Mount Kawagebo, so sacred that climbing is banned, sits on the border between Tibet and China’s Yunnan Province; its eastern side is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area UNESCO World Heritage site. In February 2011, a small gold-mining operation started near the village of Abin, which is on the western side of Kawagebo, along the path of an 800-year-old pilgrimage route that circles the mountain, attracting tens of thousands of Tibetans annually.

To the local people, who believe strongly in the sacredness of Mount Kawagebo, direct destruction of the mountain body, through activities like mining, is unthinkable. Further, villagers said the project was started without permission or prior consent. Thus began a community effort to halt the project.

Villagers said their attempts to deal directly with the mining company resulted in threats and violence from agents hired by the company, and harassment and arrests by local police. On two occasions, men armed with wooden sticks with nails attacked villagers, injuring more than a dozen.

After efforts to negotiate with the local government failed, villagers pushed $300,000 worth of mining equipment into the Nu River. A leader of the group was arrested, but later released when 100 villagers surrounded the local police station where he was being held. A few months later, however, mining resumed and tensions grew. Harassment, death threats and attacks on villagers increased, and some women and children fled to other villages to escape the violence.

On January 20, 2012, a village leader who had tried to confront the mining company was ambushed by local police, tased and arrested. Some 200 community members surrounded the police station, and an ensuing riot resulted in violence and injuries on both sides, with at least one villager sent to the hospital with serious injuries. The leader was released, but protests continued as villagers demanded closure of the mine, and hundreds more villagers from the surrounding area joined in.

This time, the local government held negotiations with the community, including the just-released leader, on behalf of the mining company, whose boss had reportedly fled the area. Villagers involved in negotiations said they were offered money in exchange for allowing the mining to continue, but they refused. On January 23, with tensions mounting, a vice-official from the prefecture government ordered the mine closed and the equipment trucked out of the village.

While the persistence of the community to protect its holy mountain ultimately paid off, some villagers suggested the mountain itself had a role to play. During the negotiations, many reported hearing the sound of a trumpet shell—used in Tibetan religious rituals—coming from the mountain, while others reported unusually windy weather, which stopped once the conflict was resolved.

A Tibetan hired to provide catering to the mine workers described being struck by a physical pressure that forced him to drop what he was carrying; only after he prayed did the sensation disappear. Several months earlier, according to another account, a village leader who had accepted bribes from the mining company died suddenly, and a member of his family was seriously injured in an accident.

He Ran Gao, a researcher who works for the Chinese NGO Green Earth Volunteers and has been closely involved with the communities of the area, described the context of these supernatural accounts. “In a place like Tibet, people have an unusual sense of divinity in nature, based on a whole system of worship and interaction, which sometime seems superstitious to modern citizens,” she said. “But it is not necessarily irrational or unreasonable.”

This sense of nature worship, Gao said, with its attendant conservation values, is “barely left due to past communism and later economic development.” But in the Himalayas and other mountain areas, where non-Han ethnicities reside and remain somewhat protected, those traditional values can still be found. She described Kawagebo as a success story showing “how sacred nature can be” and how it can “still be respected, protected and continue to make an impact in people’s lives.”

Unfortunately, Abin is but one of many villages threatened by mining activities—in most other cases, marble quarrying—and a greater overarching threat to the region: hydroelectric dam development.

Along the Nu (Salween) River, the longest free-flowing river in mainland Southeast Asia, a proposed 13-dam cascade—including several dams in or very close to the World Heritage site—would wipe out portions of the pilgrimage route around Mount Kawagebo and displace the communities of the river valley, likely dealing a blow to their traditional culture as well. Although the project was put on hold in 2004 in the wake of widespread protest, it is certainly not dead.

Last year, the World Heritage Committee issued a statement expressing concern over reports of unapproved construction under way at one dam site on the Nu River, and surveying work—including road-building and drilling—at three others. It warned that “the many proposed dams could cumulatively constitute a potential danger to the property’s Outstanding Universal Value.”

The committee asked China to submit by February 1 of this year a detailed list of all proposed dams, as well as mines, that could affect the World Heritage property, along with the environmental impact assessments of any proposed projects, prior to their approval. The committee also requested, by the same deadline, a report on the state of conservation of the property and on the progress made in completing a strategic environmental impact assessment on all of the proposed dams and related development that could impact the site’s World Heritage value.

Many thanks to He Ran Gao, who provided reporting and other source material for this report. He Ran wishes to thank villagers who provided her with information, but whose names have been witheld.

