In Tibetan culture, where people live in intimate relationship with the natural world around them, reality and mythology have a way of blending together. So it was perhaps no surprise to local villagers when, after a Chinese mining company and local authorities repeatedly repelled efforts stop a gold mining project on the slopes of holy Mount Kawagebo, the mountain appeared to strike back.

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.

The Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) of Earth Island Institute is seeking a Development Coordinator to lead its international fundraising effort, including major individual giving and foundation support.

SLFP is a documentary film project dedicated to protecting the earth’s sacred places through education and action (www.sacredland.org). We are currently in post-production on a four-part documentary series for public television about indigenous people around the world confronting threats to their traditional land and sacred sites. The Development Coordinator will play a key role in designing and implementing the fundraising strategy that will see this film project, “Standing on Sacred Ground,” through to completion and into distribution.

Core Responsibilities:

• Strategize, implement and supervise the long-term development plan for the film project, including LOI and grant writing, individual giving and events

• Brainstorm, explore, and implement new sources of untapped funding

• Research and strategize online and digitally-based revenue sources, including crowd-based funding and web partnerships

• Execute and track deliverables and requirements to fulfill grant obligations

• Manage and update five-year project budget for documentary film and Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) programmatic work; keep budget up to date on server

• In collaboration with SLFP team, manage finances for the project

• Supervise and coordinate fundraising events, including screenings, donor lunches, and incentives

• Promote SLFP by attendance and tabling at local events

Fundraising:

• Identify potential funding sources and deadlines; with project director, develop and implement long-term strategy for foundation support

• Write and submit LOIs, funding proposals and online applications, collaborating with staff as needed; Draft funder-specific budgets for individual proposals. Identify and gather required administrative paperwork (501c3 and IRS Determination letter, BOD list, Audits/990, etc.); File complete copies of sent materials

• Track all relevant deadlines and information in our database and on shared calendar

• Strategize, initiate and develop relationships with foundations and major individual donors

• Plan, and with assistance of staff, produce fundraising and screening events

• Produce, write and update fundraising materials with team, including solicitations, e-mails and our year-end mailing

• Assist in donor management, e.g. drafting thank you letters, updating records etc.

• Work with web producer to strategize online fundraising

Funder Management:

• Manage reporting to funders, e.g. draft narrative reports and financial reports, proof budgets, finalize materials for project director’s review, and send

• Execute and track all required deliverables for grant fulfillment, including budget and accounting guidelines

Qualifications & Experience:

The ideal candidate will be a dynamic, driven and sophisticated professional excited by the opportunity to help shape the future of Sacred land Film Project. The Development Coordinator is excellent with relationships, accountable, and dedicated to the cause.

The successful candidate for this position will have:

• Four plus years experience in grant writing, major gift fundraising, and development

• A successful track record of identifying, cultivating and soliciting major individual and institutional donors in a collaborative environment (experience with film production and/or distribution is a plus)

• Comprehensive knowledge of the local and national philanthropic arena

• Exceptional written and interpersonal communication skills, including the ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with staff and volunteers

• Strong background in leveraging fundraising databases (Filemaker a plus) to achieve the goals of the development department

• Proficiency in MS Office

• Excellent organizational and management skills

• Experience overseeing grants budgets (Quickbooks Pro a plus)

• A sense of humor

About Us:

Sacred Land Film Project produces a variety of media and educational materials —films, videos, DVDs, articles, photographs, school curricula materials and web site content — to deepen public understanding of sacred places, indigenous cultures and environmental justice. Our mission is to use journalism, organizing and activism to rekindle reverence for land, increase respect for cultural diversity, stimulate dialogue about connections between nature and culture, and protect sacred lands and diverse spiritual practices. We are currently in post-production phase of a four-part series on sacred places around the world, entitled “Standing on Sacred Ground.”

We are a project of Earth Island Institute. Our office is located in downtown Berkeley, one block from BART in the David Brower Center, one of the Bay Area’s most advanced green buildings, and the inspiring home of a vibrant community of individuals and organizations committed to a just and ecologically sustainable society.

This is a four-day a week position at $35,000/year (depending on experience) with an excellent benefits package starting after a trial period of two months.

How to Apply:

All applicants must send a resume and cover letter to jobs@sacredland.org, with Development Coordinator in the subject line.

SLFP believes in a diverse work force and applicants from underserved or minority communities are encouraged to apply.

The annual Qoyllurit’i pilgrimage of Peru’s Q’eros and other indigenous groups and the traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí in Colombia are among the cultural heritage “elements” added last week to U.N. Environmental, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s intangible cultural heritage lists.

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.

To the disappointment and frustration of the Tsilhqot’in Nation, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced on Nov. 7 that it would accept a repackaged proposal for the previously rejected Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine, which threatens the Tsilhqot’in sacred lake Teztan Biny in British Columbia.

The proposed mine site — which encompasses Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), Yanah Biny (Little Fish Lake) and the surrounding area, called Nabas — is traditional Tsilhqot’in territory where the people have hunted, trapped, fished, collected medicinal plants, and shared their knowledge and history from generation to generation through cultural gatherings and ceremonies.

The lakes are home to a genetically unique type of rainbow trout. They are also in the headwaters of the last major viable salmon run that comes up the Fraser River, and water in the area is pure enough that the people are able to drink directly the source — a testament to the protection the Tsilhqot’in have provided their traditional lands for generations. The area also provides important habitat for the threatened South Chilcotin grizzly bear.

For some 20 years, the Tsilhqot’in Nation has been fighting Taseko Mines Ltd.’s proposed open-pit mining project, which the Canadian environment minister rejected last year largely because the plan called for draining Teztan Biny and using it as a toxic tailings dump.

The government environmental report on which the decision was based concluded that “the project would result in significant adverse environmental effects on fish and fish habitat, on navigation, on the current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes by First Nations and on cultural heritage, and on certain potential or established Aboriginal rights [to hunt, trap and fish].” It particularly noted that the island in the middle of Teztan Biny, which would have been destroyed, is “a place of spiritual power and healing for the Tsilhqot’in.”

Three months after the government’s refusal, Taseko Mines submitted a revised plan, which proposes instead to build the tailings facility a little over a mile upstream from Teztan Biny. While the new proposal “saves” Teztan Biny, it would still surround the lake with a massive open-pit mine, destroy Yanah Biny and the Nabas region, endanger the trout spawning grounds, and threaten Tsilhqot’in member homes and graves.

Regardless of the proposed plan, according to a Tsilhqot’in media backgrounder, “the fact remains that the ore body lies immediately beside and under Teztan Biny and that the ore body is a toxic cocktail waiting to contaminate the region’s water.”

The Tsilhqot’in National Government called the new proposal a “repackaged version” of a past option that was already determined to be inferior to the most recently rejected plan, and members are frustrated that they must now endure another lengthy and costly review process.

Meanwhile, the mining company, to the dismay of First Nations members and conservationists, has already received exploration permits to begin building 15 miles of roads and dig dozens of test pits and drill holes in the proposed project area.

“The cumulative impacts from the proposed road building and drilling in this area of proven cultural and spiritual importance is a serious threat to our Aboriginal rights,” Chief Marilyn Baptiste of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation said in a press release. “Any further destruction would be pointless as the federal government cannot possibly approve this proposal.”

What you can do

Please contact Elaine Feldman, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency president, to voice your opposition to Taseko Mines’ revised proposal:

Elaine Feldman
President
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
Place Bell Canada 160 Elgin Street, 22nd Floor
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0H3 Canada
Email: elaine.feldman@ceaa-acee.gc.ca
Tel: 001-613-948-2671
Fax: 001-613-948-2208

If you send a letter via email, please CC the following people:
Peter Kent, Federal Minister of Environment (peter.kent@parl.gc.ca)
Premier Christy Clark, Province of British Columbia (premier@gov.bc.ca)
Tsilhqot’in Chiefs (mining@tsilhqotin.ca)

The Grand Canyon is close to receiving federal protection from an increase in uranium mining after the Bureau of Land Management on Oct. 26 issued a final environmental impact statement supporting Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s proposal for a 20-year moratorium on new mining claims in a million-acre buffer zone around the canyon.

In June of this year, when a 2009 temporary mining ban was due to expire, Salazar issued a six-month extension, asking the BLM to issue a final environmental impact statement evaluating his proposed action. The bureau examined that and three other scenarios — ranging from withdrawing smaller parcels of land from new claims to doing nothing — ultimately favoring Salazar’s proposed action.

Over the past few years, as uranium prices rose, thousands of claims were filed under an 1872 mining law that allows free access to public lands. This renewed interest in uranium mining put Native American tribes, environmental-protection advocates and other stakeholders on alert, and prompted the government to propose the withdrawal of land from new claims.

Increased uranium mining around the Grand Canyon has the potential to threaten aquifers and drinking-water supplies, tribal interests, the tourism economy and the park’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

BLM Director Bob Abbey said the 20-year withdrawal “would allow for cautious, continued development with strong oversight that could help us fill critical gaps in our knowledge about water quality and environmental impacts of uranium mining in the area.”

(Claims approved before July 2009 would not be affected by the ban. According to the final environmental impact statement, 11 mines could be operating in the area in the near future. Some observers are calling for more lasting protection, such as designating the public land surrounding the Grand Canyon as a national monument.)

Take action

After a 30-day review period, the federal government will issue a final decision. Please send a letter to President Obama by Nov. 25 voicing your support for protecting the Grand Canyon.

A delegation of Wixárika (Huichol) people and their allies converged in Mexico City last week to urge the government to protect their sacred landscape, the Wirikuta Natural and Cultural Reserve in the northern state of San Luis Potosí, from imminent threats by mining and agroindustrial projects.

The Wixárika have sustained their millennia-old culture thanks to their resolve to maintain ancestral traditions, a key aspect of which is a 310-mile annual pilgrimage to Wirikuta, regarded as the birthplace of the sun and of peyote, the sacred cactus though which the Wixárika communicate with their ancestors and deities.

The 540-square-mile Wirikuta reserve — located in the Chihuahuan Desert, one of the world’s most biodiverse deserts — encompasses sacred sites and 86 miles of the pilgrimage route. It is unique in that it was explicitly designed to protect the area’s cultural heritage first, followed by its natural heritage. In 2001, the state government designated it as a sacred natural site under a landmark environmental protection law. And in 2004, the entire pilgrimage route was added to Mexico’s Tentative List for inclusion as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Yet despite these protections, the Wixárika’s sacred landscape faces significant threats. First Majestic Silver Corp. of Canada has been granted 22 mining concessions covering more than 23 square miles, 70 percent of which is within the reserve, while Minera Golondrina, an affiliate of another Canadian mining company, wants to build an open-pit gold mine. Toxic tailings, water pollution, ecosystem destruction, loss of wildlife, and depletion of the water table are among the potential impacts.

In addition, industrial tomato growers have razed miles of fragile desert ecosystem. Both agroindustry and mining threaten the habitat of the peyote cactus, essential to Wixárika spiritual practice.

Apart from the direct environmental impacts, Wixárika leaders say these projects endanger the integrity of the sacred landscape and their ability to practice their traditions. The UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous affairs is also investigating the Wixárika’s claim that their right to informed consent regarding the development of their traditional lands has been violated.

The Oct. 26-27 action in Mexico City, the latest effort in a battle that has been unfolding over the past year, included public marches and ceremonies, a press conference, and a meeting with officials of the federal environmental agency.

Wixárika leaders also entered the presidential complex to deliver a letter asking President Felipe Calderón to rescind the mining concessions, curb the agroindustrial megaprojects, and “implement an alternative plan that will generate jobs for local people while it converts Wirikuta on a protected natural area that is a world-renowned model of ecological conservation.” Wixárika are also calling on Calderón to uphold the 2008 Pact of Hauxa Manaká, in which the president and the governors of four Mexican states guaranteed the protection of the Wixárika culture and sacred sites.

What you can do

Support the Wirakuta Defense Front and visit their website for updates and more information about actions you can take.

Visit Cultural Survival’s Wirikuta campaign page for more information, a sample letter to send to Mexican officials, and other ways you can help.

Join our campaign on Kickstarter to help us develop our new augmented-reality mobile app, Finding Sacred Ground!

Augmented reality, a technology for mobile devices that superimposes images and audio over the user’s actual surroundings, is one of the hottest new developments in mobile media. Developers are scrambling to design new augmented-reality applications using this amazingly immersive, interactive tool for entertainment, education, social media … you name it.

But at last year’s Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) Producers’ Institute for New Media, along with our friends at the National Park Service, as well as Paige Saez and Anselm Hook of Maker Lab, we looked at this new media technology and asked a different question: Can a hyper-modern, cutting-edge augmented-reality application also help protect ancient indigenous sacred sites — and inspire reverence for the natural world?

The app we conceptualized at BAVC, called Finding Sacred Ground, will reveal the hidden indigenous history of many well-known tourist attractions and help users explore alternative perspectives on our relationship with the earth. The first phase in our app’s development is to produce a working audio-only pilot at Devils Tower National Monument. We have the concept and the media, and now all we need is $4,500 to pay for a mobile phone application developer.  We have just launched a campaign on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter to raise the necessary funds, and for our campaign (and our app) to be successful, we need your help!

Please check out our Kickstarter campaign and spread the word to your friends, family and colleagues and contribute to making this fantastic project a reality. As for all projects on Kickstarter, we must meet or exceed our funding goal by the deadline (Saturday, November 12) for us to be able to keep any of the pledges we receive, so getting the word out is key!

Thanks very much for your help. Any size donation will make a difference.

Take me to Kickstarter now!

In the vast northern reaches of Alberta, home to the Cree, Chipewyan Dene, Dunne-za and Métis peoples, one of the last remaining stretches of coniferous boreal forest has become a center of international attention. But despite a long history of logging in the region, the conflict isn’t over timber: energy companies and investors are instead looking at what lies beneath the ground. Alberta’s vast oil sands — a mixture of sand, water and a semisolid form of petroleum called bitumen — account for 97 percent of Canada’s proven crude oil reserves, making Canada the largest source of foreign oil for the world’s largest energy consumer, the United States. However, many in the region’s indigenous community, along with environmental conservationists, see the oil production as a shortsighted economic solution that is bringing environmental disaster. “Our leaders are selling out for money,” said Rose Desjarlais, a Dene elder. “What will money do when our forests and waters are gone? It has to stop, but we need help.” Meanwhile, a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline that would connect the oil sands fields with refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas spreads the environmental concerns beyond Alberta’s borders and has ignited controversy in Canada and the United States.

The Land and Its People

Northern Alberta’s oil sands, the world’s largest deposit, lie under boreal forests and wetlands, a diverse ecosystem that stores twice as much carbon as a tropical rain forest. Combined, the region’s three major deposits — Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake — cover 54,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Florida. The region is the traditional home of the Mikisew Cree, Chipewyan Dene, Dunne-za (Beaver) peoples, along with the Métis, who are descended from unions between Europeans and First Nations peoples.

The oil sands, also known as tar sands because the thick oil resembles roofing tar, provided the region’s original inhabitants with a useful product for waterproofing their canoes. The area’s most important natural resources, however, were its water and the animals that lived in its lush forests and rivers. These indigenous people traditionally lived in small bands, subsisting through hunting, fishing and trapping, and the diversity of wildlife — caribou, buffalo, moose, beaver, ducks, geese and fish — made for a rich diet and cultural life. The people recognized individual animals in their prayers, but knew that at the base of all life was water.

Today, the Aboriginal peoples of the region maintain a close relationship with the natural world, continuing their ancestors’ hunting and fishing traditions and ties to the water and the land. There are sacred sites, including burial grounds and ceremonial lands, throughout the landscape, but details and locations are closely guarded by the communities that revere them.

The first Europeans arrived in 1788, and over the next century, population and industry increased with a booming fur trade and the exploration of gold reserves. In 1899, England’s Queen Victoria signed a treaty with the Cree, Dene and Dunne-za in which “said Indians do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada … all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever” over a vast territory that included northern Alberta, thus clearing the way for natural resource exploitation. The completion of a railway in 1922 opened the region to logging, and in the 1960s, highway construction heralded the next transformation of the boreal landscape: the oil boom.

The Oil Sands Industry

Energy companies began separating oil from the sands in the 1930s, but extraction was difficult and production minimal. Commercial production began in earnest in 1967 with the opening of the Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor Energy) surface mine, and 11 years later Syncrude began operating what is now the world’s largest mine. During the last decade, Shell Canada and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. opened new mines, and Suncor and Syncrude expanded their operations; several more mines are slated to open. Surface mining currently accounts for 53 percent of crude bitumen production.

In the years since commercial production began, energy companies have focused on developing more efficient techniques for turning oil sands into crude oil. Only about 20 percent of Alberta’s bitumen reserves are recoverable by surface mining, which uses huge excavators to scrape away the surface layer, dig up the oil sand and transport it to extraction plants to separate the oil.

However, with the development of new in-situ production techniques — which extract the oil on site and enable a far deeper reach than surface mining — the remaining 80 percent of bitumen deposits are potentially exploitable. There are at least 20 in-situ projects in operation, accounting for 47 percent of crude production.

Thanks to improved processes, Alberta’s oil sands hold an estimated 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil, placing Canada’s proven crude reserves third globally, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. According to the Alberta Department of Energy, in 2010 Alberta’s oil sands bitumen production averaged 1.6 million barrels a day — the majority exported to the United States — and current forecasts indicate that production will increase to 3.2 million barrels a day by 2019. Alberta’s oil sands facilities reportedly form the single largest industrial zone in the world today.

Environmental Concerns

Criticism of the oil sands industry focuses on the high water and energy usage required for processing, forest destruction, huge tailings waste ponds associated with surface mining and greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite improvements in efficiency, oil sands extraction remains a highly resource-intensive process. Current in-situ extraction processes use natural gas-fired boilers to generate steam, which is injected into wells drilled into seams of bitumen deposit, thus softening the bitumen and allowing it to be pumped to the surface.

According to a report by oil sands industry consulting firm Strategy West, “The primary disadvantage of steam-based thermal recovery techniques is the large amount of energy and water that must be consumed for the generation of steam. A common industry rule-of-thumb is that 1,000 standard cubic feet of natural gas is consumed for every barrel of bitumen produced; however, many projects are using much more.”

In-situ processes require 0.6 to 0.9 barrels of water to extract and upgrade one barrel of bitumen, according to a report by the sustainable-energy think tank Pembina Institute, while surface mining, which uses hot water to separate oil from sand once the bitumen has been mined, requires 12 barrels on average. Industry estimates run lower: half a barrel for in-situ extraction, and two to four barrels for surface mining.

While 70 to 90 percent of the water is reused, the remainder still amounts to a significant quantity of water — raising concerns about drawdown of the major rivers that flow through the region. Pembina Institute reports that mining operations are licensed to divert a quantity of fresh water from the Athabasca River roughly equivalent to the annual needs of a city of three million people.

The liquid waste produced from mining operations is stored in enormous tailings lakes, creating yet another concern. These lakes, which cover an area of more than 50 square miles, contain toxic substances including naphthenic acids, which are acutely toxic to aquatic organisms and mammals. A 2004 report by the National Energy Board of Canada found that “the principal environmental threats from tailings ponds are the migration of pollutants through the groundwater system and the risk of leaks to the surrounding soil and surface water.”

Meanwhile, the boreal region is shrinking and along with it, the habitat of animals who live there. Since oil sands mining operations began, 256 square miles of land has been disturbed. While this represents an area less than the size of the city of Edmonton, environmental groups have noted that once in-situ operations are factored in, the area for potential disturbance increases dramatically. Some 30,000 square miles of land — the majority of which is boreal forest — have already been leased to in-situ companies for development. Pembina Institute reports that woodland caribou populations around current oil operations dropped 50 percent from 1996 to 2006, and area First Nations people describe dramatic decreases in caribou, ducks, frogs and other wildlife.

Of growing concern is the level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with oil sands development. According to Canada’s 2007 Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the country’s emissions had risen 26 percent since 1990 and were 33.8 percent higher than Canada’s Kyoto Protocol target. The “significant rise in emissions,” it said, was due in part to “large increases in oil and gas production.” Total life-cycle emissions from products derived wholly from oil sands are 5 to 15 percent higher than average crude oil.

Health Impacts

Area residents, primarily First Nations and Métis peoples, living downstream from oil sands activities report elevated cancer rates and other health problems.

A 2007 study commissioned by the local health authority of Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca, found high levels of carcinogens and toxic substances in fish, water and sediment downstream from oil sands projects. Of greatest concern was the presence in sediments of a group of carcinogenic chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Concentrations of the chemicals were found to have risen from 2001 to 2005, and in some cases were four times higher than U.S. recommended limits. High levels of the chemicals, along with mercury and arsenic, were found in fish, which account for a substantial part of the diet of many local residents.

An Alberta Health Services study of cancer incidence in Fort Chipewyan from 1995 to 2006 found a higher-than-expected number of cancer cases overall: 51 instead of 39, out of a population of about 1,100. In particular, it noted an increased incidence of cases of biliary tract cancers, cancers in the blood and lymphatic system and cancers of unknown primary origin in the most recent six years (2001-2006) compared with the previous six years.

These findings, the study said, “warrant closer monitoring of cancer occurrences in Fort Chipewyan in the coming years.” While not attributing a cause to the higher cancer rate, the report noted, “The possibility that the increased rate is due to increased risk in the community cannot be ruled out.”

Industry representatives and related government agencies claim that toxins in the local environment are “natural,” and that human and environmental health are not at risk from oil sands development. However, a study of pollutants in the Athabasca River region, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, concluded, “Contrary to claims made by industry and government in the popular press, the oil sands industry substantially increases loadings of toxic [pollutants] to the Athabasca River and its tributaries via air and water pathways … A robust monitoring program to measure exposure and health of fish, wildlife, and humans should be implemented in the region affected by oil sands development.”

Industry Response

For the industry’s part, representatives point out that oil sands are strictly monitored, and meet or exceed regulations, that the industry provides much-needed jobs for the region, as well as a much-needed energy source for consumers in North America and beyond, and that the bulk of greenhouse gases produced by oil sands petroleum come from burning it on the consumer’s end, not from the extraction and upgrade process. Representatives also say the industry continues to look for cleaner and safer ways to operate, including reducing the need for tailings ponds.

Oil sands companies are engaged in mandated restoration of land that is no longer needed for mining purposes. Currently, about 30 square miles of land is no longer in use and is at some stage in the reclamation process, and less than a half mile has been certified as reclaimed by the Alberta government.

The Keystone XL Pipeline

The most controversial aspect of the oil sands industry is TransCanada’s proposed 1,700-mile pipeline, which would carry crude from the Athabasca region to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

The U.S. State Department, which has approval authority because the pipeline would cross an international border, released its final environmental impact statement on the project in August 2011. It found that the Keystone XL pipeline would have “no significant impact” on land and water resources along its route.

Critics of the pipeline disagree, saying it could devastate ecosystems and pollute water sources, including the Ogallala Aquifer, a crucial U.S. water resource beneath the Great Plains. Spills are of particular concern, especially since an existing pipeline carrying oil sands crude — and owned by TransCanada — was shut down for repairs in May 2011 after springing two leaks in North Dakota and Kansas.

Proponents of the pipeline point out the benefits of a stable supply of oil from a friendly neighbor in a time of rising fuel prices and Middle East instability. However, most of the oil that would travel to the Gulf Coast refineries is destined for export; in fact, six companies have already contracted for three-quarters of the oil, and five of them are foreign.

Solutions

The Pembina Institute’s Oil Sands Watch campaign is advocating a moratorium on new oil sands project approvals and lease sales until the government of Alberta implements policies and regulations that are “environmentally, socially and economically responsible,” and it has published a list of proposed solutions.

There is also a push by Albertan First Nations to regain control over their lands, protect their sacred sites within the boreal forest, and develop sustainable management of their forests to provide alternative employment for the tribal members. Currently, these First Nations manage a designated forest management area, which paces their use of timber and ensures the preservation of their sacred sites. A sacred sites mapping project is also under way.

What You Can Do

Visit Pembina Institute’s Oil Sands Watch campaign site to learn more about its “oil sands solutions.”

For a more in-depth First Nations’ perspective, visit the Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, which includes action alerts and ways you can help.

Sources

Alberta Department of Energy. “Talk About Oil Sands.” April 2011.

Alberta Department of Energy. “Talk About SAGD.” June 2010.

Alberta Department of Energy. “Talk About Upgrading and Refining.” July 2011.

Austen, Ian. “Study Finds Carcinogens in Water Near Alberta Oil Sands Projects.” New York Times, November 9, 2007.

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. “National Geographic’s Article on Canada’s Oil Sands: An Incomplete Perspective.” CAPP, March 2009.

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Upstream Dialogue; The Facts on Oil Sands. June 2011.

Canadian Centre for Energy Information. “Oilsands and Heavy Oil Overview.” Centre for Energy.

Chen, Yiqun. Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, 1995-2006. Alberta Health Services, February 2009.

Dunbar, R.B. Existing and Proposed Canadian Commercial Oil Sands Projects. Strategy West Inc., August 2009.

Dunbar, R.B. Canada’s Oil Sands—A World-Scale Hydrocarbon Resource. Strategy West Inc., February 2009.

Grant, Jennifer, Simon Dyer and Dan Woynillowicz. Clearing the Air on Oil Sands Myths. Pembina Institute, 2009.

Harkinson, Josh. “Scenes From the Tar Wars.” Mother Jones, May/June 2008.

Kelly, Erin, et al. “Oil sands development contributes elements toxic at low concentrations to the Athabasca River and its tributaries.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 37 (2010): 16178–16183.

Lorinc, John. “Making Dirty Oil a Little Less So?” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2009.

Lorinc, John. “Of Alberta’s Oil Sands and ‘Harmonizing’ Canadian and U.S. Climate Policy.” New York Times, Oct. 26, 2009.

National Energy Board. Canada’s Oil Sands: Opportunities and Challenges to 2015. May 2004. (PDF)

Norrell, Brenda. “Energy Genocide, Backlash Yield New Peoples’ Movement in the Americas.” Indian Country Today, July 24, 2006.

Poitras, George. “Canada’s Bloody Oil.” Guardian News, August 24, 2009.

“Say No to Keystone XL.” New York Times, October 2, 2011.

“Treaty No. 8 Made June 21, 1899 and Adhesions, Reports, Etc.” Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.

