Schaghticokes seek state help in dispute
01/31/2009
HARTFORD -- Schaghticoke Indians held a multi-hour vigil Thursday outside the Capitol, asking the state to stop an intruder from building roads, tearing down trees, and spoiling archeological sites on their 400-acre reservation in Kent.
Led by Chief Richard L. Velky, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation and its supporters -- about 80 people in all -- presented petitions signed by about 2,000 people to Gov. M. Jodi Rell's office, asking for the state to intercede.
But state officials, including Rell, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the state Department of Environmental Protection, say the developer who has been allowed onto the reservation in recent years was given access to the property by another tribal faction.
For that reason, the state can't stop what he is doing there, but the DEP has offered to pay for a mediator in the intra-tribal dispute.
Velky, of Woodbury, who is employed at the printing plant of the Connecticut Post, said this is not a fight among tribe members.
"The state of Connecticut would rather make this a conflict between factions instead of protecting our land, which according to the state statutes, they should abide by," Velky said in a rally on the Capitol's north steps.
"Artifacts have been dug up, burial grounds have been destroyed, and the state of Connecticut just doesn't seem to care."
Velky, who has been chief since 1987, said the state should accept the request of the tribe's governing body. "We have tried desperately to reach out to the Hartford Capitol up here, but again they have done nothing about it," he said.
He said protecting the land has nothing to do with Schaghticokes' attempt to obtain federal recognition, which was rejected in 2008 after a nearly five-year effort and now awaits action in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
The tribe is recognized under Connecticut state law.
Chris Cooper, Rell's Capitol spokesman, said Thursday afternoon he accepted the petitions from a tribal delegation.
"The governor supports the efforts of the DEP to work with the tribe," Cooper said in an interview. "They have offered the services of a mediator. Since the dispute concerns property, if it boils down to a legal issue, certainly there's redress in the state courts."
Blumenthal, in a phone interview Thursday night, said, "The unfortunate fact of the matter is there is a continuing internal dispute involving at least two apparently credible factions that have been locked in a tumultuous battle for years and years.
He said two state Supreme Court cases bar Connecticut from participating in arguments over land and tribal governance.
"We must respect the legally established sovereignty of this tribe," Blumenthal said, suggesting the tribe go to state court to solve the argument or accept the state's mediation offer.
"The question of whether this individual who is on the land at the invitation and with permission of one of the factions has a proper reason or basis for being there depends on the question of who is legally entitled to give him permission, and that's an internal issue," Blumenthal said
He added that he "sympathetic" to the tribe's pleas to stop damage to the reservation, but "we can't intervene or intrude anymore than if another private property owner took actions that he might be entitled to do."
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_11599495
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
5 indicted for American Indian artifact looting
5 indicted for American Indian artifact looting
Associated Press
Published Sunday, January 25, 2009
EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. — The pottery, stone knives, arm bands and other American Indian items sitting in a vendor’s booth or posted online look innocent enough, but the centuries-old artifacts taken from South Dakota’s rugged Missouri River banks don’t belong to the sellers.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has indicted five men, accusing them of looting or trading the ancient items.
The river’s banks are “supplying the rest of the country the artifacts they want for their collections,” said Richard Harnois, senior field archaeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers in Pierre. “There isn’t anywhere else in the country that is like this. You have a huge drainage system populated by people for 12,000 years and banks that are eroding.”
Federal laws prohibit the removal of human remains, funerary items and other sacred items from public and Indian land and bans anyone from knowingly buying those items. It is legal for landowners to take items from their own property.
“It sure seems to be the Missouri River trenches is the honey pot,” Harnois said.
“It’s just one huge artifact mine for some of these folks.”
Those indicted are: Brian Ekrem, 28, Selby, S.D.; Richard Geffre, 49, Pierre, S.D.; Elliot Hook, 52, Wessington Springs, S.D.; Scott Matteson, 60, Fort Pierre, S.D.; and John Sheild, 77, of Madison, Wis.
Their lawyers either had no comment or could not be reached for comment.
They each pleaded not guilty in federal court in Pierre to charges that include excavating and trafficking in archaeological resources and trafficking in Native American cultural resources.
Among the items: copper arm bands and bracelets, beads, stone knives, bone tools, pipes, pottery, bone fish hooks, antler arrow points, hammers, cannonballs, British and French gun flints.
The illegal taking and trading of artifacts from public and Indian land has been fairly constant among collectors, but online auction sites give people with an interest in ancient items the chance to profit from it, Harnois said.
“It really opened up the market and enabled these folks to sell stuff,” he said.
“It’s the money they want,” Halley Maynard, a tribal cultural preservation monitoring enforcement officer for the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
“These sites are going back thousands and thousands of years.”
Richard Lofton, a cultural preservation technician with the tribe, said that besides the loss of artifacts, the looters also speed river bank erosion by digging holes that fill with water.
The artifacts belong to everyone and are invaluable for learning about past cultures, he said.
“These are lost for future generations,” Lofton said.
“It’s just history. This may not be our (tribal) band. But it’s still Native American culture.”
U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said the government must try to the preserve historic pieces and not just catch those responsible for illegal trade.
“The artifact cases currently under indictment and investigation involve a significant number of items. An important aspect of the ongoing investigation is to preserve and respectfully return these objects to their rightful places,” he said.
Federal, state and tribal agencies and governments are trying to educate people about laws that prevent the taking of items from public and Indian land, which can be reported by calling 866-NO-SWIPE.
“We’re going to continue to pursue to every extent that we can until some of these folks get the idea to find another hobby or do something different,” Harnois said.
“Until they decide to stop breaking the law, we’re going to keep after them.”
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=103579
Associated Press
Published Sunday, January 25, 2009
EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. — The pottery, stone knives, arm bands and other American Indian items sitting in a vendor’s booth or posted online look innocent enough, but the centuries-old artifacts taken from South Dakota’s rugged Missouri River banks don’t belong to the sellers.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has indicted five men, accusing them of looting or trading the ancient items.
