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Dineh (Navajo) elders and youth, traveling from Big Mountain, and throughout the Black Mesa region of the Navajo Nation will hold a Prayer vigil and demonstration beginning 8:30 am, Wednesday, August 14, in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit, 121 Spear St., San Francisco. At 12:00 noon, a press conference and demonstration will be held at 450 Golden Gate.

Elders and youth are traveling a distance of two thousand miles, to tell Ninth circuit Court that they reject the proposed Accommodation Agreement, 75-year lease being imposed upon them by the Hopi and the U.S. government.

The resisters have been denied legal representation throughout the negotiations. Attorney Lee Phillips, who is paid by the Navajo Nation to "represent " the families, states that he only represents the people that want to sign the Agreement, which has been rejected by ratios of 250:1. He has also refused to provide any information regarding the final Mediation hearing in San Francisco to the people whose lives depend on its results.

Roberta Blackgoat, Chairperson for Sovereign Dineh Nation says, "The Hopi and Dineh people do not have a quarrel, but 22 years ago, a group of mining and power companies deceived the U.S. government into thinking there was a 'range war' between us and that the solution was to evict everyone who lived in the areas which they wished to mine. So Congress intervened." Since 1974, hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent on Relocation of over 10,000 traditional Dine' from their ancestral homeland, while those who resist have been denied access to safe drinking water, home improvement and construction, even in cases of demonstrated medical need.

Recently Dineh resisters won a major victory, delaying a vote on S.1973 "The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act of 1996" one day before Congress went on recess. This bill if passed would have caused the 104th Session of Congress to be remembered as the second Session of Congress to commit a travesty of justice against the Dine' people. What the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs has called a fair hearing for them is a hearing at a location several of thousands of miles from where they live, for which they were given less than five days notice.

Behind closed doors huddle a group of people interested only in money. Outside these doors stand the families whose ancestral homes will become the property of a hostile government, who will have their means of survival taken away by grazing restrictions that deny then the minimum needed to support themselves in the traditional way that their families have lived for hundreds of years, and who will subject the rule of a foreign government which has been promised $50.2 million dollars by the US government under the Senate bill #1973, if it can force the people into leaving or signing an Agreement which they do not want.

Now is the time for the people to be heard. And now is the time for Human, Civil, Religious and Constitutional rights violations perpetrated against the Dineh to stop. Please attend this prayer vigil and press conference

PRAYER CEREMONY, 121 Spear Street, 8:30 A.M. TO 9:30 A.M.

PRESS CONFERENCE, 450 Golden Gate Ave, U.S. Federal Bldg, 12:00 NOON