Navajos Confront Chinese in America the Diverse

The BBC website is currently featuring a longish report on a complex but fascinating episode involving conflict between Chinese migrants and Navajo Indians over hemp/marijuana production on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

Briefly, here’s how it went: last year, hundreds of Chinese migrants (we’re not told their legal status), out of work due to the Wuhan virus, were lured from their homes in California’s San Gabriel Valley to New Mexico with the offer of jobs trimming “flowers.” Once there, they say they were told the so-called flowers were hemp buds–closely related to the still-illegal (on Indian land) marijuana, but nevertheless entirely legal.

Some of the Navajos willingly leased their land to the developers, who turned out to be Chinese investors looking to get into what they regard as a burgeoning American industry. Supporting the investors was a Navajo businessman named Dineh Benally, president of the San Juan River Farm Board.

Other tribal members were not so happy with the presence of the Chinese “guests,” and protests began on the streets of Shiprock, New Mexico. One of the protest’s organizers, Kyle Jim, told the Navajo Times newspaper that his group was “not protesting hemp but rather the disrespectful nature of the workers” brought into the area. Jim said of the guest workers:

They’ve been involved with illegal dumping, whether its domestic waste or human waste. This is in no way a racial issue. They are not accounted for and they use all our resources within the community starting with the land, water and people. Only one who benefits from this is Dineh Benally himself and his so-called guests.

In the first of the protests, about one hundred local residents marched through Shiprock,  carrying signs saying things like, “We Don’t Need Chinese to Farm” and “Hemp is Not the Navajo Way.” One young boy shouted into a microphone, “No Asian invasion!”

Meanwhile, suspicions grew among the Navajo that the dozens of farms that were now spreading across the 27,000-square-mile reservation might be growing something stronger than non-psychoactive hemp. And eventually, after months of red tape, scientific analyses of various plants revealed that the farms were indeed growing potent, high-grade marijuana. In November, a three-day sweep of the area by local police and sheriff’s deputies netted 60,000 pounds of illegal marijuana from 21 farms and two private homes. It also resulted in the arrests of 17 Chinese guest workers, found in the act of pruning plants whose true nature they claim to be ignorant of. In addition, tribal police–who have no authority over non-Navajos–arrested 38 more on the reservation.

In spite of the raids, arrests, and protests, apparently some of the original 36 farms remain in operation, although most of the hundreds of Chinese “guests” have scattered.

The BBC piece provides a lot more details about this intriguing case. You can find it at the broadcaster’s website. For more, see also the Navajo Times.