Sally Young says she's reaped few benefits from a coal-fed power plant near her home.

Three thousand people--many of them elderly and living a traditional way of life, bound inseparably to the land--are suffering needlessly from the consequences of greed. About 12,000 others have already been forced from their homes. To stay on their ancestral land - and to ensure future generations can do the same - a group of traditional Dineh Navajo have appealed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. They have filed a complaint with the UN charging that the United States policy of forced relocation violates their human rights.

This is about the largest forced relocation of American Indians in the 20th century to make way for Peabody Western Coal Company to strip mine the ancestral lands of the Dineh. This is being done with the aid of the corrupt US and tribal governments. The Dineh who have refused to leave their land and relocate to government supplied land (the site of a major radioactive spill) are being harassed with illegal eviction notices and livestock confiscations, deprived of their well water and firewood, and forced to live in constant fear.

February 2000 is the deadline for final expulsion...

The history of this Navajo relocation is over 100 years old. In 1882, the US created a reservation for the Hopi and other Indians. The Hopi reserve, however, is set within a larger Navajo reservation.

The Hopis have lived for at least 500 years on these ancestral lands, next to the Navajo. Societies thrived using traditional dry crop farming. Areas of this land, that was used by both tribes, was given the legal name of "joint use areas."

In 1974 Congress divided the joint lands making some Hopi lands and some Navajo lands. So, thousands of Navajo were stranded on Hopi land and hundreds of Hopi families found themselves on Navajo land. Since then, the US has spent over $400 million to relocate the families to tract housing in nearby cities, towns, and rural areas.

The Navajo greatly felt the trauma of relocation. Many wound up homeless because of real estate fraud, expensive mortgages, and unaffordable taxes. Suicide, alcoholism, family break-up, emotional abuse, and death soared. Several studies since 1974 have documented these problems linked to Navajo relocation.

The traditionalists see the land as the essence of their being. They are related to the earth - the mountains, the vegetation, the animals…The threat of relocation adversely affected these people's physical and spiritual health.

In 1996, Congress adopted a law that lets the remaining Navajo stay on Hopi land as tenants for 75 years. The law also sanctions relocation of families who don't sign the leases. However, it creates a $25 million dollar incentive to Hopis if they get 85 percent of the remaining 1,500 people to sign.

The Navajo claim that as a result of this law, the Hopis are doing everything in their power to get the signatures. They claim that Hopi and US Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officials are confiscating their livestock, posting eviction notices on their doors, and threatening to burn their homes. Many don't want to sign the leases, which require rental fees, and would grant Navajo recognition of Hopi control over their land.

The Peabody Coal Company, which runs the mine at Black Mesa says tribal royalties total about $40 million a year - money that pays for roads, schools, police, fire, and sanitation services. They say that 92% of the mine's 350 workers are native Americans.

But the Navajo have not shared in the mine's bounty. Those who live near the mine endure air pollution and health problems.

With their hopes on the pending report from the UN, the Dineh say they will continue to press their case in the international arena. They are trying to schedule additional visits by other UN officials, whose special mandates range from human rights to the environment.

They are backing lawsuits against the mine and two local power plants for exceeding pollution standards. And they are asking people from Las Vegas to Los Angeles - whose electricity comes from the mine-fed power plants - to switch to other power sources.

In tribal officialdom, both sides say they hope to resolve the dispute. "We are still hoping the Hopi and Navajo can come to some harmonious solution over these lands," says Navajo Nation spokeswoman Gerri Harrison.

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Lives, indigenous native American culture, and human rights are being sacrificed in order to provide short term profits for a nonsustainable [coal mine]. Because all efforts to obtain justice in the US judicial system have been exhausted, the Dineh people have no other choice but to formally request the UN to investigate these glaring violations."