December 3, 2009
Breaking News: Western Shoshone, Black Mesa and Crow Creek
Breaking News: Western Shoshone, Black Mesa and Crow Creek
By Brenda Norrell
Today, Western Shoshone prevailed in the Ninth Circuit, in their effort to protect sacred Mount Tenabo from gold mining in Nevada and the US EPA withdrew a controversial permit allowing Peabody Coal to dump pollutants into Navajo and Hopi waterways in Arizona.
However, there was no good news for the Crow Creek Sioux, one of the nation's most economically desperate people. In a brutal attack, the IRS auctioned off 7,100 acres of their lands to pay back taxes in central South Dakota.
Crow Creek sent out an appeal for help. "Please Help Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. We are setting up Tipi's and Having Han Blece'Yapi on the land."
Since the land was earlier partitioned and sold by individual members, then bought back by the Crow Creek Nation, it was not in trust status at the time. However, Crow Creek has 180 days to buy back its land, which was sold at a portion of its value.
Meanwhile, Western Shoshone are celebrating a victory, following the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court to rule in favor of protecting Mount Tenabo from Barrick Gold Corporation's mining on the sacred mountain.
The Ninth Circuit reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that the Bureau of Land Management violated the National Environmental Policy Act in failing to properly analyze the environmental impacts from the mine on groundwater, air quality, and other resources.
"Suspending a project until that consideration has occurred thus comports with the public interest," the court stated.
Carrie Dann, a world renowned Western Shoshone grandmother, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "alternative Nobel Peace Prize," has been among those to lead the fight to protect Mount Tenabo from mining for over 15 years.
"Mount Tenabo should be left alone -- no further disturbance. This mine will drain the water from Mount Tenabo. They will be sucking the water out of the mountain forever. The destruction of the water is like the destruction of the blood of the earth; you are destroying life of the earth and the people and wildlife that depend on it. Dewatering is taking the life of future generations. Water is sacred, all life depends on it," Dann said.
Navajos and Hopis are celebrating a separate victory, following the US EPA's withdrawl of a permit for Peabody Coal mining operations on Black Mesa.
“EPA is to be commended for doing the right thing in this instance and withdrawing the inadequate water permit for Black Mesa,” said Wahleah Johns of the Black Mesa Water Coalition. “Our community was shut out of the permitting process and our requests for public hearings on the permit denied. If a new permit is issued, the agency must ensure that impacted communities are meaningfully involved in environmental decision-making.”
EPA's permit withdrawal means that discharges of heavy metal and pollutants -- including selenium, nitrates, and other heavy metals and toxic pollutants from coal-mining operations at the Black Mesa Complex -- are threatening washes, tributaries, groundwater, and the drinking water for local communities, but are not being regulated, according to the organizations challenging the permit approval.
Nicole Horseherder of TO' Nizhoni Ani (Navajo for Beautiful Water Speaks), who lives 20 miles south of the Black Mesa Complex, said, "I am very happy about the EPA's decision to withdraw the permit. I am glad to see a federal regulatory agency finally doing its job. In the course of our struggle to protect the water and bring awareness to the impacts of this coal-mining operation, we have never had such a favorable decision by any agency charged with regulating the impacts of Black Mesa."
Anna Frazier of Dine CARE said, “EPA’s recent Notice of Withdrawal of Permit is further evidence of Peabody Coal Company’s illegal coal mining operation on Black Mesa that is not only destroying the land which is the living flesh of our Mother Earth but is now polluting – with an expired discharge permit – the region’s natural water system which are, in real physical and spiritual terms, the lifeblood and veins of our female mountain."
In South Dakota, the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday auctioned off Crow Creek land to help pay off more than $3 million in back taxes, penalties and interest - a sale the tribe says is illegal under federal laws protecting Indian land.