Russian energy giant Gazprom announced this week that it had reached an agreement on a pricing formula to supply natural gas to China — a key sticking point delaying  finalization of a gas-export agreement that includes a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would cut across the sacred Ukok Plateau of Russia’s Altai Republic, part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Gazprom said it could sign a contract by the end of the year, after which construction of transportation facilities could begin.

Meanwhile, our friends at Cultural Survival and the Altai Project report that Gazprom has begun intensive surveying work for the pipeline, even though UNESCO has warned that going forward with construction would constitute a threat to the site and thus lead to possible inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

Cultural Survival and the Altai Project are are collaborating on a global campaign to help the Telengit people of the Altai reroute construction of the pipeline. The Telengit say the pipeline would destroy many of their sacred monuments, threaten endangered species such as the snow leopard, and damage the plateau’s permafrost, thus hastening the melting of nearby glaciers — as well as cause economic harm by compromising their sources of food and livelihood.

The Altai Project reports that the Ukok Plateau is undergoing extensive exploratory work, including permafrost drilling. Archeological researchers and other specialists have been hired to study cultural heritage sites such as burial mounds and petroglyph complexes, and have identified some 30 sites that require further research and either excavation or a pipeline bypass.

What you can do

The Cultural Survival/Global Response Campaign is asking for your help by sending letters to Russian and Chinese authorities urging a reroute of the pipeline. Full information, addresses and sample letters can be found here.

For more background, read our Aug. 11 news post.

Gary Snyder warned me years ago that the Western mind naturally wants to translate “sacred site” into an either-or dichotomy: “If this is sacred then that is profane — not sacred.” The unintentional harm we might do by trying to protect sacred places could be to win the protection of a small fenced-off area while everything around it is open for desecration. “Be careful,” Gary counseled.

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!

I first met Winona LaDuke in 1977, when we were both working to expose the environmental injustice of uranium mining in Navajo land — radioactive tailings piled around homesteads, former miners dying of lung cancer, thousands of abandoned mines that small children played in and used for sheep corrals. A fiery speaker and excellent investigative reporter, Winona has gone on to become a prominent voice for indigenous rights around the world. We interviewed her as one of our “big thinkers” — people who could put the sacred land protection movement into language and stories that will reach a wide audience.

I asked Winona about the apologies that have been offered to Aboriginal people in Australia and to First Nations people in Canada. These were national events of deep emotion and fanfare, but what was the long-term effect on healing the deep wounds of history?

Winona is executive director of the Native-led organization Honor the Earth, and she said a couple provocative things that I wanted to offer by way of introduction to the beautiful story she tells of real redemption that came to the Pawnee people after they and their seeds and food sources were relocated to far-off lands. It’s a story of homecoming.

But in Canada and Australia, the government apologies rang empty as resource grabs and massive new mines extract tar sands, nickel, cobalt, zinc and gold. “I would argue that we remain unable to fully heal because saying you’re sorry has to mean something,” Winona says, “and it has to change your behavior. That’s what you would tell a five-year-old: ‘You can’t kick your sister again.’ It has to mean something. Well, opening up a new mine after you say you’re sorry is not changing your behavior. Running a bulldozer over a sacred site is not changing your behavior. Allowing egregious contamination in a community after apologizing is not changing your behavior.”

“On one level, you want to tell them that what they’re doing is so wrong — in its spiritual terms, in terms of their own relationship to Mother Earth, and in terms of their denial of people’s humanity. Another facet that I always want to say is: Your plan is bad. You cannot continue to build a society that is based on conquest. We have run out of places to conquer, places to put our flags, new places to mine, new places to dam. At a certain point, you have to bring your world into some sort of economy that is durable and you need to do it sooner rather than later because the more you compromise ecosystems and spiritual recharge areas, the harder it will be for us all, including you, to recover.”

Enjoy the short film clip and hear Winona tell a powerful story of redemption and healing.

Onondaga Chief Oren Lyons traveled to Arizona in June from his home in upstate New York to attend an elders’ gathering in honor of our mutual friend, the late Hopi leader Thomas Banyacya, who, like Oren, was a tireless international spokesman for native people from the time the indigenous rights movement took root in the 1970s. We had the honor of interviewing Oren on film for our Losing Sacred Ground series. Some excerpts from a wonderful interview follow, along with two film clips of a great story Oren told about our dependence on the Earth, and a second clip with Oren’s amazing explanation of the Wizard of Oz. Here’s are some of Oren’s comments from the interview:

“I would say that probably the biggest loss I see in humanity now is the loss of understanding of relationship. They don’t understand their relationship.”

“There are almost seven billion people in the world today. The whole Earth is being covered with smoke. We’ve affected the big systems to the point of melting the ice in the north. We’ve disrupted the patterns of the Earth and we’re going to suffer the consequences.”

“For Indian nations and indigenous people, the most important thing is relationship. We value relationship way beyond anything else, way beyond what you can have. Relationship — to be close, to be next to the tree, to be next to the water, to be next to the earth. Relationship’s really good. It’s really rich. How do you maintain this relationship? How do you keep it fresh? How do you work with it? Well, our people have done that through ceremonies.”

“Where we’ve lost our way, I think, as human species, we’ve lost the understanding of relationship and therefore lost respect. But pockets of indigenous people have hung onto that. So, your teachers are going to be indigenous people.”

“Business as usual is over. It’s not competition; it’s cooperation. You are going to have to fight for the commons. We have an intellect and we better start using it for the common good because that’s where we have to change. Our future’s in our hands, and we can handle it, if we work together.”

How did Oren first learn about his relationship to the Earth? Listen to his story…

In response to concerns from tribal leaders about the vulnerability of Native American sacred sites on National Forest lands — including the decision to approve the use of treated waste water for snowmaking at a ski area on the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona — U.S. Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack last year directed the Forest Service and the USDA Office of Tribal Relations to review the effectiveness of existing laws, regulations and policies. A draft report presenting the results of that review is now open for public comment until the end of October.

The report presents the findings from more than 50 listening sessions conducted over the past year with tribal leaders, traditional practitioners, culture-keepers and unaffiliated native descendants across the country, with the aim of determining how the agency can better manage lands that include sacred sites. Forest Service employees were also surveyed.

Several key themes emerged from the listening sessions:

1. Partnering with tribes to manage sacred sites and maintaining effective communication is critical to their protection.
2. Land managers do not always take advantage of current laws and policies that could benefit the tribes.
3. Forest Service decision makers do not weigh sacred site issues equally with other interests, such as economic development and recreation.
4. Consistent on-the-ground application of available legal tools to recognize and protect sacred sites is needed.

The review team also found, among other things, that Forest Service managers would benefit from more explicit policy language regarding sacred site protection.

These findings form the basis for the report’s recommendations for procedural and policy changes, which are open for public comment until the end of October. Consultations with tribal members and other Native Americans with interest in sacred sites will continue during the public comment period.

Please take a moment to send a comment letter. You can download suggested comments here.

Public comments can be sent to:

U.S. Forest Service
Office of Tribal Relations
1400 Independence Ave., SW
Mailstop Code: 1160
Washington, DC 20250-1160

Comments also may be submitted by fax to (202) 205-1773 or e-mail to sacredsitescomment@fs.fed.us.

The Forest Service and the Office of Tribal Relations plan to submit a final report to Secretary Vilsack in November. Once the report is approved, an implementation plan will be developed.

“We hope this report will foster change in how Indian Tribes and the Forest Service interact on land management decisions for the good of all Americans,” the report states. “It is our hope that these recommendations lead to meaningful changes in the way Native American sacred sites are protected and accessed. Perhaps, just as important, they will lead to a better understanding of Native American values as American values.”

In a workshop run by Eli Moore through a partnership with the Pacific Institute and the Data Center, the Winnemem Wintu learn here about GPS devices, setting waypoints and uploading the information to a computer so that they can record their history and protect their sacred sites.

This video will give you a whole new angle on the classic tale, The Wizard of Oz.

A week ago I traveled to Devils Tower in Wyoming to meet with Dorothy FireCloud (Rosebud Sioux), superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument, and park ranger Caryn Hacker (Rosebud Sioux) to develop our collaborative project Finding Sacred Ground. This site is the first of several locations where we will explore the “hidden history” of a sacred place.

If you haven’t heard about Finding Sacred Ground yet, it’s essentially a mobile phone app much like a podcast tour you’d take at a museum, except we’re offering video, interactivity and augmented reality, along with an hour-long documentary and a Google Earth tour on the Internet as one package. It’s a true transmedia project, but unique because in this case technology serves as a bridge connecting you — the mobile-device user — to the land. The story is told through Native American voices, and by the end of it you should have a good idea why 24 of the surrounding tribes consider Devils Tower to be sacred.

I went out there to put heads together with the team, to gather our favorite GPS points and locations where a story will be triggered (and thanks to Hugh Hawthorne for getting us rolling with that). As always, we had a camera in tow and both Dorothy and Caryn shared their knowledge on tape as did Angela Wetz, the monument’s chief of resource management. We then traveled to see Duane Hollow Horne Bear at Sinte Gleska University, who shared Lakota star knowledge as it relates to the tower, and Donovin Sprague, who talked about family and community structure and what it was like for the surrounding tribes to live near the tower during specific seasons.

Caryn casually mentioned in a car ride that uranium production is likely to start just west of the tower. It has given a new urgency to this project. We might not save the world with this mobile phone app and its augmented reality assets, as we hinted at when we spoke at the augmented reality event in Santa Clara this past spring, but we do aspire to it. And what’s more, we hope to inspire a younger generation who grew up with portable tech to discover themselves and something worth protecting in this land.

A global campaign is under way to help the Telengit Indigenous People of Russia’s Altai Republic reroute construction of a natural-gas pipeline that would cross the sacred Ukok Plateau on its journey from Siberia to China.

This high plateau in the Altai Mountains has been a sacred burial ground for at least 8,000 years. Today, the Telengit people carry out their ancient rituals on the Ukok amid the burial mounds, stone stellae, and petroglyphs of their ancestors.

As SLFP reported in April, the 1,700-mile pipeline would cut through the heart of the Golden Mountains of Russia’s Altai Republic, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a region of sacred significance to the Telengit people.

The Telengit say the pipeline would destroy many of their sacred monuments. It would also inflict environmental damage to the World Heritage site, threaten endangered species such as the snow leopard, and damage the plateau’s permafrost, hastening the melting of nearby glaciers. They say the pipeline would also cause economic harm: The Telengit practice free-range animal husbandry, fishing and hunting, and are developing cultural and ecological tourism — and pipeline construction, contamination, and the melting of the permafrost will affect their economic activities and thus their sources of food and livelihood.

Talks between Russia and China over an export agreement had been stalled for years over price, but the two countries are reportedly very close to signing a deal, and Gazprom’s CEO said after the annual shareholders’ meeting in July, “We are completely ready to begin pipeline construction.”

What You Can Do

The Cultural Survival/Global Response Campaign is urging people to send letters to Russian and Chinese authorities. Full information, addresses and sample letters can be found here.

About 15 percent of the world’s surface is “sacred land” and about eight percent of it — mostly forest — is owned by religious groups, according to a team of Oxford University scientists working on a project to scientifically measure the coverage of religious and sacred land around the globe and assess its biodiversity and land-use values.

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.”

A court in Papua New Guinea this week cleared the way for the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. to proceed with a $1.5 billion nickel-mining project, which had been blocked by injunctions over the environmental impact of the company’s plan to dispose of mine tailings in the ocean.

The long-awaited decision denied a petition for a permanent injunction and lifted a temporary injunction that had been granted to the plaintiffs, landowners on the Rai Coast, who bathe, fish and travel in the waters where millions of tons of mining waste would be dumped.

In his ruling, judge David Cannings found there was “a high likelihood that serious environmental harm … will be caused by operation of the [deep-sea tailings placement].” Yet he nevertheless refused to grant a permanent injunction, citing, among other things, the plaintiff’s delay in bringing the action (well after the government had approved waste-disposal plan), the economic consequences for the companies and other stakeholders, and potential negative impact on investor confidence in PNG as a whole.

Suggesting that the landowners might receive court help in the future — once the damage is done — the judge also noted, “If environmental harm of the type reasonably apprehended by the plaintiffs does actually occur, they will be able to commence fresh proceedings at short notice and seek the type of relief being denied them in these proceedings.” The court’s one concession to the plaintiffs’ requests was that they must be consulted and kept informed every three months on tailings-disposal issues, for the life of the mine. The Ramu plaintiffs intend to appeal the ruling.

Rewind one week, to a seemingly unrelated gathering at the David Brower Center (SLFP’s home office in Berkeley, Calif.) sponsored by Earth Island Institute, where Stewart Brand and Winona LaDuke debated about technology and the environment. An audience member — our friend Peter Coyote — stood up and commented that Brand was operating from a place of intellect and LaDuke from a place of wisdom. Peter suggested leaders would do well to have wisdom advisers, not just intellectuals and technocrats offering policy advice.

The concept strikes us as directly relevant to the court case in PNG. The ruling, applauded by the governor of Madang and PNG’s mining minister, is a clear example of the values that currently preside across the globe — particularly here in the United States, where our need to consume drives a frantic demand for more. The search for ever-increasing profits and more and more stuff is finally becoming imbedded in places previously considered too remote, pristine places like PNG, where people still live off the land and many deal in trade rather than money. These places are now under siege by a new value system that will reshape the land and the culture until they are a direct reflection of the dominant system. Wisdom seems far off indeed as mining waste begins to flow into the sea.

Here at the Sacred Land Film Project, we follow the news from afar, feeling as though it was just yesterday we were filming in Madang with our new partners and friends, promising to bring their story to the world. We are now in the heat of writing and editing the story, to fulfill our promise and produce a documentary record that will be a tribute to the voices of wisdom that still remain.

For more information, read the full court decision, visit Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, and listen to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Tifanny Nongorr, comment on the decision.

After a 98-day on-site prayer vigil, the Committee to Protect Glen Cove yesterday announced a victory in its struggle to protect the sacred burial grounds of Sogorea Te/Glen Cove.

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.

Two thought leaders with clashing viewpoints on the future of environmental stewardship will be going head to head on the topic of whether technologies like nuclear power can be used to foster sustainability, at 7 p.m. on July 21 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, as part of  Earth Island Presents.

Winona LaDuke, Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) environmentalist, economist and writer will appear with Stewart Brand, author, former editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and founder of several organizations like the Global Business Network. The discussion promises to be enlightening and contentious as Brand is a proponent of nuclear power, GMO crops and geoengineering  (check out his book, “Whole Earth Discipline“), while LaDuke advocates for a nuclear-free future, green energy and ecological practices. LaDuke’s latest book, “The Militarization of Indian Country from Geronimo to Bin Laden,” addresses military impacts on Native Americans, from naming to nuclear testing.

Journalist Mark Hertsgaard, environment correspondent for The Nation and author of the recent book “Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth,” will moderate the discussion.

Don’t miss this event! Get your tickets now.

What: Fix or Nix: The Environment & Technology
Mark Hertsgaard in conversation with Stewart Brand and Winona LaDuke

When: Thursday, July 21, 2011
7:00 p.m.; doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Where: Richard & Rhoda Goldman Theater
The David Brower Center
2150 Allston Way (at Oxford), Berkeley
One block from downtown Berkeley BART

Tickets: $10-$20 for adults, $5-$10 for ages 21 and under (buy them here)
For more information call 510-859-9100.

Maps tell stories, and control of the printing press allowed colonial powers to tell their own stories for centuries. A Native American tribe that was literally taken off the map in California’s history books — and is still unrecognized by the U.S. government — is using technology to put itself back on the map.

On June 11 and 12, Eli Moore and Catalina Garzon of the Pacific Institute and Miho Kim of the Data Center led a mapping workshop with the Winnemem Wintu tribe to continue a long process of documenting sacred sites in the Winnemem’s traditional cultural territory. On Saturday, mapping terminology and GPS skills were mastered in the Winnemem village near Redding, and on Sunday a dozen young people practiced their new skills while visiting four sacred sites along the McCloud River. We filmed the workshop to include as a scene in our Losing Sacred Ground documentary series.

All over the world, indigenous communities are incorporating mapping into their communication and outreach strategies, as they craft the stories they want to tell to the outside world about their struggles to protect land, culture, language and sacred sites. Mapping now figures into five of our eight stories: in Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Russia’s Altai Republic, the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, and in Northern California.

As Winnemem leader Caleen Sisk-Franco says, “We need to create evidence to convince the Forest Service that this is a historic cultural district containing a network of sacred sites that all work together. Different places teach us different things and have different purposes. But we need them all.”

In 1887 the U.S. government forced the legendary Nez Perce Chief Joseph and his band off their homeland in the Wallowa Valley in what is now Oregon; 120 years later, the tribe returned home, taking title to thousands of acres they had been working to reclaim almost continuously since their displacement. This long-awaited success was the result of an unusual collaboration among the tribe, a nonprofit land-trust conservancy, and the local, predominantly white, community — many of whom descend from the settlers who first homesteaded the land rights after the Nez Perce were driven out. Bowen Blair, former senior vice president of the conservancy that was integral in the land return, wrote in Land&People magazine, “Returning ancestral lands to Native people has power: Power to educate about historical injustices that still affect us all. Power to inform non-Natives about how Native people live today, on or off reservation. Power to teach why a landscape is important — not just for its beauty but also for its history, culture, and ability to sustain and transform lives.”

Homeland Lost

The people known as Nez Perce — a name bestowed by an interpreter with the 1805 Lewis and Clark expedition — call themselves Nimi’ipuu, which means “real people” or “we the people.” For thousands of years before the arrival of white settlers, the Wallowa band of Nez Perce made their home in the lush and rugged landscape of the Wallowa Valley, in Oregon’s far northeastern corner.

In 1855, a U.S. treaty guaranteed the Nez Perce these lands, along with other sections in what is now Washington and Idaho. However, after gold was discovered throughout the territory in the early 1860s, the government proposed reducing the reservation land to one-tenth of its size, taking away nearly six million acres. While the majority of the chiefs — including Tuekakas, commonly known as Old Joseph — refused to approve the new treaty, a small group of chiefs based in Idaho agreed in 1863 to sign away the land and stay confined to the reservation there.

Followers of Old Joseph and his son Heinmot Tookyalakekt — Chief Joseph — continued to stay in their ancestral land in the Wallowa Valley but faced increasing pressure to leave. In 1877, under threat of a cavalry attack, Joseph prepared to lead his people toward the Idaho reservation. But a small group of young Nez Perce warriors, angered over the loss of their homeland, raided a nearby settlement, killing some whites. The army immediately began to pursue the Wallowa band and other holdouts, forcing them on the run.

In an epic journey of three months and over 1,400 miles — battling the U.S. Army at points along the way and vastly outnumbered at 700 Nez Perce warriors to 2,000 U.S. soldiers — the tribe tried to reach Canada. Starvation and causalities finally forced Chief Joseph to surrender on Oct. 5, 1877, at Bear’s Paw, Mont., 40 miles from Canadian border. It is there that he made his widely quoted speech: “I am tired of fighting … My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

After the surrender, Chief Joseph and his people, believing they would return to their home reservation, instead were ultimately sent to a reservation in what is now Oklahoma, where many died from epidemic diseases. Despite appearing before President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879 to plead his case, Chief Joseph and his group were not allowed to return to their homeland until 1885. Even then, they went not to the Wallowas or to the reservation in Idaho, but to Colville, a non-Nez Perce reservation in Washington, where Chief Joseph died and was buried in 1904.

Today the Nez Perce are scattered: many are on the Idaho reservation, where the tribal government is headquartered; others are governmentally part of the confederated tribes on the Colville reservation; some are on the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon, while still others are in Oklahoma or Canada. For more than century, the Nez Perce have been a diaspora population with no one place to call home.

Homeland Restored

In the years following the Nez Perce’s exile from the Wallowa Valley, much of the area became private ranch land. In 1995, the Bonneville Power Administration — as part of a fish and wildlife mitigation project meant to compensate for the damage done by the agency’s many hydropower dams — agreed to a Nez Perce proposal for funds to acquire and manage a portion of land in the heart of their ancestral territory.

One rancher, a conservationist who didn’t allow the land to be heavily grazed, offered to sell his 10,300-acre property, known as Chief Joseph Ranch — land where the Wallowa band once had their summer camp and, tribal elders say, Chief Joseph might have been born. Conservationists had been eyeing the land for some time, but it wasn’t until the tribe was involved that preservation became politically feasible.

The nonprofit Trust for Public Land, a national land-trust conservancy, negotiated the terms and funding for the acquisition, which was completed in October 1996. The Nez Perce, not the federal government, would manage the land as a wildlife preserve; no one would live on the land, though it would be open to the public and available for limited recreational use.

Meanwhile, some white residents of Wallowa County and dispersed Nez Perce descendants had been discussing the return of a Nez Perce presence via an interpretive center and powwow grounds, which resulted in the establishment of the Wallowa Band Nez Perce Trail Interpretive Center Inc. in 1995. Community support for a symbolic return helped ease opposition to the land acquisition, which might otherwise have been unpopular because of the white community’s homesteading tradition and support for keeping land in private hands.

Thus, on July 7, 1997 — 120 years since the tribe’s forced exile — the Nez Perce held a naming ceremony and salmon feast at a site overlooking Joseph Canyon to commemorate their reacquisition of the land they call Hetes’wits Wetes, or “precious land.” Elder Horace Axtell conducted the ceremony in a gentle rain, which another Nez Perce leader, Soy Redthunder, suggested was symbolic of the need to cleanse the land of its past violence.

Subsequent acquisitions have increased the size of the restored homelands, collectively called the Precious Lands Wildlife Area, to 16,286 acres. The area serves as a sanctuary for bighorn sheep, elk, cougar, salmon and threatened steelhead trout. Streams and meadows are being restored to their natural state through the reintroduction of native species, the removal of domestic livestock and noxious week control. Bighorn sheep numbers are now increasing after having been decimated by diseases brought from commercial sheep ranching, and tribal biologists are helping restore the county’s watershed and salmon runs, which have seen a dramatic increase over the past decade.

While no Nez Perce live on the land, the tribe has set up an office in the adjacent town of Joseph as a way of rejoining the community and working with local residents. Efforts are under way to purchase additional sections of tribal homeland to reach a final goal of 18,000 acres.

Healing History’s Wounds

Bowen Blair, who negotiated the Chief Joseph Ranch land acquisition for the Trust for Public Land, said the cause attracted support from around world: “It gained more international publicity than any other Trust for Public Land project and brought an outpouring of real care and interest.” Blair noted that, despite painful history, the Nez Perce were gracious about taking back their property and allowing it to be open to the general public.

In the wake of the acquisition and a growing awareness of the need to heal past wounds, the school board of the local high school decided to drop the school’s use of the name “Savages” and the accompanying cartoonish Indian mascot. Many town residents, clinging to what they argued were their own traditions, resisted strongly, leading to a big community fight and an eventual compromise to eliminate the mascot but keep the name. Images of the caricature were removed from the school — even sandblasted from the floor of the basketball stadium. Eight years later, however, the student body voted to do away with the name as well, changing moniker and logo to the Outlaws.

Although it took a little time, Blair said the reversal “shows how land acquisition can move an entire community and create social change.”

Sources

Angela Sondenaa and Shana Kozusko, Precious Lands Wildlife Area Draft Management Plan (Nez Perce Wildlife Program: 2002).

Bonneville Power Administration and Nez Perce Tribe, Northeast Oregon Wildlife Mitigation Project: Final Environmental Assessment (August 1996).

Bowen Blair, “A Legacy of Native Lands,” Land&People, May 15, 2010.

Bowen Blair and Chuck Sams (Trust for Public Land), telephone interview, March 31, 2009.

Elizabeth Manning, “After 120 years, the Nez Perce come home,” High Country News, July 7, 1997.

“NE Oregon Wildlife Project (NPT) Precious Lands,” Northwest Power and Conservation Council, May 2009.

Nez Perce Tribe, “Nez Perce History,” Nez Perce Tribe Web Site, accessed June 22, 2011.

“Nez Perce Still Tied to Wallowa County,” Seattle Times, March 8, 2009.

“Northeast Oregon Wildlife Mitigation Project: Precious Land,” Northwest Power and Conservation Council, accessed June 22, 2011.

PBS, “Chief Joseph,” New Perspectives on the West, accessed June 22, 2011.

Trust for Public Land, “Chief Joseph Ranch,” The Trust for Public Land, accessed June 22, 2011.

“Wallowa Band Nez Perce History: Remembering the Past,” Wallowa Band Nez Perce Trail Interpretive Center, accessed June 22, 2011.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar yesterday announced a six-month extension of the moratorium on new uranium mining claims in a million-acre buffer zone around the Grand Canyon.

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.

Earlier this month, leaders of Peru’s indigenous Q’eros people effectively blocked geneticists from collecting DNA samples from their community as part of National Geographic’s ongoing Genographic Project, which has been gathering DNA from people around the world.

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.

Now in its fourth week, the Glen Cove spiritual encampment in Vallejo, Calif., is still going strong as Native American activists and supporters continue their round-the-clock occupation of the sacred Ohlone burial site in an effort to protect it from development. (See previous SLFP news post.)

Although the protest has delayed construction at the 15-acre site, the Greater Vallejo Recreation District is pressing on with plans to install a parking lot, trails and visitor facilities by the shell mound known as Songorea Te. Last week, the GVRD board of trustees voted unanimously to forbid the public from the site once work begins, which would give police greater latitude to remove protesters.

The Protect Glen Cove Committee reports that the encampment has been receiving visits of support from from Native American representatives from throughout the region as well as other interested groups. A lawyer specializing in Native American law recently volunteered his support and services, as have some archeologists.

What You Can Do

• If you live in the Bay Area, you can get a first-hand update from organizers and learn more about ways you can help at an informational event on Tuesday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m. at Station 40, 3030 B 16th St., San Francisco.
• Contact the Bay Trail project, a non-profit organization based in Oakland, that is administered by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) that was created to implement the Bay Trail, to ask them to divest their funding from the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD) park development project at Sogorea Te / Glen Cove.
• Visit the spiritual encampment, write city officials or donate to the cause — these and many other ways you can help are described on the Protect Glen Cove Committee’s How to Help page.
• Learn more about the issue by reading the About and Frequently Asked Questions pages on the Protect Glen Cove website. You can also learn more about the history of Native Californian shell mounds in our sacred site report.