The river’s banks are “supplying the rest of the country the artifacts they want for their collections,” said Richard Harnois, senior field archaeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers in Pierre. “There isn’t anywhere else in the country that is like this. You have a huge drainage system populated by people for 12,000 years and banks that are eroding.”
Federal laws prohibit the removal of human remains, funerary items and other sacred items from public and Indian land and bans anyone from knowingly buying those items. It is legal for landowners to take items from their own property.
“It sure seems to be the Missouri River trenches is the honey pot,” Harnois said.
“It’s just one huge artifact mine for some of these folks.”
Those indicted are: Brian Ekrem, 28, Selby, S.D.; Richard Geffre, 49, Pierre, S.D.; Elliot Hook, 52, Wessington Springs, S.D.; Scott Matteson, 60, Fort Pierre, S.D.; and John Sheild, 77, of Madison, Wis.
Their lawyers either had no comment or could not be reached for comment.
They each pleaded not guilty in federal court in Pierre to charges that include excavating and trafficking in archaeological resources and trafficking in Native American cultural resources.
Among the items: copper arm bands and bracelets, beads, stone knives, bone tools, pipes, pottery, bone fish hooks, antler arrow points, hammers, cannonballs, British and French gun flints.
The illegal taking and trading of artifacts from public and Indian land has been fairly constant among collectors, but online auction sites give people with an interest in ancient items the chance to profit from it, Harnois said.
“It really opened up the market and enabled these folks to sell stuff,” he said.
“It’s the money they want,” Halley Maynard, a tribal cultural preservation monitoring enforcement officer for the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
“These sites are going back thousands and thousands of years.”
Richard Lofton, a cultural preservation technician with the tribe, said that besides the loss of artifacts, the looters also speed river bank erosion by digging holes that fill with water.
The artifacts belong to everyone and are invaluable for learning about past cultures, he said.
“These are lost for future generations,” Lofton said.
“It’s just history. This may not be our (tribal) band. But it’s still Native American culture.”
U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said the government must try to the preserve historic pieces and not just catch those responsible for illegal trade.
“The artifact cases currently under indictment and investigation involve a significant number of items. An important aspect of the ongoing investigation is to preserve and respectfully return these objects to their rightful places,” he said.
Federal, state and tribal agencies and governments are trying to educate people about laws that prevent the taking of items from public and Indian land, which can be reported by calling 866-NO-SWIPE.
“We’re going to continue to pursue to every extent that we can until some of these folks get the idea to find another hobby or do something different,” Harnois said.
“Until they decide to stop breaking the law, we’re going to keep after them.”
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=103579
Monday, January 19, 2009
State delays Indian reburial in Putnam
State delays Indian reburial in Putnam
By Veronica Nett Staff writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The proposed reburial of 600 American Indians unearthed in Putnam County has been caught up again in red tape.
In September, Ohio State University officials turned the remains over to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Putnam County Commissioner Joe Haynes thought the bones would be quickly reburied.
Instead, state officials say they plan to re-inventory the remains and artifacts and try once again to find a tribe to claim them.
Haynes says the state is doing work that has already been finished.
"Ohio State did a complete inventory in the 1990s and we've contacted every tribe that could possibly have a connection to West Virginia," he said.
"Why would you do work that has already been done? To me it sounds like a stalling tactic."
Division of Culture and History officials say they have to reinventory the more than 150 boxes of remains and artifacts to stay in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Under the rules of the 1990 NAGPRA law, the state has to start from step one and go through the process of a complete inventory and attempting to establish a cultural affiliation with a federally recognized tribe to repatriate the remains, said Susan Pierce, deputy state historic preservation officer.
"My ultimate goal is to insure that NAGPRA is followed through on," Pierce said. "The goal of NAGPRA is the return of the human remains to their tribe.... It is ultimately [the tribe's] decision how the human remains will be laid to rest."
The skeletal remains were unearthed in 1963 in Buffalo less than a mile from the present-day Toyota plant. American Electric Power owns the land now.
During the two-year excavation project, crews unearthed countless artifacts and the outlines of a village 400 to 500 years old.
Crews also dug up more than 500 graves. After their exhumation, the bones passed through several institutions, before they ended up in storage at Ohio State University in the early 1990s.
In March 2008, Putnam County commissioners signed a letter stating they were willing to accept the remains and rebury them in an undisclosed site.
Some archaeologists spoke out against the reburials, saying it would destroy the chance for future scientific discoveries about the origins of the remains.
In May 2008, the state and the Putnam County Commission brought the issue of reburying the remains before the NAGPRA review committee. The committee tabled the issue saying there were too many unanswered questions of who had legal control of the skeletal remains.
State culture and history officials intervened and took control of the remains after they were able to locate a lease agreement between Union Carbide and West Virginia stating that all excavation materials would become the property of the state.
The Putnam County Commission did not contest the state action, and the "Buffalo 600" are now at the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Center in Moundsville.
NAGPRA, passed in 1990, allows federally recognized tribes to reclaim Indian remains and artifacts from museums and universities. No federally recognized tribes have claimed the Buffalo 600, and the remains have been deemed "culturally unidentifiable," meaning they cannot be linked to modern-day tribes, Haynes said.
"We were assured they were going to be repatriated," Haynes said. "That was certainly the direction that we were led to believe."
Haynes received a letter from the state in December stating, "Repatriation doesn't necessarily mean reburial."
Pierce said now that the remains are in the control of the Division of Culture and History, they are held accountable to follow NAGRPA.
"We appreciate what Putnam County has attempted to do, but we are still held accountable to do the necessary steps," said Jacqueline Proctor, communications director for the Division of Culture and History.
Ohio State completed an inventory on the remains while they were in the university's possession, but Pierce and Proctor say the inventory needs work.
They also believe conducting another inventory of the remains may lead to overlooked clues to a cultural affiliation.
"It's not just whether somebody is interested in the remains, it's whether or not there is a scientific demonstration that [a tribe is] associated with the remains and they have a true claim," Pierce said.