"We haven't given up, the Tribe has 180 days yet and Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and I and our pro bono attorney are still working on this. Starting Monday we are setting up Tipi's and having Han Blece'Yapi on the land. It is bitterly cold here with snow flurries. It is prime land overlooking the Missouri, the Tribe wanted to use for wind energy. It was not held in trust, but fee land. The Sioux Tribes are supporting Crow Creek," one Crow Creek member wrote.
"It is time to make a stand once and for all! Make a statement that our land never will be for sale!"
Read more on these breaking news stories at: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Western Shoshone prevail at Ninth Circuit on gold mining at Mount Tenabo
For Immediate Release:
Contacts:
Larson Bill, South Fork Western Shoshone, 775-397-6726, 775-744-2537
John Hadder, Great Basin Resource Watch, 775-722-4056
Julie Cavanaugh-Bill, Western Shoshone Defense Project, 775-397-1371
Roger Flynn, Western Mining Action Project, 303-823-5738
Western Shoshone Prevail at Ninth Circuit Court on Mt. Tenabo – Court Issues Ruling Enjoining Cortez Hills Open Pit Gold Mine
Court Agrees with Western Shoshone and Allies that the Interior Department’s Approval of the Mine Likely Violated Federal Law
December 3, 2009: San Francisco,CA and Crescent Valley, NV – In a major ruling, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today issued its ruling enjoining the construction and operation of the Cortez Hills gold mine, proposed by Barrick Gold Corporation. The Ninth Circuit reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, which had denied the motion for preliminary injunction filed by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs in the case are: the South Fork Band Council of Western Shoshone, the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, and Great Basin Resource Watch (the “Plaintiffs”). The Plaintiffs challenged the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) decision to approve the Cortez Hills Mine in November of 2008.
In overturning the District Court’s decision, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their legal arguments that BLM violated federal environmental and public land law in approving the Mine. The Ninth Circuit also found that enjoining the Mine was in the public interest due to the “irreparable environmental harm threatened by this massive project.” Among other issues, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act in failing to properly analyze the environmental impacts from the Mine on groundwater, air quality, and other resources. “Suspending a project until that consideration has occurred thus comports with the public interest.”
The Cortez Hills Mine would be one of the largest open pit cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States. It would be located on the flank of Mount Tenabo – an area well-known for its spiritual and cultural importance to the Western Shoshone. The area is home to local Shoshone creation stories, spirit life, medicinal, food and ceremonial plants and items and continues to be used to this day by Shoshone for spiritual and cultural practices. Over the years, tens of thousands of individuals and organizations from across the United States and around the world have joined with the Shoshone and voiced their opposition to this mine. The proposed mine area has been found by the BLM, in repeated ethnographic studies, as being of extreme spiritual and cultural importance to the Western Shoshone. One report says: “Mt. Tenabo is … considered a traditional locus of power and source of life, and figures in creation stories and world renewal. As the tallest mountain in the area – the most likely to capture snow and generate water to grow piñon and nourish life – it is literally a life-giver. Water is to earth what blood is to the body, and these subterranean waterways are likened to the earth’s arteries and veins.”
The Mine is proposed by Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold mining company, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The Mine would blast and excavate a new massive open pit on Mount Tenabo over 800 acres in size, with a depth of over 2,000 feet. It would include several new waste disposal and processing facilities (including a cyanide heap-leaching facility), consisting of approximately 1,577 million tons of waste rock, 53 million tons of tailings material, and 112 million tons of spent heap leach material. The Mine would include an extensive groundwater pumping system to dewater Mount Tenabo (in order to keep the open pit and mine workings dry during mining) and associated water pipelines that will transport the pumped water away from Mount Tenabo. In total, the mine would permanently destroy approximately 6,800 acres land on and around Mount Tenabo, over 90% of which is classified as federal “public” land. Despite the pending case before the Ninth Circuit appealing the District Court’s denial of the Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction in January, 2009, Barrick decided to begin construction of the Mine. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling today orders the District Court to issue an injunction against the Mine.
