Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

June 13, 2016

Resistance, exploitation and oppression in Indian country

Resistance, exploitation and oppression in Indian country


Photo copyright Carl 'Bad Bear' Sampson, Western Shoshone, Peace and Friendship Walk May 2016

With the collapse of the media, the corrupt criminals are at work, as the Mormon Church attempts a cover-up of the sexual abuse of Navajo children, and the US continues to target Indian country as its toxic, radioactive and lethal dumping ground

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
copyright

With the collapse of the news media, following buy-outs and the widespread reliance on plagiarism, copy and paste and fraud, the corporate criminals are at work, relying more than ever on the silence of the media, and the media’s failure to have reporters present to cover the news.
Currently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is seeking a restraining order to block a pair of sex abuse lawsuits from moving forward in the Navajo Nation Court. This sexual abuse occurred during the years that the Mormon Church arrived on the Navajo Nation with buses in the 1970s, and drove those Navajo children away in buses to live with Mormon families in the Indian Placement Program in Utah.
Four Dineh (Navajo) children have filed lawsuits. While Mormon families engaged in indoctrination of the children, many children were sexually abused. When Navajo children told the church of the abuse, church officials refused to act to protect them, or report the abusers for prosecution.
The abuse of Indian children in church and state boarding schools, and in Catholic Churches by priests, was endemic and covered up by the US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand governments. The sexual abuse of Navajo children by Mormons and the cover-up by the Mormon Church is the latest to be exposed in the sexual abuse that left generations traumatized and individuals with broken lives.

Abusers rely on the isolation of victims.

The isolation of Navajos at Big Mountain has fueled the excessive force of the US government and its agents, especially since the local and regional media fails to responds.

The United States government has continued its brutal harassment and raids on Navajos resisting forced relocation. The Benally family at Big Mountain has resisted relocation for 40 years, struggling to survive. Last week, once again, the family livestock was seized at the home of John Benally. Police officers held women, children and elderly under house arrest, preventing them from leaving their home, while the livestock was seized.
The so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute was actually orchestrated by Peabody Coal to clear Navajos off the land at Black Mesa for coal mining. Peabody used the coal to fuel the dirty coal fired power plant, Navajo Generating Station, which provides electricity to southern Arizona. Following decades of international appeals for help, Navajos at Big Mountain say they have been waiting 40 years for the United Nations to do something.
The resistance continues throughout Indian country to exploitation and abuse. This includes the actions of the Lakota and Ponca whose people, land and water are in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
A Lakota resistance camp is in place on the Standing Rock Nation in North Dakota to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline from poisoning the water for future generations.
In Oklahoma, the Camp family from the Ponca Nation have returned to their ancestral homeland in Nebraska to plant rows of sacred Ponca “resistance corn,” in the path of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Mekasi Camp Horinek, son of Native American activist Casey Camp, said, “Not only in the soil of our ancestors’ homeland, but also in the hearts and minds of all the people that honor, respect and protect Mother Earth as the roots of these resistance seeds spread across the continents. So does the awareness of fight to stop keystone XL pipeline and protect mother earth for our future generations.”
In other news from the Navajo Nation, the Panama Papers have for the first time revealed a link to the Indian country. It is to Cuba’s Alimport, the import food agency, which the Navajo Nation sought to do business with during the days when the Cuban embargo was still in place. While it is unclear if laws were broken, the saga of this ill-fated corn and bean deal, and the censorship by Indian Country Today of genetically-modified crops and a Raytheon Missile factory on the Navajo farm, is a story in itself. The Panama Papers and the Navajo Cuban Food Deal: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-panama-papers-and-navajo-cuban-food.html
Writing on the need for the implementation of laws protecting the Rights of Nature, Pablo Solon of Bolivia -- whose vision helped cement the concepts at the Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2010 -- has authored a new reflection on the Rights of Nature movement and the laws enacted by Bolivia and Ecuador.
The Zapatistas have not been silenced. Subcomandante Marcos has taken the name of the murdered Mayan teacher Galeano. Subcomandante Galeano continues the resistance, writing with Subcomandante Moises.
Subcomandante Moises and Galeano, report both the oppression and resistance in the most recent messages to the world.
“It seems that at some moment in the brief and intense history of the 20th century, this country was an international referent for tourism … The thing is that over the past few years, ‘Mexico’ has become a world referent for governmental corruption; for the cruelty of narco-trafficking; the full complicity and cohabitation, not merely infiltration, of organized crime and the official institutions; the forced disappearances; the army out of the barracks and into the streets and onto the highways …”
Meanwhile, the United States continues to target Indian country as its toxic, radioactive and lethal dumping ground.
Yucca Mountain is Western Shoshone land as stated in the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. Yucca Mountain is sacred to Western Shoshone. It already has the scars and poisons of the Nevada Test Site and the careless Atomic bomb testing which radiated the region.
Still, in its push to store high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refuses to acknowledge that there is no safe way to store spent nuclear fuel and that it is hazardous for a million years.
“Irradiated nuclear fuel remains hazardous for a million years, as acknowledged by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its Yucca Mountain dump regulations,” writes Kevin Kamps at Beyond Nuclear.
Top photo: Carl 'Bad Bear' Sampson, Western Shoshone long walker, on Peace and Friendship Walk to Nuclear Test Site and Yucca Mountain, May 2016

Read more:
Courts must hold Mormon Church responsible for sex crimes against Navajo children
Big Mountain Navajos held under house arrest as livestock confiscated
 Sacred Ponca Corn planted in path of Keystone XL pipeline
Bolivia’s Pablo Solon on Living Well in Nature with Balance
US refuses to acknowledge nuclear fuel hazardous for a million year

Copyright Brenda Norrell

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