What if I told you that there was a place where indigenous people were being exploited? That they were taking away their historical rights? That his religious freedom was completely violated? What if I told you that it has been going on for over 30 years and it was still going on with very little change? Would you believe it if I told you what is happening in the United States? Some of you may not be surprised, but some of you may be surprised to hear that the situation at Black Mesa has come to the attention of the UN religious freedom council, many books, articles and publications have been written about it and yet, if you ask the average person in America if they know, the answer is inevitably NO. I have wondered for the past 10 years, ever since I first heard this story, how can this be? How can such a serious, unfair situation go so unnoticed by the people who live in this country, this country that is based on democratic principles? For me, the situation at Black Mesa has been a microcosm for the world at large. I have often said to myself, if this can happen to the people of our own country, to our own natives whom we should treasure, to the caretakers of our country, to those who came before us, etc., etc., then Someday, these actions will not be limited to them. It is a springboard, a harbinger of what will be.

Black Mesa, also known as Big Mountain, is a beautiful desert land in the far northeast of Arizona. It is also a desolate land that is dotted with few houses and mostly sheep and other animals. It is home to the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe. These two people have been sharing and living peacefully from this piece of land since time immemorial. But the United States government, which is in charge of these towns, drew its own borders in 1974, leaving more than 10,000 Navajo (Dine’, “The People”) and some 100 Hopi families in the wrong side of the line. This land is considered sacred to these peoples. It is the physical representation of Mother Earth. So when it came to light that these boundaries were being drawn to exploit the land for the resources (coal, uranium, and natural gas) in the land below, the irony was too great. The people whose land was taken from them did not even benefit from the resources themselves: they have no electricity, running water or plumbing, not even a telephone. They make their way in this world as they always have, through their ranching and agriculture. Yet this very existence was now threatened to light up places like Las Vegas and Phoenix and irrigate their many desert golf courses. All the Dine’ know is that the wells have dried up, the wildlife has disappeared, and the plants for the sheep to graze are increasingly scarce. Like most of these stories, these sad events and measures were agreed to by corrupt elements of the national government, greedy leaders lining their pockets at the expense of their own people.

The United States government decided to solve this homeless problem by relocating these Dine’ families, now on the Hopi Reservation, to trace homes in suburban Phoenix. This did not work for obvious reasons such as the fact that most of these families do not know how to survive in urban areas. Many were unable to pay their mortgages because they could not find work, especially since a large percentage of these relocates are elderly who do not speak English and are illiterate. Therefore, many of these elders, who know no other way of life than grazing and living off the land, began to resist this relocation and are still fighting for the right to remain on their ancestral lands after thirty years.

The US government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, called the Hopi Tribal Police into action to implement and enforce laws to make life more difficult for resisting families, so that They leave of their own free will. Things like confiscating their cattle, because they are trespassing, not allowing them to collect firewood, since they are stealing, to demolishing their houses and sacred spaces.

In 1998 I was called to action by my conscience. I left for Black Mesa to spend several months with an elderly couple, helping them with their daily chores and taking care of them. Winter is an unforgiving time on the Mesa. Many hardy old people die in the winter because temperatures drop below zero, and because wood is so hard to come by, many get sick, have no wood to keep warm, and freeze. I also went to bear witness to the atrocities. It had been documented that families that had a white person with them were not as harassed by Hopi police as white people in this country have a voice in the media and if something happened to a white person at the Mesa it would be on all waves What this situation needed and always has needed is media attention within the United States.

During the time I was there I had the absolute honor of staying with the *Smith’s. (*I changed his name in this article, for his protection.) But as my time with them continued, I knew them as “grandma” and “grandpa.” My purpose in staying with them was to help them and see firsthand what was going on up there, but I think in the end they helped me even more. When a person of relative privilege goes to a place where the basic comforts and services of home are absent, he forces you to become what is really inside of you, to invoke your deepest nature. It is an experience where you discover what you are really made of. It gets deep inside of you and just simplifies everything. No more taking running water and toilets or a hot bath for granted. Things and the value of things lose importance as you focus more on the things that really matter in life. How much does it really take to be content and happy? What is happiness? Does it come from things, or is it better to feel gratitude after a hard day’s work herding sheep and chopping wood; that beautiful exhaustion that comes from having a real relationship with the earth and the creatures of the earth. I learned to talk to myself and to listen. I asked myself, what are the problems in my life that I would be willing to fight for?