“We are pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s ruling,” said Larson Bill, Tribal Council Member of the South Fork Band Council and Te-Moak Tribe. “This is a result of Western Shoshone people remaining committed to protecting our land and environment. It is unfortunate that the company decided to push this forward without addressing all concerns, especially those of the Shoshone people. Barrick operates world wide and is well-versed on these issues – they knew that an injunction was a possibility – especially where there has been continuous opposition and litigation.” continued Larson Bill.
Carrie Dann, a world renowned Western Shoshone grandmother, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (known as the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize”) has been among those to lead the fight to protect Mount Tenabo from mining for over 15 years. “Mount Tenabo should be left alone – no further disturbance. This mine will drain the water from Mount Tenabo. They will be sucking the water out of the mountain forever. The destruction of the water is like the destruction of the blood of the earth; you are destroying life of the earth and the people and wildlife that depend on it. Dewatering is taking the life of future generations. Water is sacred, all life depends on it,” says Carrie Dann.
“None of us are opposed to mining, if it is done responsibly, however this project is as irresponsible as it gets. The BLM has a legal responsibility to protect the air, water, and ecological values of the area as well as the religious freedom of Western Shoshone, and to fully analyze the impacts of a proposed project. The Ninth Circuit correctly found that BLM failed in its legal responsibilities,” said John Hadder, Executive Director of Great Basin Resource Watch.
The Plaintiffs are being represented in court by Roger Flynn of the non-profit legal firm, the Western Mining Action Project, based on Colorado, which specializes in mining, public land, and environmental law.
For more information on the Cortez Hills Project, Mount Tenabo, and the legal challenge go to http://www.gbrw.org/
and http://www.wsdp.org/
The Ninth Circuit Decision can be downloaded at: http://www.gbrw.org/images/stories/publications/tenabo/Ninth_Circuit_injunction_ruling_12-3-09.pdf
(12-03) 17:28 PST Reno, Nev. (AP) -- San Francisco Chronicle
A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked construction of a massive gold mine project in northeast Nevada that critics say would harm the environment and ruin a mountain that several tribes consider sacred.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a rare legal setback for the mining industry in the nation's largest gold-producing state, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction to force Barrick Gold Corp. to postpone digging a 2,000-foot deep open pit at the Cortez Hills mine.
Nevada trails only China, South Africa and Australia in terms of worldwide gold production.
In reversing an earlier ruling, the judges in San Francisco said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately analyze the mine's potential to pollute the air with mercury emissions and dry up scarce water resources in Nevada's high desert. The project is located on Mount Tenabo, about 250 miles east of Reno.
The appellate judges concluded BLM's review was inadequate under the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a thorough examination of large-scale projects on federal land. They said the agency didn't fully consider the air quality impacts resulting from transporting ore to an off-site processing facility 70 miles away.
The judges also said the review didn't do enough to examine the likelihood that pumping water out of the pit would cause the groundwater level to drop and potentially dry up more than a dozen streams and springs.
The ruling Thursday sends the case back to federal court in Reno until the BLM revises its environmental impact statement.
In the ruling, the appellate court upheld a federal judge's finding that opponents of the mine failed to prove they were likely to prevail on claims the mine would cause visual harm to Mount Tenabo and create a substantial burden on the tribes' ability to exercise their religion.
Several Native American tribes say their people have been worshipping at Tenabo for centuries.
Lawyers for Barrick — the largest gold mining company in the world — argued that postponing digging the mine would cause undue financial hardship on the company and its workers during tough economic times.
But the appeals court said any economic hardship "may for the most part be temporary."
"Congress's determination in enacting NEPA was that the public interest requires careful consideration of environmental impacts before major federal projects may be go forward," the judges wrote. "Suspending a project until that consideration has occurred thus comports with the public interest."
John Hadder, executive director of the Reno-based environmental watchdog group the Great Basin Mine Watch, said the court rightly concluded BLM had failed in its legal responsibility to "protect the air, water and ecological values of the area as well as the religious freedom of Western Shoshone" tribe.
