Rez plagued by 'poverty pimps'

There is a problem plaguing Diné people in the reservation. My arguments are based in real life experiences with nonprofit organizations that monopolize on our miseries while creating a comfortable lifestyle for themselves.

The four "poverty pimps" I'd like to talk about are: Developing Innovations in Navajo Education, Inc. (Kyril Calsoyas, Flagstaff), Forgotten People (Marsha Monestersky, Tuba City), Purpose Focused (Joann Armenta, Whittier, Calif.) and Tolani Lake Enterprises, Inc. (Ron White).

While trying to understand the different personalities, behaviors and the politics involved we see that these selfish actors mirror the actions of ethnic frauds like Ward Churchill, Thom Alcoze (Northern Arizona University) and Ray Pierotti (University of Kansas).

In this discussion you will see that this is by design with regard to neo-colonized behaviors, that there are direct relationships between these two examples. While all of these non-profits intentionally marginalize participants in their play, one in particular (Forgotten People) goes beyond all this in destruction of relationships and dire manipulation of cultural mores within this structure.

All four nonprofits have transparency issues, have a Navajo face (board of directors), use Robert's Rule of Order (stops the traditional grassroots voice), are gatekeepers, use the media for their personal gain, hire from the outside or hire their friends exclusively, and always, always leave an empty legacy.

Kyril Calsoyas in December 1992 completed his doctoral dissertation, "The Soul of Education: A Navajo Perspective" (NAU). Alcoze approved this move by design. Oddly, three of the four nonprofits all hail from the education field.

We see this happening today. Isabella Walker, an important highly visible member of many political Navajo tribal administrations (chairman to president eras) is married to Calsoyas. This gives him exclusive insight into our tribal affairs and beyond this, Calsoyas is the elitist poverty pimp, a title he is quite proud to bear.

Those of you he gave laptops to as a gift should know that he knows where you go, what sites you visit and he can see your email exchanges. Power is key to him.

Tolani Lake Enterprises in many respects is defunct but leaves behind the biggest empty legacy that is in my backyard. Ron White built Tolani Lake Elementary School Academy, the beautifully completed domes (originally teacher housing) that sat unused for many years, a senior citizen's home that sits completely finished and ready to use but the monies to operate this facility do not exist.

I was a founding member of Naataanii Community Services Inc., that was an umbrella nonprofit with TLE and I managed to bring in a $3 million NAHASDA grant to rebuild in the Bennett Freeze. These dreams fell through as White absconded with the planning monies ($300K). Today, Bill Edwards bravely heads up this company and is trying his best to address these issues.

More recently, Purpose Focused came onto the landscape to help people in the former Bennett Freeze. To jumpstart her vision, Armenta proposed an earth day festival to be held in two places: Service to All Relations School (STAR School) and the Naataanii area community were selected.

Many of us worked with her, even putting up with her mental and verbal abuse. Toward the end I fired her for these actions. She left (with all the money) after putting on the event at the STAR School. We had to scramble to meet our concert obligations in Naataanii.

It was at this time I discovered that she made deals with white New Age performers to come into the reservation and she would pay them outlandish fees. She pressed me to bring in Native performers at no cost to the event. This was further personified by the building of a stage. She hired one man from Oregon and another from Texas paying their round-trip airfare, lodging and food.

In my community (as in many Navajo communities) we have very talented, experienced carpenters that would have taken care of building a better stage than that constructed. This stage sits empty and unused because it's not safe and beyond this, all the players at the STAR School event were also paid for their time, lodging, airfare and the like.

If you Google "Navajo uranium contamination" you will get about 165,000 results. Google "Forgotten People' you will get about 38,600,000 results. The Forgotten People within the Navajo lens is an organization managed by Marsha Monestersky (from New York City), an affirmed communist and a consummate Zionist trained in the art of war (these are her words).

The board she directs also drives her about and serves as her interpreter. A grassroots establishment that prides itself in its get-in-your-face militant persona is one that capriciously files lawsuits while sadly milking its membership to pay attorney salary (Jim Zion).

Monestersky promotes infighting among Navajo families and dividing reservation communities along the Window Rock versus grassroots entity storyline. Her actions go against tribal cultural norms and values. She came to us by way of Big Mountain where they ousted her but the residents of Big Mountain will not give reason for their actions. Within this, the Hopi Tribe has an exclusion order against her and she openly laughs about this legal sovereign action.