At its annual meeting, held Nov. 22-29 in Bali, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage inscribed these and 17 other elements to its 2011 Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

According to UNESCO, the list, which the committee began compiling in 2008, was created “in order to ensure better visibility of the intangible cultural heritage and awareness of its significance, and to encourage dialogue which respects cultural diversity.” An additional 11 elements were added to a second list, the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Urgent Need of Safeguarding.

In Peru, indigenous Andean communities including the Q’eros — who are the subject of a segment in Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film series Standing on Sacred Ground — participate in an annual three-day festival and pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Lord of Qoyllurit’i. Some 90,000 people from around Cusco journey to a high mountain site in the Sinakara Valley, a place of reverence that encompasses both pre-Hispanic spiritual practice and Catholic belief, yielding a unique and complex religious expression.

In Colombia, the traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí represents the cultural heritage of the many ethnic groups that live along the Pirá Paraná River in southeastern Colombia. The shamans use this sacred knowledge “to draw the community together, heal, prevent sickness and revitalize nature.” According to the Gaia Foundation, whose partner Gaia Amazonas assisted in submitting the UNESCO application, the inclusion of the culture of the jaguar shamans “is probably the first example of an entire cultural complex, rather than an individual song, a ritual, or a tradition, being recognised.”

UNESCO describes intangible cultural heritage as traditions and living expressions that are passed down through generations, evolving in response their environments and contributing to a sense of identity and continuity. Intangible cultural heritage represents a diverse wealth of knowledge that can be applied to food security, health, education, and sustainable use of natural resources, thus making it important to recognize and protect.

Click here to watch a Gaia Amazonas video about the jaguar shamans.

As we begin editing 350 hours of footage from eight sacred landscapes around the world, it is clear that indigenous cultures have myriad kinds of sacred places, and many different relationships, responsibilities, ceremonies, songs, prayers and stories. To find common themes and to draw distinctions, we have interviewed four “big thinkers” — Satish Kumar, Oren Lyons, Winona LaDuke and Barry Lopez — and we are posting some of their comments as web clips. In a world of sound bites, I see a pattern: the really profound comments take two, three, four minutes to unfold.

Satish Kumar brings a Hindu, Buddhist and Jain perspective to the definition of “sacred place.” For Satish, a UK-based writer, pilgrim and editor of Resurgence magazine, all of the Earth is the home of a divine, life-giving force so vast, mysterious and expansive that it is incomprehensible. As Satish explains it, humans embrace the Ganges River as sacred because all water is sacred, so the Ganges is a local symbol of universal sacredness. Mount Kailash is the home of the divine, a living mountain, but still essentially a symbol that all mountains have spirit and give life, as part of the sacred web of life.

It is a worldview of relationship: “This was Mahatma Gandhi’s idea,” says Satish, “moving from ownership to relationship — seeing that land does not belong to us. We belong to the land. We are not the owners of the land. We are the friends of the land, like friends of the earth. The fundamental shift is in this consciousness that land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.”

In a challenge to the environmental movement, Satish says, “We have to have an ecological worldview and understand that we are part of this web of life. But sometimes in our Western, materialistic and intellectual tradition where rationalism has dominated our thinking, even ecology has become a materialistic discipline — a scientific, rational, description of our relationship with the Earth. When you are thinking in terms of Earth being an abode of the divine, you are going further than a materialistic or a rationalistic worldview of ecology, to what I call reverential ecology. What I would call even spiritual ecology. When you have reverential ecology you see trees, mountains, rivers, forests not just in the visible and material dimension, but you see that all these elements have spirit.”

We found Satish’s explanation of sacred places so compelling that we edited a three-minute piece incorporating some of our best b-roll images, asked Jon Herbst to compose a musical score, and we present it here as a teaser of things to come, to give our friends and supporters a taste of the film series we are shaping. Enjoy!

While initially focused on areas owned or revered by the world’s mainstream religious groups, the project — a collaboration with the Alliance of Religions and Conservation — has moved into a broader stage of mapping all “religious forests,” including those managed by much smaller groups and communities. The aim is to create a database to aid scientists working with community and religious groups on conservation efforts.

The research team, from the Biodiversity Institute in the Oxford Martin School, will carry out field studies and collect information in face-to-face interviews with local communities spanning the globe and representing a spectrum of beliefs and practices. Visits are already planned to India and Ghana. (Read our sacred site reports to learn more about sacred forest groves in India and Ghana.)

