Once upon a time, I too shared in the generally warm, fuzzy, positive feelings of Senator John McCain held by the majority of the population. I even forgave him a little bit for the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform dealie.
But this is unforgivable.
From the site:
Navajo and Hopi families residing on Big Mountain and the surrounding area of the Black Mesa in northern Arizona may be forced to relocate as a new senate bill, S1003 “The Navajo Hopi Land Settlement Act Amendments of 2005,” goes before Congress. If passed, the bill will permanently displace the Navajo and Hopi, and, according to a press release by the Black Mesa Indigenous Support organization, “relieve the federal government of any further responsibility for the relocated people.” Sponsored by Senator John McCain, S1003 was initiated at nearly the same time as Peabody Coal, the world’s largest coal company, expressed an interest in the Navajo land. Peabody Coal plans to expand its strip mining into this area, where billions of tons of low-sulfur coal are located.
And people still mistake the Republicans for free-market types, somehow.
My wife spent most of last summer on the Hopi reservation, interning with a local church for a psychology degree. She told me stories of the people on there, and I indeed know a few of them. Thinking that they will be forced to move off of the scraps the feds left them from the last 250 years pisses me off. This is eminent domain on a scale unimaginable… but the bastards will probably get away with it. Since when has our racist federal government given a damn about the Native Americans, after all? Environmentalists can bitch and moan about ANWR, to save some wildlife… but flesh and blood human beings have less right to their land than animals, apparently, so long as they’re natives.
sucker, ʟʟᴄ