Another response to Hopis vs. Big Mountain Trespassers:

A correspondent forwarded this message from "Nativebadass" to me:

I forwarded the message to Native News Online with the message title "Traditional Lakota denounces Navajo Sun Dances on Hopi." It was posted there. It was also posted at IMDiversity.com with a different title. (I've linked to IMDiversity's version of it.)

Then Klee Benally, a member of the rock group Blackfire, wrote this response:

Rob's reply
Naturally, I wrote a response to the Dine'h Response to Traditional Lakota denounces Navajo Sun Dances on Hopi, as follows:

I can tell Klee is responding to a message I forwarded, since I gave it the title. If an e-mail address (Nativebadass's) wasn't on the version Klee saw, it was because it was lost after multiple forwardings. It wasn't because some government agent was impersonating a traditional Lakota.

Klee hints at foul play but can't prove his charge and doesn't try. In fact, in the version I sent, the writer identified himself as Sal White Horse, a registered member of the Lakota, in the first sentence. If Klee didn't understand that Nativebadass is Sal White Horse, he should've asked.

So much for the implied conspiracy.

>> You do not sound like a spiritual person to me. <<

Another attempt to discredit Nativebadass. Another attempt to dodge the real issues.

White Horse doesn't have to be spiritual to ask that outsiders not misuse or bastardize the Lakota Sun Dance. It's a moral and ethical issue as much as a spiritual one. Agnostics and even atheists can operate from a profoundly moral standpoint. They don't need to be spiritual to do it.

>> I am not a sundancer nor have I ever supported the sundance on big mountain for many of the reasons you have expressed, but I have never expressed my concerns as resentfully as you. <<

Klee isn't a Sun Dance supporter? You could've fooled me. All his words support the Navajo Sun Dancers; none of his words oppose them.

>> The Lakota leaders offered the sundance ceremony to the Dine' and Hopi people in order to heal the wounds that were made between them by the U.S. government law. <<

"Healing the wounds" suggests the Navajo resisters have accepted the 50-50 land partition and are trying to live with it. They haven't and aren't. "Fanning the flames" is closer to the truth than "healing the wounds." Is that an appropriate use for a sacred spiritual ceremony?

I thought many Navajo ceremonies involved healing. Why would the resisters adopt a foreign Plains ceremony when a perfectly good Navajo ceremony would do the trick? Oh, wait...I know. A Navajo healing ceremony is typically small and private, whereas a Plains Sun Dance is big and public. It has a much greater PR value.

No one can own the earth?
>> First, I would expect you, claiming to be a traditional person, would know that no one can own the earth, not Hopi, not Dine', not Lakota. <<

Can't they? See Hopis vs. Big Mountain Trespassers for more on the subject.

>> maybe then you would find out a few of the disturbing things about the AA; you're a tenant with a 75 year lease on what was once to you your homeland, you have to get permits to have ceremonies, if you have 3 "strikes" against you, you will be evicted, no true redress… the list goes on. <<

First, the land was never legally a Navajo homeland. It was a Hopi homeland that the Navajo occupied without legal title.

Second, what's so terrible about a lifetime lease on another nation's sovereign territory? No other nation has had to give up so much control over its sovereign territory.

Give us an example of any agreement that's more fair to people occupying foreign territory. No, really. Name another sovereign nation that's given lifetime leases to people who refused to obey its law.

>> "the Navajo that are still at Big Mountain must ask for and receive permission for any ceremonies, this is true for ALL tribes that want to hold ceremonies on land that is not part of there reservation."

And you think this is right? <<

Isn't it? Could the Hopi build a kiva in the middle of Window Rock and conduct a day-long ceremony there? Could they freely interfere with Navajo government and commercial business in the town? Would the Navajo mind footing the bill for the police and traffic and sanitation workers needed to take care of hundreds of visitors?

>> Reservation are U.S. imposed boundaries that sometimes don't include our traditional homelands <<

Yes. The original 1882 Hopi Reservation and subsequent boundary changes made the Hopi territory smaller and smaller. Thus it didn't include all the traditional Hopi homelands. The 1974 agreement partly corrected this injustice by giving the Hopi sovereign control over some of their traditional homelands, including Big Mountain.

>> How many Hopi people do you know? Of all the ones I have talked to even excluding my friends, none of them supported this desecration. <<

The Hopi newspaper quoted several Hopi as supporting the police action—not the "desecration." The Sun Dancers had signed an agreement to get a permit for any future Sun Dances. They violated their own pledge. The Hopi were addressing that legal violation, not the spiritual content of the Sun Dance.

Incidentally, I'm still waiting to see evidence that Klee doesn't support the Sun Dancers. It sure isn't obvious from these statements.

Illegal gathering does no harm?
>> Do you deny the people the right to heal in whichever way they choose, so long as it doesn't harm another being? <<

The Sun Dancers are harming the environment by building structures without the permission of the Hopi, the stewards of the land in question. If we consider Nature a being, it is arguably being harmed.

>> How is the Sundance in Big Mountain harming the Lakota people? <<

How does a Sun Dance held by a white "plastic shaman" harm the Lakota people? Should the Lakota accept any and all outsiders who appropriate their ceremonies without permission for a nontraditional use?

See Article on the "Lakota Declaration of War" for the answer.