Neither Pierce nor Proctor would say when the inventory might be complete.
Haynes said the state has enough to go before the NAGRPA review committee to show the remains are "culturally unidentifiable," and seek permission to have them reburied.
The undisclosed site in Putnam County for the reburial is still available and will remain so, he said.
"As long as they get reburied, we can be involved or not be involved. As long as it gets done in a dignified manner that's all that matters," Haynes said. "There are no artifacts here, and the sooner we start thinking of them as people and not artifacts, the more people will understand the urgency here."
Reach Veronica Nett at veroni...@wvgazette.com">veroni...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5113.
http://wvgazette.com/News/200901170627?page=2&build=cache
By Veronica Nett Staff writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The proposed reburial of 600 American Indians unearthed in Putnam County has been caught up again in red tape.
In September, Ohio State University officials turned the remains over to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Putnam County Commissioner Joe Haynes thought the bones would be quickly reburied.
Instead, state officials say they plan to re-inventory the remains and artifacts and try once again to find a tribe to claim them.
Haynes says the state is doing work that has already been finished.
"Ohio State did a complete inventory in the 1990s and we've contacted every tribe that could possibly have a connection to West Virginia," he said.
"Why would you do work that has already been done? To me it sounds like a stalling tactic."
Division of Culture and History officials say they have to reinventory the more than 150 boxes of remains and artifacts to stay in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Under the rules of the 1990 NAGPRA law, the state has to start from step one and go through the process of a complete inventory and attempting to establish a cultural affiliation with a federally recognized tribe to repatriate the remains, said Susan Pierce, deputy state historic preservation officer.
"My ultimate goal is to insure that NAGPRA is followed through on," Pierce said. "The goal of NAGPRA is the return of the human remains to their tribe.... It is ultimately [the tribe's] decision how the human remains will be laid to rest."
The skeletal remains were unearthed in 1963 in Buffalo less than a mile from the present-day Toyota plant. American Electric Power owns the land now.
During the two-year excavation project, crews unearthed countless artifacts and the outlines of a village 400 to 500 years old.
Crews also dug up more than 500 graves. After their exhumation, the bones passed through several institutions, before they ended up in storage at Ohio State University in the early 1990s.
In March 2008, Putnam County commissioners signed a letter stating they were willing to accept the remains and rebury them in an undisclosed site.
Some archaeologists spoke out against the reburials, saying it would destroy the chance for future scientific discoveries about the origins of the remains.
In May 2008, the state and the Putnam County Commission brought the issue of reburying the remains before the NAGPRA review committee. The committee tabled the issue saying there were too many unanswered questions of who had legal control of the skeletal remains.
State culture and history officials intervened and took control of the remains after they were able to locate a lease agreement between Union Carbide and West Virginia stating that all excavation materials would become the property of the state.
The Putnam County Commission did not contest the state action, and the "Buffalo 600" are now at the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Center in Moundsville.
NAGPRA, passed in 1990, allows federally recognized tribes to reclaim Indian remains and artifacts from museums and universities. No federally recognized tribes have claimed the Buffalo 600, and the remains have been deemed "culturally unidentifiable," meaning they cannot be linked to modern-day tribes, Haynes said.
"We were assured they were going to be repatriated," Haynes said. "That was certainly the direction that we were led to believe."
Haynes received a letter from the state in December stating, "Repatriation doesn't necessarily mean reburial."
Pierce said now that the remains are in the control of the Division of Culture and History, they are held accountable to follow NAGRPA.
"We appreciate what Putnam County has attempted to do, but we are still held accountable to do the necessary steps," said Jacqueline Proctor, communications director for the Division of Culture and History.
Ohio State completed an inventory on the remains while they were in the university's possession, but Pierce and Proctor say the inventory needs work.
They also believe conducting another inventory of the remains may lead to overlooked clues to a cultural affiliation.
"It's not just whether somebody is interested in the remains, it's whether or not there is a scientific demonstration that [a tribe is] associated with the remains and they have a true claim," Pierce said.
Neither Pierce nor Proctor would say when the inventory might be complete.
Haynes said the state has enough to go before the NAGRPA review committee to show the remains are "culturally unidentifiable," and seek permission to have them reburied.
The undisclosed site in Putnam County for the reburial is still available and will remain so, he said.
"As long as they get reburied, we can be involved or not be involved. As long as it gets done in a dignified manner that's all that matters," Haynes said. "There are no artifacts here, and the sooner we start thinking of them as people and not artifacts, the more people will understand the urgency here."
Reach Veronica Nett at veroni...@wvgazette.com">veroni...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5113.
http://wvgazette.com/News/200901170627?page=2&build=cache
Saturday, January 17, 2009
CU-Boulder to Host Panel on Native American Religious Practices and Public Lands in the West Jan. 21
CU-Boulder to Host Panel on Native American Religious Practices and Public Lands in the West Jan. 21
January 16, 2009
The University of Colorado at Boulder's Center of the American West and School of Law will host a panel discussion on "Public Lands, Private Ceremonies: Native American Religious Practices and Public Lands in the West" on Jan. 21.
The panel discussion will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Wolf Law Building's Wittemeyer Courtroom on the CU campus. The panel is free and open to the public.
The program is presented by the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Section of the Boulder County Bar Association, an organization dedicated to improving education and opportunities for its lawyer members through programs and community relations, as well as educating the public about their legal rights and responsibilities.
Patty Limerick, director of the Center of the American West, will moderate the panel. Speakers include LouAnn Jacobson, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's Canyon of the Ancients National Monument and Anasazi Heritage Center, Robert Lawrence of Davis, Graham and Stubbs LLP in Denver and Steve Moore, senior staff attorney of the Native American Rights Fund.
The panel will highlight issues that arise when traditional and cultural land use comes into conflict with nonreligious use of land in the American West. The "Arizona Snowbowl Snowmaking Case," the Mt. Taylor uranium exploration case and the Nine-Mile Canyon natural gas exploration case are examples that illustrate the tension between Native American religious practices and nonreligious uses.
