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By MEGAN BACHMAN F ar from the fertile green fields of Yellow Springs, in the arid high desert of the four corners region of Arizona, live the scattered families of the Diné (Navajo) tribe. They have, for decades, resisted federal government attempts to remove them from their ancestral land, and have done so with the help of some steadfast Yellow Springs residents who live without electricity, herd sheep and carry water for two Diné elders during cold, windy winters. The work of those local residents is more than an act of solidarity for an oppressed minority struggling to keep alive its traditional ways. In the formi- dable country of Black Mesa, Arizona, in the midst of dire poverty, are a people taking a stand against the encroachment of the industrial world on an indigenous culture. And that is worth supporting, they said. In 2012, local supporters gave a talk and screened the 1984 film "Broken Rainbow" to raise awareness about, and funds for, Diné resistance. “It’s a genocidal policy,” local supporter Jenny Johnson said of the 1974 federal resettlement act, which mandated that 14,000 Diné move from their land to border towns hundreds of miles away. The Diné land would then be granted to Supporting Native resisters the neighboring Hopi tribe, whom John- son said would in turn lease its vast min- eral resources — including coal, uranium and natural gas — to energy companies like Peabody Coal. “It’s ripping people’s culture away from them,” Johnson continued. “The land is central to their cultural identity and to their existence and to move off their land is like losing their soul.” Johnson and Jake Stockwell, both former Antioch students, have lived for six-month stretches in simple hogan- style huts and spent their days chopping wood and herding sheep for Diné elder Pauline Whitesinger. Local farmer Terry Snider returned last week from a three- month shepherding stint at the home of Ida Mae Clinton, known as “Grandma Ida.” Clinton and Whitesinger, in their 80s or 90s, are part of a small and dwindling number of Diné living in defiance of the federal relocation policy, amidst threats and harassment. Many are poor and elderly. The struggle to survive alone in the desert is especially daunting over winter, which is when Johnson, Stockwell and Snider come to help. “As long as Grandma Ida is there, they’re not mining coal,” said Snider, who has spent the last five winters with her. Snider, who is 71, is inspired that an 85-year-old woman has stood up to the U.S. government for 38 years. Clinton is the only Diné left on Star Mountain and has at times resorted to hand-to-hand combat to protect her land from Hopi fence-builders. A few hundred miles to the north, on Big Mountain, is Whitesinger, who doesn’t speak English — she only speaks the native Diné Bizaad language — and lives without electricity. Recently, four of her cows were confiscated by Hopi rang- ers and had to be repurchased for $420, a large sum for a subsistence farmer. Sheep are central to the Diné, who eat the meat and weave rugs from the wool, so volunteers spend much of their time walking for miles, taking the sheep out to pasture and distant watering holes. The work is tough. Snider walks five to 12 miles a day with the sheep in hilly terrain in rapidly changing weather con- ditions. And he must fetch all the water for cooking, cleaning and bathing from miles away. But “it’s good work,” and is the least he can do considering the way that Native Americans have been treated, Snider said. Though life is difficult for the remain- ing Diné, the alternative may be worse, Johnson said. If they are relocated, they are given $5,000 and a house. But the house requires constant utility payments and the Diné must get jobs. Worse yet, in the words of Johnson, “They are uprooted and expected to survive in a white man’s culture,” and must give up their traditional way of life, she said. Plus if the Diné leave the land, it will likely be mined for coal and other resources, Johnson said, which would wreak havoc on the land, water and air. The resistance will not go on forever. Clinton and Whitesinger are getting older and the energy-industrial complex marches ever closer to native lands. But the act of standing up for the Diné resonates still. “For Grandma Ida to hang on to what’s decent in spite of the government is awesome,” Snider said. “Anywhere I can support that resistance to the competi- tive, greedy system that’s around us, I will.” Editor’s Note: Both Diné elders died in 2014. At the time of their deaths, only three or four families remained. Snider also died, in December 2018. SUBMITTED PHOTO Jenny Johnson, left, and Jake Stockwell, right, spent several months each year for many years at the Diné reservation in the four corners region of Arizona, herding sheep for Diné elder Pauline Whitesinger, center, to support the tribe’s resistance to a federal relocation policy.