Check out this photo slideshow that takes you on a tour of our locative media, augmented reality hybrid platform — Finding Sacred Ground. Developed at the BAVC Producers Institute for New Media and in partnership with the National Parks Service, this project made for mobile platforms will lead users on an immersive new media experience through a natural or urban landscape. The augmented reality tour will graphically superimpose indigenous landmarks along the route, identify native place names, describe the dispossession of the original inhabitants of the area and create new points of entry for you to connect to the land. Visit the slideshow here.

Last month the Tasmanian government gave the final go-ahead to build a highway bridge that could disturb a 40,000-year-old Aboriginal archeological site — the oldest evidence of human habitation in the southern hemisphere.

The trove of Aboriginal artifacts — tools, stones and spear tips — were discovered last fall in a grassy floodplain by the Jordan River, where the bridge — part of a new highway 20 years in the planning and deemed by the state as essential infrastructure — was slated to be built. Immediately, archeologists and conservationists, the Aboriginal community, and even some government officials, began calling for site protection.

Those calls, as well as a legal challenge, failed. The Tasmanian state government said it had investigated alternative routes but found none to be viable. On April 11, the state approved the final construction permits, and contractors erected fencing around the disputed land to begin construction.

Protestors quickly mobilized, joining a group that had already been occupying a camp at the site, and decided to challenge police at the fence and climb the barricade to stop initial excavation work. Over the course of a week, more than 20 people were arrested.

In a conciliatory gesture, the Tasmanian infrastructure minister said an additional $15 million would be spent to ensure the bridge does not disturb the ancient artifacts. The government has also offered the Aboriginal community land on either side of the bridge so that an interpretation site could be built, but it was not immediately clear whether that offer would be accepted.

On April 21, Aboriginal activists officially called off their protests at the site, saying they didn’t believe that continued arrests would stop the bridgework. However, they also said they had not ruled out future actions.

Trudy Maluga of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Center noted that the Aboriginal protests had not been in vain: “We are winning the war, people are talking about Aboriginal heritage, which they haven’t done for years.” She said protesters would now push for legislative changes to give the Aboriginal community greater control over heritage sites.

One of our major challenges with the Losing Sacred Ground series is how to weave eight stories from around the world together? How do we create a coherent context for the complex sacred land struggles we are documenting? And how do we get PBS viewers to care? One answer is to interview “big thinkers” — people with a lifetime of direct experience and the ability to articulate abstract concepts in imaginative and compelling language.

In February, we had the good fortune to interview my old friend Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams, Of Wolves and Men, and many other wonderful works of non-fiction and fiction. Barry dug deep to discuss his experiences with traditional peoples and the intimate relationships with place that characterize sacred lands and cultures.

It was on the subject of storytelling, however, that Barry settled into his comfort zone, and told us a four-minute long story that was a true gift. We thought we would share it online (with Barry’s permission) and we hope you enjoy it.

It is the eighth day for Native Americans and their dedicated supporters who have gathered at Glen Clove, a sacred Ohlone burial site in Vallejo, California, to protect the land from bulldozers threatening to raze the area to install a park and visitor facilities — parking lot, picnic tables and toilets —  atop the burial site. The battle to protect Glen Cove has now spanned more than a decade and the group has committed to camp at the site until a compromise plan is negotiated.

Ohlone activist Corrina Gould told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Our ancestors deserve a place where they can rest forever. People everywhere understand that ancient cemeteries are sacred places. But in Vallejo, they want to put a bathroom on one.”

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After years of negotiations, Russia is moving closer to a natural gas export agreement with China that includes a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would cut through the heart of the Golden Mountains of Russia’s Altai Republic, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a region of sacred significance to the Altai people.

Under the deal, Russia’s state-owned Gazprom would pump 30 million cubic meters of natural gas annually to China. Talks have been stalled for years over price, but a Chinese source reportedly said that an agreement is now expected to be in place by June. He confirmed that the favored pipeline route would carry gas from Gazprom’s Arctic Yamal gas fields over the Altai Mountains and across the sacred Ukok Plateau to the Chinese border.

Local NGOs and communities have opposed the pipeline, citing potential impacts from the construction phase, including damage to the habitat of the endangered snow leopard and argali sheep and an influx of outsiders who may not share Altaian values. (See past Sacred Land News story.)

The Altai Republic is one of eight stories in our upcoming Losing Sacred Ground film series. To learn more about the Golden Mountains, read our sacred site report and check out an excellent photo essay by our colleague Gleb Raygorodetsky.

In its lead editorial in the Sunday, April 3 edition, the New York Times spoke out strongly against a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline that would connect tar sands fields in Alberta, Canada, with refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Proponents of the pipeline point out the benefits of a stable supply of oil from a friendly neighbor in a time of rising fuel prices and Middle East instability. But the Times editorial argues that the environmental risks, for both Canada and the United States, are “enormous.”

In Alberta, the extraction of oil from the tar sands requires the stripmining of swaths of boreal forest, along with the burning of natural gas and consumption of large quantities of water to produce steam to a turn tar-like substance called bitumen into oil. The Times’ editors came to the same conclusion SLFP did when we filmed in Alberta last year: “Operations in Alberta have already created 65 square miles of toxic holding ponds, which kill migrating birds and pollute downstream watersheds, a serious matter for native communities.”

In the United States, the greatest threat is from pipeline leaks; the Times cites multiple recent spills from existing tar sands pipelines. The new pipeline would cross an important U.S. water reservoir, the Ogallala Aquifer, thus threatening “disastrous consequences” if a leak were to occur.

Two Nebraska senators are opposing the pipeline’s proposed route, but “political pressure to win swift approval has been building in Congress.” Because the pipeline would cross an international boundary, the State Department must approve its construction; that decision is expected later this year.

This controversial issue is one of those featured in Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film series Losing Sacred Ground.

Unlike the American legal system, courts in Papua New Guinea do their own investigations. On March 1, the judge and lawyers on both sides of the Ramu nickel mine tailings-disposal case jumped in a helicopter to see first hand the environments they’ve been discussing for weeks.

At issue are the plans of the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. (MCC) to extract nickel and cobalt from an area called Kurumbukari, send it through an 84-mile slurry pipeline to their refinery at Basamuk Bay and, after processing, dump the untreated waste into the sea. An estimated 5 million tons of various heavy metals and toxins would be dumped annually.

Whether MCC will be allowed to do so in an operation euphemistically called “deep-sea tailings placement” is expected to be determined by the court in the next few months. (They’ll announce the date of their decision in April.) More than a thousand villagers from the Rai Coast, those most likely to be impacted by the disposal, have joined the lawsuit.

At stake for MCC is the millions of dollars it says it’s losing each week that the project is delayed, and millions more if the court rules it must come up with an alternative method for waste disposal. At stake for the villagers at Basamuk Bay and the Rai Coast is their source of food, the water in which they bathe, and their primary pathways of transportation.

The court case has brought some important facts to light:

• MCC admitted that they’ve already dumped ore into the bay, despite a standing court injunction specifically banning the practice.

• MCC’s contract with the Papua New Guinea government allows it to import ore from other countries and process it at the Basamuk plant, including disposing of those additional tailings in the sea.

• The company used false information in a brochure it distributed to villagers about the deep-sea impacts of the tailings disposal.

• In early March, MCC alerted villagers that they should avoid fishing and swimming in the waters near the Basamuk refinery because of a spill of sulphuric acid that occurred four days earlier. The company later retracted that warning and said only a few liters of acid had dripped onshore. Skeptical villagers report that the coral has turned white and they are afraid to eat fish from the bay.

During our shoot in PNG last April, we visited the sites that the court saw from their helicopter — the refinery site at Basamuk, the mining site at Kurumbukari, the sometimes precariously braced slurry pipeline. We met the lead plaintiff at the time, Sama Mellambo, who has since withdrawn (some people believe his decision was made under duress), and two brothers who were resisting relocation by the mine.

We have constantly been astonished by the reports we hear from this developing story, and we anxiously wait with the rest of the country for the court’s verdict, which will determine the fate of tens of thousands of people and the direction of millions of dollars.

A few days ago, late in the afternoon, I was editing footage of shamans in Siberia’s Altai Mountains when the phone rang and I heard the familiar voice of my old friend Jose Lucero of Santa Clara Pueblo calling from New Mexico. Jose said he recently received an audio tape in the mail containing an interview with Thomas Banyacya, the Hopi spokesman we both worked with in the 1980s and ’90s. Jose said the interview was recorded shortly before Thomas passed away in 1999, and he was profoundly moved by words that essentially conveyed Thomas’s last wishes — to convene a meeting of elders for the sake of human survival.

Several hours later, my daughter rushed into the bedroom and exclaimed, “They just had an 8.9 earthquake in Japan!” — and in the days since we have all followed the unfolding disaster in Japan with horror and sadness.

This was not the first time that synchronicity has marked my interactions with Thomas Banyacya. In 1979, I sat at Thomas’s kitchen table in Kykotsmovi village and related to him the details of a new film that had just premiered, The China Syndrome, about a reporter exposing a cover-up of safety hazards during a nuclear power-plant accident. I told Thomas I thought the film was so powerful it would change the world.

The kitchen door opened and in came Steve Tullberg of the Indian Law Resource Center, who had just flown in from Washington, D.C. for an important meeting with Hopi elders. Steve asked, “Have you heard about Three Mile Island?” and we all shook our heads, no. He then related the very real story of the catastrophe at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station that was pretty much exactly the same as the one I had just told Thomas about the fictional film’s nuclear meltdown. Sitting there in the heart of Hopiland, we were all humbled once again by the power of prophecy.

Here is something Thomas Banyacya said in 1986: “Traditional Hopi elders have said a time would come when Native peoples must gather together and unite. Ancient Hopi teachings warn about a time of massive natural disasters such as catastrophic floods, fire and earthquakes which will come about as a result of people destroying the natural world. Now the world is witnessing violent earthquakes such as in Japan and Los Angeles. Machines are causing destruction, such as the nuclear plant meltdown in Russia. Many people in communities across the world are behaving in self-destructive ways. Now is the time when our traditional peoples must reunite to share original instructions, exchange traditional teachings, preserve our languages, and guide our children back to the sacred path of life.”

Hiroshima. Chernobyl. Fukushima. Thomas fervently believed that the Earth would respond to abuse if humans failed to change course. When will we listen?

Please visit the Get Involved page of our website to learn how you can take action on behalf of sacred lands.

When we filmed in the spectacular Altai Republic of Russia in 2007, U.K. native Joanna Dobson kindly helped us with translation. Joanna is fluent in Russian and has moved to the Altai to work on various projects to help preserve traditional culture and protect sacred sites. Joanna reports on her work via a great website and blog, Altai Pilgrim.

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!

The latest issue of the Earth Island Journal features a must-read article on “ethical oil” that takes you to into the heart of the tar sands operations in Alberta, Canada.

Journal Editor Jason Mark aptly describes the Catch-22 that residents find themselves in: the booming industry provides employment in an area where jobs would normally be hard to come by, yet the very work local people do contributes to the erosion of their environment, their traditional cultures and their health. “According to a 2009 study by the Alberta Cancer Board, the cancer rate in Ft. Chipewyan [downriver of the industrial area] is 30 percent higher than normal,” Mark writes.

Since more than half of the oil produced in the tar sands goes straight to the United States, Americans are complicit in the dilemmas facing residents there, and that brings up deep moral questions.

Mark asks whether or not American consumers (if they even know what is going on in Alberta) consider the tar sands operation a necessary evil, and should continue to accept the sacrifice of designated regions and peoples so that we, at a safe distance, can maintain our lifestyles. Alternatively, would not a more morally defensible course be to work together to find smart alternatives with less impact? We make these choices every day by our actions — or our inaction — every time we drive our cars.

This issue of Earth Island Journal also features a project update on some of the recent highlights from our production trips for the Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film series, Losing Sacred Ground.

In February, an SLFP team attended a two-day workshop led by Google Earth Outreach and aptly titled, “Mapping Environmental Scenarios and Solutions with Google Technology.” It was a power-packed two days where we had an introduction to topics like mobile data collection, fusion tables, storytelling and visualization, as well as an introduction to Google Earth and Google Maps.

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.

Citing environmental concerns, a Brazilian judge has halted construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon rain forest.

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.

Four hundred years ago, the Q’eros of Peru retreated to the eastern slope of the Andes to escape Spanish conquest. They still live in isolation, herding alpaca, harvesting potatoes, and speaking to their Apus (mountain spirits). Global warming is decimating the Andean ecosystem and challenging the Q’eros’ formidable survival skills. Sacred Mt. Ausangate’s glaciers are rapidly shrinking and potato blight has invaded from lower elevations, forcing farmers to plant higher and higher on steep slopes. The Q’eros are running out of mountain just as they are running out of water. We bring you here some of the most arresting images from our production trip for Losing Sacred Ground.

Despite amendments to the Environment Act barring legal challenges to mining and other resource projects (see our previous news post), local land owners in Papua New Guinea have filed a lawsuit to stop a plan to dump waste from the Ramu nickel mine directly into the ocean.

Community members are tasked with proving the mining waste, or tailings, flushed into the ocean will cause environmental harm. They have united together with power in numbers: 998 landowners have joined the plaintiff’s case to submit opposition to the waste dumping. Learn more about the lawsuit at Earthworks.

Additional information and commentary available at The National, Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, Ramu NiCo website.

A community of the Penan people, a seminomadic group in the rainforests of Borneo who have been struggling for decades to save their lands and livelihood from timber harvesting and other incursions, have recently brought their fight to a Malaysian court.

On Dec. 21, the Ba Jawi community in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, lodged a collective-action lawsuit against Malaysian timber giant Samling and the Sarawak state government over 15,000 hectares of primary rainforest. The area covered by the claim is a key region of the Penan Peace Park, a self-administered conservation region in the Heart of Borneo that was proclaimed a nature reserve by 17 Penan communities in November 2009 and covers more than 600 square miles.

The Penan claim that the logging license held by Samling, which was issued by the Sarawak government in 1993, is unlawful because it covers lands held by the Penan under native customary rights and was issued without their consultation.

According the the Penan’s filed statement of claim, the land is not only their source of livelihood and sustenance but also “constitutes life itself as [it] is fundamental to the plaintiffs’ social, cultural and spiritual identity as the native Penan peoples of Sarawak.”

The case is the fifth such native customary rights case filed by Penan communities in this region since 1998, none of which have yet been resolved. The Penan’s active land-rights struggle stretches back to the 1980s, when they began blockading roads to halt logging activities, which have destroyed much of their native lands. While sometimes successful, these blockades also led to arrests, violent crackdowns, and possible murders of activists and indigenous leaders.

Samling timber operations have also posed another threat. In September of last year, a leaked Samling document indirectly acknowledged that employees at its Sarawak timber camps were involved in the alleged rape of Penan women and girls. The document, a directive from Samling’s general manager of forest operations in Malaysia, prohibited all employees from entering Penan villages or providing transportation to Penan people without management permission.

For more background information, read our Lands of the Penan sacred site report.

The new year has just begun, and we’ve already posted two new sacred site reports. One tells the story of Native Californian sacred sites that are hidden in plain sight throughout the Bay Area, and of the struggle to protect them. The other — written by Rob Wild (Toby’s co-editor for the 2008 IUCN Sacred Natural Sites guidelines) and excerpted from a new book titled “Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving Nature and Culture” — is about a unique Celtic Christian site in England.

Shellmounds of the Bay Area, California

Beneath the streets and all along the estuaries of the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay region lie ancient remnants of the daily and sacred lives of California’s native peoples. Pavement and buildings now mostly cover what used to be hundreds of shellmounds — gently rounded hills formed from accumulated layers of organic material deposited over generations by native coastal dwellers. Often the sites of burials and spiritual ceremonies, these shellmounds are still places for veneration. But preserving the remaining shellmounds has proven to be a contentious issue among developers, indigenous rights groups, preservationists and local governments … Read more.

Holy Island of Lindisfarne, England

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne has been a Christian holy site and pilgrimage center since 635, playing a pivotal role as a cradle of Christianity in northern England and southern Scotland. Nature and spirituality are very much linked here through a line of “nature saints,” of which St. Cuthbert — considered by some as England’s first conservationist — is best known in the area. Lindisfarne more recently has become a node in the revival of Celtic Christianity — an indigenous, if somewhat contested, type of Christianity where the spiritual values of nature are overtly expressed. Recent years have seen an increasing number of pilgrimages, and visitors are now estimated to exceed half a million per year, placing strains on this small community as well as on the island and surrounding coastal habitat, most of which is an official national nature reserve. The challenge today is to strike the best balance between spiritual, natural, community and economic values and interests … Read more.

The heat.

The tiny, flying red insects.

The ubiquitous body odor.

A toddler, naked save a pair of rubber boots, running to the river’s edge, delighted, excited, by a boatload of odd foreigners.

The smell of burnt hair as men scorch the pig for the feast. The rough, cool skin of a grandma as she grasps my hand, her fingers calloused from twisting bilum, a bark that’s made into string bags.

Even though we took thousands of photos and forty-odd hours of footage, I know we will never successfully convey what it’s like to be in Papua New Guinea.

I’m hoping that this video will impart some of the spirit of the place — the color and energy and many surprises we came across every day.

Canoes are a lifeline in Bosmun, the village depicted in this clip. The only road into town is the river, and it’s the same way villagers access their gardens, fish traps or visit relatives. The local “public motor vehicle,” an open-backed truck in other regions, is a motorized dugout canoe in these parts.

The village spent days making the ceremonial canoe in this clip, and it was a whole community effort. At first I didn’t fully appreciate the skill required to carve a canoe that is perfectly balanced, and won’t flip, wobble or lie to low in the water. I didn’t realize that one slip with the ax could destroy weeks of work. I didn’t know you could make paint by chewing mango leaves and spitting its juices back out.

So this is just a taste of what we saw in PNG — I hope you’re as blown away as we were.

The Bay Area Video Coalition’s new online video series The Stream features a segment on a new media application developed by the Sacred Land Film Project. The application for mobile devices — which we developed in collaboration with BAVC and our partner Dorothy FireCloud, the superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument — tells the story of indigenous culture through indigenous voices using video, audio and photos and augmented reality so that a hidden history is unveiled.

The Stream, which consists of video stories, machinima and radio podcasts, is a production of BAVC and inspired by projects developed at the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies. SLFP participated in last year’s 10-day institute, which you can read more about in our earlier blog post “Our Report on the BAVC Producers Institute.”

Do watch each and every one of The Stream’s videos for a glimpse into the future of documentary filmmaking, where compelling stories cross over to new media platforms and beyond to capture a broader audience, encourage interactivity, provoke thought and action for social and environmental justice.

Beneath the streets and all along the estuaries of the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay region lie ancient remnants of the daily and sacred lives of California’s native peoples. Pavement and buildings now mostly cover what used to be hundreds of shellmounds — gently rounded hills formed from accumulated layers of organic material deposited over generations by native coastal dwellers. Often the sites of burials and spiritual ceremonies, these shellmounds are still places for veneration. But preserving the remaining shellmounds has proven to be a contentious issue among developers, indigenous rights groups, preservationists, and local governments.

In the latter part of the 20th century, activists began working to protect remaining shellmounds and honor leveled sites where the commerce of modern life is conducted atop the graves of the Bay Area’s native peoples. Since 2005, organizers have sponsored a 280-mile shellmound prayer walk, lasting between 10 days and thee weeks, that visits several sites in the nine-county Bay Area region. The walk is primarily organized by Native women, and many in the Bay Area Native community participate in the walk, though walkers have come from as far away as Australia, Japan, the Cape Verde Islands and Nova Scotia. Some of the sites visited by the prayer walkers are already entombed under retail strips, others are protected, and still others are facing development pressure.

Songorea Te Shellmound

During the 2010 prayer walk, one of the sites under the most scrutiny was the Songorea Te shellmound in the city of Vallejo, located on 15 acres in Glen Cove Waterfront Park. The shellmound is 3,500 years old, and use of the site as a village and burial ground has been dated to 1,500 B.C.  Like most shellmounds, it was leveled in the early 1900s by private property owners; the land was eventually deeded to a municipal agency for parkland.

Plans now call for a $1.5 million low-intensity development to include picnic tables, a parking lot, a bathroom, and links to a network of Bay Area trails. Invasive plants will be eradicated and an old home on the property will be razed. The plan also calls for “capping” the identified shellmound site with a layer of soil and installing plaques describing the land’s history. The proposed work would be conducted under the observation of a state-designated indigenous representative, who has already given his approval of the project. Work on the park was slated to begin in October 2010.

But groups like Sacred Sites Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes and Indian People Organizing for Change (IPOC) oppose the plan and have been voicing concerns since 1999 about various attempts to develop the site. Indigenous activists instead ask that the entire site be undisturbed to protect the remaining shellmound and the environmentally sensitive wetland. They also ask that artifacts and remains removed during archeological digs be returned under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The University of California at Berkley, for example, houses approximately 13,000 ancestral remains from shellmounds like Songorea Te.

Greenaction, a San Francisco environmental-justice nonprofit, has partnered with organizers to draft a unity plan. Organizers are also searching for a lawyer to file an injunction against construction. As of December 2010, construction had not yet begun while a permitting issue awaits resolution.

“The creator picked that place for our ancestors to be buried,” Wounded Knee DeOcampo, one of the activists protesting development plans at Glen Cove, said. “That’s where our ancestors are. That’s where their spirits are. We have a responsibility as Indian people to protect our sacred sites.”

Buried History

The Songorea Te shellmound is just one of what used to be over 400 shellmounds clustered along the estuaries and inlets of the region, some acres wide and several stories high. The shellmounds were left by peoples of the Oholone, Patwin-Wintun, Bay Miwok, Coast Miwok, North Yokut, Wappo and South Pomo nations, a busy community of people who lived, traveled and traded all along a coastal landscape that provided plentiful resources.

Over time, the activities of daily life — eating shellfish, making tools, cooking, butchering animals, building shelters — led to the accumulation and compaction of tons of shells and other material in sloping mounds of rich soil. Generations of coastal dwellers returned to these shellmounds again and again, using the sites to bury ancestors — a way to intertwine their daily lives with the afterlife.

When European colonizers first came to the Bay Area in the 18th century, the shellmounds had been abandoned for hundreds of years, likely the result of an extended drought. But the shellmounds still retained their cultural significance and were visited and revered as sacred ancestral burial grounds.

As the San Francisco Bay Area urbanized in the 19th and early 20th centuries, most shellmounds were razed for development, dug up for their rich topsoil, looted by artifact seekers, and excavated by archaeologists who catalogued the relics in museums or university archives. Today, there are no shellmounds in the area that haven’t been desecrated in some way.

Emeryville Shellmound

The Emeryville shellmound, north of Oakland, is perhaps the most publicized example of how these burial grounds fared as the Bay Area developed. Associated with the Ohlone people, it was one of the largest shellmounds in the region. In 1876, the site was partially leveled for an amusement park; when the park closed in 1924, archaeologists excavated more than 700 indigenous graves. The site was then razed to build an industrial plant that occupied the site until the late 1990s, when the city demolished the buildings and started cleaning up the toxic soil left behind.

During that process, hundreds of human remains were found, some of which were reburied while others were taken to landfills or incinerated as part of the cleanup. Activists attended city council meetings to ask that the site be cleaned and allowed to remain open space and a place to honor ancestors. Construction continued, however, and was protested by groups like Indian People Organizing for Change, which now organizes the annual shellmound prayer walk.

The site was ultimately developed into the Bay Street Mall, a mix of retail and residential buildings. An unknown number of bodies are still interred under the three blocks of stores and apartments. Tucked in the rear of one of the stores is a small monument to the Ohlone shellmound. Every year on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, the annual shellmound prayer walk ends at Emeryville, where activists hold a protest to educate consumers about the burial grounds beneath their feet.

Hidden Shellmounds, Hard-Fought Protection Efforts

All across the Bay Area, many shellmounds are now hidden underground, with nothing to identify the significance of the sites. Some, like the West Berkeley shellmound, which is beneath parking lots and commercial businesses, have received historical landmark recognition or some other form of identification. A few others, like the shellmound at the base of San Bruno Mountain, just south of San Francisco, or the shellmound in Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont, are protected from commercial or residential development by land-use designations.

But these protections are hard-fought and take years to resolve. In the case of the San Bruno shellmound, it took a legal suit by environmental groups and a coalition of funders to stop commercial development on the site and raise the $1.3 million necessary to purchase the 25-acre property through a land trust.

At the Songorea Te shellmound at Glen Cove, activists and organizers have staged several peaceful protests, hoping to stop the arrival of the first bulldozer. They continue to negotiate with the city to halt development plans so that the spirits buried there can be granted the respect and peace appropriate to ancestral burial grounds.

What You Can Do

• Stay current with new developments and future activism at the Songorea Te shellmound via the Protect Glen Cove website.

• Join the annual Shellmound Peace Walk or make a donation in support of the walkers. Learn more at Indian People Organizing for Change.

• Shellmound activists continue to seek an attorney with expertise in Native American federal law to help preserve the Songorea Te shellmound. For further information or to contribute to the legal expense fund, contact:

Wounded Knee De Ocampo
400 Keats Drive
Vallejo, CA 94590
glencove@riseup.net
(707) 557-2140

• To protest development plans at the Songorea Te shellmound, write to the following:

City of Vallejo
Mayor Osby Davis
555 Santa Clara St
Vallego, CA 94590

Greater Vallejo Recreation District
General Manager
Shane McAffee
395 Amador St.
Vallejo, CA 94590

Sources

Albert, Mary. “San Bruno land set aside: Site was once used as Native American burial grounds.” San Francisco Examiner, September 10, 2004.

Becker, Leonard. “San Bruno Mountain Shellmound.” Sacred Sites International.

Buchanan, Wyatt. “Conservationists buy land in San Bruno.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2004.

Burchyns, Tony and Rachel Raskin-Zrihen. “Emotions run high in dispute at tribal burial site in Glen Cove area of Vallejo.” Vallejo Times-Herald, November 12, 2010.

Del Vecchio, Rick. “Emeryville: Filmmaker tells story of forgotten Indian burial ground disrupted by quest for retail.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 2005.

