CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

Commission on Human Rights                                                                                              59th Session March 17 to April 25, 2003                                                                        Agenda Item 7: Right to Development                                                                              Oral Intervention by the International Indian Treaty Council

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

My name is Kee Watchman, a traditional Dineh (Navajo) from Big Mountain Arizona, in the United States.  We are still holding on very strongly to our sacred land, our sacred water, and the herbs we use for our medicine.

We have only a small piece of our Land left with us today. This Land has a lot of very important things that are still here with us as part of our traditional way of life. This includes ceremonial herbs, the different colored stones used for ceremonial sand painting, the sacred springs used in different ceremonials and also our shrines, offering places, burial sites, petroglyphs, and the ruins of the places used by our ancestors over a thousand years ago.

Mr. Chairman, if we, the traditional Dineh, are removed from our holy ancestral homeland, we cannot practice our religion and our way of life will end. Today the energy company Peabody Western Coal Company as well as the United States government and Bureau of Indian Affairs are looking to extend three decades of strip-mining to include this area, Cactus Valley/Red Willow Springs Sovereign Community, and Big Mountain, Arizona, to be strip-mined in the next 2-10 years.

We already have a big problem with our ground water. Peabody Western Coal Company has been pumping out our aquifer for over 30 years to slurry the coal over 287 miles away to Nevada (Mohave Generating Station) and Page, AZ (Navajo Generating Station) where it make the electricity to light up the big cities far from our land.

In our religion we have our songs and prayers about the rain and the water and the Mother Earth, to use in the ceremonials. We feel like our prayers and our songs have all been wasted by the strip mining and the coal slurry.   Now we don’t have the water anymore that we need to survive, and still they are taking more and more. They say that more than 3 million gallons of water is pumped from our homelands every day for this slurry to carry the coal they are taking.  Our sacred springs are drying up now, and our sheep can’t find water to drink and our corn needs the water to grow.  The water is the life blood of our Mother Earth, and our Peoples and the plants and animals all need it to survive.

Our Grandfathers and Grandmothers are still holding a bundle to pray for the water to return, and to bring back a good rain and a good snow for the Land, for the people who remain on the Land, for their grandchildren and the animals.

The International Indian Treaty Council participated at the recent 3^rd World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, where the big transnational corporations were told by all of civil society that water is not a commodity.   Water is Life.   To Indigenous cultures and to many other cultures of the world, water is sacred.   UNESCO, a convenor on the theme on water and cultural diversity at this Forum, recognized the important contribution of Indigenous Peoples to the world’s cultural diversity, and recommended to the governments and companies there that Indigenous rights must be given their due attention. 

Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of this Human Rights Commission, we are asking for your help to protect this very last piece of our Land and our sacred water under the international Human Rights, Religious Freedom and Right to Development laws which are supposed to be for all Peoples to protect our survival.  We are asking for this International Body to do more research and to take strong action on our concerns.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Commission and All My Relations.