Continuing Legal Education credit is available. To sign up for CLE, lawyers should go to the Boulder County Bar Association's Web site at www.boulder-bar.org and go to the calendar.
For more information on the Jan. 21 event call 303-492-4879.
Contact
Patty Limerick, 303-492-4879
Christine Hylbert, christine@boulder-bar.org
Annie Scott, 720-224-8671
http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/6ecd2923385c3240c36228b889fedb3a.html
January 16, 2009
The University of Colorado at Boulder's Center of the American West and School of Law will host a panel discussion on "Public Lands, Private Ceremonies: Native American Religious Practices and Public Lands in the West" on Jan. 21.
The panel discussion will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Wolf Law Building's Wittemeyer Courtroom on the CU campus. The panel is free and open to the public.
The program is presented by the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Section of the Boulder County Bar Association, an organization dedicated to improving education and opportunities for its lawyer members through programs and community relations, as well as educating the public about their legal rights and responsibilities.
Patty Limerick, director of the Center of the American West, will moderate the panel. Speakers include LouAnn Jacobson, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's Canyon of the Ancients National Monument and Anasazi Heritage Center, Robert Lawrence of Davis, Graham and Stubbs LLP in Denver and Steve Moore, senior staff attorney of the Native American Rights Fund.
The panel will highlight issues that arise when traditional and cultural land use comes into conflict with nonreligious use of land in the American West. The "Arizona Snowbowl Snowmaking Case," the Mt. Taylor uranium exploration case and the Nine-Mile Canyon natural gas exploration case are examples that illustrate the tension between Native American religious practices and nonreligious uses.
Continuing Legal Education credit is available. To sign up for CLE, lawyers should go to the Boulder County Bar Association's Web site at www.boulder-bar.org and go to the calendar.
For more information on the Jan. 21 event call 303-492-4879.
Contact
Patty Limerick, 303-492-4879
Christine Hylbert, christine@boulder-bar.org
Annie Scott, 720-224-8671
http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/6ecd2923385c3240c36228b889fedb3a.html
Preservation concerns at Colorado sacred site
Preservation concerns at Colorado sacred site
By Carol Berry, Today correspondent
Story Published: Jan 13, 2009
Story Updated: Jan 13, 2009
BOULDER, Colo. – “What makes a sacred site sacred?” was the question posed to visiting scholars from South America and the U.S. in a workshop at Native American Rights Fund in Boulder.
The answers came from a number of participants in the event, which was part of a study of lands in the post-colonial North American West conducted Dec. 5 by colleges of law at the University of Denver and Georgia State University, and by nonprofit Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc.
But none of the answers were definitive. The consensus was that sacred sites in North America were defined by the indigenous peoples living where they were located, and were often locations where vision quests or similar rituals were held, traditional healing or ceremonial plants were gathered, or certain other events had occurred.
“Sacred places are hard to generalize,” said Steve Moore, a NARF senior staff attorney who has worked for many years on the protection of sacred places. “It’s the land that speaks to the people and the power of the place speaks to the people.”
He told participants about Valmont Butte, a volcanic formation that juts upward from the plains east of Boulder to face the Rocky Mountains to the west.
Cheyenne and Arapaho people had large encampments there in the 1800s, and the butte was also familiar to Ute, Lakota, and other Native nations. During tribal consultation, the Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance was told the butte “has always been considered a sacred place, a place of prayer, contemplation and reverence for all life that surround it, and all that it provides for the people.” Until recently, sweat lodge ceremonies were held there.
But sacred sites are part of a history of dispossession that may come to increasingly include places in South America, as well as those found today in North America.
What occurred in North America over the last 400 years is “replaying itself in parts of South America,” Moore said, terming the workshop a focus on “indigenous issues – often a neglected voice.”
National historic preservation laws and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act have been used with some success in preserving sacred places, but it is difficult to protect places “that have meaning” because legal standards do not relate to indigenous concepts.
“‘Legacy’ just has no meaning,” he said. Indigenous history may go back 10,000 years but 100 years of western thought may not encompass ‘the meaning of the place.’ Or critics may say ‘the Indians just made up those claims (that sites are sacred).’”
When reservations were created in North America, “little thought was given to what was sacred,” he said. Treaties were a “series of sham transactions” to enable western expansion by ending aboriginal title to tribal homelands, including obligations to the Cheyenne and Arapaho that encompassed the Valmont Butte area.
Ties to off-reservation sacred land forms were sometimes severed years after reservations were established, because it was against the law for Indian people to leave those reservations, he said.
But in the last 30 to 40 years – and NARF has been part of that, Moore noted – there has been “a greater renaissance among Indian people to reconnect with their cultures and traditions.”
Valmont Butte preservation is a part of that, because it “still speaks to them (Native nations) very profoundly,” he said.
In discussions with Cheyenne and Arapaho people, elders remembered the butte but couldn’t recall its original place name, although Arapaho leader Niwot had a settlement nearby at the confluence of two forks of Boulder Creek, he said.
Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance formed ties to the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming and a pow wow was held at the University of Colorado as a welcoming-back ceremony to honor their connection to Boulder Valley.
Seminar participants were told that the future of the butte – contaminated in some areas by years of industrial use and radioactive mill tailings – is uncertain. The city of Boulder owns approximately one-third of the area as open space, and the alliance hopes for possible tribal or other beneficial ownership of the remainder, subject to environmental cleanup.
The alliance’s tribal consultation yielded a recommendation that Valmont Butte be allowed to “rest and heal.”
The non-profit alliance works in partnership with the Trust for Public Lands, Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, NARF, and tribal nations, with support from the Native American Journalists Association.
The seminar at NARF included participants from university law faculties in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, as well as from several North American states.
Brazil wants to develop the Amazon and there is growing pressure on indigenous tribes that are being marginalized, although there is also a growing indigenous movement, several conferees noted, adding that the best protection for indigenous peoples may be large reservations where development can be kept at bay.