Dury, John and Laird Townsend. “Shellmound at San Bruno Mountain: Historical Essay.” Found SF.

Greater Vallejo Recreation District. Final Glen Cove Waterfront Master Plan. August 2007.

Indian People Organizing for Change.

Jones, Carolyn. “Indians: Vallejo’s plans for park desecration.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 2010.

National Park Service. “Process established for disposition of Native American human remains.” News release, March 15, 2010.

Rahimi, Shadi. “Glen Cove burial site slated for development.” Indian Country Today, December 23, 2009.

“The Emeryville Shellmound.” Sacred Sites International.

Shellmound. DVD. Directed by Andres Cediel. 2005. Berkeley, CA.

Vallejo Inter-Tribal Council. “Stop the Illegal Desecration of Glen Cove.”

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne has been a Christian holy site and pilgrimage center since 635, playing a pivotal role as a cradle of Christianity in Northern England and Southern Scotland. Nature and spirituality are very much linked here through a line of “nature saints,” of which St. Cuthbert — considered by some as England’s first nature conservationist — is best known in the area. The spiritual values of the island are mostly associated with these saints, the places linked with them, and the relationship with the island and its wildlife. Lindisfarne has a number of active Christian groups and, more recently, has become a node in the revival of Celtic Christianity — an indigenous, if somewhat contested, type of Christianity where the spiritual values of nature are overtly expressed. Recent years have seen an increasing number of pilgrimages, and visitors are now estimated to exceed half a million per year, placing strains on this small community as well as on the island and surrounding coastal habitat, most of which is an official national nature reserve and designated on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance. The challenge today is to strike the best balance between spiritual, natural, community and economic values and interests; a mechanism to generate an overall shared vision among different interests could ensure that all the island’s values are in balance and its overall integrity is maintained.

Lindisfarne History, Nature and Spirituality

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is one of Britain’s foremost Christian sacred natural sites and is the only one where national ecological values overlap with national religious and historical values. The island is located on the northeast coast of England, on the border with Scotland, and is accessible at low tide across sand and mud flats, which carry an ancient pilgrim’s way and a modern causeway. It is surrounded by the 8,750-acre Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve, which protects the island’s sand dunes and the adjacent intertidal habitats. Almost 300 bird species have been recorded in the reserve, and the total wintering wildfowl population, which includes six internationally important species, is estimated at 60,000.

Lindisfarne, one of the first Christian monastic communities in England, was founded in 635 by St. Aidan, whose generosity and humility are considered to have established the spiritual pattern of the island. For 240 years it was a center of early Christian learning and missionary endeavor. It is one of a number of holy islands off Britain’s coast and is associated with several saints, including St. Cuthbert, who served as bishop of the island’s monastic community during the late 7th century. St. Cuthbert had a reputation of a close relationship and affinity with nature, attributable to both a Christian nature tradition and pre-Christian Celtic nature spirituality. He was particularly fond of the seabirds and is attributed with establishing one of the first-ever bird protection rules relating to the killing of wildfowl.

Desecrated by the first Viking raid on England in 793, the abbey finally moved St. Cuthbert’s relics off the island in 875, and Lindisfarne was largely unoccupied until the reestablishment of a Benedictine priory around 1150. This was destroyed between 1536 and 1541, during the dissolution of the English monasteries by King Henry VIII. This event was part of the founding of the Anglican Church, with the English monarch as its head.

The Anglican Church is the oldest church on the island and, in some regards, can be said to be the inheritor of the Lindisfarne tradition. The 12th century parish church, Saint Mary the Virgin, is said to be on the site of the wooden church built by St. Aidan. Another religious community, St. Cuthbert’s Centre, hosts a variety of religious, spiritual and cultural events, including an annual retreat called “Faith and Feathers,” which combines bird watching with spiritual considerations. There is also a Catholic church, and two retreat centers, one of which focuses on Celtic Christianity. The various church groups meet together weekly to coordinate, and Holy Island has a strong ecumenical movement.

Lindisfarne has, along with Iona in Scotland, been the node of a revival of a Celtic spirituality. Some argue that there never was an organized “Celtic Church” or a distinctive Celtic spirituality. However, many argue that there was indeed a distinctive form of nature spirituality of the Celts that was incorporated into the early Christian Church as it established in these islands in early medieval times. Based on this, a rich, modern Celtic spirituality revival has developed. Celtic spirituality not only redefines nature as part of a Christian ethic, but also aims to heal the division between mind and matter that occurred during the reformation. While Celtic Christianity has its skeptics, it is clear from its remarkable popularity that it is filling a need for a form of Christianity with a clear concern for the Earth and its ecological community.

The main Lindisfarne settlement, with about 150 residents, is a traditional Northumbrian village reliant on fishing and farming but increasingly engaged in tourism, which is now estimated at 70 to 80 percent of the island’s income. While a number of long-established families have deep-rooted cultural ties to the island and unique traditions, the local population has been declining in recent years as people leave to seek jobs elsewhere, and increasing demand from “incomers” has increased house prices such that young people can no longer remain in their community. The local islander community has fears of the island becoming dominated by new religious groups that do not fall into the traditional and familiar churches.

Current Challenges and Preservation Efforts

Lindisfarne has the potential to bring nature conservation and spiritual values together, infusing the increasingly urgent need for global environmental action with a spiritual dimension. Increasing numbers of visitors, and their attendant vehicles, support the local economy but add significant pressures that may compromise the island’s overall integrity. This rising tourism, along with a growing property economy, is also putting local community values at risk. To meet these challenges, the key players on the island have been taking significant steps, including a greater understanding of the human ecology of the island and an increased level of collective action to ensure that the island maintains its integrity and multiple values into the future.

Conservation management

The Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve staff engages in several management practices, including livestock grazing to maintain the species-rich grasslands. The wildfowl are counted monthly as part of a national monitoring program. Visitor management includes regulating the access to the most sensitive areas, especially the sand dunes. Invasive alien species are monitored, the most notable of which is the New Zealand piripiri burr, historically imported in wool for the region’s cloth mills. The construction of a causeway, built in 1954-1964, has perhaps caused the biggest changes to the reserve. For example, a local rise in the sand flats in the vicinity of the causeway has hastened the conversion of mudflats to sand flats and salt marsh, thereby reducing the area of some habitats important for wildfowl grazing. Parking becomes limited during the peak season, when cars park along the main access road by the dunes; Natural England, the conservation institution responsible for declaring and managing England’s nature reserves, is under some pressure to prevent this.

Community trust fund

In response to the lack of affordable housing, the islanders established the Holy Island of Lindisfarne Community Development Trust in 1996. The trust established the Lindisfarne Visitor Centre, using the profits from sales for the benefit of the community, including building 11 community houses that are rented to community members who want to stay on the island. In this way, the island community is proactively countering some of the challenges brought about by high property values. Whether the community ownership of only seven percent of the housing stock will be sufficient to ensure community continuity remains to be seen and a higher target might be needed.

Managing tourism

Reflecting trends including an increasing interest in both nature and spirituality, tourism is now the mainstay of the island’s economy. Visitors include day-trippers, birdwatchers, pilgrims and retreat-goers. The birdwatchers come mostly during spring and autumn, when the migrant birds pass through and the wintering wildfowl are in residence. Pilgrims come primarily over the summer, with a small but increasing number coming by foot. Some of these have used one of the newly established long-distance themed walks, which are not original pilgrim routes but walks based on themes related to Lindisfarne. Bus pilgrimages of 2,000 people in 60 buses are not unusual, and unannounced arrivals can overload the facilities, disrupting local traffic and putting severe strain on car parking.

Seeking balance between nature, religion, community and commerce

In addition to natural and spiritual values, the island is important for local community and heritage, and also for economic values, but these values are not necessarily balanced. At one level Lindisfarne is a “normal” Northumbrian village, with long-term needs such as employment, affordable housing and schools. These needs to some extent run counter to a high-profile visitor attraction generating high property values. The management of the island itself and surrounding coastal wetlands is distributed among a wide range of entities and institutions, leading to multiple visions for the future of the island. No clear mechanisms have been established to discuss or decide the trade-offs between different visions and development paths. Some of the players are very large national-level government, church or charity organizations that have specialized mandates, bureaucratic tendencies, and remote and relatively inflexible decision-making mechanisms, while other key groups, especially the local community members, have no formalized voice in the decision-making process. The Community Development Trust, however, is widening its remit and gaining experience, and is therefore becoming better able to represent the community with larger institutions on a more equal footing.

Recommendations

A process of analysis, reflection and understanding followed by consensus decision-making would appear to be necessary, bringing key players together in a more in-depth way than their current working patterns and communications allow. Decision-making staff need to be engaged in this process and be willing to commit to taking action on joint decisions.

The first steps are now being taken toward such a process with the formation of a proposed Holy Island partnership. This is in its very early stages and is not widely known among some of the key players. While a forum is likely to be essential, it may not be sufficient, especially at the start; a consensus-building process may need to be undertaken to engage with a wider group of people than the forum representatives. One approach to consensus building could be a series of facilitated workshops to bring ideas to the table that could be examined in a positive light, generate a shared vision, and develop an agreed work plan. It might be useful to ask questions about the island’s economy: What is it for? How does it work? How big is too big? What is fair? How is it governed? Understanding and building a whole-island economy that answers these questions could be an important effort. Key organizations active on Holy Island should examine how they might serve community cohesion, a community of diverse interests unified by a strong sense of place.

Selected References

Adam, David. Border Lands: The Best of David Adam’s Celtic Vision. Wisconsin: Sheed and Ward, 1991.

Bede. An ecclesiastical history of the English People. Edited by Judith McClure and Roger Collins. Oxford World Classics, 1994.

Beith, Alan. “Sir Alan Beith launches unique housing venture on Holy Island.” Rt. Hon. Sir Alan Beith MP.

Bradley, Ian. Celtic Christianity: Making Myths, Chasing Dreams. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.

Brown, Michelle P. Painted Labyrinth: The World of the Lindisfarne Gospels. The British Library, 2004.

Brown, Peter. G. and Garver, Geoffrey. Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2009.

Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University/Clarendon Press, 1978.

Leatham, Diana. They Built on Rock: Stories of the Celtic Saints. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948.

Magnusson, Magnus. Lindisfarne, The Cradle Island. London: Oriel Press, 1984.

Meek, Donald. The Quest for Celtic Spirituality. Kincardine, UK: Handsel Press, 2000.

Natural England. “Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve.” Natural England.

Natural England. Management Plan of Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve. Natural England, 2005.

Newell, J.P. 1999. The Book of Creation, An exploration of Celtic Christianity’s celebration of creation and creativity. Paulist Press, New Jersey, USA.

St. Mary’s Parish Church — Holy Island.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Tristram, Kate. The Story of Holy Island: An Illustrated History. Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2009.

Hello, my name is Michael Preston, and I am a member of the Winnemem Wintu tribe and the newest member of the Sacred Land Film Project crew. I just wanted to share a little more about my tribe and do what I can to help tell our story.

Just a brief internal history: We were told by our former leader, Florence Jones, who led the tribe for 60-plus years, that it was time to tell the world about the state the Winnemem Wintu are in. As a result, Toby and the Sacred Land Film Project were allowed to film intricate parts of ceremonial life and feature us in the film In the Light of Reverence. At first this was met with much resistance by tribal members, but Florence was unfazed and the documentary went on.

Since that time, numerous short documentaries have come out telling a little more of the Winnemem story. Although many tribes still consider it taboo to film any part of ceremony, which is understandable, we have come to use a variety of documentation methods to help protect sacred sites, tell our story of injustice, preserve cultural knowledge and help attain federal recognition from the U.S. government, which does not consider us to be “real” Indians.

The story of the Winnemem Wintu is ever changing, but many of the things we find ourselves fighting for are the same battles my people have fought since first contact. We still do not have the basic rights afforded to Native Americans. We are unrecognized, with unratified treaties, and we are still fighting to protect our homeland and sacred sites and to continue our traditional way of life.

To help my people tell the world about what is happening in Winnemem Wintu lands, Rachel Gelfand and I embarked on a 28-minute radio piece that was aired on the National Radio Project’s show “Making Contact” in 2009. We conducted interviews with tribal members, environmental-justice advocates and the Westlands Water District to help tell the Winnemem story about our current fight against the raising of Shasta Dam to save our lands from being flooded a second time. Thanks for your time and hope you enjoy the piece.

Last week the United States joined the international community and became the last nation to adopt the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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.

Our boat left Maui at dawn and headed south across calm water toward Kaho‘olawe. With a group of 60 Native Hawaiians, we floated our film gear through the surf — in watertight Pelican cases — to a rocky beach. Above us loomed eroding red slopes overgrazed by goats for a century and bombed by the U.S. Navy for 50 years before determined Hawaiian activists won the island back to native control in 1994. A new era of healing has begun.

Cameraman Andy Black, sound recordist Dave Wendlinger and I were honored last month to be a part of the Makahiki ceremony, which welcomes the season of rain to Hawaii. As part of the ecological and spiritual restoration of the island, the Protect Kaho‘olawe Ohana (PKO) performs the ritual every year, opening the ceremony in November and closing in February. PKO members revived Makahiki in 1982 and have conducted the ceremony every year since. At three locations on the island, offerings are presented to the revered sky god Lono, as the people chant ancient prayers of gratitude and call for rain to “regreen the island.”

I had requested permission to film the ceremony, but our colleagues in the ohana felt strongly that filming would disrupt the focus required of each individual. However, they suggested that participation in the ceremony would give me a better feeling for the life of the island, the depth of the healing needed, and the continually evolving cultural response to the needs of nature and demands of history.

In the 30 years I’ve known and worked with the Hopi I’ve never been allowed to film a ceremony there and I’ve accepted that I never will. In our recent trip to the village of Bosmun in Papua New Guinea, the elders debated late into the night whether they would let us film the transcendental flutes at dawn. Ultimately, the decision was no filming of the flute players — too sacred, too dangerous — but audio recording was allowed. I definitely feel disappointment when a visually stunning and spiritually powerful ceremony passes before my eyes with the camera in its case, but I fully accept it and try instead to appreciate what is going on around me — and inside me.

Small groups carefully prepared 12 different offerings, which were then presented to the mo-o-Lono priests and baked in an underground fire called an imu. Each presenter stated his or her name, where they’re from, the plant being given, and where it was grown. As the sun set we walked barefoot across lava rocks to a shrine where the chants, prayers and food for the gods were presented. As the first offerings were held up to the sky, a rainbow arced down and touched the island in the east, and a beam of light came streaming out of a dark cloud in the west. It reminded me of the full double rainbow that appeared (right) over the sacred point known as Kealaikahiki in June during our first film trip to the island.

In our collaborations with communities in sacred places around the world I have come to appreciate the important role of “rituals of generosity” in which the people give to the earth and ask for nothing in return. The good spirit, humor, focus, joy, care and commitment of the community all manifested in beautiful bundles — ho-o-kupu — created out of sweet potato, taro and other gifts of the earth, wrapped in green ti leaves and one by one set on platforms in the sky. It was a true ritual of generosity. To participate, and forget about filming, was a blessing. The rain, the gentle ocean and numerous shooting stars were clear answers to our collective prayers. The island absorbed the moisture, the love and the laughter with quiet purpose.

Back in Berkeley, a new moon sets over San Francisco Bay and the winter solstice approaches. It’s time for reflection on a busy year and a transition from 40 months of travel and shooting to an intensive year of editing. With Hawaii our final story to film (18 hours shot so far), we have begun to try to get our heads around 53 hours of tape from the Altai, 46 hours from Ethiopia, 34 hours from Peru, 42 hours from Mount Shasta, 42 hours from Papua New Guinea, 44 hours from Australia, and 50 hours from Canada. Now begins the joy and struggle of weaving our eight stories together.

I spent the past week editing the wise words of our good friend Danil Mamyev (left) from the Altai Republic of Russia. On our first filming trip for Losing Sacred Ground, Danil took us on a pilgrimage up Uch Enmek Mountain. Like the Hawaiians who watch for hoaiolona, signs from nature, Danil encouraged us to fully experience the journey by going with pure intentions, being open and listening to the land. In both Altai and Kaho‘olawe, giving energy to the land revealed signs, lessons and inner realizations that are the essence of sacred places.

Our time on Kaho‘olawe ended with a day of filming the Makahiki Games. The main event was wrestling, and the competition was intense in all categories — men, women and children. No matter how much dust was kicked up or how hard the loser was thrown to the ground, every battle ended with smiles, touched foreheads and a deep aloha breath. Warrior training continues in the 21st century.

Everyone who’s known me for longer than 15 minutes knows that I love crafts. I make felt, I reconstruct my clothes, I made our wedding rings. (I don’t necessarily do these things well, but I enjoy them anyway.)

Our recent trip to Alberta introduced me to a lot of old-school do-it-yourselfers — people for whom the trendy recent renaissance of home jamming and butchering means nothing, because they’ve been doing it all along. They’ve been doing it not as a “lifestyle choice,” but for survival. Having grown up in Safeway-strafed suburbia but an avid lover of all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I was excited to meet people who were living off the land, surviving minus 40 degree winters through hunting and fishing.

Eugene Courtoreille hunts moose, then smokes the meat to make dried meat.

Leona Guertin picks wild blueberries and high bush cranberries to can beautiful jams. (They didn’t quite last the winter, as we devoured several jars in a sitting. Sorry, Leona!)

Roy Ladouceur gathers bundles of mint that he dries for tea, and sweetgrass he braids for smudging.

It’s getting harder and harder to do these things. Pollution and lower water levels mean most people have found it to difficult to stay in the bush, and they’ve retreated to towns like Fort Chipewyan, where there are such amenities as a store and running water. Some say that the plant medicines along the river aren’t as potent, if they can find them at all. Moose, ducks and beavers are harder to find. A brown scuzzy foam floats on top of the river, where fisherman have complained for years about rising rates of deformed fish. Most people blame the oil sands operations upstream from their reserve lands.

But in the midst of this stark and, frankly, depressing gloom and protest, we met another DIYer. Mike Mercredi did something I didn’t think you could do at home: he started his own radio station.

Fort Chipewyan didn’t really have a radio station. The faint signals of a few stations make it up to this town of 1,200, but Mike recalls one particularly frustrating evening, when all he could pick up was radio bingo. Radio bingo has a big following, but if you’re not actually playing it’s hilariously boring. (Imagine, in monotone: “O-42. O-42. B-3. B-3 …”) So Mike decided to start his own station.

Mike didn’t have any experience with radio or the technical side of broadcasting. But he didn’t let that stop him. He had a friend who guided him through the setup — what kind of transmitter to buy, how to set up the software. He says it was a relatively simple process to get on the air.

The station is run from a laptop and a small transmitter. It broadcasts when he feels like it; if he wants to save electricity or is out of town, it goes off the air. He has the occasional live interview, takes requests, and makes community announcements. He invites friends to come in and share the microphone. He plays a crazy mix of music: country, metal, pop, hip-hop, whatever comes up on the playlist. He is totally comfortable as a DJ, casual and conversational, funny and personal.

Most of the young people in town tune in to Mike’s station when it’s on: 107.3, “For Chip, By Chip!” (FCBC). So far, it’s been a great success.

But the dream doesn’t stop there. He has plans to start taking advertising for a bit of cash flow — right now, all of the costs are out of his pocket.  So far it’s been a one-man operation, but Mike is hoping to start affiliated stations in small towns across the region. As he said, “There’s so much gloom and doom, and I wanted to give something positive to the community.”

Mike’s also hoping to podcast some of the interviews, or perhaps stream his broadcasts online. But for now, the only way to hear his show is by going to Fort Chipewyan.

Meanwhile, we can all take inspiration from Mike’s do-it-yourself attitude: if you see a need, it just might be in your power to meet it.

Independent climate change and sustainable development publisher Earthscan is hosting a free webinar Tuesday, Nov. 23, at 9 a.m. PST that promises insight into:

• Biocultural diversity
• Integrating cultural and spiritual values into conservation, tourism and heritage management practices
• Embracing the values of local people to dramatically increase the success of conservation and sustainability efforts, for the benefit of all

Reconnecting Culture and Nature is presented by Luisa Maffi, co-author of “Biocultural Diversity Conservation,” and Robert Wild, co-editor of “Sacred Natural Sites.”

Register here! If you can’t make the live webinar, don’t worry — it will be made available at Earthscan’s archive so you can tune in at your convenience.

A crowd of 200 Anangu traditional owners, along with tourists and officials, recently gathered at the base of Australia’s iconic sandstone monolith Uluru to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its return to the traditional custodians.

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.

by Caitlin Sislin, Women’s Earth Alliance, North America Director
originally posted at Women’s Earth Alliance

Where do you get your power? Does it emerge from the ground beneath your feet? Do you look to the sky or to the waters for it? Does it coalesce within your community? As power flows towards you, does it render others’ lives bleak while it brightens yours? Will your great grandchildren’s great grandchildren be fortunate enough to derive their power from the same places as you do?

These are the questions that our team of delegates — women leaders from across the environmental and green energy advocacy spectrum — investigated during our Fall 2010 Advocacy Delegation, Promoting Energy Justice on the Navajo Nation. During our five-day journey from Flagstaff, Arizona to Shiprock, New Mexico, our team met front-line leaders of the Dine’ movement for a just transition from fossil fuels to sustainability. These courageous women and men generously shared their stories, struggles and strategies with us, together describing a shared vision for an end to the U.S.’ reliance on dirty power derived from indigenous lands, and a turning towards the abundant solar, wind and non-polluting energy potential of tribal lands.

Our Dine’ colleagues and hosts spoke to us of the potential for healing and transformation inherent in this power shift. They modeled the efficacy of coordinated grassroots action to bring that vision to life. And they named the importance of broad-based coalitions to support the vision for ecological and economic justice for indigenous peoples.

How do we unplug from these injustices and desecrations, when so many of us unwittingly or unavoidably rely on fossil fuels to power our modern lifestyles? Bound, as so many of us currently are, to cheap electricity and an economic system that ceaselessly plunders and contaminates the most sacred places of the original peoples of this land, how do we engender the transformation so critically needed at this time in history? As allies to indigenous leaders working for environmental justice, it is incumbent upon us to ask hard questions of ourselves and of our communities: who and what suffers so that we can turn on the lights, and what will it take to find another way?

Discovering the destruction is remarkably easy: anyone can follow the path of the gargantuan transmission lines crossing the Southwestern desert back to the coal mines, the power plants, the contaminated water tables, the birth defects and cancer clusters. But finding a new way is a more complex task that will require everyone’s participation. For some of us, it means employing our expertise at the federal level, demanding increasingly stringent air- and water-quality regulations, the overhaul of corrupt agencies, and the overturning of ill-advised permits to power plants and mineral extraction operations.

For others, it means organizing around state and local ballot propositions, working to build legislative bridges between economic development and environmental sustainability. For yet others, it means jumping into the trenches of business development, supporting the strategic planning, capitalization and implementation of far-seeing projects like utility-scale solar installations on reclaimed mine land on tribal reservations.

And for all of us, it means becoming ever more aware of the effect of each of our actions – even the most minute, like flipping a light-switch – has on the web of life.

Our dedicated Advocacy Delegation team learned that we have all the power we need – the power to say no to destruction, the power to say yes to an equitable, healthy future for all of us, and the power to act in alliance with the deeply-rooted vision for sustainability held by indigenous women and men throughout North America.

From our friends at Greenaction:

The City of Vallejo and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD) are planning to destroy the Glen Cove ancient Native American burial site and shell mound in order to expand a trail and build a parking lot and toilets.

They have ignored the concerns of the Native community, so we are calling all advocates, activists, elders, spiritual leaders, families, the Native community and environmental and social justice activists to join us in a spiritual ceremony and gathering that YOU CAN ATTEND.

What: “The Ancestors are Crying” — Protect Glen Cove Native Sacred Site from Destruction
When: Noon, Saturday, Oct. 16
Where: Glen Cove, Vallejo. Click here for directions.

Click here for more information or call Sacred Site Protection and Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSPIRITS) 707-557-2140.

If you can not attend this gathering, YOU CAN HELP by contacting the following individuals and demand that Glen Cove sacred site is protected:

Osby Davis, Mayor of Vallejo
555 Santa Clara Street, Vallejo, CA 94590
707-648-4377
mayor@ci.vallejo.ca.us

Shane McAffee, GVRD Manager
395 Amador Street, Vallejo, CA 94590
707-648-4603
smcaffee@gvrd.org

Let’s send a clear message that the Glen Cove sacred site must not be destroyed!

For more background information, read our Sacred Land news post from March 16.

New Mexico’s Taos Pueblo community recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the return of their sacred Blue Lake after 64 years under federal government control. Hundreds gathered Sept. 17 and 18 to commemorate this precedent-setting victory for religious freedom and sacred land protection.

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.

When the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples three years ago, only four member states voted against it: Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

The declaration sets forth “the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world,” recognizing their right, both collectively and individually, to enjoy all the freedoms laid out in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. It establishes their rights to traditional lands, political participation, cultural expression, and freedom from discrimination, among others.

Last year Australia, under a new government, voted to support the declaration, and this year New Zealand followed suit. Now, in response to recommendations from tribal leaders and NGOs, the Obama administration is also reconsidering the U.S. stance.

In April of this year, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan G. Rice announced that the United States had decided to review its position, noting, “We recognize that, for many around the world, this declaration provides a framework for addressing indigenous issues.”

Since then, then State Department and other federal bodies have been holding consultations with Indian tribes, interested NGOs and other stakeholders. The review is due to conclude sometime in October.

Now is the time to encourage the White House to endorse the declaration! Visit the Indian Law Resource Center or Amnesty International to send a letter to President Obama.

A Hawaiian marine national monument known for both its abundant and unique aquatic species and its significance to Native Hawaiians has become the United States’ first new UNESCO World Heritage site in 15 years and its first to be recognized as a mixed cultural-natural property.

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.

In one of the largest repatriations of Native American ceremonial artifacts in U.S. history, the Smithsonian Institution has returned 217 sacred items to California’s Yurok tribe.

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.

In August 2010, the team at Sacred Land Film Project traveled to Alberta Canada, the site of  one of the world’s largest oil sands deposits and the place where more than half of the oil produced goes straight to the US. The booming industry provides employment in an area where jobs would normally be hard to come by, yet the very work local people do contributes to the erosion of their environment, their traditional cultures and their health.

