Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has launched a massive campaign of livestock confiscation targeting the elderly Dineh (Navajo) 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 U.S., with an annual per capita income lower than in many Third World countries. The elderly people rely upon their livestock for 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 Feb. 15, 1999. People who have not signed leases with the Hopi Tribe are not eligible for permits. Many who signed leases received allocations far below the number needed for survival. The BIA claims their sole purpose is to protect deteriorating range conditions. The people claim that the problem is BIA range management policies outlawing their traditional use of separate summer/winter camps, which sustained herds four to ten times larger prior to BIA intervention. This current BIA livestock impoundment continues 25 years of abuse and harassment aimed at expelling the people of Black Mesa from their homeland.

While the BIA claims that 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 expelled from their homes, and many government policies have been designed to drive out those remaining on their land. For 30 years, the people have been subject to a freeze on housing improvements 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 BIA's efforts to deprive the Dineh of the same rights afforded to all Americans. 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 flock 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 would lose their source of wool to weave rugs that provide their only funds for survival. As she has stated in reference to the BIA policy, "This is not range management. It is murder."