I also helped grandma and grandpa. I was there when the Hopi Ranger arrived with a semiautomatic at his house and began questioning them in a language I knew they didn’t understand. I was there to take care of the goats and sheep when Grandma needed to go to the cardiologist, 3 hours away in Phoenix. Alone and scared, I brought the pack home when the snow and ice were so deep that walking through them all day had formed ice balls on their skin and weighed them down so much they couldn’t walk anymore. . Trusting in this new found inner strength, I found a stick and began to hit the snowballs off the goats until I was able to climb the hill and bring them home safely.

I was also there for the humor. The first time I participated in the sacrifice of a sheep, I was given many small jobs to do. Killing a sheep and preparing the meat afterwards is a process that takes all day. The Dine’ eat every part of the sheep. I watched Grandma sit emptying the intestines of the sheep into old coffee cans and cleaning the intestines with hot water. She took parts of the layer of fat that had dried in the sun and began to wrap it with the cleaned pieces of intestines. She then put these packets in clean water to keep them fresh. She moved toward me to do something with the bowl of intestines water and the dirty coffee can. He couldn’t understand why she wanted him to put the clean intestines in the dirty coffee can. So I pretended to do it and she nodded. So I dumped the intestines in the coffee can. She had almost dropped it all when she started to scream. She came up to me with another bowl of clean water and instructed me to take the intestines out of the coffee can and clean them. I then realized that all she wanted me to do was pour the dirty water from the cleaning container into the coffee can. I felt horrible. But instead of being crazy, it became the joke for the duration of my stay. She started calling me “dygyss” (a form of “stupid” or “git”) and even when we had visitors, she would tell the story of how the stupid bilaga’ana (white girl) would throw clean food to eat in the sheep dung. . Maybe she still tells that story…

I received many gifts there, but the most precious gift they gave me was the gift of humility. The gift of knowing how much space I take up in the world. The gift of knowing more is not better. It’s quality over quantity, always and the gift of gratitude. That humility has nothing to do with weakness, but it is perhaps the most powerful human attribute of silent power. Give when you have nothing and never pretend to know anything. Since then I’ve been thankful that I don’t have to sleep with one eye open, worry about freezing to death or having my house collapse when I’m away. After all the pain and sadness these Dine’ resisters had experienced at the hands of strangers, to be accepted enough to invite me into their home, eat the food I prepared, and make a place for myself in their family is an overwhelming feeling; how much more advanced and generous and understanding can be people who are on the verge of losing everything. It really changed the perspective of how I think. Even now, almost ten years later, as I sit here writing this, the tears are still in my eyes because I have so much to learn and I wish I had done more. When I was there, I even considered staying with Grandma and Grandpa for a while and continuing to help them as my life’s work. But I knew that I had to get back to my own life, and that my job was to bring these lessons with me and implement them in my own life, away from serenity and simplicity. And tell people what’s going on up there, in a beautiful desolate land full of “Walk in Beauty” people.

As an update, things have for the most part stayed the same in Black Mesa. Grandfather died about 5 years ago, of old age. Grandma, somewhere in her 80’s still living her years, alone, on her piece of land with her sheep. In November, she suffered a minor heart attack after a harassing confrontation with a Hopi Ranger while she was herding her sheep. To read her statement go to: (Link: [http://www.blackmesais.org/elderstakeaction.htm] ) His case is currently in continuation and the pre-trial date is March 12.

“When you think about it, in all 50 states human rights and civil rights are reported every day on television. Every day the situations on the other side of the sea are reported. Here we have the same situation. We are human but our laws have been broken. All the rights of these people have been violated. They are broken. —Percy’s Deal, Dine’, Hardrock Chapter