In a major victory for indigenous land rights, India’s environment minster on Aug. 24 struck down a controversial mining project in eastern Orissa state that would have threatened the survival of the 8,000-member Dongria Kondh tribe.

Citing violations of environmental and human rights laws, Jairam Ramesh denied permission for London-based Vedanta Resources to build an open-cast bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri Hill range. The company had set up an alumina refinery in Orissa in 2008 with the expectation that it would be allowed to annually extract three million metric tons of bauxite, the raw material for aluminum.

The Dongria Kondh consider the remote hills — home to their god, Niyam Raja — sacred, and they also depend on the hills for their livelihood. For the past eight years they have been fighting to protect their land and way of life. The tribe had gained the support of NGOs including Amnesty International and Survival International, which ran a successful global campaign comparing the Dongria Kondh’s plight to the Na’vi tribe in the award-winning James Cameron film “Avatar.” (Watch Survival’s film “Mine,” embedded below.)

Vedanta had claimed the mine would cause little disturbance to the hills and that, along with the refinery, it would help alleviate poverty in the region. However, in a report commissioned by Ramesh, a committee of experts found that the project would “drastically alter the region’s water supply, affecting both ecological systems and human communities,” and threaten “the very survival” of the Dongria Kondh. The committee found that Vedanta had acted illegally and with “total contempt for the law,” and that to allow the mine to go forward would be “illegal.”

Vedanta reportedly intends to push for an alternative mine site in the region. “There is no question of abandoning this project,” CEO Mukesh Kumar said. The alumina refinery, which has polluted rivers and damaged crops along with the livelihood of the local people, will also continue to operate.

SLFP Project Director Toby McLeod discussed his experiences filming Losing Sacred Ground and In the Light of Reverence and shared his thoughts on human relationships with sacred natural places on the July 27 edition of the weekly radio program “A World of Possibilities.”

The program, titled “Saving Sacred Lands,” also featured interviews with Gathuru Mburu, director of the Institute of Culture and Ecology in Kenya; Silvia Gómez a consultant for Gaia Amazonas Foundation in Bogota, Colombia; and
Liz Hosken, director and co-founder of the Gaia Foundation in London.

Listen to the full program here.

Widespread illegal harvesting of mahogany — bound for the United States and other world markets — continues inside a Peruvian reserve for uncontacted indigenous tribes, according to a report released this month by the nonprofit Upper Amazon Conservancy.

The UAC’s year-long investigation documented logging settlements and felled trees throughout the 1.2-million-acre Muruanahua Territorial Reserve for Indigenous People in Voluntary Isolation. The reserve and adjacent Alto Purús National Park are part of the largest network of protected areas in Peru and home to at least three uncontacted groups, the largest concentration of isolated tribes in Peru and possibly the world.

UAC initially discovered a large logging operation in the headwaters of the Mapuya River, near the border with Alto Purús, in March 2009. In April of this year, a flyover observation revealed large rafts of recently cut mahogany boards, indicating that the settlement continues to be used as a transport center for illegal wood. The group also identified a separate logging settlement on the lower Mapuya. Both sites, according to local people interviewed by UAC, have been in use for several years.

The report notes that loggers are also targeting titled indigenous community lands along the Yurua River, adjacent to the reserve. In recent years, logging companies have “aggressively pursued” logging agreements with these communities, which contain “some of the last commercially viable mahogany stands anywhere in Peru outside of protected areas.” Unfortunately, loggers often employ exploitative practices with the communities. According to the report, “a vast network of logging roads” crosses the area, “providing a fleet of over a dozen tractors with easy access to the forests all along the Yurua.”

Ironically, along the route out of this remote area, the wood passes a forestry control post constructed specifically to stop the transport of illegal wood. However, according to the report, “the wood is laundered with forestry permits intended for legal logging operations in registered timber concessions and community lands… thus, when the wood is finally trucked to Lima, it contains export documentation required by the United States.”

With the United States receiving more than 80 percent of Peru’s mahogany exports, the 2008 amendment to the Lacey Act — which outlaws the import, possession and sale of illegally sourced wood — is almost certainly being violated. The illegal logging means that Peru is also failing to uphold its forestry obligations under a 2009 U.S. free trade agreement, as well as violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Illegal logging harms uncontacted tribes by invading the lands that sustain them. The UAC report also notes that the encroachment of loggers into Murunahua homelands is likely driving some members of the tribe to join settled communities on the Yurua River. But what’s more, loggers bring diseases against which the tribes have no natural defenses. According to Survival International, after the isolated Murunahua tribe came in contact with loggers in the 1990s, more than half the population died, primarily from transmitted infections.

The UAC report urges Peruvian authorities to do more to combat illegal logging, but notes that the illegal activity, and resulting endangerment of vulnerable indigenous tribes, will likely continue “until the U.S. government unilaterally rejects questionable Peruvian mahogany.”

Likewise, Survival International’s David Hill, in an interview with Mongabay.com, said, “The only ways to stop this happening is for U.S. buyers to reject any Peruvian mahogany, or the U.S. government to ban exports temporarily. Until that happens, people in the U.S. have no idea where the wood they’re buying is actually coming from.”

Learn more about illegal mahogany logging and its impact on indigenous tribes in our Alto Purús sacred site report.

After a two-day court hearing, the traditional custodians of Phiphidi Waterfall last week won an injunction to halt the construction of a tourist resort at their sacred site for 20 days, allowing them to prepare for further legal action.

The Ramunangi clan, in South Africa’s Limpopo Province, has been waging a years-long battle to protect the Phiphidi Waterfall area from tourism and other forms of development. The latest threat began on April 19 when bulldozers broke ground on a tourist complex that would include eight chalets, a restaurant and a bar at the head of the falls. (See June 22 story.)

After unsuccessfully seeking other remedies, the Ramunangi and members of Dzomo la Mupo, custodians of a larger network of sacred sites in the Venda region of which Phiphidi is a part, petitioned the Limpopo High Court for an injunction. Construction is being carried out by Tshivhase Development Foundation Trust, which is run by a relative of Venda king Kennedy Tshivhase.

According to the Ramunangi’s legal representative Roger Chennells, the judge, after hearing testimony from both sides, agreed to conduct an on-site inspection of the construction in response to the defendants’ claim that Phiphidi Waterfall was not a sacred site and that the Ramunangi were not the traditional custodians.

Dzomo la Mupo member Mpatheleni Mapaulule said that upon visiting the site and witnessing Ramunangi elders performing a ritual, “the judge said we must not disturb them.” She noted that the judge could see that the whole area, including the surrounding forest, was sacred: “He said the church is the yard, the altar is not only sacred but the whole surrounding.”

For background on this story, read our Phiphidi Waterfall sacred site report.

Update: Read more in this Aug. 1 article from BBC News.

From Cultural Survival:

Defend Indigenous Rights and Protect Marine Life in Papua New Guinea

The government of Papua New Guinea doesn’t want to hear from us. It has authorized a Chinese mining company to dump toxic waste into the sea, and it is determined to stifle dissent from every quarter. It hired scientists to assess potential harm to marine life, but when the scientists warned that the damage could be widespread, it suppressed and ignored their findings. When coastal Indigenous land-owner clans challenged the mining company’s “deep submarine tailings placement” project in court, the government passed a law that denies citizens the right to appeal any permit granted by the Department of Environment and Conservation, no matter how it might affect their health, livelihoods, and cultures. PNG’s license to the Chinese Metallurgical Construction Company (CMCC) violates national laws and international agreements, but the PNG government isn’t listening – yet.

An international outcry is needed. Toxic mine tailings dumped into the Bismarck Sea could undermine the marine food chain at its source, potentially rendering all fish unsafe to eat and destroying the livelihoods of the Indigenous people who depend on the sea. Could thousands of letters from world citizens get the attention of the PNG government? Please send your letter today. We must try.

Read more at Cultural Survival’s website.

As tourists flock to South Africa this month for the World Cup tournament, a tribe in the north of the country is urgently struggling to save a sacred site from being destroyed by tourism development.

On April 19, bulldozers moved in on Phiphidi Waterfall, one of the sacred sites of South Africa’s vhaVenda people, breaking ground on a project to build a tourist-chalet complex. The move was the latest blow in the Ramunangi clan’s years-long struggle to assert their role as traditional custodians of Phiphidi and protect their sacred site from development.

For years visitors, lured by government tourism marketing, have been literally trashing the site — trampling vegetation and leaving litter in even the most sacred areas — while the Ramunangi have been denied full access to perform certain rituals. In addition, a road-building project recently destroyed one of Phiphidi’s most holy areas, a rock above the falls.

The current development scheme was undertaken without the legally required consultations. After members of the community notified the developer that it was building on a sacred site, activity temporarily ceased. However, work resumed on May 31. The site is now locked, and the required notice board about the nature of the development, the implementing agency and the name of the developer is absent. According to one Ramunangi elder who visited the site June 8, the damage to this sacred place is already serious.

Phiphidi is part of a network of sacred sites that are central to the traditional belief system of the vhaVenda people. These sites are the home of ancestral spirits, which protect the people, ensure health and well being, and bring rain. The Ramunangi regard themselves not as owners of Phiphidi but as its stewards, with a duty to protect the site and perform rituals there for the whole of Venda. The waterfall, river and surrounding forest are part of a savannah biome in a region known as a biodiversity hotspot.

What You Can Do

The Gaia Foundation is collecting statements of support to aid the effort to obtain a court injunction. Go to their website to sign on to their statement or submit one of your own.

For background on this story, read our Phiphidi Waterfall sacred site report.

You may have heard that Sacred Land Film Project was at the BAVC Producers Institute, an intense new digital-media boot camp leading to a project presentation before a packed house at the The Center in San Francisco.

For 10 days our team was immersed in learning about emerging new media technologies, how to harness them for social and environmental justice, how to nurture and grow communities, and how to motivate positive action using these exciting new tools. Topics ranged from alternate, augmented, virtual and hybrid digital reality, web 3.0, the “intelligent web,” data visualization, interactive mapping, to twitter strategy and crowd sourcing. We were surprised to learn that we are no longer filmmakers, we are “screen content producers!”

The project we developed and then presented at The Center is a global application made for mobile devices, like a smart phone, that will take you on a tour of sacred sites that are now maintained as national parks or, in the case of urban tours, to discover where sacred sites have been paved over.

We partnered with Dorothy FireCloud, the Superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument, to create a tour prototype. With Dorothy’s guidance and the help of our amazing mentors, Anselm Hook, a leading augmented reality specialist, and Paige Saez, a designer and strategist, we created a working prototype and a long-term vision for a mobile phone application that could have a profound impact on our collective understanding of sacred lands.

The tour tells the story of indigenous culture through indigenous voices using video, audio, photos and augmented reality so that a hidden history is unveiled. Augmented reality is when an image is overlaid onto a physical environment, as you can see in the video below.

GPS data triggers your hand-held device to play stories relevant to your exact location. For example, in our Devils Tower prototype, you will be able to look through your smart phone and see an Indian village overlaid onto the modern-day physical environment, then raise the phone to the sky, where you can learn about Lakota star knowledge and see it through the phone.

We love the way this technology encourages people to get out and experience nature while learning a history that is buried, lost, hidden, erased or literally underground, and in doing so recapture what it means to be in connection with the land.

The government of Papua New Guinea dealt a harsh blow to traditional landowners on May 28 when it passed a pair of amendments to the country’s Environment Act barring legal challenges to mining and other resource projects.

Rushed through Parliament on a Friday night, the amendments shelter resource projects from legal challenges over environmental damage, labor abuse and landowner exploitation, and grant the government wide-ranging power to exempt resource developers from state environmental requirements. Thus, the legislation effectively strips citizen’s traditional and constitutional land rights while giving developers greater power and protecting them from liability.

The legislation, passed by a vote of 73 to 10, came after intense lobbying by China Metallurgical Group Corporation, developer of the $1.4 billion Ramu nickel/cobalt mine. Ramu landowners had recently won an injunction to stop a pipeline that would slurry waste from the mine out to sea off Madang Province, once the mine is completed.

Tiffany Nonggorr, a lawyer representing the landowners, said the battle is not yet over, as the matter is already before the courts.

For more detail check out the June 1 blog post by SLFP Director Toby McLeod about his recent trip to Madang Province to document the Ramu nickel mine story for the upcoming Losing Sacred Ground film series.

Note: The SLFP crew went to Papua New Guinea in April, 2010 to film a segment of Losing Sacred Ground. We are posting a few stories from that trip.

The woman selling bananas smiles at me, warmly, excited. I snap her picture, then, like so many times before, I spin my camera around so she can see herself in the camera’s LCD display. Onlookers gather round. They point at the photo and nod excitedly, give me the thumbs up, and go back to studying the screen. The banana woman reaches out to shake my hand. “Thank you.” She pushes a bunch of bananas into my hand.

Traveling through Papua New Guinea, this scene replays itself with construction workers, fishermen, betel-nut sellers, toddlers, teenage boys carrying machetes and wizened men wearing traditional wigs decorated with flowers. All reacted with wonder, curiosity, surprise and glee at seeing their own photos.

Especially in areas without electricity (or photo development labs, for that matter) possession of these photos was extremely valuable. My husband brought a small photo printer, and whenever it spit forth its diminutive image, the recipient would retreat without another word to study his or her likeness. Friends would gather and comment, point and laugh, and we would usually leave them still staring at the print as our boat pulled away.

Ownership and control of one’s own image is not a new issue for documentary filmmakers, but it’s especially important in places like Papua New Guinea, where most people have little or no access to cameras, video and other technology. Tellingly, in the places where we spent the most time, the thing people wanted most from us (after first aid) was copies of our photos and video.

“It doesn’t matter if it takes a long time,” the Huli men from our guest house told us. “Please send us our photos.”

Having just completed the BAVC Producer’s Institute for New Media, we newly realized how many issues there are in this new era of filmmaking. YouTube and Vimeo make global distribution possible at the click of a button, and online tools make it possible for people separated by thousands of miles to share footage and collaboratively edit a film. In many ways that’s revolutionary — a plurality of voices, people telling their own stories, sharing and pooling resources to reach as wide an audience as possible.

But this “democratization” of the means of production also means that filmmakers can easily lose control over the images they create. And that could be a problem. Giving up your own likeness makes you vulnerable in surprising ways. The people who allowed us to take their images trusted that we would not misuse them. It would be negligent and unethical to share those images, especially the editing of them, in ways that the subjects haven’t agreed to.

In Papua New Guinea, that responsibility could easily be lost — since so many people so freely invited us to take their photos. In a country where Internet access is sparse and we saw no local television production, the need for media literacy and empowerment is taking a back seat to more urgent problems like health care, nutrition, schools, roads and violence.

But I believe that producing media and learning its power are also crucial elements in development. Of course, I’ll be a bit sad when my digital camera in a riverside village fails to elicit the simple, immediate thrill that it did this past April. But I would trade that for seeing kids using cameras to interview their elders, mothers telling their own stories, and people along the road taking pictures of the fascinating foreigners, instead of the other way around.

Chinese police in Markham County in eastern Tibet have reportedly cracked down on protesters attempting to block the resumption of mining operations on their sacred mountains.

Radio Free Asia reported on May 15 that five people were beaten and tear-gassed in protests against three gold mines in the county. Some 5,000 troops were in the area, with reinforcements expected.

“Thousands of local Tibetans — young, old, men, and women alike — have attempted to block the Chinese from resuming mining activities,” one local Tibetan source said. “But [Tibetan Autonomous Region] Party Secretary Zhang Qingli has given orders to ahead with the mining, even if this means using force against protesters.”

Last year in Markham similar protests took place against mining on a sacred mountain called Ser Ngul Lo, a site where Tibetans have historically worshipped. However, talks ultimately resolved the standoff with a promise to end mining operations.

According to another local source, on May 4 — the day the mining company was ordered to resume operations at the three sites — 13 Tibetans were detained. “All of those detained were Tibetan businessmen and leading figures who successfully blocked the Chinese mining company in 2009,” the source said.

What you can do

Go to the Intercontinental Cry website for a sample letter to send to China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, calling on the Chinese government to withdraw their police forces and protect the Tibetans’ sacred mountains.

To learn more about the history, beliefs and practices surrounding sacred mountains in Tibet, read our Mount Kailash sacred site report.

A major new assessment of the current state of biodiversity warns that unless urgent action is taken, the natural systems that support humankind are at risk of collapse.

The third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3), released May 10 by the Convention on Biodiversity and the U.N. Environmental Program, confirms that governments around the world have failed to meet targets set eight years ago to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Instead, the five main pressures driving the loss  — habitat change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and climate change — have either remained constant or are increasing.

“Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world,” Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a press release announcing the report. “The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050.”

The report is based on 110 national biodiversity reports and other scientific assessments, including an analysis carried out by the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership, published last month in the journal Science, which represents the first assessment of how targets made through the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity have not been met. That assessment noted that since 1970 the world’s animal populations have been reduced by 30 percent, the area of mangroves and sea grasses by 20 percent, and the coverage of living corals by 40 percent.

The GBO-3 outlines a possible new strategy for reducing biodiversity loss, learning the lessons from the failure to meet the 2010 target. It includes addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, such as patterns of consumption, the impacts of increased trade and demographic change.

“The assessment of the state of the world’s biodiversity in 2010 should serve as a wake-up call for humanity,” Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive-secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said. “Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet.”

The report will be a key input into discussions by world leaders at a special high-level segment of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 22, as well as negotiations by world governments at the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit in October.

The GBO-3 draws attention to indigenous sacred sites, noting the thousands of community conserved areas around the world — including sacred forests, wetlands, and landscapes — and observing that “indigenous and local communities play a significant role in conserving very substantial areas of high biodiversity and cultural value.”

This deep association between sacred sites and biodiversity conservation is highlighted in many of SLFP’s sacred site reports. To learn more, check out our Beyul of the Himalaya, Gamo Highlands, Kaya Forests and Mount Sinai reports, among others.

The Free Land project and Indian Canyon with the Sacred Land Film Project, News From Native California and Heyday Books present “Ohlone Presence: An Evening of Storytelling, Theater and Song from Ohlone Land and History.”

8 p.m., Saturday, May 8
David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, Calif.
Tickets available at the door, $15-25 sliding scale

Enjoy storytelling from all perspectives and sacred spaces and places at this fundraiser for Indian Canyon. The event features:

• Ariel Luckey (Free Land)
• Ann Marie Sayers (Ohlone/Indian Canyon)
• Carl Anthony (Urban Habitat)
• Christopher “Toby” McLeod (Sacred Land Film Project)
• Janeen Antoine (Lakota Sicangu)
• Kanyon Sayers-Roods (Ohlone/Indian Canyon)
• Ken Brower (Author)
• L. Frank (Tongva/Ajachmen)
• Malcolm Margolin (Heyday Books)
• Melissa Nelson (Ojibwe)
• Paloma Pavel (Earth House Center), and
• Willie Underbaggage (Oglala)

Download the flier here.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced April 28 that the first offshore wind farm to be built in the United States has been given the green light.

The Nantucket Sound Cape Wind Project, opposed by the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes, will be allowed to proceed provided that measures be undertaken in the construction of the energy farm to minimize negative impacts. Efforts to this end include a reduction in the number of wind turbines from 170 to 130 to reduce visibility from Nantucket Island.

While local reaction to Tuesday’s announcement was mixed, the 2009 passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was a strong voice against Cape Wind, may have played a factor in the Department of the Interior’s approval of the controversial project.

Read previous SLFP news coverage of this story from April 8 and January 17.

In a demonstration to show solidarity with the Brazilian indigenous peoples who will be gravely affected by the recently approved Belo Monte dam project, actress Sigourney Weaver will join members of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to peacefully protest in front of the Brazilian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York today, April 28, at 1:30 p.m.

On April 20, after a series of legal battles and last-minute injunctions from environmental and indigenous rights groups, the Brazilian government won out and awarded a domestic consortium—including the state-owned power generator and several construction firms—the $10 billion contract to build the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River. (See our past stories.)

Construction could begin this year, with the project operational by 2015. Once complete, Belo Monte will be the world’s third largest dam. Its construction will flood some 200 square miles of rainforest while also drying up a stretch of the river—affecting an estimated 19,000 to 40,000 people, including 14 indigenous tribes that live nearby.

Indigenous groups are mobilizing to stop dam. A group of 150 Xikrin Kayapo Indians were moving last week to occupy the planned construction site. “We will build a permanent village there and will not leave so long as the project is on,” chief Luiz Xipaya told Agence France Presse.

Xipaya said he expects to have at least 500 Brazilian Indians there by end of month, with an ultimate goal of 1,000. “The indigenous people feel threatened by this project and are very agitated,” he said.

Since the construction contact was awarded, thousands of people have participated in protests throughout Brazil led by indigenous groups and environmental organizations including Greenpeace and Amazon Watch.

Take Action

If you’re in New York, you can join today’s protest at 1:30 p.m. in front of the Brazilian Permanent Mission to the United Nations at 747 3rd Avenue, between 46th and 47th streets.

You can also help by contacting the Brazilian embassy to express your concern.

All over the world, indigenous people protect places of spiritual significance and hotspots of biodiversity. James Cameron’s symbolic story of the Na’vi, in his film “Avatar” parallels the struggle that indigenous people around the globe face to defend sacred places Western culture seeks to dominate.

“Avatar” has hit a nerve and inspired masses. Grossing nearly $2.7 billion at the box office globally and spawning numerous discussions, Facebook groups, forums, fan pages, activist responses and articles citing examples of real-world Pandoras, the film, if nothing else, has been a catalyst to bring the plight of indigenous people to the forefront as never before.

Cameron himself said has been changed forever by the film and his resulting visit to the Xingu River, where he has been “spurred to action to speak out against the looming environmental destruction endangering indigenous groups around the world.”

With Sigourney Weaver, he traveled to Brazil to attend protests calling for a halt on construction of the Belo Monte dam, the third largest dam in the world, but time is running out. The government intends to auction construction to private investors April 20.

See our previous news post to learn what you can do to help halt the Belo Monte dam, and join Sacred Land Film Project in calling even more people to action in solidarity with the Indigenous Movement. You can learn more about the Xingu River in our related sacred site report.

The federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has recommended that the U.S. Department of the Interior reject a proposal for the country’s first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, saying it would have ”destructive” effects on dozens of nearby historic properties, including Native American cultural sites.

In seven pages of comments sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on April 2, the council backed claims by two Wampanoag Indian tribes that the Cape Wind project would obstruct their view of the rising sun and the ocean, interfering with rituals and ceremonies, and potentially disturb sacred burial sites on the now-submerged shoal on which the turbines would be built.

”The indirect and direct effects of (Cape Wind) on the collection of historic properties would be pervasive, destructive and, in the instance of seabed construction, permanent,” the council said.

The council also criticized federal agencies — including the Minerals Management Service, the lead agency reviewing the project — for their ”tentative, inconsistent and late” consultation with the Wampanoag tribes.

An excerpt of a recent statement by Cedric Cromwell, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe reads: “We have repeatedly raised serious concerns over the proposed project for more than six years. For the first time, we believe that our concerns are being heard, and we look forward to continuing the process of consultation until an acceptable outcome has been achieved. This process is long overdue, and we thank Secretary Salazar and President Obama for their commitment to the rights of Native Americans.”

Opponents of the project included the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who fought Cape Wind up to the months before he died last year of brain cancer.

Salazar must respond to the council’s comments before making his final ruling on the project, expected by the end of April. To learn more, read the April 2 New York Times story and see the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head website.

Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995, passed away April 6 in her home in Talequah, Okla. Mankiller was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation and left behind a legacy of tribal revitalization and collective self-determination, including instituting community-development projects to improve infrastructure, building a hydroelectric facility and establishing tribal-owned businesses.

In 2002, the Sacred Land Film Project was honored by Mankiller’s support. Read more about the life of Wilma Mankiller in the New York Times.

With the U.S. Department of Energy’s March 3 withdrawal of a license application to build a high-level nuclear waste dump under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the long-contested project is at last on its way to being shut down. The department’s motion was filed “with prejudice” — meaning the site could never again be considered for use.

The mountain, located within the Western Shoshone Nation and a sacred place for the Shoshone and Paiute peoples, was selected in 1987 to become the nation’s first long-term geological repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Despite significant ongoing protest and legal challenges from Native Americans, Nevada residents and environmentalists, Congress officially approved the program in 2002. However, last year President Barack Obama, in his 2010 budget request, indicated that the federal government would begin exploring other options, and in February the Energy Department told Congress it planned to shift $115 million from the Yucca Mountain program budget into efforts to shut down the project.

On March 23, a group of House Democrats and Republicans — representing districts in Washington, South Carolina and Michigan that currently store nuclear waste — introduced a resolution to stop the administration from ending the program. Members of a House energy subcommittee also challenged the Energy Department’s actions, claiming it went against Congress’ directions in its energy spending bill for the 2010 budget.

However, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, responding in a letter, said, “We do have the authority within the law to take the reprogramming actions we have planned.” DOE press secretary Stephanie Mueller went further, saying, “Make no mistake, the department will be shutting down the Yucca Mountain project this year.”

To learn more about Yucca Mountain and native struggles to protect it, read our Yucca Mountain sacred site report.

Travel to Papua New Guinea with us here, to catch a glimpse of the people, the food and the land that is being reshaped by the forces of industry. Check out this blog by Director Toby McLeod for a first hand account of our production trip, February through March 2010, and the steep challenges facing the people we met.

Winnemem Wintu tribal members have embarked on an unusual and historic journey in an effort to bring Chinook salmon back to the McCloud River.

On March 19, they traveled halfway across the globe to New Zealand, where the U.S. government once sent Chinook eggs gathered from the McCloud River. The completion of Shasta Dam in the 1940s resulted in the obstruction of seasonal salmon runs in the McCloud.

The Winnemem hope to restore the salmon by stopping the enlargement of Shasta Dam and having a waterway installed that would allow reintroduced salmon to reach the remaining 200 miles of cold water pools and historic spawning grounds critical to their survival.

In New Zealand, they will join with Maori leaders and hold a ceremony culminating with a four-day “nur chonas winyupus,” or middle water salmon dance, which is intended to assure the salmon that the Winnemem are still caring for them and their home river. The Winnemem plan to petition local fish and game officials to return some salmon eggs to the McCloud.