Monestersky's words are heavily ingrained with the media-at-large and she is fluent in the use of the Internet. This is usually dangerous when it involves tribes and intellectual property as it relates to marketing culture without tribal permission to publish or produce videos and the like on the net.

To prove my point, if you attend an EPA conference where the Forgotten are presenting you will see her taking credit for creating perception into this narrative. She will hog the presentation time as well but beyond this, she takes credit (online) for bestowing this story to the world.

While researching my allegations, I came across an EPA workshop where she presented with Dr. Lee Greer (La Sierra University, Riverside, Calif.) in Tuba City a position paper, "Forgotten People-Building Capacity Decolonizing the Navajo Nation-Using Grassroots Driven Development and Activism to Secure Environmental Justice."

How is it that a couple of invaders can present on subject matter foreign to them?

Further, on Feb. 15, 2011, I met with Greer at his campus and specifically told him to follow protocols with references to publishing a DNA health study that he is currently working on with Monestersky.

The Navajo Nation government's role today has been negatively impacted by a transparency civil lawsuit filed by Monestersky. The Navajo Hopi Land Commission as a result cannot do its job in service delivery. Civil lawsuits in Navajo take on the average 11 years to resolve.

Within this, recent activities in human safe water delivery into Black Falls have been sabotaged by her and she has been evicted from water meetings held in Window Rock for creating disturbances and disruptions.

I conclude this letter with an appeal to my Diné people: Let us get together and work toward a brighter future grounded in the words of my late aunt Stella who spoke of respect and k'é.

I ask your support to get behind Mr. Raymond Maxx, our executive director with the Navajo Hopi Land Commission, and his staff to transform the conflict that Monestersky has imposed on us and to rid her of our conscious. In the physical realm, I ask that her removal from our reservation happen immediately.

Robert Redsteer
Naataanii Peacebuilders Alliance
Leupp, Ariz.

[Courtesy of Navajo Times, July 28, 2011, Letters to the Editor]

Traditional Resisters’ Last Stand Against Growing American Domination

(Photos by Demitra Tsioulos, 2008) Blackrock's grandkids & Where Lizard Dipped Its Hand in Water Sheep Camp.

Elder Resisters, Mary Lou & Clarence Blackrock, Call for Need for Crucial Awareness About A Dying Culture at Big Mountain
Translation by Bahe Y. Katenay

July 2011, Cactus Valley – Big Mountain, Arizona – Mary Lou and Clarence did this interview at their sheep camp near Little Spring of One With Blackhorse. The interviewer was Christophe Cousin from the France TV CanalPlus’s The New Explorer show. These programs are series of short discovery documentary about “off-the-mainstream, beaten paths” where people’s culture is based on pastoral or farming livestyles and whose cultural ways may now face the challenges of change and modernism.]

Mary Lou: Where I was born was right across this canyon (pointing westward) near where Red Willow Spring Canyon empties into Blue Canyon. It was said that I was born in a traditional shade shelter and so it was in the late summer time when I was born. The families stayed together and they moved about in this particular area and sometime they moved over on the eastside of the Upper Big Mountain range. Growing up then, I remember life seemed pure because you really never heard of different diseases or devastating sicknesses. I think my mother utilized a lot of the medicinal plants to cure our minor ailments and most of our foods came from these lands as well. Sheep was always a part of life and so were the crop fields, too.

How life has changed since then? I would have to say the forcible taking of my children. My children are not on the lands with me, and this is contrary to me growing into adulthood around my mother and the extended family. This change I feel has been the greatest pain and hardship that Washington (U.S. government) has inflicted upon me. As dedicated mothers especially in Dineh (Navajo) society, we begin to think about our new born of how we would raise them and the expectations for their future on these ancestral lands, and just as I was raised.

Well, the most memorable joyful moments that I remember in my younger days began when I hid from my mother so that, she will end up herding the sheep herself. I had a couple of colts corralled and I lasso one. I fought with it a bit and then when it settled down, I tried to put the saddle on. This I tried for a couple of days, but finally I secured the saddle and cautiously climbed into the saddle, and it kicked and bucked for a little bit but it began to be tamed.

(Inset photo by Demitra Tsioulos) Mary Lou with weaving & rough ridin' days according to Her story.