To create the database, researchers will collect information on boundary lines and land rights; a forest’s biodiversity value and role in carbon-dioxide absorption; and the local community’s relationship with the forest over generations — religious and cultural uses, including medicinal plant resources.

The results could play a vital role in conservation, as well as native land rights efforts. “We urgently need to map this vast network of religious forests, sacred sites and other community-conserved areas to understand their role in biodiversity conservation,” research team member Dr. Shonil Bhagwat said. “Such mapping can also allow the custodian communities, who have protected these sites for generations, to secure their legal status.”

According to a committee press release, the Yocha Dehe and Cortina tribes on July 19 established a cultural easement and settlement agreement with the City of Vallejo and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District, setting a legal precedent for granting Native peoples jurisdiction over their sacred sites and ancestral lands. The cultural easement would forever guarantee the tribes legal oversight in all activities at the site. In exchange, the tribe would agree to pay the city $100,000.

The deal allows for a scaled-back version of the waterfront park project to proceed. Terms include elimination of a formerly planned restroom facility and relocation of a “downsized” parking lot to an area tested to confirm that it contains no human remains or cultural remnants.

While the specifics of the deal leave some ambiguity about how GVRD’s park development project can and cannot proceed, Committee to Protect Glen Cove member Corrina Gould (Chochenyo/Karkin Ohlone) said she had faith that the tribes would take the necessary steps to protect ancestral remains from being disturbed.

“We appreciate and are humbled by the vast support that we have received in protecting our ancestors,” Gould said. “It is our responsibility to continue to do the work to make certain that all of our sacred places are protected.”

The 3,500-year old site continues to be spiritually important to California tribes. On April 14, local Native Americans and supporters began a 24-hour prayer vigil at Glen Cove to prevent the Greater Vallejo Recreation District from bulldozing and grading a large portion of the sacred site and constructing bathrooms and a parking lot.

The two city agencies will vote on the agreement later today. The Committee to Protect Glen Cove said a closing ceremony for the encampment will be held on July 30.

For background information, read our past news stories on the struggle to protect Glen Cove, as well as our sacred site report, Shellmounds of the Bay Area.

The temporary ban — enacted in July 2009 and due to expire next month — will now be in effect until December of this year, while the Bureau of Land Management completes a final environmental impact statement that evaluates the department’s “preferred alternative” of a 20-year ban on new mining in the full million-acre zone. Once that statement is published in the fall, Salazar said, he will be ready to make a final decision on the 20-year withdrawal.

Speaking from the South Rim of the canyon, Salazar emphasized the need for a management plan guided by “caution, wisdom and science,” in order to protect the World Heritage Site, drinking-water supplies, the tourism economy and tribal interests, noting that “many tribes in the area see their history and culture woven throughout the Grand Canyon’s landscape.”

Attempting to quell criticism that the withdrawal would deny access to uranium resources in the area, Salazar pointed out that it would apply only to new claims — the small number of existing claims would remain in effect and could continue to be developed. Referring to those claims, Salazar urged “cautious development with strong oversight.”

Salazar recalled the words President Theodore Roosevelt, spoken years ago at the same location: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Read this Feb. 25, 2010 Sacred Land News post to learn more about the moratorium, the existing mining claims and the potential environmental impacts.

Members of the Genographic Project had planned to arrive on May 7 to begin collecting samples from several Q’eros communities, located in an isolated province of the Cusco region. The Q’eros — who are the subject of a segment in Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film Losing Sacred Ground — are a traditional, shamanic people who self-identify as the “last Inca.”

According to a communique from the Asociación para la Naturaleza y el Desarrollo Sostenible (ANDES), a Cusco nonprofit, the U.S.-based project did not consult with local or regional authorities; rather, a local guide hired by the project sent only a one-page letter to the communities announcing the upcoming visit.

The letter, released by ANDES, invited families to come to a “fun” presentation on the study, which would include “a projector and pretty pictures,” in an effort to encourage them, young and old alike, to offer their DNA samples. “The benefit,” the letter said, “is that the people of Q’eros can know their ancestral roots … You can learn about your origin from centuries and centuries ago.”

But Benito Machacca Apaza, president of the Hatun Q’eros community, said in an ANDES press release, “The Q’ero Nation knows that its history, its past, present, and future, is our Inca culture, and we don’t need research called genetics to know who we are. We are Incas, always have been and always will be.”