“But when you start to put people on reservations, you’re going to have to place a culture of 20,000 years on a fraction of their land, and will it begin a process of tearing that culture apart?” Moore questioned. “You’re making a choice to protect them, but at what cost?”
One South American national forest law was ruled invalid because it failed to include the participation of indigenous peoples in forest planning in what was termed “a multicultural issue and a property issue,” pitting individual rights against cultural rights and, at times, individual versus collective rights.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/37348384.html
By Carol Berry, Today correspondent
Story Published: Jan 13, 2009
Story Updated: Jan 13, 2009
BOULDER, Colo. – “What makes a sacred site sacred?” was the question posed to visiting scholars from South America and the U.S. in a workshop at Native American Rights Fund in Boulder.
The answers came from a number of participants in the event, which was part of a study of lands in the post-colonial North American West conducted Dec. 5 by colleges of law at the University of Denver and Georgia State University, and by nonprofit Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc.
But none of the answers were definitive. The consensus was that sacred sites in North America were defined by the indigenous peoples living where they were located, and were often locations where vision quests or similar rituals were held, traditional healing or ceremonial plants were gathered, or certain other events had occurred.
“Sacred places are hard to generalize,” said Steve Moore, a NARF senior staff attorney who has worked for many years on the protection of sacred places. “It’s the land that speaks to the people and the power of the place speaks to the people.”
He told participants about Valmont Butte, a volcanic formation that juts upward from the plains east of Boulder to face the Rocky Mountains to the west.
Cheyenne and Arapaho people had large encampments there in the 1800s, and the butte was also familiar to Ute, Lakota, and other Native nations. During tribal consultation, the Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance was told the butte “has always been considered a sacred place, a place of prayer, contemplation and reverence for all life that surround it, and all that it provides for the people.” Until recently, sweat lodge ceremonies were held there.
But sacred sites are part of a history of dispossession that may come to increasingly include places in South America, as well as those found today in North America.
What occurred in North America over the last 400 years is “replaying itself in parts of South America,” Moore said, terming the workshop a focus on “indigenous issues – often a neglected voice.”
National historic preservation laws and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act have been used with some success in preserving sacred places, but it is difficult to protect places “that have meaning” because legal standards do not relate to indigenous concepts.
“‘Legacy’ just has no meaning,” he said. Indigenous history may go back 10,000 years but 100 years of western thought may not encompass ‘the meaning of the place.’ Or critics may say ‘the Indians just made up those claims (that sites are sacred).’”
When reservations were created in North America, “little thought was given to what was sacred,” he said. Treaties were a “series of sham transactions” to enable western expansion by ending aboriginal title to tribal homelands, including obligations to the Cheyenne and Arapaho that encompassed the Valmont Butte area.
Ties to off-reservation sacred land forms were sometimes severed years after reservations were established, because it was against the law for Indian people to leave those reservations, he said.
But in the last 30 to 40 years – and NARF has been part of that, Moore noted – there has been “a greater renaissance among Indian people to reconnect with their cultures and traditions.”
Valmont Butte preservation is a part of that, because it “still speaks to them (Native nations) very profoundly,” he said.
In discussions with Cheyenne and Arapaho people, elders remembered the butte but couldn’t recall its original place name, although Arapaho leader Niwot had a settlement nearby at the confluence of two forks of Boulder Creek, he said.
Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance formed ties to the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming and a pow wow was held at the University of Colorado as a welcoming-back ceremony to honor their connection to Boulder Valley.
Seminar participants were told that the future of the butte – contaminated in some areas by years of industrial use and radioactive mill tailings – is uncertain. The city of Boulder owns approximately one-third of the area as open space, and the alliance hopes for possible tribal or other beneficial ownership of the remainder, subject to environmental cleanup.
The alliance’s tribal consultation yielded a recommendation that Valmont Butte be allowed to “rest and heal.”
The non-profit alliance works in partnership with the Trust for Public Lands, Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, NARF, and tribal nations, with support from the Native American Journalists Association.
The seminar at NARF included participants from university law faculties in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, as well as from several North American states.
Brazil wants to develop the Amazon and there is growing pressure on indigenous tribes that are being marginalized, although there is also a growing indigenous movement, several conferees noted, adding that the best protection for indigenous peoples may be large reservations where development can be kept at bay.
“But when you start to put people on reservations, you’re going to have to place a culture of 20,000 years on a fraction of their land, and will it begin a process of tearing that culture apart?” Moore questioned. “You’re making a choice to protect them, but at what cost?”
One South American national forest law was ruled invalid because it failed to include the participation of indigenous peoples in forest planning in what was termed “a multicultural issue and a property issue,” pitting individual rights against cultural rights and, at times, individual versus collective rights.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/37348384.html
Tribes & Environmental Groups Petition Supreme Court in Appeal to Protect Religious Freedom & Environmental Integrity of Sacred Mountain
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: Tuesday, January 6th 2009
Contact: Klee Benally - Save the Peaks Coalition
Email: indigenousaction@gmail.com
Website: www.savethepeaks.org
Tribes & Environmental Groups Petition Supreme Court in Appeal to Protect Religious Freedom & Environmental Integrity of Sacred Mountain
FLAGSTAFF, AZ – On Monday, January 5th 2009, Tribes & environmental groups in Arizona filed a unified petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear appeals in a precedent setting legal battle to protect religious freedom and the ecological integrity of the holy San Francisco Peaks.
The slopes of the holy San Francisco Peaks, located in Northern Arizona, have been at the center of a historical and lengthy battle that has pitted economic interests on public lands against environmental integrity, public health and cultural survival. Arizona Snowbowl, a small private ski business that leases land from the U.S. Forest Service, is attempting to expand current development and use millions of gallons of recycled sewage water to make fake snow.
