The View from the Hogan 10 107 Days till the final solution

Notes from Big Mountain
(for the discerning reader)

Ya'a'tee
First off, a point of terminology. I have been instructed to avoid using the word "HPL" in my writing. The words HPL, JUA, Navajo Reservation, etc etc, are deeply painful and offensive. These words refer to lines drawn on maps and in the minds of those in Washington ( and their followers). They are not real, they divide that which is whole. I will refer to the land where these
words are being written as The Altar. The reasoning is this: Within the four sacred mountains that encompass Navajo land, is the Hogan for the Dineh people. When a hogan is built to live in, it is a model of this Macrocosmic Hogan. This is why Ceremonies must take place inside a Hogan. This is also why bulldozing of Hogans is such an abominable and sacrilegious crime. Within the Ceremonial Hogans is a space used for an altar. Within the Macrocosmic Hogan this space correlates to the Big Mountain area.

We hear of many events and prayer vigils taking place in the first week of October at U.S. Embassies abroad in support of the people here and against the continued genocide. To all of you who have worked hard at setting up these events, we send our prayers and thanks, as well as to all those who give of their precious time to attend these events. Let us hope that the hearts of those in Washington will be touched. As Sitting Bull said "As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist."

There is a good letter circulating on the Net from "the people of the land known as America" to the clowns in Washington. contact Beth at isco@efn.org and ask her to send you a copy. If you like what it says, then you just send Beth your name and address and it will get appended.

The Men In Black continue to visit Pauline's land on a daily basis. They recently stopped at the site of this past summers Education/Witness camp, and -horror of horrors- they discovered a piece of soggy cardboard approximately one foot square, and a small brown bottle that at one point contained ginger beer. Barely able to contain their outrage, many photographs were taken of the offending material, and they rushed back to HQ as fast as possible. Imagine the scene, the BIA War room,... a group of Very Important People cluster around the photos trying to decide what action to take against this latest outrage. Smart young men and women stride across the room with the latest satellite images. Presidential candidate McPain wants the Nuclear Option,... he's just about fed up with these inconvenient Indians, Wayne Tulip, The Hopi Tribal Chairman tries desperately to talk him out of it,... he's worried what a nuclear explosion will do to the grazing for his friends cows. In a corner, Fedora Lewis, the Hopi Goebbels, is not so sure,... she sees a way to incorporate the nuclear motif into the Casino she so desperately wants to build in Hopiland. In the end they settle on an armed convoy composed of Hopi Rangers, BIA police, US marshals, County Sheriffs, FBI and ATF, with a couple of National Guard Helicopter Gunships for back-up. Maybe I'm exaggerating SLIGHTLY, but what continues to take place here is a farce on a hugely criminal level, and sometimes I find humor to be my only defense against absurdity.

Meanwhile, the real criminals, the BIA impoundment squads, continue to snatch the peoples animals even though there is more grass than could be consumed by flocks ten times as large. Of course we knew they were coming because the roads were graded. Normally the roads we travel are so bad they couldn't be classified as jeep trails, only last week I had to rush a woman
to hospital in the middle of the night. A 75 mile journey took 2 and a half hours, each bump, rut and pot hole slowing us down and causing pain to my passenger. But when the BIA need to come in on a lightning raid to take the peoples animals, out come the dozers and graders to give them a nice smooth, fast ride. Your tax dollars hard at work. What may not be at all clear to
y'all out there is that this is all executed as military operations, these are para-military, multi-agency "squads" whose only aim is to cause fear and hardship. Loaded down with weapons and all the hi-tech toys money can by, elders who are alone are targetted. The following is a quote from Big Mountain Newsletter.

The people of Big Mountain and the Joint Use Area say they are being terrorized. They cite jet airplanes flying so low that the pilot is visible, BIA trucks cruising the Survival Camp and the peoples hogans, helicopters, and the apparent sabotage of wells and windmills, and so on.
The government has answers for most of the charges, saying for instance that the jet flights are "routine" training patterns, the helicopters are "surveying" and the trucks are "conducting a census". The government says the people are being "over dramatic" in their reactions. In the 1960's these same people said that they were attacked with poisonous gases from airplanes,
killing their livestock. It wasn't until years later, when the white citizenry of Globe, Arizona, received a similar attack, that the U.S. admitted it had been using 2,4,5-T, an incredibly toxic pesticide, for "brush control" without proper safeguards. Even if the latest actions are in fact "routine", the question remains why all of these activities should suddenly escalate in the few months just prior to the July deadline for Navajo removal. The governments position on the jet flights is typical: the Air Force insists it is just running a normal training pattern which happens to pass directly over Big Mountain. Challenged at a recent hearing as to why the flights were necessary, and whether similar flights were scheduled over non-Indian communities, the Air Force declined to explain. Spokespersons noted that it would not change the flights just to please the Indians, regardless of ceremonies or other problems with the flights. Parents claimed the flights terrified their young children at school and literally knocked the elderly out of bed. Religious ceremonies are also disrupted and the livestock are scattered by the flights. The Air Force admits that it flies as low as 400 feet. Bottom line is that these Indian people are being subjected to procedures which the government wouldn't think of directing towards white communities. In this case the people under attack are the traditional Navajo and Hopi people of the Joint Use Area, already under incredible pressure due to 12 years of implementation of the Relocation Act. The result is terror.