Concerns were raised among the community over the project organizers’ failure to obtain informed consent and to follow local regulations. A Q’eros delegation brought those concerns to regional officials in Cusco, who agreed, saying the expedition violated a local ordinance on biological diversity that requires notarized evidence of informed prior consent, along with other documents, before collecting DNA. According to ANDES, this marked the first time that a local government in Peru applied an ordinance “in defense of its citizen’s genetic integrity.”

Project head Spencer Wells told ScienceInsider, “We have cancelled our visit to the Q’eros until we find out exactly what happened.”

Yet a larger biodiversity issue looms that threatens the way of life of the Q’eros and other Quechua communities in the region. On April 15 President Alan García signed a decree allowing the import and planting of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country, which could compromise the native species of Peru — in particular, the potato — which sustain these Andean communities and form a core part of their cultural identity.

Alejandro Argumedo of ANDES said in an email message, “Cusco is the center of origin of the potato, with the highest diversity of potato varieties found anywhere in the world. As guardians of the potatoes, Andean communities have, within challenging political contexts that favor international commercial interests, fought to protect their biocultural heritage. These actions have been supported by local governments, such as the Cusco regional government, and have led to five regions producing decrees that prohibit the use of GMOs … All that has been accomplished over the last 10 years of actions against GMOs in order to protect Peru’s Peru’s high-quality natural, non-GMO crops is now being threatened.”

Opponents of the decree, including the farming communities around Cusco, have been mobilizing and converged in Lima last week to protest. Many opponents argue that the country hasn’t conducted enough research and development in the field, and they are asking for a 15-year moratorium on GMOs, to give Peru more time to build the research infrastructure needed to fully assess and make the best decisions on the use of GMO crops.

Peru’s Congress is expected to discuss just such a moratorium in a new proposed bill. Meanwhile, Peru’s Minister of Agriculture Rafael Quevedo recently resigned in the heat of criticism over his support of GMO crops and his position as director of a company that uses them.

Learn more about the Q’eros in our Cordillera Vilcanota sacred site report and watch the video below.

We highly recommend a new short film about Altai environmental problems associated with tourism, which Joanna helped translate from Russian to English. Produced by Lena Chevalkova, the film is titled The Pines of Askat. Please check it out!

Most impressive were the case studies offering lessons about how Google Maps have been effective tools to raise awareness and inspire action to protect the environment.

Rebecca Moore, manager of the Google Earth Outreach program, shared a powerful example of her own mapping work within her community in northern California for Neighbors Against Irresponsible Logging. Moore used Google Earth to visualize a proposed logging area in the Santa Cruz Mountains near her home. The visualization proved that the logging area would be very close to schools, a daycare center, neighborhoods, landslide areas and pristine waters. Moore’s “fly-over” view of the logging area featured a three-dimensional aerial journey through Los Gatos Creek Canyon and revealed major problems with the logging plan — problems that weren’t apparent in the simple map created by Big Creek Lumber and the San Jose Water Co.

We also learned about projects like “Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops,” where the indigenous Surui tribe of the Amazon rain forest are using Google Earth to map their sacred and cultural sites, places where they hunt and fish, along with areas of illegal logging and the site of their first contact with the outside world. This data is power, providing a means of strengthening their culture, preserving their history and sharing it with the world. (Check out the video.)

The Surui tribe’s work is an inspiring model for the Sacred Land Film Project as we seek ways to integrate the power of mapping and data visualization into our storytelling in hopes of inspiring others to take action to protect the earth’s sacred places.

On Feb. 25, federal judge Ronaldo Desterro ordered the immediate suspension of the license authorizing work on the dam because the Brazilian environmental agency, Ibama, had authorized the project without ensuring that 29 environmental conditions were met. Those conditions include measures to guarantee the navigability of the Xingu River system, support programs for the affected indigenous populations, and plans for restoring areas that are damaged.

Over the past year there has been an outpouring of national and international protest against the dam — a long-delayed project that finally received the green light on Feb. 1 of last year — because project would destroy a vast area of rain forest, displacing tens of thousands of people, including tribal people whose livelihoods depend on the river and forest. (See our past news stories.) If constructed, it would be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric dam.

Last week’s court ruling, which also barred Brazil’s national development bank from funding the project, is the latest stage in an ongoing legal battle; previous injunctions blocking construction had been overturned.

Leila Salazar-Lopez, program director of Amazon Watch, which has run an active international campaign to stop the dam, said, “The suspension of the partial installation license is a reprieve for the people and the environment of the Xingu River Basin. This announcement is yet another confirmation that the Belo Monte Dam Complex is bad for the environment and local communities and riddled with financial risks.”

