Update on Navajos sheep impoundments

UPDATES CONCERNING IMPOUNDMENTS & ARRESTS OF THE SOVEREIGN DINEH NATION ON THE “HPL”

October 28, 2014 by BMIS   
By Black Mesa Indigenous Support

Hopi Rangers arrested two individuals and impounded 120 sheep this morning at the homesite of Tom and Etta Begay in Red Willow Springs.  Heavily armed rangers guarded and blocked nearby dirt road entrances as well.

“The Hopi Rangers came for our homestead early this morning. They tried to arrest my Aunt Etta who is almost 70 years old and my dad Bahe. They had barricades set up at the top of the hill with two police units, when we tried to get around the barricade they chased us for two miles, trying to hit us with their trucks, and they drew their guns at us.  When we got to the house they brought four more units and tried to block us in by the north hogan. They grabbed us out of our vehicles.  A male officer was grabbing me around my waist. I told them they were violating our rights and violating our elders. They were trying to arrest Etta who didn’t even know what they were saying [she doesn’t speak English]. She wasn’t doing anything. They arrested my younger brother Lance and me. Because we were a threat to them for voicing our rights and defending our family. It took three officers to detain me and another three to detain my brother.   We didn’t  go down without a fight. We were let go after six hours of detainment. I told them they are threatening our family who is all alone and elderly and they come out with guns and threaten and scare them. Who would have defended our family if we didn’t come?  We didn’t come with guns and knives; we are not violent, we just came to protect our family.  Who knows what they would have done if we weren’t there. We said, we are not scared.  We are protecting our elders, if you are going to take us to jail for that, do it. They took 120 sheep from our homestead.”–Milayia Yoe, arrestee.

The U.S government has always used “scorched earth policies” against Indigenous people–attempts to cut them off from their food supplies, decimate economies, or destroy infrastructure–as a precursor to forced relocations including the Long Walk of the Dineh. Livestock impoundments come under this category. There is increased surveillance on the families and livestock of the so-called “HPL” including the use of drones.

“We are in a battleground, the endless battleground of the Partitioned Lands. This is the front of the line and when it comes your family there is no yes or no, you have to stand up for your family and your relatives. This is what I was taught. The past was never really forgotten of the way the U.S. Government treated my people. It is still going on, it is still alive. We will fight- not with violence or armor, but with the old ways.  This is a stand for people to know who we are and how we live as Dineh.”–Gerald Blackrock  10/23/14

“The U.S. government is using the Hopi Tribe. We are Native People, we don’t work like this.”–Beulah Blackrock 10/ 28/14

Caroline Tohannie, the elder who had her herd impounded last week, has a court date coming up where she will be facing trespassing charges for being at her homestead.

These impoundments are stressful for the entire community, particularly the elderly:

“Our life is connected to the life of the sheep.  We are alive and strong because of them, and being close to them, being with them everyday, keeps us strong. Especially now in our old age the sheep are important to us. If we are too far from our sheep, we can become frail. “ Clarence and Mary Lou Blackrock, Cactus Valley Elders10/25/14

“I disapprove of the impoundments. They really affect the elderly. Ever since I was a baby I was carried on a horse to herd sheep. I have herded all my life and I am in my eighties.  You have the livestock in your heart, and they want to take that away.”–Jack Woody, Black Mesa Elder 10/25/14

“They way that the rangers are treating the people goes against the Dineh way; it is very taboo to point a gun at somebody. They are traumatizing an already traumatized community. If overgrazing was actually the issue they could just educate people. But it’s not. This is uncalled for.”–Marie Gladue Big Mountain Resident 10/28/14

Calls to Action:

*Lawyers needed! If you are a lawyer or have connections to lawyers, residents are requesting legal assistance.

