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!

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.