Read about the Winnemem Wintu and their journey to New Zealand in this major New York Times story from March 20. Learn more about the Winnemem and their ancestral homeland in our McCloud River Watershed sacred site report, and you can also follow Winnemem Headman Mark Franco’s blogs for details about their New Zealand journey and other issues.

We’ve been throwing around some new terms here in the SLFP office: New media. Interactive mobile technology. Geocasting. Augmented reality.

At first blush, it may seem incongruous for a group that’s focused on protecting traditional cultures and ancient sacred places, but the Sacred Land Film Project is about to join Web 3.0. (OK, I admit I had to google “web 3.0″ to make sure that is what we are doing … so you can see what level I’m at.) But with so many developments that have already proven effective in communication and mobilization — like text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter — we are hoping the next steps will be even better at building community and fostering educational experiences.

The best part of this new development? We’re getting a lot of help. Losing Sacred Ground has been accepted for participation in the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) Producer’s Institute for New Media. The Institute is a 10-day workshop that partners documentary projects like ours with mentors in technology to help filmmakers develop projects that go far beyond theatrical screenings or television broadcast.

As BAVC describes it, “The intention of the Institute is to develop socially relevant media projects for emerging digital platforms … Producers may propose a range of delivery strategies, including cellphones, other hand-held devices, set-tops, Internet, portable software and more.”

Previous participants have designed online games, experiences in Second Life, interactive art exhibits, digital community spaces and marketplaces, and video-based educational platforms. You can check them out here.

Our team is hoping to use technology to encourage people to experience and appreciate the natural world. Our original idea was to combine documentary techniques with the concept of geocaching (a sort of treasure hunt using a handheld GPS) and audio guides/webcasting to create an experience we’re calling “geocasting.”

We envision an experience something like this: users can download an audio guide, with optional GPS coordinates, into their iPod, iPhone, GPS, or other mobile device. They can then travel to one of our sites — currently we’re hoping to start with the Shellmound in Emeryville and Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

The audio guide will lead the user through the site, describing the people and cultures that once inhabited the areas that the listener is seeing. The sound might also include native music, interviews with people indigenous to that area, and commentary on modern impacts — for example, the controversy surrounding the climbing of Devil’s Tower. After their trip, geocasters will be able to share their experiences, photos and thoughts online on a dedicated website.

In addition, BAVC is going to help us develop an augmented reality component of this project. We’re not sure what this is going to look like yet — and any description I make is likely to be wrong. Suffice it to say, this will be the really innovative part of our project and most likely beyond anything we’ve imagined thus far.

We’re hoping that this project will help people connect to the rich histories of environments that they might otherwise overlook. We also think it will be fun! So stay tuned for more details as the project gets under way.

International outcry is mounting against the Brazilian government’s plan to move forward on the massive Belo Monte dam on the Amazon’s Xingu River.

On March 11, a coalition of 140 international organizations sent a letter to Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva demanding an immediate halt to the plans and urging a consideration of alternatives to the mega-dam. The dam project would destroy a vast area of the Amazon rain forest, displacing tens of thousands of people, including tribal people whose livelihoods depend on the river and forest.

Lend your support by sending a message to the Brazilian government.

If you’re in the Bay Area, you can learn more about the struggle to save the Xingu and protect indigenous rights at an event this Friday, hosted by our friends at International Rivers, featuring two films, a panel discussion and live Brazilian drumming:

When: Doors open at 6:30 p.m., Friday, March 19; film starts at 7 p.m..

Where: The David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley (map)

What: Film screening of Amazonia: Voices from the Rainforest by Glenn Switkes and Monti Aguirre and the award-winning short Battle for the Xingu, directed by Iara Lee, followed by a panel discussion on efforts to protect the Amazon river and the forest it sustains.

Panelists include:

• Aviva Imhof, Campaigns Director, International Rivers
• Leila Salazar-Lopez, Campaign Director, Rainforest Action Network and Board Member, Amazon Watch
• Monti Aguirre, Latin America Campaigner, International Rivers

Afterward, stick around for some refreshments, music by Samba Jam, and great conversation!

Cost: $15 at the door. SAVE $2 IF YOU PURCHASE ONLINE. Purchase tickets here.

For more information, e-mail Karolo Aparicio at karolo@internationalrivers.org, or call 510.848.1155.

The Ohlone sacred site and burial site at Glen Cove was in the spotlight this weekend. Thus far the Glen Cove site has escaped development, but the city of Vallejo is now moving forward with plans to convert the land into a park with picnic tables, trails, restrooms and a parking lot.

Local native people and those in favor of keeping the ancient shell mound intact, including the Vallejo Inter-Tribal Council, Sacred Sites Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes and the International Indian Treaty Council, have been fighting development plans for years and intend to continue to gather at the ancient site they call Sogorea Te to rally for its protection.

The culturally and spiritually significant shell mounds, sacred to the Ohlone, have largely been obliterated throughout the Bay Area. A widely publicized example is the Emeryville shell mound, which was destroyed to build the South Bay Street Shopping Center.

A portion of the Bay Bridge is built atop an Ohlone tribal burial ground on Yerba Buena Island, partly on state-owned land and partly on federal land. Bodies unearthed on the state land were ceremonially reburied, but those found on federal land were not released for reburial because the Ohlone is not a federally recognized tribe.

Without federal recognition, the Ohlone and supporters face an uphill battle to protect sacred sites like Glen Cove. Norman “Wounded Knee” Deocampo, a member of the Vallejo Intertribal Council, said the tribe is considering a court injunction and searching for a pro bono lawyer to stop the plans at Glen Cove.

• If you would like to get involved in protecting Glen Cove, send an email to protectglencoveATgmail.com.

• For a creative look at shell mounds in the Bay Area, check out this video.

Rising like an island in the center of California’s Sacramento Valley, the Sutter Buttes figure prominently in the traditional creation and afterlife stories of the Maidu and Wintun peoples, whose ancestors once lived within view of this small mountain range. In the 19th century, European settlement and the imposition of private property rights severed the Native American way of life — but it is the concept of private property rights that today both preserves the Buttes and leaves them precariously open to development.

A day before his official Jan. 22 inauguration, Bolivian President Evo Morales held a symbolic swearing-in ceremony at the Kalasasaya Temple in Tiwanaku, the seat of an Andean empire that flourished for more than 400 years. Morales, an Aymara Indian, chose the sacred site because the Aymara are the principal descendants of the Tiwanaku empire.

Before addressing a crowd of thousands of indigenous supporters, Morales joined priests and elders for private cleansing rites, then participated in a series of public offerings and prayers to the Andean deities for guidance.

“From this millennial place a new light is born, a light of hope for the Bolivian people and for humanity,” Morales said in a speech delivered in Aymara, Quechua and Spanish.

Morales vowed to continue to fight for the rights of indigenous Bolivians. Last year Morales led a constitutional overhaul that enshrined traditional religions and increased protection for indigenous land rights.

The Sutter Buttes of Northern California’s Sacramento Valley are where life began and where life ends. Playing a role in the traditional creation and afterlife stories of the Maidu and Wintun peoples, this small mountain range was a place of ritual for their ancestors, who once lived within view of the Buttes. In the 19th century, European settlement and the imposition of private property rights severed the Native American way of life — but it is the concept of private property rights that today both preserves the Buttes and leaves them precariously open to development. Presently the Buttes are mostly in private hands, and the grasslands and oak-studded hills are kept primarily as cattle and sheep ranches with strictly limited public access. However, in recent years land in the Sutter Buttes has been subdivided into residential lots, and conservation advocates and Native American leaders fear that the future of the Buttes could include more development. Arlene Ward, a member of the Mechoopda Maidu tribal council, says: “The Gold Rush and the events of the 1800s stripped us of our cultural identity and our resources. We lost who we were. Now in the 21st century, many people are taking up their identity as native peoples. The Sutter Buttes are significant to who we are and it may be that there are practices we want to revive and we will want to go to that power place — but it has to be there for us.”

The Land and Its People

The Maidu Indians who lived east of the Buttes called them Histum Yani, and the Wintun Indians, who lived to the west, knew them as Onolai-tol. Both names translate to “Middle Mountain.” Rising like an island in the center of the Sacramento Valley, the Sutter Buttes figure prominently in the creation stories of these two Native American tribes. The origin stories differ: sometimes the Sutter Buttes arose out of water or darkness or chaos, created by the falcon spirit animal. In other stories, the Buttes were where Earth Maker dwelled after having made the world.

But just as the Sutter Buttes have a place at the beginning of creation, they also play a vital role at the end of life. In many native traditions, the Buttes are a mysterious, powerful portal to the spirit world, a stopping point for the dead on their journey to the afterlife. In some traditions, the Buttes are so powerful and holy that stepping foot in them is forbidden except to healers and spiritual leaders.

Northern California native peoples, such as those belonging to the Maidu and Wintun nations, did not live within the Sutter Buttes but seasonally traveled to the foothills to gather acorns, hunt and perform rituals and ceremonies. Their home villages were along the Sacramento and Feather rivers, where the Buttes’ prominent peaks dominated the people’s spiritual and visual landscape.

Oak trees dot the grassy slopes of these ancient, eroded volcanic domes, which culminate in a rough circle of steep, craggy spires — the highest peak tops 2,100 feet. The Sutter Buttes are approximately 10 miles across, with a total footprint of 75 square miles, about 1.5 times the size of San Francisco.

The mountain’s plant and animal community is similar to those found in the foothills of the Coast Range to the west and in the Sierra Nevada to the east. But for thousands of years, the Sutter Buttes have been separated from these regions by 40 miles of grasslands, a separation that has created an “island effect.” Although there are no plants or animals endemic to the Sutter Buttes, over millennia this separation created a unique biological community. The Buttes are where some plants and animals have their most northerly extension of their range, while others their most southerly.

In the 1830s a malaria epidemic brought by European fur trappers killed an estimated two thirds of the area’s native population; later diseases such as smallpox and cholera killed even more. The California Gold Rush displaced ancestral villages when the establishment of towns pushed the few remaining Indians onto remote village sites. When California joined the United States in 1850, the state passed legislation allowing for Native Americas to be forced into “apprenticeships.” These events devastated what was once the densest population of native people in America. Finally, in 1862, many Sacramento Valley Indians were forcibly relocated to a reservation. Today, the closest Native American settlement is a Wintun “Rancheria,” or tribal land, about 10 miles west of the Buttes.

Despite the devastation and displacement, the Sutter Buttes continued to be an important part of Native American mythology. The Sacramento Valley native peoples had long performed sacred dances, some of which are traced back to visions of dancing animals and spirits in the Sutter Buttes. In the 1870s, the California Ghost Dance synthesized with the Wintun’s Hesi ceremonies into the Big Head dance, in which participants danced for restoration of their Indian way of life. The Big Head dance is still performed today as a dance of renewal.

By the late 19th century, the Central Valley’s rich agricultural land was primarily cultivated in wheat. Today the once vast grasslands have been converted to rice fields, while the oak woodlands are now orchards for walnuts, prunes and peaches.  Sheep primarily grazed the upland of the Sutter Buttes until cattle production took hold about 50 years ago.

Current Challenges and Preservation Efforts

Future development and land-use strategies in the Sutter Buttes are the main concern of conservationists and Native American communities, who want to see the Buttes preserved and not sold for housing development or resorts.

About a dozen families own the majority of land in the Sutter Buttes, much of which is still used as ranchland. Most of the private landowners in the Sutter Buttes have a family relationship with the land that spans more than 100 years. They are proud of their ranching heritage and their private stewardship of the land and want to see it remain undeveloped. The California Parks Department owns a 1,785-acre parcel of land on the mountain’s northern flank; this undeveloped park is currently closed to the public due to state budget shortfalls.

While land in the Sutter Buttes is zoned as agricultural, the current Sutter County land-use plan allows for the land to be divided into lots as small as 20 acres. Critics of the current zoning contend that this opens the door for luxury residential construction that could gradually erase the natural landscape and spiritual nature of the Buttes. That’s what happened in 1999, when 1,100 acres in the foothills of the Sutter Buttes were sold and subdivided into 11 large lots. Five luxury homes have been built on those lots since then. In total, there are around 30 subdivided lots that cover approximately 2,500 acres.

In 2007, Sutter County approved the division of 900 acres of Sutter Buttes foothills into 13 lots. A local organization, the Yuba Historical Society, sued the county and the developer on the basis that there was no environmental impact report completed and that an illegal road variance was granted that could open up development anywhere within the Buttes. The lawsuit was settled in January 2010, with Sutter County setting aside its 2007 approval of the land’s division.

Sutter County is currently revamping its General Plan, including zoning designations in the Sutter Buttes. The plan will not be adopted until late 2010, but draft proposals point toward zoning restrictions that will keep any subdivided lots to 80 acres or greater. Such changes would prevent development of dense subdivisions, but would still allow for construction of luxury homes on large lots, such as those built in 1999. Even with changes to zoning, those who advocate preserving agricultural and undeveloped land in the Buttes worry that zoning designations could become vulnerable with each election cycle as local government leadership changes.

One strategy for land preservation is to protect land through conservation easements. The Middle Mountain Foundation is a land trust that actively purchases development rights from willing landowners through conservation easements in the Sutter Buttes; it then holds these easements in perpetuity as a protection against development. The foundation currently owns about 200 acres in the Sutter Buttes and plans to purchase 1,800 more acres through conservation easements.

For the time being, however, the current downturn in California’s economy and real estate market has eased development pressure. Depressed housing sales, stricter housing loan guidelines, and cautious investors all combine to protect the Buttes, at least for now, from aggressive real estate development.

When the housing market recovers, however, the Buttes may attract new real estate development because of revised Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps. These maps, which go into effect at the end of 2011, place most of Sutter County in a flood zone, a designation that is projected to quadruple home insurance premiums. The Sutter Buttes are not part of the new flood zone, which may lure homebuyers and developers seeking to avoid the sharply increased insurance premiums.

Though members of the Maidu and Wintun communities now mostly live far away from the Sutter Buttes, they are nevertheless involved in the issues there. In 2005, members of the Mechoopda Maidu Indian tribe testified before the state’s park commission, asking that the parkland in the Sutter Buttes be granted a name that reflected the Native American heritage. (To date, the park has been temporarily designated as Sutter Buttes State Park.) They also requested that it be designated as a cultural reserve, a request that has not been realized.

Within the native community, however, there are differing opinions on the Sutter Buttes. Some feel strongly that there should be little to no human presence there, while others hike into the interior Buttes as guides on hiking trips that directly support conservation efforts.  Since 1976 close to 40,000 adults and school children have visited the Buttes on such guide-led public tours.

What You Can Do

The only way the public can gain access into the Sutter Buttes is to join several guided hiking tours that are offered in cooperation with landowners and the state park system on a limited, for-fee basis by the Yuba Historical Society and the Middle Mountain Foundation. Monies collected support their land preservation activities. You can also support the work of these organizations by becoming a member.

Sources

Anderson, Walt. Inland Island: The Sutter Buttes. Prescott, AZ: Natural Selection, 2004.

Barth, Daniel (Yuba Historical Society). Telephone interview, November 30, 2009.

Barth, Daniel. Middle Mountain Montage. Video Clip. YouTube, January 1, 2009.

Brown, Laura. “‘Chipping Away’ at Sutter Buttes.” The Union, December 12, 2007.

Geiger, Steve (Sutter County Planning Services). Telephone interview. December 15, 2009.

Hubbartt, Mike. Images of America: The Sutter Buttes. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010.

Knapp, Don. “A Chance to Hike California’s Hidden Buttes (Maybe).” New York Times, March 16, 2007.

Lindahl, Kathleen. “A Short History of Peace Valley in the Sutter Buttes of Central California.” California Department of Parks and Recreation, November 3, 2005.

McHugh, Paul. “Sutter Offers Many of Nature’s Wonders.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 2000.

Mechoopda Maidu Indians. Mechoopda Maidu Indians.

Middle Mountain Foundation. Middle Mountain Foundation: The Sutter Buttes Regional Land Trust.

Ortiz, Gamaliel. “Hike Into the Sutter Buttes, Relics of Geological History.” The Sacramento Bee, November 12, 2009.

“Sutter County General Plan Update.” Sutter County.

Ward, Arlene (Mechoopda Maidu Indian Tribe). Telephone interview. December 16, 2009.

Wilkins, Cory (Middle Mountain Foundation). Telephone interview. November 24,  2009.

Yuba Historical Society. Yuba Historical Society.

Yune, Howard. “FEMA Flood Maps for North Sutter Won’t Arrive Until 2011.” Appeal-Democrat, December 7, 2009.

Yune, Howard. “Future Growth in Sutter County Debated.” Appeal-Democrat, October 26, 2009.

Yune, Howard. “Settlement Stops Land Split in Buttes.” Appeal-Democrat, January 20, 2010.

After a nearly 20-year hiatus, uranium mining has resumed on public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon.

In late December 2009, Denison Mines Corp. began extracting high-grade uranium ore from its Arizona 1 mine, located about 10 miles from the boundary for Grand Canyon National Park.

The mine had been shut down in 1992, never having produced any ore, after a crash in uranium prices. However, with a rebound in prices in recent years and increasing uranium demand — including the Obama administration’s January announcement of major investment in the construction of new nuclear reactors — mining companies are looking to restart old mines and open new ones in northern Arizona, which reportedly holds the most concentrated source of uranium in the United States.

Renewed interest in uranium mining has put Native American tribes, environmental-protection advocates and other stakeholders on alert. In July 2009, members of the Havasupai Nation and their allies gathered at the Red Butte sacred site, on the south rim of the canyon, to address the reemerging threat.

The U.S. Department of the Interior is taking a cautious approach to ensure that communities, landscapes and watersheds are protected, it says. In July, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a two-year moratorium on the filing of new mining claims on the 1 million acres of federal lands near the Grand Canyon. During that time the department will consider imposing a 20-year restriction on new mine development. Also on the table is the Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) in January 2009, which would withdraw the lands from mineral exploration.

“Over the next two years, we will gather the best science and input from the public, members of Congress, tribes and stakeholders, and we will thoughtfully evaluate whether these lands should be withdrawn from new mining claims for a longer period of time,” Salazar said in a statement.

The moratorium, however, doesn’t affect existing valid mine claims, which are protected by the outdated General Mining Act of 1872. According to the Bureau of Land Management, six mines are expected to reopen on the federal lands in question.

In November 2009, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust sued the Bureau of Land Management for failing to update 1980s-era environmental reviews and mining plans before allowing Denison to reopen the Arizona 1 mine. The groups say the current mine claim is not valid, and thus subject to the moratorium. The suit is still pending.

Of particular concern is potential impact on groundwater and regional aquifers, which supply water districts including Las Vegas and Los Angeles. As a part of the Interior Department’s two-year review, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a series of studies to determine the effects of uranium mining on the natural resources of the region. The results, released Feb. 17, show elevated levels of uranium in wells, springs and soil around uranium exploration and mining sites.

Elsewhere in the Southwest, uranium mining threatens Native American sacred sites. New Mexico’s Mount Taylor — held holy by the Navajo, Acoma, Zuni and other tribes — sits atop a vast uranium deposit that has also attracted the attention of mining companies since the upsurge in uranium prices. In 2009, native tribes and environmental groups launched an effort to protect the mountain, which resulted in its receiving state protected status as traditional cultural property. (Read an excellent piece of long-form journalism on this complex story in High Country News.)

Visit the websites of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust for more information on uranium mining at the Grand Canyon and ways you can help.

In January, the U.N. released its first-ever report on the “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,” which presents a global view of the current situation of indigenous peoples, examining poverty and well-being, culture, education, health, human rights, environment and emerging issues.

Authored by indigenous peoples, the report offers statistics and information to raise awareness about indigenous development, advance the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and influence the U.N. Development Program’s 2010 Human Development Report, themed “Rethinking Human Development.”

The report highlights the critical situation for indigenous peoples around the world and translates the urgency into hard statistics. Indigenous peoples make up about 5 percent of the world’s population and 15 percent of its poor, as they are the first population to be affected by industries that harm the environment or resource-intensive projects.  In the United States, nearly a quarter of Native Americans and Alaska Natives live below the poverty line, with lower life expectancy and higher death rates from causes including diabetes, homicide, suicide and car accidents. The statistics are grim.

Although indigenous peoples are caretakers of some the world’s greatest regions of biodiversity and enrich global culture in a plethora of ways — from traditional knowledge in herbal remedies and land management to environmental principals — their plight has yet to enter mainstream conversation or find serious discussion in major news outlets.

Yet every effort counts, and actions such as the release of “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” will further the urgently important dialogue on global interdependence, land rights, resistance to the loss of biological and cultural diversity, and hope for a collaborative future.

A controversial and long-delayed hydroelectric dam project on Brazil’s Xingu River received the green light on Feb. 1 when the Brazilian Environment Ministry issued an environmental license for the dam’s construction.

If the project goes forward, the Belo Monte dam would be Brazil’s largest hydroelectric complex and the world’s third largest. The dam would flood an estimated 170 square miles of land in the state of Pará, displacing some 16,000 people and and impacting thousands of others, including tribal people, whose livelihoods depend on the river and forest. The dam would also dry up the river around its “Big Bend,” home to the Paquiçamba reserve of the Juruna indigenous group.

First proposed in the 1980s, the project had been stalled for years because of widespread national and international protest. A 2005 lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors claims that indigenous communities were not consulted on the project, as required by Brazil’s constitution.

The Brazilian Environmental Justice Network has launched an international campaign demanding that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and other Brazilian authorities stop the project. The online magazine Intercontinental Cry has details on what you can do. You can also get additional information from our friends at International Rivers, long-time opponents of the Belo Monte Dam.

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

As many of you know, the Losing Sacred Ground film series follows the story of Aboriginal communities seeking to reverse Australia’s rapid environmental degradation and prevent further losses of their revered sites. After a successful court battle to stop Xstrata zinc mine from expanding, the Northern Territory Parliament enacted legislation that overturned the legal decision and allowed the diversion of the river.

Over a year later, Xstrata has not fulfilled its promise to revegetate the area affected by the river diversion. The Northern Land Commission’s (NLC) chief executive, Kim Hill, says, “Flying over the mine site, it’s just a scar on mother earth.”

The McArthur river is a sacred part of the “dreaming” and song cycles of the aboriginal people. Barbara McCarthy (Yanyuwa), a member of the Northern Territory Parliament, says, “If you cut the McArthur River you are cutting the Rainbow Serpent, and there is a great sense of fear that comes from that — a spiritual sense of fear. It is a relationship with the river that indigenous people want so much for non-Aboriginal people to understand and respect. And that no amount of money can take the place of something that has been within the family for thousands and thousands of years.”

Xstrata is authorized to extract 43 million tons of the resource over the next 20 years.

We can still let Chief Minister of the Northern Territory of Australia Paul Henderson know that we are in support of the aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and ask to rescind permission for Xstrata to mine. Mr. Henderson can be contacted here: chiefminister.nt@nt.gov.au. You can view a sample letter on The Environment Centre Northern Territory’s website.

Check out our webclips and sacred site report on the subject.

The National Preservation Institute will be presenting a seminar entitled “Consultation and Protection of Native American Sacred Lands,” to take place April 28-29 in Seattle, Wash.

Designed to provide continuing education and professional training to those involved in the management, preservation and stewardship of Native American sacred lands, the seminar will cover areas including federal laws, tribal and federal land-management guidelines, historical and cultural factors, the consultation process and other tools for achieving protected status for culturally significant places.

For more information, including a detailed agenda, pricing and registration information, visit the NPI website.

Reversing an earlier U.S. district court decision permitting Barrick Gold Corp. to proceed with plans for a massive open-pit gold mine at Nevada’s Mount Tenabo, a federal appeals court ordered a preliminary injunction against the mine.

Mount Tenabo and its environs are part of Newe Sogobia, the ancestral land of the Western Shoshone, who object to the project on religious as well as environmental grounds. The plaintiffs challenged the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s decision to approve the Cortez Hills mine in November 2008.

In its Dec. 3, 2009, decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the merit of the environmental claims of the Shoshone’s case and said that an injunction was in the public interest, noting “the irreparable environmental harm threatened by this massive project.”

The court thus reversed the district court’s decision, sending the case back to the lower court to issue an injunction pending the preparation of an environmental impact statement that “adequately considers the environmental impact of the extraction of millions of tons of refractory ore, mitigation of the adverse impact on local springs and streams, and the extent of fine particulate emissions.”

Cortez Hills would be one of the largest open-pit cyanide heap-leach gold mines in the country. The proposed mine area had been found, in repeated ethnographic studies by the Bureau of Land Management, to be a place of extreme spiritual and cultural importance to the Western Shoshone. The area is home to local creation stories, spirit life and medicinal plants, and it continues to be used for spiritual and cultural practices.

Learn more in our Mount Tenabo sacred site report.

Backing away from a definitive move to ban climbing Australia’s iconic Uluru, Northern Territory Environment Minister Peter Garret on Jan. 8 approved a management plan that instead would allow for an eventual ban once certain conditions were met.

The red sandstone monolith is a place of spiritual significance for its Aboriginal traditional owners, who have long urged an end to climbing.

Under the new 10-year management plan for Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, the 1,142-foot rock will remain open to climbers until the number of annual visitors choosing to climb drops to below 20 percent, until the park board determines that adequate new visitor experiences are in place, or until the climb is no longer the primary reason visitors choose to come to Uluru.

Those conditions may be hard to meet. “Realistically, I would expect the climb to remain open for at least a number of years,” Garrett said.

Last year — citing respect for Aboriginal belief along with safety concerns — the park board proposed an outright climbing ban in its draft management plan, which caused an uproar in the tourism sector. During a public-comment period on the proposal, the government received 153 submissions, 78 in support of the closure and 75 against.

With the new plan, park management will now focus on adding new attractions, such as more night-time and cultural activities. “The most important thing is to create new experiences — without new activities some visitors will still think the most important thing about Uluru is the climb,” Harry Wilson, chair of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta board, said.

If and when a ban is ultimately deemed appropriate, Garrett said the tourism industry will be given at least 18 months notice so it can adjust its marketing. In the meantime, park management will continue to promote a “do not climb” message to visitors.

To learn more about Uluru, read our sacred site report.