*Call protests at your local Department of Interior or Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, donate funds here,come to the land as a human rights observer (email blackmesais@gmail.com for more information),

*“Call the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Hopi Rangers, and the Department of Interior. Ask they stop impounding sheep on the HPL. This is current day colonialism, our food sovereignty is being attacked and ask that they stop the unjust impoundments.”–Louise Benally

Call:

• The BIA superintendent Wendel Honanie at (928-738-2228),
• Hopi Chairman Herman G. Honanie,  Email: hehonanie@hopi.nsn.us, Phone: (928) 734-3102
• The Hopi Rangers Clayton Honyumptewa at (928-734-3601),
• The Department of Interior at  (602-379-6600)

***Please forward this request far and wide by re-posting or sending this to ten people***

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Mohawk Nation News 'Long Knives'

LONG KNIVES

Posted on October 28, 2014

Please post and distribute. Nia:wen.

MNN. Oct. 28, 2014. The illegal and immoral purges started before the gunfight on Reichtag Hill in Ottawa. Harper’s role models are Hitler and Stalin. The cabal fantasizes the big lie that they own Onowaregeh, the Indigenous land of Great Turtle Island. Canadian true history is about atrocities against us. War, intimidation and murder promote the big lie. Harper is silencing any critics who don’t fall in line, by ridicule or death, whichever suits him best.

Money and sex are always used to control those in positions of power. CBC mega star, Jian Ghomeshi, the biggest voice in Canada, is going down! Ghomeshi who broke no laws made his sexual proclivities public and is suing for $50 million. The mainstream media cooperates with the “Long Knives” to silence accused critics of the regime.

Like Hitler and Stalin, Harper is removing anyone who stands in the way of his corporate reign of terror. Troubadours, artists, alternative media, politicians, scientists, academics and civil society are being purged. They are threatened to keep their mouths shut or else. Resentment and disgust is building up in some, while the media propaganda machine keeps the rest asleep.

Trudeau, Ambrose, Mulcair & Harper in the Commons echo chamber: “Do as you’re told?”

Canada, a military corporation, run the police state. They guard the stolen treasury of the Queen taken from us. Harper got 30% of the vote. Stalin said, in an election, ”It matters not who wins the vote, only who counts the vote”. Harper, the terrorist, is calling himself the unifier of Canada. Yes, he is unifying the people against him.

Now all the white people are the new Indians, being scrutinized by the Nazi tribunal. Their tactics are same old, same old. Will Harper shoot and kill them with guns and diseases, as was done to us? He will hide in the bathroom and order contract killers like the RCMP and the Canadian military to murder his critics and dissenters.

Soldiers swear allegiance to a foreign Queen in England and her heirs. The men with arms and guns that Canadians are trusting to take care of them don’t owe them or the land they live on any allegiance.

Harper is guarded night and day by the Canadian military. They are unaware that his true role as PMO is to tighten the screws on the 100-year plan to be rid of the “Indian problem” written by Duncan Campbell Scott in 1924.

Harper is like the fool described by the Beatles: : “Nobody wants to know him. They can see he’s just a fool. And he never gives an answer.” Beatles. Fool on the Hill.

MNN Mohawk Nation Newskahentinetha2@yahoo.com For more news, books, workshops, to donate and sign up for MNN newsletters, go towww.mohawknationnews.com  More stories at MNN Archives.  Address:  Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L thahoketoteh@hotmail.comfor original Mohawk music visit thahoketoteh.ws

See Notice: Fake ottawa gunfight was army drill.

Read: Toronto Star: Gunfight on the Hill.

New at Censored News!

Hi friends,
Please go to Censored News to read the latest on the resistance at Big Mountain to the sheep impoundments.
Please see Censored News original, three day series from the Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Wisconsin last week.
Thank you, Brenda brendanorrell@gmail.com
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Indigenous Congress, Zapatistas, Declaration for missing students and Yaquis

Joint Declaration from the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN on the crime in Ayotzinapa and for the liberation of the Yaqui leaders

Joint Declaration from the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN on the crime in Ayotzinapa and for the liberation of the Yaqui leaders

(Note: this text was read by CNI members in one of the mobilizations held in Mexico on October 22, 2014, and not by EZLN representatives, as some of the paid press reported.)