That was written 14 years ago, and nothings changed..... its been going on the whole time since, and the view from the Hogan is inescapable that this is war, low-intensity maybe, but war nonetheless. One thing I am sure of, is that both the people who plan this campaign of
harassment and those that carry it out, watch waaay too much TV.

How is it that a war against Indians has been and is still being fought on this continent for the past 30 years, and most people are only just finding out about it now?

So, we are hurtling towards two big dates. January 1st, 2000 and February 1st, 2000. I find it hard to get excited about the Millenium, some Roman dude, way back when, decides to change his peoples calendar and start time from a new date, how is that real? ......And anyway, don't most people know that the year begins on November 1st?

When I think of Y2K, my first reaction is, how utterly terrifying it must be, to live in a world that is so unstable that a couple of digits on a silicon chip has the potential to bring it all tumbling down. My second thought is how absurd it is, that here on the Altar, are people who have the
knowledge, skills, and most importantly, the wisdom, to live without an infantile dependence on the Technostructure, and yet the dominant society is hell-bent on rubbing out these people rather than listening to them and learning from them. If, in a worst case scenario (barring Nuclear Winter), the technostructure does collapse, then we here on the Altar will have to
make a few minor adjustments to our lifestyle ( though as I am now a cyber-slut, I'd surely miss conversing with all you good folks out there), but overall the benefits would be enormous. The mine will close down. The sky will be free of huge, noisy, chunks of metal hurtling towards La La Land with Very Important People on board, and the Men in Black will cease harassing us
as the coal will be worthless. It would be my guess that many of you who have not been here cannot truly imagine what it is like to live outside of the Technostructure, without electricity, without plumbing, with the closest small store 20 miles away, asphalt road 30 miles away, telephone 36miles away, post office 40+ miles away, supermarket 74 miles away. The people here have never had these "amenities",... in what I consider a dumb move, the U.S. made it illegal for the people to "develop", hoping to encourage the people to leave, but what its caused is that the people continued with a way of life that has changed little for generations, and life is lived in a good way, depending on those most basic resources, brains and bodies, something most of us have, life is generous. There is an often voiced belief "out there" that everybody in the world is so desperate to achieve the "American way of life", but I must tell you, it just ain't so. A little story may show this.Some years ago, when I was living with my Grandma and Grandpa, I figured that the price of a simple solar power system was low enough for me to be able to raise the funds, so I asked my Grandma what she would use electricity for if I could supply it. I needed to figure what size system to work on. Her eyes immediately lit up, "an electric light,".... for the hogan in winter, so she could weave. Like many elderly people, her eyesight was not as sharp as it used to be, and with a keresone lamp the colors of the yarns were hard to see, so on the long winter nights she wasn't able to weave. " What else would you like" I asked. She thought for a while, and then said " an iron, to iron the rugs after they are finished". "Anything else" I asked. She thought, and thought....." how about a microwave oven? refrigerator? TV?. She laughed. That was all she could think of to do with electricity, make it so she could spend even more hours sittin at the loom. Around this time I sat down and figured out how much these elderly women were getting paid to weave these beautiful rugs. Figuring in the time it takes to raise the sheep, shear, wash, clean, card, spin, dye the wool, set up the loom, and then do the weaving, I reckoned they were lucky if they were getting 2 bucks an hour. So any of you in the market for a genuine navajo rug, please bear in mind what a deal you're getting.

On the subject of rugs, for those of you in the neighbourhood of
Missoula, Montana, there is an exhibition of approximately 50 rugs from the resisters here at the Art Gallery, in the University. These are the real things, and the show runs till Oct 31st. I saw some of the rugs on their way up there, and there is some beautiful work. I would be out of line to have a favorite, but Fanny Goys rugs are particularly fine. Roberta Blackgoat will be in town for a reception on Saturday the 30th, so that would certainly be worth attending.

