Dine' Blockade Update NO Arrests Made Yet, still need people support!!!
Ya'at'eeh,
Coming from the front-lines: Yesterday evening, my father and I arrived to the blockade about 4:30 p.m. 12/21/06, to find 15-17 SUV police vehicles from Farmington police, county police and Navajo Nation police, 2 ambulances and one paddy wagon van as seen in the photos below. The police towed 2 concrete blocks to blockade the road to Alice Gilmore's homelands. The police took all the belongings of the blockade and dumped the equipment just on the other side of the road. Despite harassment and intimidation from the deputy sheriff and heavy police force, resisters did not give up and were re-building the resistance camp.
The Dooda Desert Rock Resistance Camp is in urgent need of people support! A major human rights violation has occurred on these families and elders, who are denied to enter there own ancestral homelands! The Navajo Nation, Dine Power Authority, and Sithe Global are terrorizing and bullying our grandmas and relatives, who are only trying to protect their homelands and their way of life!
I feel disheartened to know our own Navajo Nation has been telling concerned callers that they are "assisting elders with fire wood", this is untrue. Grandmas and relatives were harrassed yesterday and police were ready and geared up to make arrest. The majority of resisters are women and a few yound men. I am urging and calling out to all our men folks to help out at this time! Where the warriors at?! We have a situation here that could use your voice, support and strength.
According to the resisters, the Deputy Sheriff told Navajo permit-holder Alice Gilmore that this is not her land, and this land belongs to BHP. What gives them the audacity to tell a grandmother this, where her cultural and spiritual ties, clanship and roots are embedded in this land and her parents and grandparents have occupied these lands for countless generations that predate current arbitrary jurisdiction lines.
I give thanks to the resisters, for being strong and holding down the principles that we live by as Dine people, these relatives are standing up us and for their right to live as indigenous peoples and for the caretaking and protection of mother earth.
Ahee'hee,
wahleah
wahleah
photos by Wahleah Johns
Update of the Navajo Nation Desert Rock Blockade ( 9:30 p.m. MST , 12/21/06 )
Update posted by Tom Goldtooth, Director, Indigenous Environmental Network
All your calls to the Navajo Nation today have been working! As of this late evening, we heard from the people at the Blockade that the Navajo police have NOT made any arrests (yet).
All the supporters must understand that from late morning to early afternoon today, the elders and resisters at the Blockade, for all intensions and purposes, actually were thinking they were going to be arrested. Reports came in from the Blockade that there were up to 21 numerous types of police, ambulance and tribal ranger vehicles ascending on the site. According to Dailan Jake Long, the media contact at the Blockade, some of the tribal police came all the way from Tuba City , Arizona , in addition to local Shiprock , New Mexico police vehicles.
Dine’ CARE was trying to maintain constant contact with the Blockade resisters during this very tense and critical time today. During a time period, all cell phone contact was cut-off. In the best interest of the elder grandmothers, a decision was made to post a message that Dine’ grandmas were being arrested and for supporters to immediately call the Navajo Nation President’s office. The posting stated that if elders and supporters have been arrested, to ask the police to release them. At the time, the situation called for immediate action, and from sporadic reports from the Blockade, it appeared arrests were being made. That’s when an action was posted through electronic mail and other means.
After some time, cell phone connection was reestablished between Lori Goodman of Dine’ CARE and the Dooda resisters. According to Dine’ CARE, who talked with people at the Blockade, the elders were given five minutes to make a decision to leave or get arrested. The report was that many of the elders and resisters were being intimidated by the large police force. According to Dailan Jake Long, some of the grandmothers got scared.
The elders and resisters were doing a prayer ceremony when police finally drove up and disrupted the ceremony. According to Dailan Jake Long, the police dismantled the camp, tossing tents and everything into a huge truck and moved it across the road away from the blockade area. No one had any access to any of the supplies, nor the food. The elders and resisters were refused access to the portable toilets.
The police have posted police at the blockade entrance and two at the proposed drilling sites. The police now have 4 cops there, guarding east and west entrances.
Communication is very much needed. The area is remote, with no electricity nor running water. The Dooda resisters are doing the best they can to maintain communication with the outside world. Native support groups like Dine’ CARE, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous Media, and others are trying as best as we can to provide support and information.