In our latest sacred site reports, monks in China and Mongolia are taking a spritual approach in confronting modern threats to Buddhist and Daoist sacred mountains, while in Malaysian Borneo, one of the world’s last nomadic tribes fights to save its traditional rainforest lands from logging, hydropower and oil palm plantations.

Nine Sacred Mountains, China—Throughout China’s history, Buddhist and Daoist pilgrims have gone to mountains seeking spiritual sustenance and solace; there are five sacred mountains that are preeminent for Daoists and four sacred mountains that are paramount to Buddhists. In the 20th century, political upheaval led to the violent repression of religious expression, and sacred sites across China were destroyed. Despite losses, the devotion of monks and local residents to the holy reputation of these mountains prevented total destruction.

Now, as China gradually moves away from its past of religious intolerance and forges a new social and political identity amid unprecedented economic growth, the sacred mountains continue to attract traditional pilgrims and a considerable number of secular visitors. With these dual roles as spiritual destinations and economic enterprises, the sacred mountains face new challenges, such as uncontrolled tourism and habitat destruction. In this modern era, Buddhists and Daoists are turning to age-old philosophies as an impetus for environmental conservation.

Bogd Khan Uul, Mongolia—Considered the world’s oldest officially and continuously protected sacred site, this mountain massif was declared a sacred mountain reserve in 1778, and evidence of its protected status dates back to the 13th century. During the decades-long rule of communism in the 20th century, religion was repressed and nearly all of Mongolia’s 900 Buddhist monasteries were destroyed.

However, reverence persisted and the post-communist era ushered a revival of the national tradition of nature conservation, the restoration of monasteries and resanctification of sacred natural sites, including Bogd Khan. Unfortunately, real estate and tourism development, including a ski resort, now threaten Bogd Khan, and Mongolia’s deep-rooted conservation ethic must face yet another modern challenge.

Lands of the Penan, Malaysia—Living in the rainforests of Borneo, the Penan people are one of the last indigenous groups in the world with members who still follow a traditional nomadic lifestyle, relying solely on their natural environment for material and spiritual sustenance. In recent decades, logging has destroyed or altered the rainforest, forcing most Penan into a settled or seminomadic lifestyle marked by impoverishment, political marginalization, and increasing difficulty finding traditional sources of food in a diminishing rainforest.

These circumstances have driven many Penan into activism that began in the 1980s with road blockades against lumber companies and legal battles over land rights. Today, the Penan are fighting to save their rainforest home in the face of hydroelectric dam construction and a misguided race to plant oil palm plantations for biofuel.

In a first test of the Obama administration’s promise to honor the needs of Native Americans in policy- and decision-making, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met with local tribes as a step to determine whether to approve a massive offshore wind-farm project in Massachusett’s Nantucket Sound.

Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes have been fighting the Cape Wind project since 2004. They claim the wind farm — which would include 130 turbines, each 440 feet tall — would obstruct their view of the rising sun and the ocean, interfering with rituals and ceremonies. In addition, the shoal on which the turbines would be built was once dry land and contains sacred burial sites.

On Jan. 4 the National Park Service, in response to a claim by the affected tribes, announced that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, which could potentially delay or deny the Cape Wind project. The claim appears to refer to some 500 square miles of Nantucket Sound; never has a Native American claim over such a large area of water been approved.

Salazar, who must sign off on a federal permit before the project can move forward, met on Jan. 13 with all the major stakeholders, including tribal representatives, to try to reach a compromise.

“This meeting, I believe, is going to be the first test of whether or not we’re getting lip service and rhetoric from the administration or whether they’re truly going to hear the tribal nations — whether they’re going to pay attention and try to help us or whether it’s business as usual,” Cheryl Andews-Maltais, chair of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe, said.

Opponents are asking for the project to be relocated to a less instrusive part of the sound. Salazar pledged a resolution by the end of April.

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service is accepting public comments on the historic preservation aspects of the project until Feb. 12. Click here to learn how to submit your comments.

Sacred Land Film Project director Toby McLeod and writer Jessica Abbe will be in attendance at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival’s screening of In the Light of Reverence this weekend. If you are in the neighborhood and can join them please do stop by. The film will screen this Saturday, Jan.  16, at 1:30 p.m. at 106 Union with a special guest appearance by Caleen-Sisk Franco, Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and Mark Franco, Headman for the tribe.

In other SLFP news, if you haven’t already checked out our newly posted photo slide shows highlighting our Losing Sacred Ground production trips to the Altai Mountains of Russia and Australia, you can do so here. A gallery from the best of In the Light of Reverence is also included. Stay tuned, we’ll be posting more in the coming weeks.

A Department of Interior administrative law judge has overturned Peabody Coal Co.’s life-of-mine permit for operations at Black Mesa on Navajo-Hopi land in Arizona. The controversial permit was granted by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining in the final days of the Bush administration and was appealed by native activists and environmental organizations. The controversial strip mine has operated for more than three decades under a temporary permit.

Judge Robert G. Holt ruled on Jan. 5 that “OSM violated NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) by not preparing a supplemental draft EIS (environmental impact statement) when Peabody changed the proposed action. As a result, the final EIS did not consider a reasonable range of alternatives to the new proposed action, described the wrong environmental baseline, and did not achieve the informed decision-making and meaningful public comment required by NEPA. Because of the defective final EIS, OSM’s decision to issue a revised permit to Peabody must be vacated and remanded to OSM for further action.”

For details read more in Indian Country Today.

In Chinese, the term for pilgrimage, ch’ ao-shan chin-hsiang, is literally translated as “journeying to a mountain and offering incense.” Throughout China’s history, Buddhist and Daoist pilgrims have gone to mountains seeking spiritual sustenance and solace; there are five sacred mountains that are preeminent for Daoists and four sacred mountains that are paramount to Buddhists. In the 20th century, political upheaval led to the violent repression of religious expression, and sacred sites across China were destroyed. Despite losses, the devotion of monks and local residents to the holy reputation of these mountains prevented total destruction. Now, as China gradually moves away from its past of religious intolerance and forges a new social and political identity amid unprecedented economic growth, the sacred mountains continue to attract traditional pilgrims and a considerable number of secular visitors. With these dual roles as spiritual destinations and economic enterprises, the sacred mountains face new challenges, such as uncontrolled tourism and habitat destruction. In this modern era, Buddhists and Daoists are turning to age-old philosophies as an impetus for environmental conservation. Martin Palmer, secretary general of the NGO Alliance of Religions and Conservation, writes that according to the Daoist Grand Master Wu, “For centuries, Daoism has protected the sacred mountains by making them places of refuge, places where nothing was done. We have been passive. Now we must be active. We must work to preserve that which we love. We must educate people about our need for nature.”

The Land and Its People

As the indigenous religion of China, Daoism and its philosophies are entrenched in Chinese culture, art and daily practice. It is a spiritual tradition that stretches back thousands of years; the earliest written record of its existence is from 350 B.C., when one of its classic texts, the Daodejing (Tao-te Ching), was written. Unlike many major religions, Daoism does not have a single prophet or a definitive text but rather is an evolving set of beliefs. Some of its essential tenets include the ethics of humility, moderation and compassion; a belief in the interconnectedness of all things; the pursuit of harmony in a universe made dynamic by the opposite and complimentary forces of yin and yang; and a view of nature as a model for a balanced life.

Buddhism came to China from India in the first century. Like Daoism, Buddhism focuses on the spiritual development of the mind and body. Buddhism emphasizes meditative practices; the interconnectedness of the past, present and future; the impermanence of life; and a moral imperative for compassion and simplicity. In the natural world, Buddhists find a place for retreat and contemplation.

Over the course of Chinese political history, both Buddhism and Daoism were official imperial religions, and both exerted popular influence. Emperors and commoners journeyed to mountains as pilgrims, believing that mountain peaks were closest to heaven and the gods, and the ideal training ground in the pursuit of enlightenment and transcendence. Over time, particular mountains became associated with Daoist and Buddhist pilgrimage. While there are numerous mountains throughout China that are considered sacred, nine of them achieved particular prominence.

The five sacred Daoist mountains are Tai Shan, in Shandong province; Hua Shan, in Shaanxi province; Heng Shan Bei, in Shaanxi province; Heng Shan Nan, in Hunan province; and Son Shan, in Henan province. The four sacred Buddhist mountains are Emei Shan, in Sichaun province; Wutai Shan, in Shaanxi province; Jiuhua Shan, in Anhui province; and Putuo Shan, in Zhejiang province. The mountains range in height from less than 1,000 feet to more than 10,000. Because most transition from warm climates at the base to alpine conditions at the peaks, they provide habitats for a wide number of plants and animals that account for a significant portion of China’s biodiversity.

At the height of their cultural influence, the mountains supported hundreds of monasteries and sheltered elaborate temples, cliff inscriptions and stone tablets. They were also associated with major works of Chinese poetry and art. Today, far fewer temples and artifacts remain, and the level of religious activity varies from site to site.

For the Daoists, Tai Shan is their holiest mountain. In 351 B.C. the first known Daoist temple in China was established there, and at one time its slopes protected hundreds of temples. Today, 22 temples remain, along with other relics. The mountain is also renowned for the more than 400 species of medicinal plants that grow there.

Home of the first Buddhist temple in China, built in the first century, as well as the world’s largest Buddha, Emei Shan is one of Buddhism’s holiest sites. The mountain once supported 100 monasteries, but only 20 survive. More than 3,000 plant species have been recorded on Emei Shan, making it the most botanically rich mountain in the Northern Hemisphere. On Wutai Shan, the highest mountain in northern China, Buddhism has also been active for 2,000 years; 53 monasteries reside among its five peaks, and the pilgrimage tradition is very much alive.

Religious devotion flourished on all these mountains until the 1949 Communist Revolution, which established an atheist state; many monasteries were made over for secular use and religion was oppressed. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s continued this violent, state-sanctioned suppression. During this time, a campaign to rid the country of what the communist leadership considered to be archaic ideas — including religious institutions and symbols — destroyed approximately 90 percent of the temples and other religious artifacts on the sacred mountains. Nevertheless, local people fought to protect these sacred sites, often at the risk of their own lives.

While nominally still a communist state, China began moving toward a more capitalist economic system in the 1980s. Modern China is a country in transition and one marked by increasing religious tolerance. Along with these changes have come a movement to rebuild the temples destroyed during the 20th century and a tourism strategy that plainly banks on the religious history of China’s sacred mountains.

Current Challenges and Preservation Efforts

In the late 1990s the NGO Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) surveyed China’s nine sacred mountains and found a high level of ecological conservation at sites with active religious communities — where monks were present and practicing at all times — affirming the link between ecology and spirituality. It is clear that future protection of these sacred sites depends on continued support of the religious communities that are devoted to them, on reviving religious customs and on strengthening the ecological-spiritual bond to foster greater environmental conservation.

Many of the environmental challenges on the nine sacred mountains are directly linked to tourism and commercialism. The mountains continue to attract religious pilgrims, but nature tourism in China is an increasingly popular pastime. Each of the mountains attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors per year, with some documenting a million or more visitors annually. This human pressure has brought problems like air pollution and unchecked development. At several of the mountains, including Emei Shan, cable cars have been installed to ferry visitors to the peaks, and pilgrimage trails are crowded with restaurants, hotels and souvenir stalls.

Other conservation issues pertain to illegal logging (despite a 1998 national logging ban), illegal collection of plant and animal species for sale in the lucrative underground medicinal trade, and industrial pollution from towns and cities surrounding the mountains.

The state has made attempts to protect the mountains. It obtained UNESCO World Heritage designation for Tai Shan, Emei Shan and, most recently, Wutai Shan, and in 2008 submitted application to extend the Tai Shan listing to include its four fellow sacred mountains. However, government conservation efforts exist in tension with powerful profit motives. For example, in 2003, the Chinese government pulled down hundreds of illegal structures on Tai Shan, including food huts, souvenir stands and billboards. At the same time, however, plans continue to open a theme park on the mountain in 2010. Emei Shan also faces a theme-park threat.

A profit-versus-protection conflict was also apparent on Wutai Shan. In 2007, monks demonstrated against iron ore mining, which was ravaging the mountain. As a result, the government agreed to close three mines and suspend the operation of seven others. However, the Chinese government was later criticized for plans to forcibly relocate 6,000 residents of Taihuai town, which is nestled among the mountain’s five peaks and full of historic monastic buildings, to clean up residential and commercial sprawl in an effort to obtain UNESCO World Heritage status — achieved in 2009 — and thus develop the site’s potential as a tourist destination.

The ARC began working with the China Daoist Association in 1995, and later with the Chinese Buddhist Association, to develop conservation programs aligned with and supported by religious belief and practice. It has helped create management programs for the Daoist mountains Hua Shan and Tai Shan, and is assisting conservation efforts for the Buddhist Wutai Shan and Emei Shan.

A major breakthrough occurred in 2008, when an official partnership was formed between the China Daoist Association and the provincial government to manage Hua Shan — and to build the program around the concept of the mountain as a sacred place, not just a tourist destination. In addition, a master of the China Daoist Association was added as a full member of the management bureau.

Moreover, the representative bodies of China’s Buddhists and Daoists have made official commitments to environmental practices. In 2008, the Daoist Association issued an eight-year draft plan that includes practices such as limiting the sale of incense sticks, which are a significant pollutant; using energy-efficient technology, such as solar panels, on their temples; and collaborating with local governments to offer ecological education to visitors. China’s Buddhists are expected to issue a similar plan, which builds on other statements issued in 2006, to recognize the leadership role Buddhism can play in environmental advocacy.

One model for religious stewardship in China is found on another sacred mountain, Taibaishan. Here, the China Daoist Association, with help from the ARC, rebuilt a temple using sustainable materials and established an ecology training center for the community and visitors. The Daoists are using this model to guide their work on other sacred mountains.

The venerable traditions of Buddhism and Daoism honor nature, which has helped preserve the sacred mountains for over 1,000 years. Contemporary Buddhists and Daoists are increasingly making frank connections between their theology and everyday environmental practices in order to sustainably conserve these sacred sites.

What You Can Do

Consider supporting the work of the Alliance for Religions and Conservation. Visit the ARC website for ways you can get involved.

If you visit, stay on marked trails, dispose of litter properly, limit your use of incense sticks, and respect the religious activities of monks and nuns on the mountains. Follow the guidelines in “Ethics for Visiting Sacred Sites” when traveling to any of the sacred mountains in China.

Sources

ARC. “Daoists in China Issue an Eight Year Plan for Generational Change on the Environment.” Alliance of Religions and Conservation, November 6, 2008.

ARC. “Daoist Monks and Nuns to Manage Sacred Mountains.” Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

ARC. “Hua Shan to be Managed as a Daoist Mountain for the First Time in 70 Years.” Alliance of Religions and Conservation, July 22, 2008.

ARC. “Two Major Eco-Agreements from Chinese Buddhists.” Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

“The ARC China Sacred Mountains Project: 1995 to Date.” July 2008. (PDF)

Biello, David. “The Rain in China Falls Mainly on the Plains, Thanks to Pollution.” Scientific American, March 9, 2007.

Branigan, Tania. “Mountain Residents Bulldozed out of Government’s Word Heritage Vision.” The Guardian, March 13, 2008.

Chuanhiang, Ju and Zhao Ruixue. “Big Boost for Mountain Tourism.” China Daily, May 28, 2009.

“China Bans Mining on Sacred Buddhist Mountains.” Reuters, August 23, 2007.

“Holy Sites and Relics.” World Buddhist Forum.

Miller, James. “Daoism and Ecology.” Forum on Religion and Ecology.

“Mountains of Southwest China.” Conservation International.

Palmer, Martin. “Religion and the Environment in China.” China Dialogue, October 26, 2006.

Palmer, Martin. “Saving China’s Holy Mountains.” People and Planet, April 18, 2001.

Palmer, Martin. “Sites of Significance.” Resurgence, September/October 2008.

“Songshan National Nature Reserve.” The Nature Conservancy.

Swearer, Donald K. “Buddhism and Ecology.” Forum on Religion and Ecology.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “The Four Sacred Mountains as an Extension of Mt. Taishan.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “Mount Wutai.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

United Nations Environment Program–World Conservation Monitoring Centre. “Mount Emei.” UNEP-WCMC Protected Areas Programme. (PDF)

United Nations Environment Program–World Conservation Monitoring Centre. “Mount Taishan.” UNEP-WCMC Protected Areas Programme. (PDF)

Crowned by one of the four holy peaks surrounding the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, Bogd Khan Uul Strictly Protected Area is Mongolia’s — and perhaps the world’s — oldest officially and continuously protected site. Officially declared a sacred mountain reserve in 1778, evidence of its protected status dates back to the 13th century. During the decades-long rule of communism in the 20th century, religion was repressed and nearly all of Mongolia’s 900 Buddhist monasteries were destroyed. However, reverence persisted and the post-communist era ushered a revival of the national tradition of nature conservation, the restoration of monasteries and resanctification of sacred natural sites, including Bogd Khan. Unfortunately, real estate and tourism development, including a ski resort, now threaten Bogd Khan, and Mongolia’s deep-rooted conservation ethic must face yet another modern challenge. Mongolian researcher and linguist Osomamjimyn Sukhbaatar writes, “One of the distinctive traits of Mongolian civilization is its profound relationship with nature and its preservation of wilderness. Mongolians have developed outstanding traditions of a relationship with nature by deifying nature and the Earth.”

The Land and Its People

Capped by the 7,440-foot holy Tsetseegun peak, Bogd Khan Uul (Mountain), which lies to the south of Ulaanbaatar, extends some 20 miles from east to west and nearly 10 miles from north to south. The mountain’s landscape features dense coniferous forests and bare rock on the upper slopes, and open grassland, including wildflower meadows, at lower elevations. According to Mongolia’s National Red List, threatened animal species include the critically endangered red deer, which has seen an 80 percent regional decline over the past three generations because of exploitation and habitat loss; the endangered Mongolian gazelle, Eurasian elk and Siberian marmot; and the vulnerable black-tailed gazelle and sable.

Bogd Khan Uul’s significance as a holy mountain stretches back to the time when shamanism — with its focus on the worship of natural sites — was dominant, and its reverence continued as shamanism was integrated into Buddhism, which became Mongolia’s state religion in the 13th century. The mountain is associated with the Mongolian shamanistic deity Dunjingarav, who rides 33 grey horses. “Bogd” and “Khan” are terms of reverence used frequently in the names of Mongolian mountains. Khan, meaning “king,” was commonly used during shamanistic times, while Bogd, sometimes translated as “living” or “holy,” originated in India and Tibet and became the more traditional name once Buddhism was accepted in Mongolia.

At Bogd Khan, and throughout Mongolia, practitioners came to stone cairns called oovos to pay homage to the deities that inhabited the landscape — a shamanic tradition that was adopted into Mongolian Buddhist practice. Many mountains and streams have deities attached to them, and these deities influenced the naming of much of the landscape. In the 1700s the people who settled what is now Ulaanbaatar began to make semiannual offerings on the mountain and codified prohibitions against hunting and logging.

Mongolian officials established Bogd Khan Uul as a protected area in 1778, predating the establishment of the United States’ Yellowstone National Park by nearly 100 years. Bogd Khan Uul’s protected status may date back even further, as there is evidence suggesting an informal protection as early as the 1200s. According to legend, Genghis Khan was born at the foot of the mountain; while that story is most likely apocryphal, it is known that the great Mongolian emperor’s headquarters were for a time situated nearby.

During the communist era, from 1924 to 1989, Buddhism was suppressed, ovoo worship was outlawed, monasteries were destroyed, Buddhist texts disappeared, and many  monks were killed. However, following the election a democratic government in 1990, Mongolia has worked to restore its spiritual, cultural and conservation traditions.  Buddhist monasteries and ovoo worship have been revived, and some thought-to-be extinct texts have resurfaced. On Bogd Khan Uul, ceremonies led by local Buddhist lamas honoring the deities of the mountain are again taking place.

In 1995, the government designated Bogd Khan Uul a “Strictly Protected Area,” one of several conservation categories established by Mongolian law. This precipitated UNESCO’s awarding of “Biosphere Reserve” status to the mountain in 1996. Mongolia also submitted Bogd Khan and two other sacred mountains for tentative inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List as a mixed cultural-natural site. In addition, Bogd Khan Uul is one of three sites recognized by Mongolian presidential decree as a natural sacred site.

The blending of traditional shamanistic Mongolian beliefs with Tibetan Buddhist thought has produced perhaps the best model for modern conservation efforts. According to Sukhbaatar, the main feature of Mongolia’s strength in protecting nature is buried deep within its legends, stories and names about the natural surroundings. “Flowing from pre-Buddhist cultures, enhanced and often codified by Buddhism and now fused with environmental awareness, the ancient names of sacred mountains, lakes and rivers indicate a profound respect for nature which is one of the hallmarks of Mongolian culture.”

Current Challenges and Preservation Efforts

In recent years, tradition-inspired approaches to conservation have been the blueprint for local protection efforts and have inspired ideas for solving Mongolia’s pollution, overgrazing, logging and waste-disposal problems.

In 2000, the Buddhists of Mongolia restored traditional hunting and logging bans. The following year, expanding on the ban, they reintroduced the concept of Buddhist Sacred Reserves — areas designated as protected by the deities — which date back hundreds of years but had been destroyed under communism. Bogd Khan is among the seven reserves that have since been resanctified. To further strengthen the conservation concept among the citizens of Ulaanbaatar, in 2003 the Buddhist community unveiled a carving of the mountain’s protector deity on the slope facing the city.

On the mountain’s south side, monks are rebuilding the Manzushir Monastery. Built in 1750, it housed more than 350 monks and 20 temples before it was destroyed in 1936. The Dashchoilin Monastery in Ulaanbaatar looks after ovoos on Bogd Khan, and in 2006, monks planted 1,000 trees. In 2008, a team from the National University of Mongolia established a signposted tour path to the mountain’s peak, the first in the site’s history, and produced educational brochures and a video to strengthen conservation efforts.

Unfortunately, despite its official moniker, the Bogd Khan Uul area is far from “strictly protected.” Over the past six years, urban sprawl from Ulaanbaatar has been creeping south; hotels, tourist facilities and residential developments, often surrounded by high fences, are rapidly filling many of the valleys. In November 2009, Mongolia’s first ski resort opened on the mountain’s northeastern slopes, and an associated golf course is slated to open in June 2010.

Because of these developments, Bogd Khan Uul was dropped from a World Bank forest conservation project that would have linked Bogd Khan with other nearby protected areas, allowing species to move into new ranges as an adaptation measure to climate change. Project administrators, however, could get no assurance from the Mongolian government that conservation was a priority in the protected area.

Local residents are also hunting and grazing animals and logging wood within Bogd Khan Uul. A 2005 report published by the WWF and the Alliance for Conservation and Religions noted that community involvement in protected-area management was limited and that members of the local population were often alienated from that management.

Creative community-based approaches are needed to strengthen Mongolia’s traditional conservation ethic among the broader population. Mongolian Buddhist monks could also benefit from increased ecological training and support, which could in turn affect the larger community. For example, some monks have expressed interest in using biodegradable khadags, or offering scarves, which would have the direct effect of cutting down clutter on mountains and could also encourage the Mongolian people to consider the environmental impact of their actions.

What You Can Do

Consider becoming a member or making a donation to the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, which works with Mongolian Buddhist groups to help them restore the environment in accordance with their traditional principles.

For thoughts on the ethics of visiting a sacred place, familiarize yourself with these guidelines.

To learn more about the development currently going on at Bogd Khan, watch this video.

Sources

Alliance of Religions and Conservation. Mongolia: Buddhists and Environment.

Bedford, Charles. “The World’s Oldest National Park: Ghosts of Monks and Red Deer.” Cool Green Science: the Conservation Blog of the Nature Conservancy, November 10, 2009.

Bulag, Uradyn Erden. Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Chimedsengee, Urantsatsral, Amber Cripps, Victoria Finlay, Guido Verboom, Ven Munkhbaatar Batchuluun, and Ven Da Lama Byambajav Khunkhur. Mongolian Buddhists Protecting Nature: A Handbook on Faiths, Environment and Development. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Alliance of Religions and Conservation, 2009.

Croner, Don. “Bogd Khan Uul: One of the Four Sacred Mountains of Ulaan Baatar.” Mongolia Adventure, Summer 2008.

de Gruyter, Walter. Shamanism and Northern Ecology. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1990.

Dudley, Nigel, Liza Higgins-Zogib, and Stephanie Mansourian. Beyond Belief: Linking Faiths and Protected Areas to Support Biodiversity Conservation. WWF and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, 2005.

“Mongolian Geographical Species Search.” National Red Lists.

Sukhbaatar, Hatgin Osornamjimyn. Sacred Sites of Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Alliance of Religions and Conservation, Gandan Monastery, WWF Mongolia, and World Bank, 2002.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “Bogd Khan Uul.” MAB Biosphere Reserves Directory.

United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “Mongolia Sacred Mountains: Bogd Khan, Burkhan Khaldun, Otgon Tenger.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

Saltzstein, Dan. “Mongolia’s First Ski Resort Opens.” The New York Times, December 7, 2009.

Whitten, Tony. “Mongolia: tough decisions about the world’s oldest nature reserve.” Mongolia Web, May 12, 2009.

Wild, Robert, and Toby McLeod, eds. Sacred Natural Sites: Guidelines for Protected Area Managers. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 2008.

Living in the rainforests of Borneo in Southeast Asia, the Penan people are one of the last indigenous groups in the world with members who still follow a traditional nomadic lifestyle, relying solely on their natural environment for material and spiritual sustenance. But in recent decades, logging has destroyed or altered the rainforest, forcing most Penan into a settled or seminomadic lifestyle marked by impoverishment and political marginalization. The Penan have received almost no compensation for the ongoing loss of their ancestral home and find it increasingly difficult to find their traditional sources of food in a diminishing rainforest. These circumstances have driven many Penan into activism that began in the 1980s with road blockades against lumber companies and legal battles over land rights. Today, the Penan are concerned that hydroelectric dams and a misguided race to plant oil palm plantations for biofuel and acacia plantations for paper pulp will finally obliterate their rainforest home. As a Penan man explained to the ethnobotanist Wade Davis, “The land is sacred; it belongs to the countless numbers who are dead, the few who are living, and the multitudes of those yet to be born. How can the government say that all untitled land ‘belongs to itself,’ when there had been people using the land even before the government itself existed?”

