This situation invites harassment, intimidation, coercion, and the most extreme violation of our legal and human rights. In actuality, the dispute stems from the greed of energy corporations, federal interests, and the Hopi Tribal Council to exploit vast coal reserves in the Hopi Partition land. The resulting Joint Use Area was to be shared between the Hopi and Navajo people in accordance with their traditional cooperative land use habits. This land is the traditional home and sacred site of the Dineh people, being surrounded by the few sacred mountains that anchor their religion. The Dineh people have lived on these lands since before the arrival of Columbus.
Some families can trace their ancestry on the land back over twenty-five generations.
Throughout the dispute, heavy handed tactics have been used to pressure Dineh residents into accepting relocation. The Bennett Freeze, enacted in 1972, outlawed housing construction and repair for people living in the HPL area. Twenty-five percent of the relocates have die as a result of toxic exposure and loss of their cultural connection to their land. These are some of the human rights abuses executed by the U.S. government and the Hopi Tribal Council are an act of genocide against the Dineh people. The Manybeads Lawsuit of 1988, based on First Amendment religious freedom issues, mandated mediation between the Dineh resistors and the Hopi - Tribal Council.