What if I told you 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 will be surprised to hear that the situation in 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, inevitably the answer is NO. I have wondered for the last 10 years, ever since I first heard this story, how can this be? How can such a serious, unjust situation go so unnoticed by the people who live in this country, this country that is based on democratic principles? For me, the situation in 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 things to come.

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 the home of the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe. These two people have been peacefully sharing and living on this piece of land since time immemorial. But the United States government, which has these peoples in its charge, has drawn its own borders in 1974, which has left more than 10,000 Navajo (Dine’, “The People”) and about 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 farming. Yet this very existence was now threatened with lighting up places like Las Vegas and Phoenix and watering 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 becoming scarcer. Like most of these stories, these sad events and measures were arranged 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 who were now on the Hopi Reservation, to search for housing 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 were unable to find work, especially since a large percentage of these relocatees 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 still fight 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 carry out laws to make life more difficult for families who resist, so that leave of their own free will. Things like confiscating their cattle, because they are raiding, not allowing them to collect firewood, since they are stealing, even demolishing their houses and sacred spaces.

In 1998 I was called to action by my conscience. I went out to 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 freezing, and because wood is so hard to come by, many get sick, don’t have firewood 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 harassed as much by the Hopi police as white people in this country have a say in the media and if anything happened to a white person on the Mesa it was they would be on all waves. What this situation needed and has always needed is media attention within the United States.

During my time there I had the absolute honor of staying with the *Smith’s. (*I have changed his name in this article, for his protection.) But as my time with them continued, I got to know them as “Grandma” and “Grandpa.” My purpose for 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 comforts and basic services of home are absent, he forces you to become what is really within you, to invoke your deepest nature. It is an experience where you discover what you are really made of. It gets into the deepest part of you and just makes everything simple. 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 semi-automatic 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 back home when the snow and ice were so deep that walking through them all day had formed balls of ice on their skin and weighed them down so much they could no longer walk. . Relying on this newfound inner strength, I found a stick and began beating snowballs off the goats until I was able to climb the hill and bring them safely home.

I was also there for the humor. The first time I participated in a sheep slaughter, I was given a lot of small jobs to do. Killing a sheep and preparing the meat afterwards is a process that takes all day. The Dine’ eats every part of the sheep. I watched Grandma sit by emptying sheep intestines 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 clean 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 water with intestines 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 into the coffee can. She had almost thrown it all away when she started screaming. She came up to me with another bowl of clean water and motioned for her to take the intestines out of the coffee can and clean them out. Then I realized that all she wanted me to do was dump 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 I was given 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 is 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. I’ve been thankful ever since 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 me in their family is an overwhelming feeling; how much more advanced and generous and understanding people can be 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, tears are still in my eyes because I have so much left 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 go 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 is happening up there, in a beautiful desolate land full of people who “Walk in Beauty.”

As an update, things have for the most part stayed the same in Black Mesa. Grandpa died about 5 years ago, of old age. The grandmother, somewhere in her 80’s, is 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 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 across the sea are reported. Here we have the same situation. We are human but our laws have been violated. All the rights of these people have been violated. They are broken. —Percy’s Deal, Dine’, Hardrock Chapter