Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Big Mountain, AZ - On March 5, 1999, in defiance of requests from religious and human rights organizations, the United States Government launched a massive campaign of livestock confiscation intended to exterminate a group of elderly people who for 25 years have been defying attempts to remove them from their ancestral lands. The targets are Dineh (Navajo) families who were turned into trespassers on their own land by a 1974 law passed by Congress at the urging of the coal-fired power industry. Over 12,000 people have been forcibly relocated since that time, but over 2,000 may still remain in the area. Many of the targets are elderly people who survive by herding sheep as their families have done for hundreds of years. Their livestock is the centerpiece of their daily lives in which their culture and religion are intertwoven with their land and animals.

The herds have a different significance to the US government. It is the key to the people being able to maintain a fiercely independent lifestyle living in remote areas without electricity, running water, telephones, or assistance from the government. Under terms of a 1996 law intended to complete the evictions ordered in 1974, the US government is trying to remove these people within the next 12 months. The government hopes that destroying their herds will turn them into helpless dependents upon the government who will be unable to resist this effort.

The government program is being executed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The program will remove all animals for which valid permits are not obtained. People who either have refused or were ineligible to sign leases under terms of the 1996 law with the government are not allowed permits for their livestock. People who signed leases are eligible for permits and are not threatened with eviction, but even they have found that many of their livestock will be taken, as the number of permits issued is less than needed to cover their livestock. The BIA began sending notices in January notifying families of its intention to begin removing non-permitted animals, and the confiscations are now underway.

Two of the victims on Tuesday, February 23, were Anna and Ella Begay, two sisters who live alone in a dilapidated 10 foot by 12 foot shelter in the wilderness on Coal Mine Mesa. While the traditional Dineh do not keep track of their age in years, the women are both probably over the age of 90. Ella is deaf and partially disabled. Living without electricity or running water, they are barely able to survive by herding a few sheep and coaxing a few crops from the arid soil. Their only transportation is their two horses. They also had three donkeys, which haul water and firewood for them and also help plow their small field. Friends gave them a ride Tuesday morning so that they could attend a community meeting for news about the impoundments. While they were away, an army of 14 armed police officers and BIA officials arrived over the rugged trails in five police vehicles and two impoundment trucks. Not finding anyone home to resist, the officials confiscated the sisters horses and donkeys from their corral. The BIA estimates that each visit of their impoundment squadron costs the government over $800. This amount of funding would purchase more food than the sisters see in a year. Without their livestock, the chances that the elderly sisters will survive another year are diminished.

The same scenario was repeated at several other homes during the week, and over the next few months it will be repeated hundreds of times as the federal and tribal authorities remove all un-permitted animals from the region. Most of the people targeted for these attacks are over the age of 65, and many are over 90. They live in terror - not knowing when they wake up each morning if this will be the day when the authorities target their home. The confrontations have a high potential for violence. Rena Babbitt Lane, whose lost livestock in a confiscation on Monday, February 22, had her wrist broken when she tried to stop a previous impoundment. Other people have experienced beatings or been arrested when they tried to resist confiscations in the past.

The BIA publicly claims that the program is motivated only by a need to protect the range land for the benefit of the community. But as demonstrated in community meetings February 20-23 attended by most of the affected families, the policy is strongly opposed by the people whose interest the government claims to be protecting. Within the local community, the claim that the invasion is connected to ecology is not believed.

For more information contact, Carol Halberstadt
Phone: (617) 796-0396 or (617) 332-0290

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