"None of us are opposed to mining if it is done responsibility. However, this project is as irresponsible as it gets," he said. In addition to the Mine Watch, the plaintiffs included the Western Shoshone Defense Project and three tribes.
BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley said the agency was reviewing the ruling and had no comment Thursday.
Vincent Borg, Barrick's executive vice president for corporate communications, said the company was pleased the appellate court upheld the lower court ruling regarding religious freedom.
"The district court will now have to consider the extent of any injunctive relief" in regard to the other parts of the ruling the judges overturned, he said.
Barrick began construction in January on the mine, which would be one of the largest open-pit, cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States. Company officials said at the time they were prepared to spend $640,000 a day on the project for the next 15 months.
"It is unfortunate the company decided to push this forward without addressing all concerns, especially those of the Shoshone people," said Larson Bill, a member of the Te-Moak Tribe.
Carrie Dann, of the Western Shoshone, said the project would drain the water from the mountain.
"The destruction of the water is like the destruction of the blood of the earth," Dann said. "You are destroying life of the earth and the people and wildlife that depend on it."
____
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/03/financial/f144318S83.DTL&type=business#ixzz0YgYK619q
Contacts:
Larson Bill, South Fork Western Shoshone, 775-397-6726, 775-744-2537
John Hadder, Great Basin Resource Watch, 775-722-4056
Julie Cavanaugh-Bill, Western Shoshone Defense Project, 775-397-1371
Roger Flynn, Western Mining Action Project, 303-823-5738
Western Shoshone Prevail at Ninth Circuit Court on Mt. Tenabo – Court Issues Ruling Enjoining Cortez Hills Open Pit Gold Mine
Court Agrees with Western Shoshone and Allies that the Interior Department’s Approval of the Mine Likely Violated Federal Law
December 3, 2009: San Francisco,CA and Crescent Valley, NV – In a major ruling, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today issued its ruling enjoining the construction and operation of the Cortez Hills gold mine, proposed by Barrick Gold Corporation. The Ninth Circuit reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, which had denied the motion for preliminary injunction filed by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs in the case are: the South Fork Band Council of Western Shoshone, the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, and Great Basin Resource Watch (the “Plaintiffs”). The Plaintiffs challenged the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) decision to approve the Cortez Hills Mine in November of 2008.
In overturning the District Court’s decision, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their legal arguments that BLM violated federal environmental and public land law in approving the Mine. The Ninth Circuit also found that enjoining the Mine was in the public interest due to the “irreparable environmental harm threatened by this massive project.” Among other issues, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act in failing to properly analyze the environmental impacts from the Mine on groundwater, air quality, and other resources. “Suspending a project until that consideration has occurred thus comports with the public interest.”
The Cortez Hills Mine would be one of the largest open pit cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States. It would be located on the flank of Mount Tenabo – an area well-known for its spiritual and cultural importance to the Western Shoshone. The area is home to local Shoshone creation stories, spirit life, medicinal, food and ceremonial plants and items and continues to be used to this day by Shoshone for spiritual and cultural practices. Over the years, tens of thousands of individuals and organizations from across the United States and around the world have joined with the Shoshone and voiced their opposition to this mine. The proposed mine area has been found by the BLM, in repeated ethnographic studies, as being of extreme spiritual and cultural importance to the Western Shoshone. One report says: “Mt. Tenabo is … considered a traditional locus of power and source of life, and figures in creation stories and world renewal. As the tallest mountain in the area – the most likely to capture snow and generate water to grow piñon and nourish life – it is literally a life-giver. Water is to earth what blood is to the body, and these subterranean waterways are likened to the earth’s arteries and veins.”