Mexico, October 22, 2014

To the students of the Normal Rural Isidro Burgos, in Ayotiznapa, Guerrero

To the Yaqui Tribe

To the National and International Sixth

To the peoples of the world

“Because those of us below hurt with rage and rebellion, not with resignation and conformity.”

EZLN, October 19, 2014

From our peoples in struggle, from within our resistance and rebellion, we send our words as a reflection of this part of the country that we have constitute and call the National Indigenous Congress. We are gathered by the pain and the rage that call to us because it is a pain and rage that we share.

The disappearance of the 43 student compañeros of the Normal Rural Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, kidnapped and disappeared by the Bad Governments, imposes upon us a shadow of mourning, angst, and rage. Our hope for the reappearance of the compañeros is also the pain that unites us; our rage illuminates the candles that today light the way of mobilizations all over the country, raising the cry of dignity and rebellion in Mexico below.

We know that as long as this country is governed by criminals, lead by the supreme paramilitary leader Enrique Peña Nieto, those who strengthen their political and social conscience by exercising and defending education will be murdered and disappeared, and those, like the Yaqui Tribe, who defend water for their ancient and heroic people, will be imprisoned.

The Mexican government has tried to minimize the criminal repression of the student compañeros as if they were just a few more victims of delinquent crime, as they have done time and time again across the country. They may be just a few more dead for the media, but those of us who have suffered many kinds of repression know that that the delinquents are in the political parties, all of them, in the house of representatives and the senate, in the municipal presidencies, and in the halls of government.

Ayotizinapa pains us. The 43 students are still missing and the State acts as if it doesn’t know where they are, as if it wasn’t the State itself who took them. They try to disappear our conscience as well, but today the disappeared are present in the thoughts of this whole country, in the attentive gaze and the heart of those of us who make up the National Indigenous Congress.

In this country there are dangerous mafias, and they are called the Mexican State. We disturb and bother them, we who struggle, we who have no face—who have had it torn away—we who are nobody, we who see and feel the violence, we who suffer multiple and simultaneous attacks, we who know that something terrible, very terrible, is happening in this country: a war against all. It is a war that we below see and suffer in its totality.

We reiterate today that as long as our student compañeros from Ayotzinapa do not appear alive and well, as long as our brothers Mario Luna Romero and Fernando Jiménez from the State of Sonora continue to be held prisoner for defending the sacred waters of the river Yaqui, as long as they remain kidnapped by the bad governments, we will continue responding accordingly.

As in Guerrero, the repression against the people, the extraction of natural resources, and the destruction of the territories in the entire country are operated by the Narco State, without scruples. It uses terror in order to manufacture pain and fear; this is how it governs.

Against the war of extermination, this pain and rage has been transformed into dignity and rebellion. The only other choice would be to simply await death, dispossession, and more pain and rage.

We demand the return of the 43 disappeared students and the dismantling of the entire State structure that sustains organized crime!

We demand the immediate liberation of the compañeros Mario Luna and Fernando Jiménez!

Their pain is ours; their rage is ours!

October 22, 2014

Never Again a Mexico without Us

National Indigenous Congress

General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation

[i] The Escuelas Normales in Mexico are teaching colleges that principally train rural and indigenous young people to be teachers in their own communities.

Beatings and Shame: Terror in Indian Boarding Schools Described at Tribunal

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin -- The testimony of Native Americans who were beaten in boarding schools concluded on Friday, during the three day Boarding School Tribunal here. Native Americans described being kidnapped from their families and not seeing them for years, while they endured severe beatings and starvation in boarding schools operated by the governments of the United States and Canada and religious organizations.

Imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier’s written statement was read into the record, describing the way he was kidnapped and beaten in boarding school.

