Big Mountain, AZ. Native Hatred On The Increase Toward Resisters to Genocide

 

Increase HateToward Resisters to Genocide. 

By Bahe Katenay, August 20, 2026

An unimaginable cruelty of animal abuse that is so horrific, and what is more frightening is how the individual or individuals that committed this crime might be sending out a threatening message. The source that set the course for this kind of mentality and tribal division of the once coexisting tribes goes back to the 1974 U.S. Public Law 93-531 or the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act. In response to that Executive Order, hundreds of traditional Díneh (Navajo) organized in 1977 to resist the forced removal and land partitioning law. Some Hopi traditional representatives also came to Big Mountain to show their solidarity and to clarify that, it was the U.S. backed Hopi tribal council who were claiming all of Big Mountain and wanted Díneh to move out. 

52 years later, today, the traditional movements are gone, a few extended Díneh family groups remain, modern native societies including Hopi have abandoned the deep cultural ties to land and the neighborship system. Furthermore, there has been the white washing and propaganda that has reset history with the idea that, "Navajos have always been the problem." This new mood of native thinking perceives the future with limited old time religious values, but instead to forge on to modernism that will bring better wealth and industrial opportunity. 

The 1977 land partitioning mandate "awarded" Hopis 900 million acres which is mostly empty of humans except for about a hundred Díneh relocation resisters.

These resisters are made up of original resisters and extended families and all are disdained by both the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribal governments, as lawless and non-citizens. 

The growing acts of hatred have also been demonstrated by both Navajo tribal officials and Hopi tribal law enforcement personnel. Navajo officials at the community level known as Chapter headquarters prohibit "Hopi partitioned lands" branded resisters from participation. Hopi authorities in the past have manhandled and even injured elder resisters when they tried to stop the confiscation of their animals. In 2014, late resister Etta Begay's over the "legal" limit of the number of sheep were forceably confiscated and later she stated as she wept, "the Hopi police were throwing the sheep, sometimes kicking them, and throwing them on top of other sheep when the stock trailer got too full."

Civilians are now adding to the already escalating hate toward the condemned, remaining Díneh resisters. On June 26th of this year, resisters-extended-family members returned home in Mesquito Springs and saw some smoke coming from the sheep corral. When they approached where their 22 sheep lived, they saw all the sheep partially burnt and dead. The corral's wooden log fence had burnt to the ground. The family had always realized that that ultimate day might come for their final forced removal. They stayed because of their late parents who resisted the relocation laws and have upheld the ancient Dineh tradition and rituals. Despite all those memories of strength coming to their minds, the still determined siblings must have dropped to their knees and wept.

This incident of burning sheep alive was a crime and the perpetrator or perpetrators need to be convicted. Hopi tribal police have been out to the crime scene and no updates from the police, as of this writing.

The remaining Díneh relocation resister homesites are scattered miles apart across the western margin of Big Mountain. A few are alone with their small sheep and goat herd, and the dedicated sheepdogs. Horses and cattle are long gone due to forced confiscation or forced to sell. Resisters as they are referred to are native holdouts, still clinging on to indigenous life with some little hope, still praying and singing prayer songs occasionally, and nothing to really think about or plan for because the ceremonies and cultural gatherings have long vanished, too. They just live on and graze the animals even though they have no representation or so-called rights and protection. Prior to the burning of the sheep, families have reported suspicious activities like individual trespassers near homesites and what seemed like stalking on residents And the family that lost 22 sheep are rebuilding another sheep corral and hoping to replace their loss of the precious churro sheep. 

This report should not be taken lightly just because the whole country and the world is becoming unsafe. A stop can be made to: the growing hate and violence in this pristine and isolated holy lands of Big Mountain even though it is not on an urban street setting. It can become the atoning to bring back balance and perhaps, harmony. Archaeological science thus far has no evidence that ancient Dineh and historic Dineh (not modern Navajos) never waged wars, but only until the recent foreign colonizers' aggressions. Perhaps based on the Hozhon beliefs, Dineh might have been a sinless culture. "Lambs of the Gods" who took humanity's punishment upon themselves but now, it is enough.     

Help the unprotected resisters to Genocide. Responsible agencies to call, demand full investigation and arrest those that committed these acts in Mesquito Springs. The NH Land Commission Office are responsible as well and are still funded through the U.S. Office of Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation.

Hopi Law Enforcement - 928-734-7344,

BIA Law Hopi Agency - 928-738-2228,

Navajo Hopi Land Commission:

Executive Director, Windowrock - 928-357-6904,

Tuba City SubOffice - 928-283-3000

Support network for Díneh resisters does exist. Requests include volunteer home stays and manual labor help, sheepherders, water hauling, seasonal organized support projects, and donations of basic essential needs. DM for more Info.

Help with Expenses for Travel, Film Screenings & Festival Submissions

   

 

FUND RAISING for Screening Event Travel, Renting Venues, and Film Festival Submission Fees. 

 

https://gofund.me/89de7939

 

 

 

PLEASE SUPPORT by getting community groups involved to set up screenings.

PROLOGUE: Helps Before Viewing Film

**MUST READ BEFORE VIEWING FILM. ENJOY**

 

Big Mountain Legacy Film: SYNOPSIS / Re-enactments / A Dream of a Man

 Director: Bahe (Naabaahii) Katenay (Keediniihii), October 2023     (75 minute featured documentary)

Background:

In the 1970s, D7neh (Navajo) families around Big Mountain were notified that their communities would be uprooted and that they may never see their ancestral homelands ever again. Now 50 years later, less than 20 home sites remain and the once strong resistance leaders like Pauline Whitesinger, Haastin Niiz Begay, John Katenay, and Roberta Blackgoat have all passed on. How should the future remember the legacies of such wise teachers? What gave their community the will to defy U. S. Congressional Legislations that were nothing but anti-Indian which was forcing them to give up hundreds of years of cultural existence?