On the subject of Robertas travels, she will be in Washington DC during the second week of November. I don't have any locations or dates for her appearances there, but for sure she will be at the concert where Blackfire are playing.

Presuming of course we survive Y2K, we then come to February 1st, 2000. Who knows what is going to happen? The Feds and the HTC know, but they ain't saying. There have been deadlines before, and a pattern has emerged. Threats of forced evictions are broadcast, support is mobilized, the media takes an interest, the deadline arrives, nothing happens, the media lose interest, support wanes, and back to the daily grind of low-intensity warfare and siege tactics. Maybe that will happen again, but maybe not. Warmaker is not known for making rational decisions, so it's best to plan for all eventualities.

Back in the real world, the weather has changed. It hasn't rained for some weeks now. Back to the usual intense blue dome above. The sun is much lower in the sky, the shadows are larger, the colors richer, and the days shorter. The Dineh name for this moon is "back to back", where the two seasons touch. The corn's all harvested, primary chore now is to bring in, cut, and chop firewood for the coming winter. There is already a nip in the night air, a killing frost took out my squash and tomato plant a few weeks ago. Like most life-sustaining activities round here, cutting firewood is illegal according to the Feds and the HTC. I know for a fact that sons of two of the Grandmas went into Hopi Tribal Offices to get a woodcutting permit and left without one, so even though no-ones been arrested in a while for cutting wood, it is one more stress and worry on the people. I've been too busy with the flock and the firewood to take advantage of the other bumper harvest this year, Pinyon nuts, a much favored delicacy. Travelling across the Altar one sees people out, under the trees, collecting as much as possible before the 4 legged and winged get their share. The sight of people collecting free food always feels festive to me. I stopped by Robertas place late one afternoon after she had been out picking all day. We sat in front of her house and watched her sheepherder bring home the flock. Behind us, on her door, was a simple sign that reads:

Entering Sovereign Dineh Nation
Thin Rock Mesa
All are welcome who repect the land, life, and law of the Dineh
Warning!
Federal, state, and tribal personnel, your jurisdiction does not apply here
Your actions will be counter-acted.

Similar signs are re-appearing around the Altar.
As we sat, a huge strange looking object flew slowly over us. grabbing noculars I saw that it was the Space Shuttle, piggy-backed on a big jet transport. I explained to Roberta what the space shuttle was, and how it put all the satellites up in the sky, and how some of those satellites can take pictures of us here on the ground. Her eyes immediately lit up, "we should write SUE THE CREATOR out there" she said, pointing to the land out in front of the house, Sooo there is now a message being laid out on the ground in front of her place, so if you happen to be an owner or operator of a spy satellite, point it to:

36 degrees 14 minutes 79 seconds N
110 degrees 38 minutes 62 seconds W

Also if you are a pilot or photographer who wants to take some pictures of this message, you're welcome.

One final thought on Y2K, we hear of big bucks being made by supplying Y2K survival information, so, I make the following offer; for a mere fifty bucks a day, you are invited to the BOPEEP Y2K SURVIVAL SCHOOL, topics covered will include: How to avaoid freezing by using an axe. How to avoid thirst by walking to a spring with a bucket. How to avoid starvation by grubbing around in dirt and blood and guts. How to repair just about anything with baling wire. 1001 things to do when your television doesn't work. etc
etc.

We human beings are an incredible species. Our brains and bodies are perfectly capable of doing all thats necesesary to keep life going in a good way, but more than that, we are capable of profoundly beautiful acts of love, kindness, and generosity. Yet we are taught to feel powerless and to fear each other and to fear life itself. Why? (I am reliably informed that that is a rhetorical question)

But then, what the hell do I know,........ I'm just a sheepherder.

"We need to be kinder to each other"

Your prayers, support, and correspondence are invited.

I thank you for your time that you have given me by reading this.

For all my relations

Bo Peep

reachable via unclejake74@hotmail.com

P.S. To all those who have written to me, please be aware that owing to the pressing needs of the flock, the firewood, and the Grandmas, the office is sometimes left unattended for days at a time. It may take as long as a half moon between when you write, and when you hear back from me. Around here the information superhighway is a muddy jeep trail. Please be patient, you will hear from me.

If you have received this update as a forward, but want to sure of getting them in the future, please let me know and I will add you to the list. Also if there are any "back issues" you don't have, again, let me know.

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