Senator McCain: we have learned that during and throughout your career, you have consistently sponsored bills to transfer the Coal Rights, which runs to hundreds of billions of dollars of Coal, out from under the rightful owners of Black Mesa, the Native Navajo, Hopi and Dineh, into the hands of Coal Mining Companies paying paltry or unrealized license fees that have now way of benefiting the rightful owners, and that you manipulated the system to benefit the patronage of the Coal Industry and its clients in the Casinos in Las Vegas.  Please answer the following questions.

SENATOR MCCAIN...

1) PL 104-301, which you sponsored in 1996, authorized the forcible relocation as of February 1,2000, of Navajo families who did not sign leases with the Hopi Tribe. A number of families have refused to sign these leases. Do you feel that the forcible relocation of native people who are living on their traditional land is consistent with the statements of the High Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations?  Were you aware that they have been investigating the treatment of the Navajo and Hopi?  Is this a good way for the US government to open the new millenium ? Does this reflect the way that you believe the US government should treat its Indigenous peoples or does treat them ?  Do you believe this treatment is a violation of their Human Rights, inasmuch as thousands have suffered early mortility or impoverishment since the enactments?

2) PL 104-301, which you sponsored in 1996, ratifies a settlement agreement under which the Navajo families who sign leases are not allowed to vote or participate in the government which rules them.
Why do you feel that Native Americans are not entitled to vote or to have civil rights ?

3) PL 104-301, which you sponsored, authorized $25 million for the Hopi Tribe if they could obtain the signatures of 85% of the 112 Navajo families on leases. Did you anticipate that placing a $260,000 bounty
on each signature would lead to abuses in the process through which these signatures were obtained ? Are you familiar with reports from the Navajo families that signatures were obtained under the threat of jail, beatings or immediate eviction ? Do you feel that the few signatures obtained under these circumstances constitute an endorsement of your policy ?

4) PL 104-301, which you sponsored, set up a livestock permitting system for Navajo families that left many of the families without protection for their herds. Many of them are elderly people who depend on these herds for their survival. Do you believe that the confiscation of the sole means of survival of elderly people is consistent with the goals of the US Govenrnment's alleged "support" for Indian Affairs?

5) PL 104-301, which you sponsored, completes the settlement of a contrived land title dispute between the Hopi and Navajo Tribal governments. The key figure in the history of the land dispute was an attorney named John Boyden, who formed the current Hopi government and obtained BIA recognition for it in 1953, and who was the architect of the original relocation legislation back in the 1970's which bears some resemblence to the present law implementing a relocation based on effecting an accomodation of the interests of Peabody Coal. Boyden was, at the time he did this work, also working for the Peabody Coal Company. Do you believe that it is appropriate for Congress to continue Indian Affairs policies that are based on land title established by the intent of a coal company ? Are you willing to consider legislation that revises the land title to reflect the traditional occupancy and use ?  Did you not pick up the work of Boyden as a Congressman and a Senator and carry it forward for the purposes it is now being used: to forcibly transfer the rights in the territory to mine coal, to Peabody?

6) Most other nations now recognize the right of Indigenous people to remain on their traditional land. S1973, which you sponsored, requires the relocation next year of people whose families have occupied the land for hundreds of years. Why do you believe that the US should not recognize their right to remain on their land ?

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