Madonna Thunder Hawk shared the story of a Lakota elder from Cheyenne River in South Dakota. At four years old, he was thrown against the wall repeatedly until his bones were broken for wetting the bed in boarding school. Now, he is over 70 years old and his back is still scarred from the beatings there.

Bill Means, Lakota, described how his father’s job was to care for the horses in boarding schools. One of his friends was beaten to death by the school staff when one of the horses ran into barbed wire as the boys tried to catch him.

Roxanna Banguis, Ed.D., Tlingit, Haida and Sechelt, said her mother told her that there were constant beatings in the boarding school in Sechelt B.C. When the school partially burned down, skeletons of babies were found in the walls.

"The sexual molesters, the predators, found a job where they can abuse children."

"The worst is the baby skeletons they found in those walls. We don't know if those were Native Americans, or from the nuns." She said the nuns were not celibate.

One young man from Michigan described being raped by a priest at the age of five, the blood running down his leg, and the trauma remaining for the rest of his life.

Grand Chief Terrance Nelson of the Southern Chiefs Organization described how shame and beatings were used in the psychology of control at boarding schools.  

Bill Means photo Brenda Norrell

Native children in the US and Canada were beaten and shamed when they spoke their own language, the only language they knew.

Dennis Banks, Anishinaabe, discussed the revitalization of the American Indian Movement. Banks announced a walk across America for Freedom for Leonard Peltier, beginning in Alcatraz in February and concluding in Washington DC in July 2015.

Dorothy Ninham, organizer of the Tribunal, urged a class action lawsuit against the US government and churches.

The Boarding Schools Tribunal in Green Bay, Oct. 22 -- 24, was the second annual Tribunal. The first Tribunal last year focused on Leonard Peltier and Indigenous Rights.

Read more of their statements and watch the archived livestream by Earthcycles: www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Hopi Rangers impounding Navajo Sheep, one arrest

Censored News

French translation by Christine Prat

http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=2522

Louise Benally said, Dine' (Navajo) residents face arrest and livestock theft on their ancestral homelands of Big Mountain, Black Mesa, Arizona. These are ELDERS and families that RELY on their livestock for sustenance. It is the US government with their borders and mass forced relocation, amd nearby coal company that is the real burden on communities, the land, water, air and ozone -- not a family's livestock. Call the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Hopi Rangers, and the Department of Interior. Ask they stop impounding sheep on the HPL. This is current day colonialism, our food sovereignty is being attacked."

Residents are requesting human rights observers and sheepherders during this time of escalated harassment. {*HPL refers to the US-backed 'Hopi Partitioned Lands' located at massive seams of coal}. ‪

Black Mesa Indigenous Support 
UPDATE from HPL (Hopi Partition Land) residents:  Shirley Tohannie and elder Caroline Tohannie  had their entire herd of 65 sheep impounded by the Hopi Rangers (US federal government) Tuesday, October 22, 2014.If the fines aren’t paid the sheep will go to auction, and the family is being told that the sheep will not be able to return to the family’s rangeland.  The cost to release the livestock is nearly $1,000.

Jerry Babbit Lane, the Tohannie’s neighbor on the HPL, was arrested by Hopi rangers when he attempted to check on his neighbors and was charged with disorderly conduct. He was released this evening, 10/23. Rangers told Shirley they plan to take Rena’s (Jerry’s mother) sheep too and that they’re going to start impounding across the HPL.

 As we’re writing, another family on Big Mountain has had nearly their entire herd impounded.

Residents are requesting human rights observers and sheepherders during this time of escalated harassment.  If you or anyone you know can come be a human rights observer to support the Dineh resistance on Black Mesa,now is the time. Doing human rights observation work can help stop or slow down the impoundment process. Families who will be potentially impacted by impoundments are requesting solidarity. Email blackmesais@gmail.com if you can come out.