"This is an important case for the Supreme Court to hear. The Supreme Court, in a split decision, previously deprived Native Americans of First Amendment rights vis-à-vis sacred sites under the control of the federal government." said Howard Shanker, who represents Navajo Nation, Havasupai Tribe, White Mountain Apache Nation, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network. "This case represents the last, best chance for Native Americans to have some substantive protection of sites that they hold holy or sacred through application of existing law." stated Shanker.
"In a country that supposedly values the free exercise and accommodation of all religion, it is unconscionable that Native American religious and cultural beliefs have essentially been relegated to second-class status by the federal government. The Supreme Court now has an opportunity to right this wrong." Shanker said.
Tribes' primary arguments have focused on religious freedom issues by utilizing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which they had hoped would provide the necessary legal protection where other laws such as the American Indian Religious Freedom Act have failed.
"The proposed development at Snowbowl, particularly the use of treated sewage effluent for snowmaking, would have profound effects upon the ability of several tribes to engage in vitally important religious practices at the sacred San Francisco Peaks." said Jack Trope of the Association on American Indian Affairs who is working together with DNA Legal Services, representing the Hualapai Tribe, Navajo medicine practitioner Norris Nez and Hopi spiritual practitioner Bill Preston. "The en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit's narrow interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in this case, which rejected the claims of the tribal plaintiffs, conflicts with the intent of Congress and the interpretation of the law by other Circuits. For these reasons, we have asked the Supreme Court to review this case in order to clarify the law and interpret it in a manner that would require the government to show a compelling interest in this case (and similar cases) before it can implement its land management decision. We do not believe that the government can show that approval of the Snowbowl development is in fulfillment of a compelling governmental interest." Trope said.
The Forest Service manages the San Francisco Peaks as public land and has faced multiple lawsuits by the Navajo Nation, Hopi, White Mountain Apache, Yavapai Apache, Hualapai, and Havasupai tribes, as well as the Sierra Club, Flagstaff Activist Network, Center of Biological Diversity, and others after it initially approved the proposed ski area development in 2005.
In a recent ruling, a 9th Circuit Court "en banc" panel overturned another 9th Circuit decision protecting the holy place. The divided en banc panel found that using recycled sewer water to make snow for skiing on an admittedly sacred site posed no 'substantial burden' on the Plaintiffs' exercise of religion in this case. According to the Court, the "only effect of the proposed upgrades is on the Plaintiffs' subjective, emotional religious experience. That is, the presence of recycled wastewater on the Peaks is offensive to the Plaintiffs' religious sensibilities…the diminishment of spiritual fulfillment – serious though it may be – is not a 'substantial burden' on the free exercise of religion." The Court dismissed Plaintiffs' religious beliefs as calling them mere "damaged spiritual feelings."
It is not clear on when the Supreme Court will decide whether it will hear the case or not. Pending a decision, Snowbowl is legally barred from development on the holy mountain.
While the current appeal focuses on RFRA, many citizens and environmental organizations continue to be concerned with potential health implications of the use of recycled sewage water upon the fragile mountain ecosystem and the untested impacts that would occur if humans ingested the artificial effluent snow.
"This case should concern everyone who values religious freedom, human rights, public health and environmental integrity." said Klee Benally, a volunteer with the Save the Peaks Coalition. "This issue also isn't just about one mountain, there are a number of sacred places located on public lands that are being threatened by development right now; Mt. Tenabo in Nevada, Medicine Lake in Northern California, Bear Butte in South Dakota, Mt. Taylor in New Mexico, for example. We are asking for everyone to call their Congressional representatives to hold hearings and to enact new legislation that guarantees protection for Native American sacred places."
The City of Flagstaff still maintains a contract with the ski area to sell up to 180 million gallons of treated sewage effluent during the winter seasons. Without the contract for the treated sewage effluent, it would not be possible for the business owners of Snowbowl to attempt their desecration.
"A ski area should know better than to attempt to make fake snow from treated sewage effluent and dominate Mother Nature in the high desert, especially in the face of global warming. It's not only unsustainable, it's insane." said Rachel Tso, a volunteer with the Save the Peaks Coalition. "The question is, what do we value more: a healthy community, ecological integrity and the cultural survival of more than 13 Indigenous Nations, or the interests of a single for profit private ski business?"
For more information and to read the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, visit: www.savethepeaks.org.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: Tuesday, January 6th 2009
Contact: Klee Benally - Save the Peaks Coalition
Email: indigenousaction@gmail.com
Website: www.savethepeaks.org
Tribes & Environmental Groups Petition Supreme Court in Appeal to Protect Religious Freedom & Environmental Integrity of Sacred Mountain
FLAGSTAFF, AZ – On Monday, January 5th 2009, Tribes & environmental groups in Arizona filed a unified petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear appeals in a precedent setting legal battle to protect religious freedom and the ecological integrity of the holy San Francisco Peaks.
The slopes of the holy San Francisco Peaks, located in Northern Arizona, have been at the center of a historical and lengthy battle that has pitted economic interests on public lands against environmental integrity, public health and cultural survival. Arizona Snowbowl, a small private ski business that leases land from the U.S. Forest Service, is attempting to expand current development and use millions of gallons of recycled sewage water to make fake snow.
"This is an important case for the Supreme Court to hear. The Supreme Court, in a split decision, previously deprived Native Americans of First Amendment rights vis-à-vis sacred sites under the control of the federal government." said Howard Shanker, who represents Navajo Nation, Havasupai Tribe, White Mountain Apache Nation, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network. "This case represents the last, best chance for Native Americans to have some substantive protection of sites that they hold holy or sacred through application of existing law." stated Shanker.
"In a country that supposedly values the free exercise and accommodation of all religion, it is unconscionable that Native American religious and cultural beliefs have essentially been relegated to second-class status by the federal government. The Supreme Court now has an opportunity to right this wrong." Shanker said.
Tribes' primary arguments have focused on religious freedom issues by utilizing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which they had hoped would provide the necessary legal protection where other laws such as the American Indian Religious Freedom Act have failed.
