Francisco Peaks.
Peabody's collusion with the US government has
resulted in a dark infamy of genocide and crimes against my people and the
environment - relocation, the Bennett Freeze, uranium mining, all in the
pursuit of energy resource development fueled by corporate and governmental
greed and collusion.
I offer my heartfelt support for democracy and
freedom for all indigenous people in struggle.
I believe, if the voices of all the dispossessed come together as one
voice, nothing would be left standing of the gigantic lies. Misery is the
historical lot of the dispossessed. I want freedom and justice for my people
and our right to self-government and indigenous autonomy like our ancestors.
Recommendations:
·
Indigenous
people should use the Declaration in support of concrete aims like
self-governance, self-rule and control over property rights, land and
resources.
·
Indigenous people should use the right to free,
prior and informed consent, as stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples and our Treaties
instead of continuing to sustain injuries to our property rights, water rights,
economic rights, and our rights to just compensation for waived and/or lost
rights.
·
The Navajo Nation
should adopt the declaration as their standard for addressing water rights issues
such as the proposed Little Colorado River settlement introduced as Senate Bill
2109 and House Resolution 4067.
·
Peabody Coal
Company should be held accountable for trademarks left behind, a legacy of corporate
crimes against the indigenous people of Black Mesa. Respectfully,
Leonard Benally
Big Mountain Resister and Member, Forgotten People
Big Mountain, Black Mesa, Navajo Nation, AZ
1 comment:
Thank you very much for this thorough evaluation of the water theft, and land theft. I do not live in the southwest but I do not believe we should be dishonoring treaties and imposing mining and fracking on anyone.
This careful reporting gives me the opportunity to have the correct information in order to push back and stand up for mother earth and the people.
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