“Call the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Hopi Rangers, and the Department of Interior. Ask they stop impounding sheep on the HPL. This is current day colonialism, our food sovereignty is being attacked. Call the BIA superintendent Wendel Honanie (at 928-738-2228), the Hopi Rangers Clayton Honyumptewa at (928-734-3601), and the Department of Interior at  (202 208-3100) and ask that they stop the unjust impoundments.”--Louise Benally  

Although these orders are coming from current Hopi policy, ultimately the relocation laws and livestock impoundments result from the federal government and Peabody Energy’s divide and conquer strategy used to open up the land for massive coal mining. “In the 1970s, Hopi elders encouraged the Dienh elders to remain on their homelands, saying if they did relocate, the coal mine would expand. The Hopi elders said it wasn’t them who wanted the land.”--NaBahii Keediniihii

A July 2012 report by the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission classifies the relocation as a massive human rights violation and demands the immediate repeal of PL 93-531 and an end to relocation efforts and harassment in the form of surveillance, livestock impoundments, and disruption of gatherings and ceremonies that the resistance community experiences.

The sheep sustain the vitality of the people and the land, and traditional grazing practices need to be supported not severed. Impoundments are nothing less than harassment and human  rights violations.

For background information on the resistance of the HPL communities, click here.

BLACK MESA INDIGENOUS SUPPORT

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Indian boarding schools continued systematic genocide

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin -- The Tribunal on the Devastating Impacts of Boarding Schools began the second day with Jean Whitehorse, Dine' (Navajo) speaking on Native rights and the sterilization of Indian women.

Whitehorse said she went to the hospital in intense pain, and was asked to sign papers.

"Besides taking out my appendix, they sterilized me," said Whitehorse, of the sterilization carried out without her knowledge at Gallup Indian Hospital.

Whitehorse was one of many women in the United States who were the victims of the US government’s program of the sterilization of Native American women.

During the testimony on Thursday, the second day of the Boarding School Tribunal, Grand Chief Terry Nelson of the Southern Chiefs Organization of Canada testified.

Chief Nelson said he understands the psychology of abuse and control that was used on Indian children in boarding schools.

"In order to wipe out people, you have to dehumanize them."

"You have to take their children away from them," said Nelson, who is also vice chairman of the American Indian Movement.

Roxanna Banguis, Ed.D., Tlingit, Haida and Sechelt, said her mother told her that there were a lot of beatings in the boarding school in Sechelt B.C. When the school partially burned down, skeletons of babies were found in the walls.

"The sexual molesters, the predators, found a job where they can abuse children."

"The worst is the baby skeletons they found in those walls. We don't know if those were Native Americans, or from the nuns." She said the nuns were not celibate.

Native Americans described the beatings and sexual abuse from the staff, priests and nuns in Indian boarding schools in the United States and Canada that are operated by religious organizations, the US government and Canadian government. Those schools used shame, sexual abuse and beatings to degrade Native children. The abuse resulted in generations of trauma.

Testimonies of abuse in boarding schools by children kidnapped from their families were also read into the record on Thursday, including the testimony of imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier who was stolen from his family as a child in North Dakota.

The Tribunal continues on Friday and is being livestreamed by Earthcycles.

Read more from the testimony during Day 2 of the Tribunal at Censored News http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/watch-live-day-2-boarding-school.html

Live Coverage Boarding School Tribunal, Oneida land, Wisconsin

Live Coverage begins mid-day on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014

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Stephanie Davis greets Dennis Banks at Boarding School Tribunal 2014

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014
We are here at the Boarding School Tribunal. We will be going live when the Boarding School Tribunal begins mid-day today, Wednesday. Already here this morning in Green Bay at the Oneida Convention Center, and arriving now: Madonna Thunder Hawk, Bill Means, Lakota; Lakota; Dennis Banks, Anishinaabe; and Jean Whitehorse, Dine'. Looking forward to hearing from you. Oct. 22 -- 24 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Earthcycles and Censored News!
Go to Censored News to read the opening words of Dennis Banks, Anishaabe, and Bill Means, Lakota.
brendanorrell@gmail.com http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/10/earthcycles-livestream-boarding-school.html

Watch live streaming video from earthcycles at livestream.com

http://www.livestream.com/earthcycles

Follow live sessions on Wednesday through Friday
Oct. 22 -- 25, 2014
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Earthcycles and Censored News are live in Green Bay!

