And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Tribal officials issue alert on need to reduce herds http://www.azcentral.com/news/0524dry.shtml By Bill Donovan May 24, 1999 WINDOW ROCK -- When tribal officials began warning Navajo ranchers in 1996 that a major drought was coming, they found few willing to listen. The reasons for the resistance were both cultural and historical, as well as economic. But over the next year, as the reservation was hit by the century's worst drought, ranchers had to sell off a large part of their herds or sit around and watch them die. Today, history is threatening to repeat itself. "We're now facing the same situation," said Eugene Guerito, director of the tribe's emergency management department. "Hopefully, this time, more will listen." But that is no sure thing. For traditional Navajos, raising livestock is linked to their religion, as reflected in the saying, "If you care for your sheep, your sheep will care for you." And in 1996, many Navajo ranchers feared that the warnings of drought were merely a ploy by federal officials to reduce tribal herds to improve the grazing capacity of tribal lands. In the end, tribal grazing officials estimated that the ranchers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by waiting until many of their sheep and cattle were near starvation. Precipitation this past winter has been way below normal, and tribal range officials said that forecasts for this summer say the situation isn't going to improve. Already, a number of communities in the western portion of the reservation, north of Flagstaff, have been complaining of dry conditions, said Elizabeth Washburne, director of the tribe's department of agriculture. "We're now in the process of telling Navajo ranchers to take whatever steps they need now to reduce their herd size," he said. To do this, Guerito and other tribal officials have been using a bit of Anglo psychology. "We've been urging Navajo ranchers to reduce their herds so they won't have to work as hard day in and day out," he said. He added that this is a concept that takes traditional Navajos - used to working from dawn to dusk - a while to get used to. Tribal officials must also contend with traditional Navajo values that base a person's wealth on the number of livestock his family has. Navajos' suspicion over officials' cries of "drought" stem from a long- standing battle with the Bureau of Indian Affairs over stock reduction that dates back to the 1930s. At that time, federal officials ordered hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle to be slaughtered and dumped in mass graves to alleviate overgrazing. But tribal officials are telling Navajo ranchers that the current drought conditions aren't coming just from the BIA. The May report for the Palmer Drought Severity Index, used by meteorologists to predict weather trends, has shown steadily worsening drought conditions in the Southwest in the last few months; it now indicates moderate to severe drought in slightly more than half of Arizona. Since May and June are normally dry and hot in most parts of the state, the forecast indicates that drought conditions "will certainly worsen" over the next few weeks...<<END EXCERPT Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