The Mine is proposed by Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold mining company, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The Mine would blast and excavate a new massive open pit on Mount Tenabo over 800 acres in size, with a depth of over 2,000 feet. It would include several new waste disposal and processing facilities (including a cyanide heap-leaching facility), consisting of approximately 1,577 million tons of waste rock, 53 million tons of tailings material, and 112 million tons of spent heap leach material. The Mine would include an extensive groundwater pumping system to dewater Mount Tenabo (in order to keep the open pit and mine workings dry during mining) and associated water pipelines that will transport the pumped water away from Mount Tenabo. In total, the mine would permanently destroy approximately 6,800 acres land on and around Mount Tenabo, over 90% of which is classified as federal “public” land. Despite the pending case before the Ninth Circuit appealing the District Court’s denial of the Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction in January, 2009, Barrick decided to begin construction of the Mine. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling today orders the District Court to issue an injunction against the Mine.
“We are pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s ruling,” said Larson Bill, Tribal Council Member of the South Fork Band Council and Te-Moak Tribe. “This is a result of Western Shoshone people remaining committed to protecting our land and environment. It is unfortunate that the company decided to push this forward without addressing all concerns, especially those of the Shoshone people. Barrick operates world wide and is well-versed on these issues – they knew that an injunction was a possibility – especially where there has been continuous opposition and litigation.” continued Larson Bill.
Carrie Dann, a world renowned Western Shoshone grandmother, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (known as the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize”) has been among those to lead the fight to protect Mount Tenabo from mining for over 15 years. “Mount Tenabo should be left alone – no further disturbance. This mine will drain the water from Mount Tenabo. They will be sucking the water out of the mountain forever. The destruction of the water is like the destruction of the blood of the earth; you are destroying life of the earth and the people and wildlife that depend on it. Dewatering is taking the life of future generations. Water is sacred, all life depends on it,” says Carrie Dann.
“None of us are opposed to mining, if it is done responsibly, however this project is as irresponsible as it gets. The BLM has a legal responsibility to protect the air, water, and ecological values of the area as well as the religious freedom of Western Shoshone, and to fully analyze the impacts of a proposed project. The Ninth Circuit correctly found that BLM failed in its legal responsibilities,” said John Hadder, Executive Director of Great Basin Resource Watch.
The Plaintiffs are being represented in court by Roger Flynn of the non-profit legal firm, the Western Mining Action Project, based on Colorado, which specializes in mining, public land, and environmental law.
For more information on the Cortez Hills Project, Mount Tenabo, and the legal challenge go to http://www.gbrw.org/
and http://www.wsdp.org/
The Ninth Circuit Decision can be downloaded at: http://www.gbrw.org/images/stories/publications/tenabo/Ninth_Circuit_injunction_ruling_12-3-09.pdf
(12-03) 17:28 PST Reno, Nev. (AP) -- San Francisco Chronicle
A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked construction of a massive gold mine project in northeast Nevada that critics say would harm the environment and ruin a mountain that several tribes consider sacred.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a rare legal setback for the mining industry in the nation's largest gold-producing state, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction to force Barrick Gold Corp. to postpone digging a 2,000-foot deep open pit at the Cortez Hills mine.
Nevada trails only China, South Africa and Australia in terms of worldwide gold production.
In reversing an earlier ruling, the judges in San Francisco said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately analyze the mine's potential to pollute the air with mercury emissions and dry up scarce water resources in Nevada's high desert. The project is located on Mount Tenabo, about 250 miles east of Reno.
The appellate judges concluded BLM's review was inadequate under the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a thorough examination of large-scale projects on federal land. They said the agency didn't fully consider the air quality impacts resulting from transporting ore to an off-site processing facility 70 miles away.
The judges also said the review didn't do enough to examine the likelihood that pumping water out of the pit would cause the groundwater level to drop and potentially dry up more than a dozen streams and springs.
The ruling Thursday sends the case back to federal court in Reno until the BLM revises its environmental impact statement.