One time also, there was this bigger younger pony but I led it to a distance neighbor where I asked the riders to help me. We began to subdue this big pony and eventually we saddled it. I climbed into the saddle but the men were trying to discourage me. The gentleman holding the head and ears of the pony asked me, “Now what?” I told him to release the ears and pull off the blindfolds. The pony immediately bolted and began galloping so fast and I hung on. I was riding across the canyon near Where the Line of Trees Come Out and toward the distance canyon walls and giant boulders. I noticed some of the men were on horseback trying to catch up. (Laughs.) I and the big strong pony reached the scattered boulders when it suddenly turned around and back down into the valley. I could see the other riders still trying to catch up and the large trail of dust rising into the air like we were having a great stampede. My strong pony began trotting and I eventually rode it calmly, the entire way home.

Life was all about having our hogans and moving around with our herds during the summer time. There were plenty of sheep and goats, some cattle and then horses. I eventually acquired my own herds and horses. There was much happiness or exuberance that came with herding and caring for the sheep, cattle and horses. Then there were the crop fields where we planted and harvested. Certainly, all these are hard work but in the end, the results were what was rewarding and living this way led to loving your country very deeply.

For these reasons and when the Washington came to me years back, I told them that I will not accept their relocation laws. I told them, “I reject your offers and I shall remain among these lands and home sites. This place is where I conduct my daily business for Life and for my Life!” So, this is the only culture, language and ways of subsistence I know and I know no other. (They) took some of us on a field trip to the New Lands where we would be relocated if we accepted the offer. It is true that those lands had beautiful settings, but I looked at the ground and I did not recognized the vegetation. I begin to wonder “how could (they) expect me to train myself to learn about that strange vegetation?” (They) even told us that they will allow us plenty of animals more than what we have on our original lands. I took that as a lie immediately.

My children have already accepted that urban life styles. They all have gone into that so deeply that if I ever was given back the authority to decide the future of these lands and ways of life, the children will care less about making their homes around here. I truly feel that I am near the end of it all, I am not as agile as I once was, my eyes cannot see the weavings that I work on, and now I am someone that does not cook for herself anymore. I cannot provide a room or space for my children to sleep or live while they visit us. The government tells them “No!” They are not allowed to build anything. A few have accepted the relocation offer and they live elsewhere these days.

The country is now empty. Only the BIA tribal authority and police drive about occasionally to “monitor” us but I do not speak English so I do not know why they keep checking on us. I just have a guess that they probably are keeping vigil for that time when we have exhausted all our existence and soon after we would be gone. Then they probably will take upon themselves to do whatever they had wished to do with these lands. I have declared to my family that “when that time comes when ‘something’ takes me away that, everyone makes sure that I am cremated and my ashes be scattered among these lands, here.” At least, my ashes will give little smudges of colour throughout.

(Photos by Demitra Tsioulos, 2008) clockwise: Well near Cottonwood Springs, Blackrock's herds in rock shelter corral, outside summer cooking stove when non-Native supporters helped at sheep camp.

Clarence: The BIA cops and rangers had tore down this hogan and they had stacked all the logs out there near that road. My children, the men, decided to rebuild it because our sheep camp is still here. The federal tribal authorities also tore down other structures around here like the one on the slope of this north mesa point. Those hogans and corrals were situated nicely and they dismantled it and you can only see stacked logs there now.

Our histories [1860-1868], here, about the wars with the U. S. and the escape by some from capture of its Army should be very important to us and to the next generations, as well. Unfortunately, it seems that the new generation does not care about these histories. This history is part of the foundation that defines our resistance to relocation here at Cactus Valley, Red Willow Springs, Thin Rock Mesa, and Big Mountain. Even some of these sheep herds are descendants from those that were issued during the release from Fort Sumner and from those that escaped the Army’s slaughtering.

It does not matter if we lived on the so-called “Hopi Partitioned Lands,” the Navajo Nation still expects us to participate in the electoral processes. But we do not see the results of our Votes which were to be “change.” Mary Lou and I live in a house that is falling apart. All we hear about is corruption and that leadership in Window Rock has taken bribes or stole out of certain funds. It definitely seems like the root of these behaviors comes from Washington because the same stories are heard about the leadership at the federal level.

How should it be? I do not know. Our own community should restart its grassroots councils.

© Sheep Dog Nation Media, 2011

For more on this genocide and the struggles for survival, and how you can help: http://blackmesais.org/take_action/