According to Amazon Watch, indigenous Amazonian leaders are currently touring Europe warning investors of the risks of large dams like Belo Monte and exposing the role of Brazil’s National Development Bank in Amazon destruction.

Read our Xingu River System sacred site report to learn more about indigenous struggles to protect the river.

President Barack Obama announced his decision to sign the declaration at the second White House Tribal Nations Conference on Dec. 16. Of the four nations around the world that initially opposed the declaration, Australia ratified it in 2009, New Zealand ratified it earlier this year, and Canada followed in November.

Though not legally binding, the declaration, “is the most significant development in international human rights law in decades. International human rights law now recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples as peoples, including rights of self-determination, property, and culture,” Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center, said. “It is a first step to respecting land and water rights, and protecting sacred sites.”

Winnemem Wintu Tribal Chief Caleen Sisk-Franco pointed out that while this is an important milestone, the language in the declaration only includes federally recognized tribes. “For the Winnemem Wintu we will continue to be discriminated [against] by the U.S. agencies. [There is] still a fight ahead to have a voice!”

The Winnemem Wintu’s fight for recognition started with the 1851 Treaty at Cottonwood Creek. The Winnemem ceded lands in return for a 25-square-mile reservation, but the treaty was never ratified. The tribe was left without a reservation and their land was taken over by encroaching settlement. In the mid-1980s the Winnemem did not appear on the Bureau of Indian Affairs official list of federally recognized tribes. Sisk-Franco said the declaration’s Article 37 may hold an answer to their dilemma:

Article 37: Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements concluded with States or their successors and to have States honour and respect such treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements.

Without a doubt, the declaration is a powerful tool to advocate for indigenous rights, and in the long run this may be a way for the Winnmem Wintu, as well as other tribes in similar situations, to regain federal recognition.

At the Tribal Nations Conference, attended by representatives of the nation’s 565 recognized tribes, Obama said of the declaration, “The aspirations it affirms, including the respect for the institutions and rich cultures of Native peoples, are ones we must always seek to fulfill.”

Coulter points out, however, “To see the promise of the Declaration become a reality, we must continue to fight for laws, policies and relationships that take into account the permanent presence of Indian nations in this country, and throughout the world.”

Check out our September 2007 blog comment on the language in the declaration regarding protection of sacred sites, which was much stronger in earlier drafts.

The Oct. 26, 1985 hand back, when the Australian government signed the title deeds over to the Anangu, marked a symbolic moment in the Aboriginal land rights struggle. Since then, the Anangu have leased Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to Parks Australia under a joint management agreement.

But despite high tourist numbers — more than 300,000 a year — Anangu say they have not seen the benefits. At the Ayers Rock Resort, the only tourist site serving the national park, it was reported that only one employee out of 670 is indigenous.

That statistic, however, is expected to change. A week before the handover celebration, the Indigenous Land Corp., a federal agency established to help Aboriginal people with land acquisition, announced the purchase of the resort for AU$300 million. The deal — made in partnership with Wana Ungkunytja, which represents indigenous business interests in nearby communities — includes all hotels and accommodations, as well as the airport.

ILC chair Shirley McPherson said the corporation aims to have a 50 percent indigenous workforce by 2015. Toward that end, it will establish the country’s first national indigenous tourism training academy, preparing 200 students a year.

Harry Wilson, current chair of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta board of management, said, “The new direction in tourism will mean we Anangu people benefit for new tourism opportunities and enable new visitors to share and learn about our culture and land. We will work together to bring about the dreams and hopes of our forefathers not to forget the struggle they had to get this land here.”

To learn more, read our Uluru-Kata Tjuta sacred site report and see our previous news posts.

Blue Lake, or Ba Whyea, is a small mountain lake that forms the headwaters of Rio Pueblo, which tumbles through the village of the Taos people. Oral tradition holds that the Taos tribe was created out of the sacred waters of Blue Lake. As a place of ritual worship and historic importance, the lake is essential to Taos culture, religion and daily life.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an order placing Blue Lake and its surrounding watershed under control of the U.S. Forest Service, and the Taos Pueblo community and allies spent the next six decades fighting to get it back.

The restoration finally came in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed into law a bill putting control of Blue Lake and its 48,000 surrounding acres back in the hands of the Taos Pueblo people. The bill also granted the community exclusive use of the 1,640 acres immediately surrounding the lake, making it off limits to all but enrolled Taos Pueblo members.