"The proposed development at Snowbowl, particularly the use of treated sewage effluent for snowmaking, would have profound effects upon the ability of several tribes to engage in vitally important religious practices at the sacred San Francisco Peaks." said Jack Trope of the Association on American Indian Affairs who is working together with DNA Legal Services, representing the Hualapai Tribe, Navajo medicine practitioner Norris Nez and Hopi spiritual practitioner Bill Preston. "The en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit's narrow interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in this case, which rejected the claims of the tribal plaintiffs, conflicts with the intent of Congress and the interpretation of the law by other Circuits. For these reasons, we have asked the Supreme Court to review this case in order to clarify the law and interpret it in a manner that would require the government to show a compelling interest in this case (and similar cases) before it can implement its land management decision. We do not believe that the government can show that approval of the Snowbowl development is in fulfillment of a compelling governmental interest." Trope said.
The Forest Service manages the San Francisco Peaks as public land and has faced multiple lawsuits by the Navajo Nation, Hopi, White Mountain Apache, Yavapai Apache, Hualapai, and Havasupai tribes, as well as the Sierra Club, Flagstaff Activist Network, Center of Biological Diversity, and others after it initially approved the proposed ski area development in 2005.
In a recent ruling, a 9th Circuit Court "en banc" panel overturned another 9th Circuit decision protecting the holy place. The divided en banc panel found that using recycled sewer water to make snow for skiing on an admittedly sacred site posed no 'substantial burden' on the Plaintiffs' exercise of religion in this case. According to the Court, the "only effect of the proposed upgrades is on the Plaintiffs' subjective, emotional religious experience. That is, the presence of recycled wastewater on the Peaks is offensive to the Plaintiffs' religious sensibilities…the diminishment of spiritual fulfillment – serious though it may be – is not a 'substantial burden' on the free exercise of religion." The Court dismissed Plaintiffs' religious beliefs as calling them mere "damaged spiritual feelings."
It is not clear on when the Supreme Court will decide whether it will hear the case or not. Pending a decision, Snowbowl is legally barred from development on the holy mountain.
While the current appeal focuses on RFRA, many citizens and environmental organizations continue to be concerned with potential health implications of the use of recycled sewage water upon the fragile mountain ecosystem and the untested impacts that would occur if humans ingested the artificial effluent snow.
"This case should concern everyone who values religious freedom, human rights, public health and environmental integrity." said Klee Benally, a volunteer with the Save the Peaks Coalition. "This issue also isn't just about one mountain, there are a number of sacred places located on public lands that are being threatened by development right now; Mt. Tenabo in Nevada, Medicine Lake in Northern California, Bear Butte in South Dakota, Mt. Taylor in New Mexico, for example. We are asking for everyone to call their Congressional representatives to hold hearings and to enact new legislation that guarantees protection for Native American sacred places."
The City of Flagstaff still maintains a contract with the ski area to sell up to 180 million gallons of treated sewage effluent during the winter seasons. Without the contract for the treated sewage effluent, it would not be possible for the business owners of Snowbowl to attempt their desecration.
"A ski area should know better than to attempt to make fake snow from treated sewage effluent and dominate Mother Nature in the high desert, especially in the face of global warming. It's not only unsustainable, it's insane." said Rachel Tso, a volunteer with the Save the Peaks Coalition. "The question is, what do we value more: a healthy community, ecological integrity and the cultural survival of more than 13 Indigenous Nations, or the interests of a single for profit private ski business?"
For more information and to read the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, visit: www.savethepeaks.org.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Preservation concerns at Colorado sacred site
Preservation concerns at Colorado sacred site
By Carol Berry, Today correspondent
Story Published: Jan 13, 2009
BOULDER, Colo. – “What makes a sacred site sacred?” was the question posed to visiting scholars from South America and the U.S. in a workshop at Native American Rights Fund in Boulder.
The answers came from a number of participants in the event, which was part of a study of lands in the post-colonial North American West conducted Dec. 5 by colleges of law at the University of Denver and Georgia State University, and by nonprofit Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc.
But none of the answers were definitive. The consensus was that sacred sites in North America were defined by the indigenous peoples living where they were located, and were often locations where vision quests or similar rituals were held, traditional healing or ceremonial plants were gathered, or certain other events had occurred.
“Sacred places are hard to generalize,” said Steve Moore, a NARF senior staff attorney who has worked for many years on the protection of sacred places. “It’s the land that speaks to the people and the power of the place speaks to the people.”
He told participants about Valmont Butte, a volcanic formation that juts upward from the plains east of Boulder to face the Rocky Mountains to the west.
Cheyenne and Arapaho people had large encampments there in the 1800s, and the butte was also familiar to Ute, Lakota, and other Native nations. During tribal consultation, the Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance was told the butte “has always been considered a sacred place, a place of prayer, contemplation and reverence for all life that surround it, and all that it provides for the people.” Until recently, sweat lodge ceremonies were held there.
But sacred sites are part of a history of dispossession that may come to increasingly include places in South America, as well as those found today in North America.
What occurred in North America over the last 400 years is “replaying itself in parts of South America,” Moore said, terming the workshop a focus on “indigenous issues – often a neglected voice.”
National historic preservation laws and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act have been used with some success in preserving sacred places, but it is difficult to protect places “that have meaning” because legal standards do not relate to indigenous concepts.
“‘Legacy’ just has no meaning,” he said. Indigenous history may go back 10,000 years but 100 years of western thought may not encompass ‘the meaning of the place.’ Or critics may say ‘the Indians just made up those claims (that sites are sacred).’”
When reservations were created in North America, “little thought was given to what was sacred,” he said. Treaties were a “series of sham transactions” to enable western expansion by ending aboriginal title to tribal homelands, including obligations to the Cheyenne and Arapaho that encompassed the Valmont Butte area.
Ties to off-reservation sacred land forms were sometimes severed years after reservations were established, because it was against the law for Indian people to leave those reservations, he said.
But in the last 30 to 40 years – and NARF has been part of that, Moore noted – there has been “a greater renaissance among Indian people to reconnect with their cultures and traditions.”
