The following Email was sent to Kathleen Burnham from the Green Eye Records Foundation who accepts donations of money or supplies on behalf of the Navajo at Big Mountain, AZ. You can also purchase a hand woven rug to support the resistance to relocation. If you would like more information on the situation you can get on the email list at: http://theofficenet.com/~redorman/voices/voices.html or contact the Foundation at 831/515-5100, ext. 107, or greeneyerecords@hotmail.com.

Roberta Blackgoat is an elder resister at Thin Rock Mesa at Big Mountain, AZ. She was one of three elder Dine (Navajo) to go to New York City to speak to the shareholders of the multinational corporation that owns the company strip mining (coal) on their sacred home land. These are her words:

"The hardest part of this struggling here at Big Mountain, Arizona is that we are uneducated. We have no means to relocate. I am trying to help the other people. A lot of the people are suffering. A lot of people need help. Where we are living is where the Creator planted us here. It is here where we are expected to live in our traditional ways. They expect our children to learn white ways and forget their traditions and their families. Now they don't learn the prayers and sacred songs of the ancestors. They are all being forgotten. The white people came here and wanted us to kill others. What is going to happen to the children who are killing each other? We are praying for them all. We are praying for our livestock which are most important to our lives. We pray for what we grow, everything is under this prayer. When everything is destroyed for us here, what will you do for us? Will you be able to replace our prayers and songs we were given? I don't believe it will work. The people here who have moved away are dying, they are in jail, they are homeless."

"I have a sign that says, 'The Creator is the only one that will Relocate me.' It is a sign I carry for my children and my grandchildren. I do this also to honor my ancestors. I say prayers and sing songs for all the native people in this country. They are suffering from land disputes and fishing rights, etc. I ask for the white tongue to have understanding of these things. Let them remember how they survived here when they came here. That should be a great lesson for them. They should know why we have to protect this land. The guts of the Mother Earth must be protected. We don't want to live the white ways. The earth is suffering because of them. The guns and machines made from the Mother Earth. She is dying. Who will have the most money in hell? We are all going to be in hell for killing the earth. These are my feelings. I want peace in this country. Let our brothers and sisters all live on their land peacefully. How they were taught. My ancestors were all buried around here. Farther than I can see in all directions are the buried bones of my great-great grandparents and my great-grandparents and my grandparents and my mother and father. That's why I want the BIA to understand me. The bones of my ancestors are here. Our prayers are all here. From the hogan out in all four directions we pray for peace and health. Mostly we do it by the new moon and the full moon. It is the way we will be known by the Holy People and the Mother Earth. Inside our four sacred mountains are the guts of the Mother Earth. The coal is her liver, the uranium her lungs, and so on."

"It is for these that the white people want the land here on the Navajo Reservation. The Creator gave us prayers to protect this land. It is all in our songs which are sacred. It is for these reasons I am asking you to stop the injustice and the destruction of our lands and our people. We do not recognize this law 93-531. We had no way to understand this thing being done to us. It is against our laws. It is working against us. We are going hungry because our livestock is being taken away. We are homeless because we can't build. We are losing our children. The damming and the fencing, all this is the law we don't understand. Please help us to stop this inhumane treatment of our people and our animals and our land. When our young people come home from the war, what can we tell them they fought for? Let us have the peace and the treaties that gave us the right to our own land."