The Congress of the United States passed Public Law 93-531 in 1974 and it was signed by the President. It is an Executive Order, a declaration to exterminate, a declaration of war. The justification for this law was to “resolve” a supposed “land-dispute” among the Hopis and Dineh, and the lands were divided.

The 2023 Video Documentary:

The original impetus for resisting the federal mandate was the sacredness of the lands, ancestral ties and natural features which were dwelling places of Deities. The elder interviewees knew the future will not be the same way as they had lived and the same childhood experience. The video put aside much of the effective resistance against the most powerful, capitalistic country in the world, instead the video presents stories about their ancestors’ teachings. A D7neh ritual existence which was basically daily living, ceremonies and nutrition. An indigenous atmosphere long before the Europeans’ arrival with its brutal conquest. The video narrowly touches on a 400-year history of cultural survival and maintaining identity. And how that history overlaps with so-called modern America.

One grandmother’s story become an intense chapter, and it is about her direct clan ancestry facing near annihilation as one little girl survives which resulted in re-establishing a Clan at Big Mountain. This story comes from a massacre site with two mass graves. Then stories about decades of intense state of fear and which lead into the US’s late 1800s war policy of random killing, starvation and captivity. The modern times the 1920s and 30s when these story tellers were born, a different state of fear had re-emerged, and then again at their elderhood in the late 1900s. All the stories in this documentary program are messages for the future because, as these elders have predicted, the lands maybe empty of indigenous culture which once thrived for centuries.

The Re-enactment Scenes:

Scenes of re-enactments were originally inspired by the ancestors’ stories being retold. One was that horrible massacre, and that story also gave the will power for the elders to resist the relocation laws.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 A couple of implicit scenarios were put into the massacre re-enactments which dips into relevant history.   

(For whatever reason hate existed, the Europeans used foes of D7neh, the Comanches as scouts.)

(Facts from archaeology noted that preColumbian MesoAmerica frequent far into northern Arizona.)

Other additional scenes were attempts to give authenticity to the stories about culture and lands impacted by the eviction policies.  

 

A Simple Man’s Dream to Video Document Big Mountain

David Ray McQuade is from West Virginia, an American Scotch Irish. The region where he grew up was in eastern slopes of the great Appalachian Mountains. His time of growing up, based on stories he shared, reminds me of Howard Zinn’s book “A Peoples’ History of the United States.” Mainly about his ancestors’ experience of the harsh times among untamed white society versus, the lords. The era of the Hillybilly survival and their resistance to enslavement in the underground coal mines or being grunts for the wealthy lumber tycoons. Poverty was rampant causing bitter feuds with outside clans. However, most of the Hillybillys were able to survive off nature for food and medicine. By the time David was born his parents were a well-situated American family with having 14 siblings. His dad was a coal mine lower status, site operation supervisor, and they owned a house.

David with a bit of that Old English Irish Scottish accent would tell of his ancestors similar to the following phrases:

“…being called backwards and uneducated... Having your accent ridiculed... growing up in the mountains, you are heir to a legacy... Mountain mothers worked in the fields and were usually the moral compass of the family. Mountain fathers worked all day in the coal mines, built homes without house plans, and could shoe horses.  They were the originators of dealing with whatever life threw at them…” - 2021 West Virginia Hillbilly Ramblings 

How David (left in the brown t-shirt) found his way among the Díneh (Navajos) at Big Mountain was another tale of this simple man. Before Big Mountain, he had partnered with his elder brother as street vendors by purchasing the old, abandoned Santa Fe, New Mexico post office lot. They imported goods from Mexico and established the original Jackalope Pottery. David also seeks extra opportunities and there was the 1980s uranium mining boom in the western part of the state. Wages were too good, and not many commitments as a single young man except for occasional boozing. He was down and had just suddenly lost his car and rental space. While still being a uranium miner he heard about a protest against uranium mining, so he hitch-hikes to the protest and wanted to learn about uranium. A couple of Big Mountain Díneh elder delegates were in attendance at the protest. David met a couple of white folks who were doing a film documentary about Navajos resisting a forced relocation law. David quit his uranium mine job and along with is dog, Chevis, they volunteered to assist and helped drive the film crew to Big Mountain.

David and Chevis then decided to just herd sheep and help that way since he knew no filming skills, or anything related to that. Off and on for ten years after that he still came back to the same sheep corral and to the same family. He eventually became an adopted son and brother to the family siblings. He returned back to Santa Fe also to his elder brother and help with the growing business. He then hops on to short term jobs with movie companies that came to town. David’s heart was with Big Mountain, the communities that were protecting the ancestral holy lands from the federal, forced-relocation laws and the industrial greed. He then strongly believed that he could help with recording the historical events happening around him. He had already given much company to his adopted Mom and Dad. So, he approached me about getting the latest video recording equipment and begin shooting interviews and Big Mountain life in struggle.

Neither of us knew nothing about recording on professional video equipment. David recorded based on his amateur ideas of framing shots. At that time, I was very much based at Big Mountain, and I took over the recordings. David then suggested we go to another new format and so I did. I went on recording more and kept his dream of video documentary alive.