Valmont Butte preservation is a part of that, because it “still speaks to them (Native nations) very profoundly,” he said.
In discussions with Cheyenne and Arapaho people, elders remembered the butte but couldn’t recall its original place name, although Arapaho leader Niwot had a settlement nearby at the confluence of two forks of Boulder Creek, he said.
Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance formed ties to the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming and a pow wow was held at the University of Colorado as a welcoming-back ceremony to honor their connection to Boulder Valley.
Seminar participants were told that the future of the butte – contaminated in some areas by years of industrial use and radioactive mill tailings – is uncertain. The city of Boulder owns approximately one-third of the area as open space, and the alliance hopes for possible tribal or other beneficial ownership of the remainder, subject to environmental cleanup.
The alliance’s tribal consultation yielded a recommendation that Valmont Butte be allowed to “rest and heal.”
The non-profit alliance works in partnership with the Trust for Public Lands, Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, NARF, and tribal nations, with support from the Native American Journalists Association.
The seminar at NARF included participants from university law faculties in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, as well as from several North American states.
Brazil wants to develop the Amazon and there is growing pressure on indigenous tribes that are being marginalized, although there is also a growing indigenous movement, several conferees noted, adding that the best protection for indigenous peoples may be large reservations where development can be kept at bay.
“But when you start to put people on reservations, you’re going to have to place a culture of 20,000 years on a fraction of their land, and will it begin a process of tearing that culture apart?” Moore questioned. “You’re making a choice to protect them, but at what cost?”
One South American national forest law was ruled invalid because it failed to include the participation of indigenous peoples in forest planning in what was termed “a multicultural issue and a property issue,” pitting individual rights against cultural rights and, at times, individual versus collective rights.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/37348384.html
By Carol Berry, Today correspondent
Story Published: Jan 13, 2009
BOULDER, Colo. – “What makes a sacred site sacred?” was the question posed to visiting scholars from South America and the U.S. in a workshop at Native American Rights Fund in Boulder.
The answers came from a number of participants in the event, which was part of a study of lands in the post-colonial North American West conducted Dec. 5 by colleges of law at the University of Denver and Georgia State University, and by nonprofit Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory, Inc.
But none of the answers were definitive. The consensus was that sacred sites in North America were defined by the indigenous peoples living where they were located, and were often locations where vision quests or similar rituals were held, traditional healing or ceremonial plants were gathered, or certain other events had occurred.
“Sacred places are hard to generalize,” said Steve Moore, a NARF senior staff attorney who has worked for many years on the protection of sacred places. “It’s the land that speaks to the people and the power of the place speaks to the people.”
He told participants about Valmont Butte, a volcanic formation that juts upward from the plains east of Boulder to face the Rocky Mountains to the west.
Cheyenne and Arapaho people had large encampments there in the 1800s, and the butte was also familiar to Ute, Lakota, and other Native nations. During tribal consultation, the Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance was told the butte “has always been considered a sacred place, a place of prayer, contemplation and reverence for all life that surround it, and all that it provides for the people.” Until recently, sweat lodge ceremonies were held there.
But sacred sites are part of a history of dispossession that may come to increasingly include places in South America, as well as those found today in North America.
What occurred in North America over the last 400 years is “replaying itself in parts of South America,” Moore said, terming the workshop a focus on “indigenous issues – often a neglected voice.”
National historic preservation laws and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act have been used with some success in preserving sacred places, but it is difficult to protect places “that have meaning” because legal standards do not relate to indigenous concepts.
“‘Legacy’ just has no meaning,” he said. Indigenous history may go back 10,000 years but 100 years of western thought may not encompass ‘the meaning of the place.’ Or critics may say ‘the Indians just made up those claims (that sites are sacred).’”
When reservations were created in North America, “little thought was given to what was sacred,” he said. Treaties were a “series of sham transactions” to enable western expansion by ending aboriginal title to tribal homelands, including obligations to the Cheyenne and Arapaho that encompassed the Valmont Butte area.
Ties to off-reservation sacred land forms were sometimes severed years after reservations were established, because it was against the law for Indian people to leave those reservations, he said.
But in the last 30 to 40 years – and NARF has been part of that, Moore noted – there has been “a greater renaissance among Indian people to reconnect with their cultures and traditions.”
Valmont Butte preservation is a part of that, because it “still speaks to them (Native nations) very profoundly,” he said.
In discussions with Cheyenne and Arapaho people, elders remembered the butte but couldn’t recall its original place name, although Arapaho leader Niwot had a settlement nearby at the confluence of two forks of Boulder Creek, he said.
Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance formed ties to the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming and a pow wow was held at the University of Colorado as a welcoming-back ceremony to honor their connection to Boulder Valley.
Seminar participants were told that the future of the butte – contaminated in some areas by years of industrial use and radioactive mill tailings – is uncertain. The city of Boulder owns approximately one-third of the area as open space, and the alliance hopes for possible tribal or other beneficial ownership of the remainder, subject to environmental cleanup.
The alliance’s tribal consultation yielded a recommendation that Valmont Butte be allowed to “rest and heal.”
The non-profit alliance works in partnership with the Trust for Public Lands, Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, NARF, and tribal nations, with support from the Native American Journalists Association.
The seminar at NARF included participants from university law faculties in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, as well as from several North American states.
Brazil wants to develop the Amazon and there is growing pressure on indigenous tribes that are being marginalized, although there is also a growing indigenous movement, several conferees noted, adding that the best protection for indigenous peoples may be large reservations where development can be kept at bay.
“But when you start to put people on reservations, you’re going to have to place a culture of 20,000 years on a fraction of their land, and will it begin a process of tearing that culture apart?” Moore questioned. “You’re making a choice to protect them, but at what cost?”
One South American national forest law was ruled invalid because it failed to include the participation of indigenous peoples in forest planning in what was termed “a multicultural issue and a property issue,” pitting individual rights against cultural rights and, at times, individual versus collective rights.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/37348384.html
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