Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Big Mountain, AZ - The US Bureau of Indian affairs (BIA) launched a massive campaign of livestock confiscation targeting the elderly Dineh families who reside on the Hopi Partitioned Lands created by the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Settlement Act. This area, larger than the state of Rhode Island, is the poorest region of the US, with an annual per capita income lower than many third world countries. The elderly people rely upon their livestock for their survival, living a traditional subsistence lifestyle on lands their families have inhabited for hundreds of years.

The BIA ended a self-imposed two-year moratorium on livestock confiscation in January by mailing notices to all owners of livestock without valid permits, with impoundments scheduled to begin on February 15, 1999. People who have not signed the leases with the Hopi Tribe are not eligible for permits. People who signed leases received allocations far below the number needed for survival. The BIA claims that their sole purpose is to protect deteriorating range conditions. The people claim that the source of the problem is BIA range management policies that outlawed their traditional practice of using separate summer/winter camps that had enabled them to sustain herd sizes 4-10 times larger prior to BIA intervention. Furthermore, when government policies disturb a traditional culture that has been self-sustaining for hundreds of years, genocide should not be considered as an acceptable mechanism to correct the problems resulting from those policies.

While the BIA claims that the range management is an independent issue, the targets of the impoundment campaign are the same people threatened by other policies resulting from the 1974 Relocation Act. Over 12,000 people have already been forcibly relocated from the region, and many government policies have been designed with the purpose of making life impossible for those remaining on their land. The people have been subject to a freeze on housing improvements for 30 years that has made it illegal even to fix a broken window. The government routinely confiscates their firewood in winter, and the people have been stripped of their civil rights.

The people threatened by the planned BIA livestock confiscation are all elderly people who have no means of survival other than their traditional herding. Zonnie Whitehair, the owner of the largest herd in the area, is faced with the confiscation of her entire herd of 200 sheep. Her husband, Oscar, died in December, and if her herd is taken, she has said that she will soon follow. Roberta Blackgoat, like many other grandmothers, faces the possible confiscation of her entire herd. In addition to losing their primary food source, the grandmothers lose their source of wool to weave rugs that provide their only source of funds for other provisions. As she has stated in reference to the BIA policy, "This is not range management - it is murder".

For further information please contact:
Sovereign Dineh Nation
Phone: (520) 673-3461 or (508) 540-8980