In the ruling, the appellate court upheld a federal judge's finding that opponents of the mine failed to prove they were likely to prevail on claims the mine would cause visual harm to Mount Tenabo and create a substantial burden on the tribes' ability to exercise their religion.
Several Native American tribes say their people have been worshipping at Tenabo for centuries.
Lawyers for Barrick — the largest gold mining company in the world — argued that postponing digging the mine would cause undue financial hardship on the company and its workers during tough economic times.
But the appeals court said any economic hardship "may for the most part be temporary."
"Congress's determination in enacting NEPA was that the public interest requires careful consideration of environmental impacts before major federal projects may be go forward," the judges wrote. "Suspending a project until that consideration has occurred thus comports with the public interest."
John Hadder, executive director of the Reno-based environmental watchdog group the Great Basin Mine Watch, said the court rightly concluded BLM had failed in its legal responsibility to "protect the air, water and ecological values of the area as well as the religious freedom of Western Shoshone" tribe.
"None of us are opposed to mining if it is done responsibility. However, this project is as irresponsible as it gets," he said. In addition to the Mine Watch, the plaintiffs included the Western Shoshone Defense Project and three tribes.
BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley said the agency was reviewing the ruling and had no comment Thursday.
Vincent Borg, Barrick's executive vice president for corporate communications, said the company was pleased the appellate court upheld the lower court ruling regarding religious freedom.
"The district court will now have to consider the extent of any injunctive relief" in regard to the other parts of the ruling the judges overturned, he said.
Barrick began construction in January on the mine, which would be one of the largest open-pit, cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States. Company officials said at the time they were prepared to spend $640,000 a day on the project for the next 15 months.
"It is unfortunate the company decided to push this forward without addressing all concerns, especially those of the Shoshone people," said Larson Bill, a member of the Te-Moak Tribe.
Carrie Dann, of the Western Shoshone, said the project would drain the water from the mountain.
"The destruction of the water is like the destruction of the blood of the earth," Dann said. "You are destroying life of the earth and the people and wildlife that depend on it."
____
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/03/financial/f144318S83.DTL&type=business#ixzz0YgYK619q
Zapatistas: In the Language of Love
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Photo: Maria Garcia cooking for Marcos and the Comandantes in Sonora, near the Arizona border. Photo Brenda Norrell
It is popular now for writers to try and explain the Zapatistas with intellectual rhetoric. But when we rode with the Zapatistas, it was in the language of love, it was in the spirit of resistance, and we were all prepared to die.
When the Zapatistas spoke of autonomous governments and dignity, it came from the depth of their beings, from the wellsprings of their souls, from the earth mother within them. Mayan corn farmers, with only their little plots of corn as a means of survival, were being driven off their lands by corporations and paramilitaries. Fighting for their land meant the survival of their families.
In our journeys from the Tucson barrio to Chiapas, spanning more than a decade, Maria Garcia ignited hearts with the understanding of the true spirit of the Zapatistas movement. It was this love of the Indigenous Peoples, this passion for the struggle for autonomy and justice, that drove us forward.
Not everyone could see, not everyone had two legs and not everyone could understand the languages and dialects, but always there was the unspoken language of love. Far beyond rhetoric, it was this love that has always powered the movement.
On the Zapatista caravan through Mexico, sitting next to me was Miguel, from Nogales. Without the gift of physical sight, he brought a special spirit, a special grace. We described to him the colors of Mexico, the colors of the flowers in the fields where the revolutionary Zapata once lived. It was on the Zapatista caravan, that the Nahuatl warrior from Guerrero came aboard our bus. With one leg, he hopped aboard, and rushed forward, serving as security. At home, he said, there was no food in the villages. He was lean, too lean, and about 20 years old. Others came, too, leaning on their canes, or with walkers. Still others came nursing their newborns, or mourning the loss of their loved ones killed by the paramilitaries.