It has come to the attention of the Dooda resisters, Dine’ CARE, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Indigenous Environmental Network and our support groups that the director of the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety has issued a statement today to correct misinformation being disseminated online that arrests of Navajo grandmothers are occurring at the Desert Rock Energy Project site. Like we explained above, we understand that after everything that took place earlier today, no arrests were made. However, it is our opinion that if people from throughout the country had not made calls to the Navajo Nation today, arrests could have taken place. Again, according to the reports directly from the people at the Blockade, the police were ready and equipped to make arrests. They had paddy wagons, which are vehicles to haul people to jail.
The director of the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety further says that “the officers there are doing a good job and are providing the direct service that the elderly need out there. They've been helping with moving firewood provided by the Navajo Nation, and are employing 120 percent diplomacy in dealing with the situation."
The Dooda resisters and elders did NOT experience the police as providing help nor exercising diplomacy.
He said “online reports that there are 21 officers on the site are inaccurate. He said there are two Navajo Nation officers, one lieutenant and two Navajo rangers assisting the people.�
Again, this is not what the Dooda resisters have experienced. The resisters are the ones that witnessed the numerous police vehicles. They counted up to 21 vehicles today.
It is reported tonight the police had tossed their food and belongings all alongside the road and the Dooda members were just putting their new Camp back together. Students from Fort Lewis College have arrived to help out and will doing video taping. More people are to be coming from Save the Peaks from Flagstaff tonight and a man from Taos brought firewood.
Below is a Press Statement released by the Dooda/Dine’ CARE Desert Rock Committee:
For immediate release
Contacts:Dailan Jake Long505-801-0713
Elouise Brown505- 505-947-6159
Lori Goodman 970-259-0199
Navajo Grandmothers Intimidated While Lawfully Gathered
Navajo Grandmothers Intimidated While Lawfully Gathered
Burnham , NM and the Navajo Nation, December 21, 2006 - Paddy wagons, police and other enforcers came and attempted to haul away members of the Navajo Nation -mostly grandmothers - during a prayer ceremony this morning. The women, members of the Dooda (Navajo for "NO!") Desert Rock Committee, have been keeping a vigil at the site of a proposed coal fired power generation station that they oppose for reasons of their families' health and well being. These women were brutally forced out, their food taken away, their camp dismantled this afternoon in clear violation of their constitutional rights and in absence of any form of restraining order or other legal mandate. Although they showed legal documents that protected them, Officer Demsey claimed they were meaningless. They have committed no crimes, were not interfering with any work going on at the location, and were acting within their rights to gather peacefully in the hopes of persuading our Navajo Nation government not to make this kind of mistake again.
Their vigil has been going on since December 12th, near the site where Sithe Global Power, a Texas-based energy company, proposes to build the Desert Rock Power Plant. This plant will further damage the air, water and land in the four corners area of the American Southwest, in the heart of the traditional Navajo homeland. Two other plants in the immediate vicinity are among the worst sources of pollution in the United States . Mercury, sulphur dioxide, and dozens of other toxic chemicals are spewed from these plants each day. Incidents of cancer, respiratory disease, reproductive disorders and other illnesses occur here at much higher than average rates. The plants foul the water in a part of the world where water is already scarce.
Sithe, in collusion with our Navajo Nation executive office, have strong-armed, threatened, lied to and otherwise coerced our local population to accept this proposed power plant throughout the past two years. Families have had their land taken from them with insufficient compensation to move anywhere else. We've been told, as we've been told many times in the past, that this polluting monster will bring "hundreds of jobs" to the Navajo Nation, and lots of economic benefits. Time after time, we've heard this same lie for too many projects just like this one. After over a hundred years of such development the Navajo people are among the poorest people in the entire United States .
Nobody is calculating the costs - to our land, to our air, to our water, to our children. Members of the Dooda Desert Rock Committee, members of Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment, and other organizations, have tried to offer alternative solutions. There are cleaner, more sustainable ways to bring prosperity to our people, without sacrificing the lives and well-being of our people. No one has listened.
This is not just a local problem. This is big energy companies forcing themselves on the American people. This is a violation of civil rights and an illegal suppression of dissent here at home in the United States . This facility will further pollute the air and water throughout the area. And those who are speaking out in opposition, innocent grandmothers who only care about their families, are being silenced with violence. We ask that all who share our concern about our future, and are tired of being forced to pay the consequences of these corporations and government bodies, who care nothing for the lives of people, please lend us your support.
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