The Land and Its People

The island of Borneo has one of the most dazzlingly diverse ecosystems on the planet. The island’s tropical rainforests teem with plant and animal species, many of which are not found anywhere else in the world. Borneo is divided among Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei; both Malaysia and Indonesia are considered megadiverse countries that sustain a critical number of species. The Penan people live in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which by itself supports over 180 mammal species, 530 bird species, 10,000 insect species and 8,000 plant species.

While scientists are drawn to Borneo to study its ecological complexity, indigenous peoples who live intimately with the land have generations of inherited knowledge about the rainforest. The Penan are well adapted to nomadic life, understanding the ecological cycle of the rainforest, the habits of the forest animals, and the many uses of its plant life, which yield food, medicines, building materials, and tools for hunting. The Penan believe that the forest and its abundance is a gift from their creator, that the plants are sacred — thus, they have an obligation to use the forest in sustainable ways and to ensure its health for future generations.

Like several other indigenous peoples of Borneo, the Penan’s culture is relatively egalitarian. Although they recognize resource use rights, land ownership is a foreign concept. Community life is defined by an ethic of sharing — in fact, according to Davis, “the greatest transgression in Penan society is see hun, a term that translates roughly as ‘a failure to share.’”

Over the course of centuries, the Penan way of life has been influenced by cultures beyond Borneo, including Western colonization in the 17th century and present-day missionary activities and corporate resource grabs. Most Penan, for example, now practice Christianity and wear Western clothing. In the 1960s, missionary efforts combined with large-scale logging in Sarawak pushed many Penan out of the rainforest and into permanent villages sponsored by the logging companies or the Sarawak state government.

Today, there are roughly 10,000 Penan in rural Sarawak who continue to depend on remaining forest resources for their basic needs; many are seminomadic for at least part of the year, while very few live a fully nomadic life in the rainforest.

Current Challenges and Preservation Efforts

Much of the rainforest in Sarawak has been commercially logged at least once. In flat terrain, forests are clear cut and converted to plantations. Between 1990 and 2005, Malaysia lost an area of forest cover equal to the size of Connecticut, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. In the interior hills, forests are logged selectively for certain species, leaving highly degraded forests and a network of rapidly eroding logging roads.

This aggressive logging activity has resulted in soil erosion, water contamination, loss of animal habitat and the disappearance of mature rainforests traditionally roamed by the Penan, who responded with road blockades beginning in the late 1980s, and were quickly joined by other indigenous groups. While sometimes successful in halting logging, more often these blockades led to arrests, violent crackdowns, and possible murders of activists and indigenous leaders.

Though logging for tropical timber continues, another lucrative industry in Malaysia in recent years has been oil palm, a crop traditionally used in food products and cosmetics. Interest in oil palm spiked dramatically after it received widespread promotion as an inexpensive, environmentally friendly biofuel that would replace fossil fuels.

In a worldwide political climate in which the public is clamoring to reduce global warming, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and find viable alternatives to fossil fuel, oil palm has emerged as a popular crop for biodiesel production. Malaysia and its neighbor Indonesia dominate the world oil palm market, providing 83 percent of the world’s supply. To capitalize on the demand for biodiesel, the Sarawak government continues to grant leases every year for more plantations. Many of the leases overlap with indigenous peoples’ customary land.

But while oil palm emits less carbon than regular diesel when used as a fuel, the total oil palm production cycle actually increases greenhouse gas emissions. The clearing and burning of Borneo’s rainforests (and coastal peat lands) for plantations releases enormous stores of carbon trapped in the soil; decaying vegetation releases more greenhouse gases. Moreover, fossil fuels are burned during the planting, processing and transportation of the crop. Combined, the carbon released as greenhouse gas from the entire oil palm production cycle far outweighs emissions released by petroleum diesel.

Another criticism leveled against oil palm plantation is the killing effect such a monoculture has on biodiversity. One study showed that converting land from forest to oil palm results in an 80 percent decrease in species biodiversity.

But the political impetus in Malaysia for the continued granting of oil palm concessions is strong. Oil palm represents a significant sector in the Sarawak state economy and is highly profitable for a small group of Malaysians, including government officials with family connections to the industry. For indigenous peoples like the Penan, however, oil palm plantations have not brought any notable material wealth.

Large-scale acacia tree plantations, which provide the raw material for the paper industry, are also swallowing up tracts of forest. Such plantations boast high long-term profitability, as the trees can grow 45 feet in just seven years and are able to regrow from stumps.

Until now, the Penan have not been able to assert their rights to traditional lands in Malaysian courts. Logging and oil palm companies often receive “provisional” land leases with no consultation with the peoples already using and occupying the land. What’s more, to earn a living, many settled or seminomadic Penan are unable to find paid work outside of logging. “Smallholder” oil palm schemes promise a share in oil palm profits, but in reality they often employ migrant contract labor for meager wages. And Penan communities, with limited land rights in Sarawak, have seen no benefit from recent joint ventures between companies and indigenous communities holding land through customary rights.

In response to their escalating concerns about the environmental and socioeconomic effects of oil palm and pulp plantations as well as logging, many Penan communities are again resorting to protests in the form of road blockades, demonstrations and legal action. In 2009, many new blockades were erected. Protests by non-Penan Malaysians also occurred after allegations that multiple Penan woman and young girls were raped by logging camp employees; these allegations were affirmed a year later, when a leaked document from the timber giant Samling indirectly acknowledged that employees at its Sarawak timber camps were involved in the alleged rapes.

One hopeful victory for the Penan came in May 2009, when a Malaysian federal court recognized the legitimacy of broad indigenous definitions of communal property and land boundaries. Activists hope this ruling will allow for the recognition of Penan land claims, halting further encroachment into the rainforest.  The decision could also help resolve hundreds of existing property lawsuits filed by indigenous peoples in Sarawak against both corporate encroachment and the government that granted leases to the companies. The most recent lawsuit was filed in December 2010, when the Ba Jawi community lodged a collective-action lawsuit against Malaysian timber giant Samling and the Sarawak state government over 15,000 hectares of primary rainforest. The area covered by the claim is a key region of the Penan Peace Park, described below.

Some attempts toward land protection and conservation also represent positive steps. In February 2007, the governments of Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia signed the joint Heart of Borneo initiative, in which they commit to protect an 85,000-square-mile forested region. A number of long-range conservation goals have been set and the initiative has received broad international support, but it will take time to see on-the-ground impacts. In November 2009, 17 Penan communities proclaimed the Penan Peace Park, a nature reserve covering more than 600 square miles within the Heart of Borneo region. However, the Sarawak government has refused to recognize the park, and Director of Forests Len Talif Salleh condemned it as an “illegal” project that “tainted Sarawak’s image.”

But logging and plantations are not the only battles the Penan are fighting. Several Penan leaders were arrested in 2009 while protesting hydroelectric dam projects in Sarawak. One project — the Bakun dam on the Upper Rejang River, scheduled for completion in 2011 — will flood an area of forest the size of Singapore and has already displaced 10,000 indigenous people. There are 12 more hydroelectric dams planned in Sarawak which, if completed, will submerge many Penan villages.

What You Can Do

Write a letter to the Sarawak government on behalf of the Penan and against uncontrolled oil palm and pulp plantations and hydroelectric dam development. Urge them to recognize the Penan’s rights to ownership of their land and to stop all development without the Penan’s prior and informed consent. Address your letter to the following:

YAB Pehin Sri Haji Abdul Taib Mahmud
Chief Minister of Sarawak
Office of the Chief Minister of Sarawak
22nd Floor, Wisma Bapa Malaysia Petra Jaya
Kuching
93502
Sarawak
Malaysia

U.S. residents should also write their elected officials; go to Congress.org for a quick Zip-code search of all your representatives.

Consider supporting Penan community schools, community organizing and legal aid through the Borneo Project (USA); the organization also offers volunteer opportunities both in Borneo and the United States. Other organizations working on behalf of the Penan include Survival International (UK), Bruno Manser Fonds (Switzerland), and the Borneo Resources Institute (Malaysia), which in turn provides support for specific projects and organizations benefiting Penan communities.

Sources

“Arrested Penan: “Water From the Dam Will Flood Our Lands.’” Survival International, September 23, 2009.

“Borneo: Sarawak.” The Borneo Project.

Bruno Manser Fonds. “Penan Go to Court to Defend Heart of Borneo Rain Forests.” Bruno Manser Fonds, December 21, 2010.

Bruno Manser Fonds. “Sarawak Government Refuses to Recognize Penan Peace Park.” Penan Peace Park, December 17, 2009.

Colchester, Marcus, et al. Land is Life: Land Rights and Oil Palm Development in Sarawak. Forest Peoples Programme, 2007. (PDF)

Davis, Wade. “The Penan: Community in the Rainforest.” In Context No. 29, Summer 1991.

Fargione, Joseph, et al. “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt.” Science 319 (February 29, 2008): 1235-1238.

Human Rights Commission of Malaysia. “The Murum Hydroelectric Project and Its Impact Towards the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the Affected Indigenous Peoples in Sarawak.” 2009. (PDF)

Lee, Yoolim. “Getting Rich in Malaysia Cronyism Capital Means Dayak Lose Home.” Bloomberg, August 25, 2009.

MacKinnon, Ian. “Palm Oil: The Biofuel of the Future Driving an Ecological Disaster Now.” The Guardian, April 4, 2007.

“Malaysian Palm Oil – Green Gold or Green Wash?” Friends of the Earth International, October 2008. (PDF)

“Malaysia Penan Tribe Resist Logging Firms.” Al Jazeera. September 3, 2009.

Mayer, Judith. “Borneo Project: Burning for Biofuels.” Earth Island Journal 23, No.1 (2008): 20-22.

Moses, Kara. “Power, profit, and pollution: dams and the uncertain future of Sarawak.” Mongabay.com, September 3, 2009.

Rogers, Heather. “Why Biofuels are the Rainforest’s Worst Enemy.” Mother Jones, March/April 2009.

Sacred Land Film Project. “Borneo Penan File Suit Against Timber Giant.” Sacred Land News, February 8, 2011.

Sheridan, Michael. “Blowpipes Thwart Borneo’s Biofuel Kings.” The Sunday Times, August 30, 2009.

Sheridan, Michael. “‘Green’ Dams Hasten Rape of Borneo Forests.” The Sunday Times, March 15, 2009.

“Tribe: Penan.” BBC.

White, Mel. “Borneo’s Moment of Truth.” National Geographic, November 2008.

Zappei, Julia. “Malaysia’s Highest Court Affirms Tribes’ Land Rights.” Associated Press, May 10, 2009.

I traveled to Oahu, Molokai and the Big Island last week, continuing discussions with Native Hawaiians about our proposal to make the ongoing saga of Kahoʻolawe Island one of the eight stories in Losing Sacred Ground. This was my fourth research trip over two years to meet with members of Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana and the Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve Commission, and I am very happy to report that we reached an “agreement in principle” to go forward.

Folks unfamiliar with this process might ask: what takes so long? When dozens of native people from five islands oppose the U.S. Navy for a decade and win, and then succeed in having the land returned to their sovereign control, and when that heavily bombed island is the only island in the Pacific Ocean bearing the name of the sea god Kanaloa, you start to get an idea of the sensitivity and concern that might arise when an outsider asks to partner to tell the story.

As I made my rounds this trip, meeting with long-time activists Emmett Aluli and Davianna McGregor on Molokai, with Craig and Luana Busby-Neff and Pualani Kanahele on the Big Island, and then with a Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana ad hoc communication committee of seven on Oahu, a visionary Cultural Use Plan was released by the Kaha’olawe Island Reserve Commission. I had heard about the plan for several years and read early drafts, but Emmett was generous enough to loan me an advance copy and I was able to read the 200-page document as I crisscrossed the islands. By the time I met with the Cultural Use Plan’s principle author, “Auntie Pua,” in Hilo, I had read the entire plan, and felt very humbled, as it makes painfully clear how little time most of us take to observe and participate in our natural environment.

I highly recommend that anyone interested in safeguarding sacred sites read this visionary document. It is a challenge to practitioners to intimately get to know the stars, the tides, the winds, the waters, the life cycles and the life forms, and to take care of them with passion and ceremony. The document “requires that you do the ceremonies as instructed in order to foster a relationship between yourself and the elements.” Though crafted for Hawaii’s unique culture, history and environment, it is a blueprint for a community of wise, committed individuals to heal and restore a sacred place.

In a confrontation that ended with activists declaring transitory victory, a human blockade in California’s Six Rivers National Forest halted logging operations that the local Karuk tribe says is threatening its sacred sites and the survival of the forest. The protest took place near Orleans, about 140 miles northwest of Redding in Northern California.

Logging crews were turned back at about 5 a.m. on Dec. 16 at Orleans Mountain Lookout Road by approximately 15 activists, who lit a large fire in the roadway.

“This morning’s small but important victory marks the beginning of our campaign to defend Karuk sacred sites and protect the health of our forests,” Orleans local Chook-Chook Hillman said.

The blockade was organized by the Klamath Justice Coalition, which claims that current logging does not comply with the fuel-reduction plan agreed to in dozens of community meetings with stakeholders. Following a two-and-a-half-year consultation process, native and non-native community members from the Orleans region agreed to the Orleans Community Fuel Reduction and Forest Health Project, which was intended to enhance forest health and reduce the threat of wildfire through undergrowth removal.

As part of the plan, the U.S. Forest Service agreed to protect corridors of the forest around the Karuk Tribe’s ceremonial trail system. The plan banned commercial harvesting and heavy equipment in the protected areas, and prohibited cutting of hardwood species and large-diameter trees throughout the forest. It also called for multiparty monitoring of the logging operations.

Upon commencement of the plan, Karuk organizers said, subcontractors carrying out the logging work began violating the project guidelines.

“To date, we’ve had trees as large as three to four feet [in diameter] that have been felled in the buffer zone,” Karuk tribe spokesman Leaf Hillman said, noting that loggers have also set up heavy equipment, including a skyline logging system that uses towers and cables to move logs through the forest, inside the protected areas. In addition, the Forest Service failed to implement the promised multiparty monitoring.

Tyrone Kelley, the Six Rivers National Forest Supervisor, told the Associated Press that the current violations are the result of an oversight by the Forest Service, which failed to write the restrictions into the logging company’s contract. The Karuk Tribe is demanding that the Forest Service cease all logging on the 914 acres in question until these issues can be resolved.

The tribe conducts a semiannual ceremony throughout 9,000 acres of the forest, a region they’ve dubbed the Panamnik World Renewal Ceremonial District. Hillman said the area has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. During the ceremony, a priest travels through the forest on the tribe’s traditional trails to locations where various dances and prayers are held.

This is the same area that was the subject of the historic “G-O Road” case in the 1980s, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans did not have a First Amendment right to stop a Forest Service logging road from penetrating their sacred High Country.

The Klamath Justice Coalition is investigating legal measures it might initiate to halt the logging.

Winding down from the timeless cloud forests of New Guinea’s Central Range, the Sepik River’s majestic folds form the core of one of the largest and most intact freshwater basins in the Asia Pacific region. The soul of Papua New Guinea, the Sepik is often compared with the Amazon and the Nile, and it sustains an amazing variety of flora and fauna — much of it endemic — along with a wellspring of human cultural expression. In particular, many of the region’s people are economically, culturally and spiritually tied to the crocodiles of the river. While logging, mining and large-scale agriculture operations have been threatening forests, rivers and wetlands in many parts of the country, the Sepik region has remained essentially unspoiled, the river serving as a vital source of food, water, transportation and community identity. However, a copper and gold mine, projected to begin construction in 2012, threatens the pristine status of the Sepik. According to Andrew Moutu, Ph.D., a Sepik man and a lecturer at the University of Adelaide, Australia, “If the mine comes into operation, the people and villages of the Sepik River located below the Frieda River will be severely affected and we will lose everything that defines Sepik River societies.”

The Land and Its People

Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the Melanesian island of New Guinea and several smaller islands. The country’s motto, “unity in diversity,” is apt: it is one of the most ethnically and biologically diverse countries in the world. Some 60 percent of this mountainous land is covered by tropical forest — representing, along with neighboring West Papua, the world’s third-largest intact rainforest — and the forests contain an estimated 5 to 7 percent of the world’s biodiversity.

There are more than 800 indigenous languages among the people of Papua New Guinea, and a stunning range of cultural diversity. Most people live in small communities, where they practice subsistence farming and depend on the forests to provide their food, medicine and building materials. Rather than being bought and sold, land is passed down through generations, and it is a source of identity and spiritual connection as well as survival. Ninety-seven percent of the land in Papua New Guinea is under legally recognized customary-land title, meaning that the country’s indigenous people have rightful ownership of the traditional lands they occupy.

Seven hundred miles in length and with a catchment area covering nearly 30,000 square miles, the Sepik River occupies a special place in Papua New Guinea. It is the largest unpolluted freshwater system in all of New Guinea and it holds some of its rarest plant and animal species, including two species of crocodile — one saltwater and one fresh — upon which the peoples of the river’s middle reaches are economically reliant. The region is one of the least economically developed in the country, and its 430,000 inhabitants depend on the forests and river for their livelihoods. The area is also one of the world’s most culturally and linguistically diverse, home to over 300 languages in an area a bit smaller than the state of Texas.

Crocodiles feature prominently in the legends and rites of passage of various Sepik tribes. Stories may vary from village to village, but there is a shared belief in ancestral ties to the crocodiles and a practice of ritual scarring of initiated men that emulates crocodile skin. Descending from traditionally male-dominated warrior cultures, the men still congregate in intricately carved “spirit houses,” known in the pidgin colloquial as haus tambaran, to debate village matters. The artisans who carve the house posts, orators’ stools, ceremonial hooks and other features found within the houses are honored within their tribes, a practice that has led to a thriving art-carving trade well known among Asian Pacific native-art collectors.

Among some peoples, including the Bahenimo of the Hunstein Range in the Upper Sepik region, certain parts of the land carry taboos because they are viewed as dwelling places of spirits, or masalai. Although lifestyles among the people of the Sepik are changing slightly as a result of outside influences, most traditional believes continue to be valued.

Current Threats and Preservation Efforts

For the past two decades, industrial logging has been the most significant cause of forest loss in Papua New Guinea, and logging companies often use cash and other incentives to lure traditional communities to sign over their lands. Large-scale monocrop agriculture often then moves into the newly cleared land, with further destructive effects to the environment and local communities. Fortunately, the Sepik River Basin has remained a largely unspoiled — but that may change with the development of a large-scale mining project.

Located near the headwaters of the Sepik on the border between East Sepik and Sanduan (West Sepik) provinces, the Frieda River mine aims to tap one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits. Operated by a subsidiary of Australia-based Xstrata Copper, which also holds majority interest, the project is currently in the feasibility-study stage but is expected to begin construction in 2012, with production starting up in 2016.

Xstrata has pledged to conduct operations at the Frieda River mine in an environmentally and socially responsible way (see Xstrata’s 2008 sustainability report in the source list below), but critics including Andrew Moutu have expressed concern that environmental plans have not been made public and villagers of the Upper and Lower Sepik have not been adequately involved in the planning process. Of primary concern is that mine tailings might make their way into the river system. Discharge of millions of tons of waste from the Ok Tedi mine in neighboring Western Province resulted in a bona fide environmental disaster affecting some 600 square miles of land and at least 30,000 residents of the Fly River system; the Frieda River mine is expected to be an even larger operation than Ok Tedi.

Writing in PNG newspaper The National, Moutu said, “I want to challenge and appeal to all the educated people of Sepik River societies throughout PNG to mobilize and address the question of a Frieda River mine before we dig and bury ourselves in the coffins of mineral intoxicants. 
As feasibilities are being carried out, we have the right to demand a sound environmental plan that incorporates all and every concern about our crocodiles and humans, fish and sago, water and contaminants, eels and mayflies, birds and mosquitoes, men’s houses and churches…”

That the Sepik River Basin has until now avoided the fate of other areas of PNG has been credited in part to the region’s designated protected areas and the implementation of sustainable economic practices for its people.

An 850-square-mile area of the Hunstein Range highlands in the Upper Sepik was declared a national Wildlife Management Area in 1998 to prevent the largest proposed industrial logging effort in the country. In October 2005, the government announced it would gazette two adjoining WMAs, the 140-square-mile Uma and 42-square-mile Me’ha, creating the country’s largest lowland-rainforest protected area. The new WMAs, which are still awaiting final gazetting, are located in the lower catchment of the Nisek River, a tributary of the Sepik, and supply wetlands that are a breeding habitat for the country’s largest crocodile populations.

WMAs, which encompass land owned by customary communities, are established at the request of the communities and with their own rules and management committees. The goal is to provide environmental protection and opportunities for sustainable development while also strengthening land rights and preserving cultural and sacred sites. In the case of the Sepik WMAs, rules protect core forest areas from logging, place traditional restrictions of the hunting of certain animal species, and forbid disturbance to masalai areas. The Uma and Me’ha WMAs are also intended to help the communities sustainably exploit gaharu, a fragrant wood used in the manufacture of incense, perfume and medicinal products.

However, WMA projects are not without detractors. According to a report for the Australian Conservation Foundation, the projects’ compensation model — that is, providing material incentive, typically in the form of economic development, in exchange for the local agreement to protect natural areas — “assumes that local poor people are likely to be driven to destroy the natural value of their locale, and have few of their own, indigenous resources for environmental management. In addition, the [WMA project] may position itself as a competitor with logging and other destructive resource industries seeking to ‘buy’ the favor of local communities.” Others criticize the WMAs as nothing more than “paper parks.”

An area encompassing the middle and upper reaches of the Sepik River Basin is currently being considered for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a mixed natural and cultural heritage site. UNESCO helps countries to protect their World Heritage sites by providing technical assistance and professional training and supporting public awareness-building and conservation activities.

Among the villages along the river, crocodile eggs are a valued commodity, and some years ago overharvesting along with fire- and invasive-species–related wetland deterioration had begun to create a critical situation in the crocodile population that could have very quickly affected the livelihood of all the surrounding villages. In 1998, some local stakeholders and outside agencies formed the Sepik Wetlands Management Initiative to address some of the underlying issues, and it evolved into a broad community-based organization that now sustainably harvests crocodile eggs and skins as well as mapping their nesting habits, all while protecting and developing the wetlands associated with the Sepik River.

A 2006 crocodile population count showed the wetlands project had effectively reversed the decline observed from 1988 to 1998, recording the highest numbers since aerial counts started in 1982. In recognition of its accomplishments, the initiative was a 2006 U.N. Development Program Equator Award finalist.

What You Can Do

If you plan to visit the Sepik River Basin, download the ecotourism guide “Sepik River: Nature and Community Tourism” and see “Ethics for Visiting Sacred Places” for more guidance.

Sources

Anderson, T. “Papua New Guinea’s Bismarck Ramu Group: Redefining ‘Conservation and Development.’” Melbourne: Australian Conservation Foundation, 2004.

Divine Word University and WWF. “Sepik River: Nature and Community Tourism.” (PDF)

Embassy of Papua New Guinea. “Papua New Guinea Wildlife and Environment: PNG Government/NGO Approach to Conservation.” Embassy of Papua New Guinea to the Americas, Washington, DC.

Highlands Pacific Group. “Frieda River Fact Sheet.” October 2008. (PDF)

Kirsch, Stuart. “No Justice in Ok Tedi Settlement.” Cultural Survival Quarterly, Summer 2004. (PDF)

Moutu, Andrew. “Frieda – another ecological disaster?” The National, May 5, 2008.

Moutu, Andrew. “Is There Such a Thing as an ‘Environmentally Friendly Mine’?” The Melanesian, June 24, 2008.

Peter, David (Freshwater Program Manager, WWF Papua New Guinea). E-mail correspondence, March 1, 2009.

Sepik River Wetlands Management Initiative. “Equator Prize 2006 Nomination File.” UNDP Equator Initiative Knowledge Base. (DOC)

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “Upper Sepik River Basin.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

WWF. “Uma and Me’ha Wildlife Mangement Areas.” July 10, 2008. (PDF)

WWF. “Upper Sepik, Papua New Guinea.” Forests of New Guinea.

WWF. “New Ways to Explore the Pacific’s Last Great Wilderness.” News release, March 6, 2007.

Xstrata Copper. “Frieda River Project: Sustainability Report 2008.” (PDF)

IUCN has published two new translations of “Sacred Natural Sites: Guidelines for Protected Area Managers,” co-edited by SLFP’s Toby McLeod with Robert Wild. The English, Spanish and Russian documents are available for free download. IUCN, aka the World Conservation Union, announced the new translations in a press release:

“We decided to present the Spanish version of the Guidelines at WILD9 precisely because this important international conservation gathering takes place in the traditional lands of the Maya people of Yucatan, shared by Mexico and Guatemala,” said Gonzalo Oviedo, IUCN Senior Adviser on Social Policy and close collaborator in this work. “This is one of the areas of Latin America with the greatest richness in biological diversity and indigenous spiritual traditions – and one where both are at risk because of many threats. Through this publication, IUCN wants to add its contribution to the efforts for their conservation.”

The Russian publication was presented last Friday at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting on the protection of traditional knowledge in Montreal, Canada.

“The CBD has recognized the importance of the protection of sacred natural sites in various documents and decisions, and produced its own guidelines for it,” said Petr Azhunov, Baikal Buryat Center for Indigenous Cultures. “But mostly these decisions remain on paper. I am attending the traditional knowledge meeting to explore ways in which we can make better use of the CBD to strengthen action on the ground, and I am highlighting the opportunities that the new Russian translation of the IUCN Guidelines offer for working with communities in Central Asia and congratulate all who have made it possible.”

Thanks to the WCPA Specialist Group on the Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas, and to Gonzalo Oviedo, IUCN Social Policy Advisor, for completing new versions of the guidelines accessible to a wider audience around the world. We are also grateful for the support of ProNatura in Mexico for making the guidelines widely available in Latin America, and The Christensen Fund for financial support.

Sacred Land Film Project has completed our 2009 annual report summarizing the year and recent production work on our new film series “Losing Sacred Ground.” You can download the report, titled “If We Don’t Laugh, We’ll Cry” now.

Here’s a sneak preview:

In northern California, soft October light shimmered on the McCloud River as Winnemem Wintu leaders Caleen and Mark Sisk-Franco showed us signs of ancestral villages