>> Now we ask: which side in this so called "dispute" hasn't been peaceful? <<

Considering how often the Navajo have encroached on Hopi land, harmed Hopi livestock, and overgrazed Hopi vegetation, I'd say it's the Navajo.

>> I don't agree with the sundance being on Big Mountain, I will not condemn anyone for desiring to heal. <<

Will Klee condemn anyone who breaks a signed promise? However Klee wants to spin his position, not condemning illegal activity is tantamount to supporting it.

>> They charged her with trespassing, even though she and others remember the stories of her grandmother and great grandmother and so forth and how they were all raised up there on Big Mountain. <<

Four generations. Meanwhile, the Hopi remember stories of how their ancestors migrated through these lands, marking and claiming them for all time. That was 50, 100, or more generations ago, not four.

White Horse says, "I have personally asked Lakota Sundance Chiefs, they ALL they never gave permission or never will give permission for a Sundance to be held off a Lakota Reservation...." Klee's discursive response doesn't address White Horse's point. Who are the Lakota elders who gave the Navajo permission to conduct Sun Dances almost 30 years ago? Even if this permission existed, who says the elders gave the Navajo permission to conduct Sun Dances indefinitely? Who says they're still giving permission?

>> the HTC is also planning on building coal fired power plants on Black Mesa. <<

The Hopi people shot down the most recent attempt to build a coal-fired plant, the Reliant deal. Which shows the Hopi Tribal Council does respond to its constituents' wishes. If the Hopi people wish to build power plants on Black Mesa, it's their sovereign right. If they don't, the HTC will bow to their wishes just as it did in the Reliant case.

Opinion on council isn't opinion on sovereignty
>> you can always go to any of the villages and ask them what they really think about their tribal council, I'm sure it's the same in your nation as in ours, most of the councils were set up by the U.S. to access natural resources and they still act that way. <<

Why the councils were set up is ancient history. That they still "act that way" is an unfounded opinion.

Tribal councils are chartered to provide jobs and benefits for their people, which requires economic development. Neither the Hopi nor the Navajo have opposed mineral extraction as long as it's done in an environmentally and economically sound way.

How the Hopi villages think about the Tribal Council is a separate issue from how they think about their sovereign land. Let's ask the villages whom they prefer to have sovereign control over Big Mountain: the Hopi Tribe or the Navajo Nation. Let's ask them which tribe degraded the Hopi/Navajo Joint Use Area, turning a shared resource into a veritable wasteland. (For those who don't know the answer, a hint: It was the Navajo.)

The only argument of Klee's against the Hopis' legal and moral title to Big Mountain is:

A few responses to that:

1) Not all Indians are traditional. They don't have to be to remain full-fledged Indians. Traditional Indians don't determine the law or tell nontraditional Indians who owns their ancestral lands. Nontraditional Indians have as much right to their lands as traditional Indians do.

Actually, most Indians are a mix of traditional and progressive traits. Few are purely traditional or progressive. Those who live in pueblos or hogans or tipis without electricity or plumbing or motor vehicles are relatively rare.

2) It's a flat-out myth that "traditional" Indians never recognized land rights. Many Indian cultures claimed exclusive hunting rights to an area and fought outsiders who intruded on their claims. A few cultures practiced land ownership as we know it today, with specific title to specific pieces of land.

3) Under the present American system, someone must own and govern each piece of land. The courts have determined that Big Mountain's owner is the Hopi Tribe. Klee doesn't suggest a reason why anyone else should own and govern this land instead.

Would Klee suggest dissolving the Navajos' right to the Navajo Nation and opening it up to Anglos, Hopis, and other Indians? Why not, if no one can own Window Rock or Shiprock or the sacred mountains on Navajo territory? Unless he does suggest opening Navajo-owned land to everyone, his position is hypocritical.

As for the Accommodation Agreement, let's note that the duly-elected Navajo government negotiated the AA, an impartial court approved it, and the vast majority of Navajo on Hopi Partitioned Land signed it. That's about as fair as it gets when people are battling over an intensely emotional issue.

The bottom line is the ownership of the land. Every other issue—whether the Hopi should've bulldozed Camp Anna Mae, whether the Accommodation Agreement is fair—is a detail compared to that. The Hopi claimed the Big Mountain area long before the Navajo arrived. That gives them legal and moral title to the land.

Rob Schmidt
Publisher
PEACE PARTY
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/bigmtn.htm

Another response to Benally's posting

A Native responds to Rob (11/20/02)
>> The destiny of the Indian world is not our's to question. <<

Who do you mean by "ours"? I'm not raising questions independent of anyone in the "Indian world." I'm supporting the Hopi Tribe in its longstanding desire to retain sovereignty over its ancestral land. The Hopi are questioning the Navajos trespassing on their sovereign land. I'm merely echoing their questions.

>> The heart of Mother Earth is not for sell, nor has it ever been. As for the so-called American system, of course there are laws and such, however, those laws have no strength over the power's of the ceremonial and medicine world of the Indian. <<

Regardless of whether they practice their traditional religions or not, Indian nations have sovereign control over many areas in the United States. Big Mountain is one of them. So the question is who has control there: the Hopi, the Navajo, both, or neither.

You and I and the Hopi and Navajo are all US citizens. If you admit our system is based on laws, take the next step. Whose laws should prevail at Big Mountain? The Hopi have asserted and US courts have affirmed that Hopi laws should.

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