Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Kee Shay, a Dine resister, and Marsha Monestersky, an activist who has been supporting and helping the resisters for the past several years, have been served exclusion orders by the Hopi Tribe. Pursuant to these orders, the Hopi Tribe hopes to exclude Kee Shay and Marsha from the Hopi Reservation, which tribe contends includes the Hopi Partitioned Lands. Hearings on the exclusion orders are set in January for Marsha, and February for Kee Shay. If the Hopi Tribe prevails in these hearings, and excludes Marsha and Kee Shay this will serve as a precedent for the Hopi Tribe to serve other resisters with exclusion orders. As it stands now, it remains unclear what the Justice Department will do next February 1, 2000 with regard to the resisters. With this uncertainty the Hopi Tribe is looking for ways it can evict the resisters if the Justice Department does not take action. Therefore, these two exclusion hearings, the first of their kind, are critically important to the resisters. I am an attorney who has been representing Marsha and Kee Shay in this process. I know of at least one other lawyer who is interested in joining our effort, and there may be others. However, in order to launch an effective and winning defense we need financial support. Right now we have none. We are desperately in need of funds to support the Marsha and Kee Shay's defense and stop the Hopi Tribe from launching its own forced relocation of the Dine people.

In northern Arizona today there are several hundred traditional Navajo families (Dine, in their own language) who are facing forced relocation from their traditional homelands. This is largest forced relocation since the relocation of the Japanese in World War II. The purpose of the relocation: to help the coal companies, such as Peabody coal, get to the coal deposits underneath the land where these people now live. On February 1, 2000 the U.S. government can begin forced relocation by going to court and evicting these people.

This relocation process has been going on since 1974. Thousands have already been relocated. As a result health problems have increased, suicide levels increased, serious depression and other forms of mental illness increased. Many of the relocatees rather than be helped, as promised by the U.S. government, have lost their homes, and now live in destitute conditions.

The people who remain on the land, who have until February 1st 2000, are some of the most traditional of the Dine. Many are grandmothers (The Dine is a matriarchal society) who tend their sheep, and live in their traditional way. Part of that way is their spiritual connection and duty to the land on which they live. To remove them from their land, as one Grandmother has said, is to disappear us.

Many people have come to the aid the resisting Dineh, but more help is desperately needed for legal assistance. Any contributions should be sent to our fiscal agent Steve Sugarman, Executive Director, Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), 20110 Rockport Way, Malibu, CA 90265-5340, phone: (310) 456-3534. Please earmark donations to Dineh legal defense.