Navajo women in solidarity with
Palestine oppose Israel's genocidal practices, say Navajos don't need Israeli
chemicals to grow food
| by Brenda Norrell
( December 13, 2012, New York,
Sri Lanka Guardian) Navajo women in solidarity with Palestine oppose Navajo
President Ben Shelly’s visit to Israel this week and spoke out against the
ongoing genocidal policies of Israel and Shelly’s longterm human rights abuses
at home.
Navajo women said Shelly and
Israel are part of the war machine. Working with sustainable agriculture,
Navajos said that Shelly does not need to go to Israel to learn how to use
chemicals to grow food.
 |
| Louise Benally/Photo Brenda Norrell |
Louise Benally, Dine’ resisting
forced relocation at Big Mountain, Arizona, said, "Ben should stay in
Israel, to learn how to farm, they are only puppets for the war machines."
"Is he learning how to farm
food, or weapons of mass destruction?" Benally and other Dine’ on Black
Mesa say the Navajo Nation government is a puppet government of the US, which
abandoned them for coal mining and power plant dollars.
Working with sustainable
agriculture, Janene Yazzie, Navajo, said Shelly does not need to go to Israel
to learn how to use chemicals to grow food.
“To hear that our president
believes the apartheid government of Israel has more to offer than the Dine’
people in his homeland fighting against his policies is hurtful and
unbelievably ignorant.”
Yazzie points out that Shelly’s
visit to Israel this week is the latest in a long list of human rights violations,
which includes schemes to sell out Navajo water rights, and sending armed Swat
teams to intimidate Navajos at public forums.
Janene Yazzie said:
It should not shock or surprise
us that our Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly has taken an unexpected trip to
visit Israel, a government that has committed itself to carrying out genocidal
practices against its population of indigenous Palestinian peoples.
In communities across our nation
there is a struggle to localize food production by returning to traditional
methods of farming and irrigation suitable to our climate, our soils, our
native foods, and the values of our culture. Instead of visiting these projects
or investing in them President Shelly has gone to Israel to learn about
"Fertigation," a method that is dependent on the use of chemical
fertilizers.
Read Janene Yazzie's full
statement:
Navajo explains why the toxic
Navajo president doesn't need to go to Israel to learn how to use chemicals to
grow food
by Janene Yazzie
It should not shock or surprise
us that our Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly has taken an unexpected trip to
visit Israel, a government that has committed itself to carrying out genocidal
practices against it's population of indigenous Palestinian peoples. I make
this argument because our President has illustrated himself to be unfit to make
the kind of informed, wise, and strong decisions that promote the inherent
rights of our own Dine (Navajo) people; let alone prove himself to be the kind
of leader that is concerned or educated about the campaign of genocide waged by
Israel.
In his official press release he
is quoted as saying, “Our trip is also about cultural exchange in this part of
the world where the Israeli people co-exist with their neighbors," listing
his priorities as "Agriculture, Technology, Tourism, Infrastructure, and
Government Services." Meanwhile his actions within the past year alone
have shown his complacency in the violation of the Human Rights of our own
people through his endorsement of the toxic "Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado
River Water Rights Settlement." As part of his campaign to support this
bill his "government services" included sending armed swat teams and
Navajo Nation people (and in some places state police) to intimidate his own
people at public forums and to censure opposition.
His open investment in coal and
the policies that support them, as well as his contradiction between rhetoric
and actions when it comes to Uranium, all serve to create enormous obstacles to
the implementation of plans proposed by Dine entrepreneurs to transform our
Nation into one that produces clean energy projects. He has actively tried to
discredit, de-legitimize and exclude his own people in important decisions that
regard the future of our Nation until we formed overpowering grassroots
organizations. Yet still our arguments for social and environmental justice,
for investment in sustainable economic development based on clean energy, and
localizing food production continue to be met with resistance. To hear that our
president believes the apartheid government of Israel has more to offer than
the Dine people in his homeland fighting against his policies is hurtful and
unbelievably ignorant.
In communities across our nation
there is a struggle to localize food production by returning to traditional
methods of farming and irrigation suitable to our climate, our soils, our
native foods, and the values of our culture. Instead of visiting these projects
or investing in them President Shelly has gone to Israel to learn about
"Fertigation," a method that is dependent on the use of chemical
fertilizers. There are other Dine entrepreneurs such as myself trying to
introduce sustainable ways of building energy-efficient homes out of local
materials, with waste-water recycling systems that allow us to optimize our use
of this precious resource. The underlying conflict in all these issues is that
all these grassroots projects employ "alternative methods of
development" that empower communities to work together to meet their own
local needs. However the projects that have received open support and funding
within the past year are based on the unsustainable model of top-down private
investments, based on illusions of trickle-down economics.
If President Shelly was really
interested in how he could create the kind of development that will really
serve the numerous needs of our people he would know that his first priority
should be to invest in his own people and become a leader that protects our
rights. If he is to represent us on the international level then he needs to
become knowledgeable on the unsustainable structures that underlie our current
globalized market systems. Lastly, it is imperative that he begin to understand
what those of us on the grassroots-level understand; that in order to establish
alternative forms of development we have to fight against the status quo of
existing systems of power that prevent us from achieving our self-sufficiency.
This makes it our responsibility as the largest tribal nation in the U.S. to
stand in solidarity with the struggles of Indigenous peoples all over the world
who continue to fight removal, exploitation and open acts of genocide on their
ancestral lands. I stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and those
Indigenous nations and non-indigenous peoples fighting against continued
corporate, religious, and political exploitation. Only when we hold our leaders
accountable to their electorates, only when we take a united stand against
unsustainable market-practices, and only when we accept that all our homelands
are changing from climate change, will we be able to unite around a new vision
of how humanity should progress. From my experience returning home to join the
resistance inside my nation, this is the true heart of the Dine people, and it
is a vision that has not been respected or shared by our President Ben Shelly.
Brenda Norrell, who served as a
reporter at Navajo Times beginning in 1982, has been a news reporter in Indian
country for 30 years. She is the founder of the Censored News, now in its sixth
year, has had 1.4 million views! Brenda is also a regular with the Sri Lanka
Guardian.