A few years ago, Jose Garcia, Tohono O'odham, and his wife Maria, and I traveled to the Zapatistas stronghold near the Guatemalan border in Chiapas. With us were Mayo community leaders from the west coast of Mexico in Sinoloa. A huge Zapatista flag waved on a car at the entrance to their village, where most of the Mayo people survived by collecting firewood or herding their goats. Their village vowed to be the first autonomous Zapatista village in the western region of Mexico. After our trip, the two Mayos and their families were beaten by Mexican officers. The Mayo leaders were imprisoned.
In this sadness, in this intense struggle since the early 1990s, there was also humor. Walking through San Cristobal de las Casas with Hopi photographer Larry Gus, there was a stout looking 50-something-year-old US CIA agent type, with a shaved head. As he rushed past, the man snarled at us, "F---ing Navajos."
Another favorite story from that time was when I was lost on a mountain in Zapatista territory, with a Mexican military helicopter hovering overhead. It was at a time when the Zapatistas were being assassinated near Oventic and we were there as human rights observers, as human shields.
Maria remembers that it was her chiles that saved me as I came down the mountain. The bright red chiles had fallen, one by one, from the lunch bag all the way on the mountain trail. I followed the chiles back down, on the foot trails down the mountain. Unfortunately at the top of the mountain, none of the lunch was saved, as a horse ate the lunch bag hanging on a tree.
That was in 1995, when Jose, Maria and Larry were on the Indigenous delegation to Chiapas, along with Dakota, Tohono O'odham and Yaqui. We looked down the barrels of the Mexican military's AK47s, wore handkerchiefs over our faces in solidarity with Mayan corn farmers in the mountains, and stood in solidarity with the women and children who face death each day.
Since that time, Jose Matus, Yaqui ceremonial leader who was a member of the delegation, cofounded the Indigenous Alliance without Borders. Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham, organized the Indigenous Border Summits of the Americas in 2006 and 2007. Their words have been their weapons.
Jose Garcia, Tohono O'odham, and his wife Maria, have kept alive the language of love. They lost ownership of the home where they lived in the barrio in Tucson for 30 years, where they now live as renters. But from that barrio in Arizona, stretching through the heart of Mexico, they carved out a home for all of us, in the language of love.
brendanorrell@gmail.com
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Mohawk Splitting the Sky: Arresting Bush for war crimes
Citizen's Arrest of George W. Bush for War Crimes
The Trial of "Splitting the Sky"
by Prof. Anthony J. Hall
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16377
Who and What is on Trial?
When Splitting the Sky broke through police lines in his attempt to conduct a citizen’s arrest of former US president George W. Bush, the Mohawk freedom fighter pierced a thick wall of tyranny. He broke through a tight phalanx of state protection for the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace.
With his courageous act, Splitting the Sky announced the unwillingness of millions of global citizens to tolerate any longer the culture of impunity that places a small, interlinked global plutocracy above the law. By breaking police lines, the Attica brother and American Indian Movement activist scouted a route of liberation for those of us seeking to get out from under the weight of complicity in international crime committed in our name. We are all deeply implicated in the state terror permeating the 9/11 wars because it is our tax dollars that fund these imperial assaults. (Read article at link above.)
The Trial of "Splitting the Sky"
by Prof. Anthony J. Hall
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16377
Who and What is on Trial?
When Splitting the Sky broke through police lines in his attempt to conduct a citizen’s arrest of former US president George W. Bush, the Mohawk freedom fighter pierced a thick wall of tyranny. He broke through a tight phalanx of state protection for the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace.
With his courageous act, Splitting the Sky announced the unwillingness of millions of global citizens to tolerate any longer the culture of impunity that places a small, interlinked global plutocracy above the law. By breaking police lines, the Attica brother and American Indian Movement activist scouted a route of liberation for those of us seeking to get out from under the weight of complicity in international crime committed in our name. We are all deeply implicated in the state terror permeating the 9/11 wars because it is our tax dollars that fund these imperial assaults. (Read article at link above.)
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