Gone are the days when the Taos Pueblo had to seek special-use permits from the Forest Service in order to practice their religion, a victory that community members — even after 40 years — continue to celebrate. Tribal member Sylvia Mirabal, who was only eight years old in 1970, said, “We are able to still get to Blue Lake freely, and that’s the most significant thing. My grandfathers made this happen.”

To learn more, read our Taos Blue Lake sacred site report.

The nearly 140,000-square-mile Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is the single largest conservation area in the United States, and with its new designation — announced July 30 during the World Heritage Committee’s 34th annual session in Brasilia, Brazil — it is the world’s second largest World Heritage site.

The chain of small islands and atolls and its surrounding ocean, situated about 150 miles from the main Hawaiian Archipelago, which began life some 28 million years ago, represents the oldest example of island formation and atoll evolution in the world. The near-pristine area is home to more than 7,000 marine species, a quarter of which are found nowhere else; it provides the only remaining habitat for several endangered species; and it is the world’s largest tropical sea bird rookery and one of the last predator-dominated coral reef ecosystems.

Papahānaumokuākea is also a place of deep cultural and spiritual significance for Native Hawaiians. According to the site’s World Heritage page, it is important “as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world, and as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death.” Two of the islands feature the highest concentrations of ritual sites in Hawaii.

In response the World Heritage designation, Aulani Wilhelm, NOAA superintendent for the monument, said, “We hope Papahānaumokuākea’s inscription will help expand the global view of culture and the contributions of Oceanic peoples to World Heritage and underscore that for so many indigenous peoples, nature and culture are one.”

To learn about other culturally and spiritually significant Hawaiian sites, read our reports on Haleakala Crater, Kahoʻolawe, Mauna Kea, and Wao Kele O Puna.

The artifacts — which include necklaces, arrows, baskets, headdresses and hides believed to be hundreds, possibly thousands of years old – had been stored on museum shelves for nearly a century. The Yurock tribe, California’s largest, has lived near the Klamath River in Northern California for millennia.

The tribe held a  Kwom-Shlen-ik, or “Object Coming Back,” ceremony on Aug. 13 in the town of Klamath to celebrate the return. Yurock chairman Thomas O’Rourke said, “These are our prayer items. They are not only symbols, but their spirit stays with them. They are alive. Bringing them home is like bringing home prisoners of war.”

A collector of Indian art had sold the artifacts to the National Museum of the American Indian in the 1920s. In 1989, a federal law transferred stewardship of hundreds of thousands of artifacts to the Smithsonian, requiring it to consider repatriating the items to federally recognized tribes.

The tribe will use the items for the 10-day Jump Dance starting Sept. 24, in which dancers perform inside a traditional redwood plank house to ask the creator for balance and renewal. Speaking about returning the sacred items to to their traditional use after years on a museum shelf, O’Rourke said, “It’s been a long time since they’ve heard their native voices and native songs.”

Meanwhile, the Ohlone people are seeking to protect their sacred sites around the proposed Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick Point redevelopment project in San Francisco.

About a dozen members of the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe held a sunrise ceremony Aug. 11 at the project site, then appeared before the city Board of Supervisors that afternoon to plead for a greater say in how their traditional lands are developed. The tribe, which numbers 2,000, currently lives primarily around Pomona, in Los Angeles County, but can trace its genealogy back to San Francisco’s Mission Dolores.

According to tribe chairman Tony Cerda and others, San Francisco, in preparing the environmental impact statements for the 700-acre project, failed to follow state rules that require notifying “the most likely descendants” if there are suspected burial sites.

City officials disagree, saying they did notify Ohlone tribes about the project but also that San Francisco, as a charter city, is exempt from many of the state’s notification requirements.

The situation is complicated by the fact that although it’s certain that the Ohlone were the primary American Indians living in the Bay Area before the arrival of Europeans, no one knows for sure which Ohlone tribe lived where – making land claims difficult. What’s more, Ohlone tribes are not recognized by the federal government.

Nevertheless, Cerda and his tribe appear to have made an impact on the Board of Supervisors, which unanimously approved a resolution asking the Planning Department and the Redevelopment Agency to implement protocols for working with the Ohlones on the project.

The tribe wants to ensure that its ancestral burial grounds are not desecrated, and it is also advocating that the project include a cultural center with a sacred ceremonial site and a genealogical research facility.

Learn more about the Oholone at the Oholone Profiles Project.