Heartache and Genocide: Indian Boarding Schools in Photos

Heartache and Genocide: Indian Boarding Schools in Photos

By Censored News

Boarding School Tribunal begins tomorrow, Wed., Oct. 22, 2014 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/09/tribunal-on-indian-boarding-schools.html

Photos below (three) from Kumeyaay website, original from e-book Lakhota.com
http://www.kumeyaay.info/history/History_Indian_Boarding_Schools.pdf

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(Above) More photos on Kumeyaay website, original from e-book Lakhota.com
http://www.kumeyaay.info/history/History_Indian_Boarding_Schools.pdf
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(Below) Navajo and Apache children in prison at Fort Sumner, N.M.

Navajo and Apache Children in Prison of Fort Sumner, Bosque Redondo, NM

Fort Sumner by Louise Benally, Dine'

The following comments by Louise Benally of Big Mountain, comparing the Long Walk and imprisonment in Bosque Redondo to the war in Iraq, and responding to this photo, were censored by Indian Country Today.

 Navajos at Big Mountain resisting forced relocation view the 19th

Century prison camp of Bosque Redondo and the war in Iraq as a
continuum of U.S. government sponsored terror.

Louise Benally of Big Mountain remembered her great-grandfather and
other Navajos driven from their beloved homeland by the U.S. Army on
foot for hundreds of miles while witnessing the murder, rape and
starvation of their family and friends.

“I think these poor children had gone through so much, but, yet they
had the will to go on and live their lives. If it weren’t for that, we
wouldn’t be here today.

“It makes me feel very sad and I apply this to the situation in Iraq.
I wonder how the Native Americans in the combat zone feel about killing
innocent lives.”

Looking at the faces of the Navajo and Apache children in the Bosque
Redondo photo, Benally said, “I think the children in the picture look
concerned and maybe confused. It makes me think of what the children in
Iraq must be going through right now.

“The U.S. military first murders your people and destroys your way of
life while stealing your culture, then forces you to learn their evil
ways of lying and cheating,” Benally said.

http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id78.html

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Carlisle: The Children Who Never Came Home

For the families

Long Walk 2 northern route photos by Brenda Norrell

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2009/09/carlisle-children-who-never-came-home.html

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Forced assimilation and militarization for US government

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Indian children were forced into militarization, and conditioned to fight for the same US government that had murdered their ancestors.

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Haskell: Misery

Above: Haskell in Kansas, photo from: http://www.ancientways.org/otherprojects.asp
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(Above) Photos from online search

Censored News Fundraiser for Boarding School Tribunal Coverage

Hi friends,

Censored News is fundraising for coverage of the Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which begins Wednesday. As of today, Tues., Oct. 21, $490 is still needed to cover airfare and hotel expenses. Airfare is increasing each day.

I plan to provide print coverage, photos and behind-the-scenes interviews at the Tribunal, Oct. 22 --, 24, 2104. Govinda of Earthcycles will provide the livestream.

Censored News also provided live coverage of the first Tribunal, the Peltier Tribunal on Indigenous Rights, at the same location last year.

Please donate at PayPal on Censored News, or contact me at: brendanorrell@gmail.com
Censored News
www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Thank you!
Brenda Norrell, publisher Censored News

Devastating effects of Boarding Schools on Indigenous Peoples, Second Annual Tribunal on Indigenous Rights information: 
http://www.blueskiesfoundation.info/event/2nd-annual-tribunal-on-the-abuse-of-indigenous-human-rights/

Censored News is now in its 9th year, with 3.5 million pageviews, with no advertising or grants. It has been a rough road, but we are still here as a service to Indigenous Peoples and grassroots people working for human rights and protection of the land, air and water.