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.

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 Kaho’olawe 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 Kaho’olawe ‘Ohana and the Kaho’olawe 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 Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana 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.

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. The grinding rocks, home sites and burials will be submerged if Shasta Lake, the enormous reservoir held back by Shasta Dam, is enlarged by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and backs further up into this wild stretch of the McCloud River.

Upstream from the houseboats, marinas and weekend fishermen, a tall boulder balances over a deep, shining pool named for the sucker fish spirit that inhabits it. If the dam is raised, the Winnemem will never see the Sucker Pool again. For generations, young warriors and leaders have swum across the pool as part of their initiation rites.

Mark and Caleen knelt on the shore, lit a pipe, put hands in the water and prayed for the sacred site as Will Parrinello filmed this quiet healing and blessing ceremony. “This is not a recreation area to us, it is a life way,” Caleen said later. “I had to swim across this pool, years ago. To think we might lose it breaks my heart.”

For the Winnemem, it was a bittersweet year. After strong local resistance, Nestlé dropped plans to bottle millions of gallons of pure water from within Mt. Shasta that would have threatened the mountain’s artesian springs. But high on the mountain’s slopes visitors continue to dump human cremation ashes in the Winnemem’s sacred spring, causing ecological harm to a pristine meadow and water source, and wreaking spiritual havoc by defiling the tribe’s origin place.

Facing daunting odds the Winnemem fight on, like indigenous communities all around the world. Their tenacity and sense of humor give me hope. “We will endure no matter what,” says Caleen, “and if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.”

Read the full version of Sacred Land Film Project’s 2009 Annual Report.

The Ramunangi of northern South Africa — traditional custodians of Phiphidi Waterfall, a small cascade that is central to the clan’s relationship with ancestral spirits — have been engaged for decades in a struggle to protect their sacred site from tourism and infrastructure development.

Subjugated during the country’s apartheid era to the power of larger, government-backed tribes, this small clan was helpless to stop Phiphidi from becoming a popular tourist spot, with visitors freely roaming the site, leaving litter, trampling vegetation, playing loud music and, the Ramunangi say, disturbing the spirits. A rock above the waterfall — one of the site’s most holy areas — was recently destroyed as part of a road-building project, and for years, the Ramunangi have been denied full access to the site to perform their rituals and custodial duties. The clan is now turning to legal measures to restore full access to Phiphidi and receive official recognition as its custodians.

Tshavhungwe Nemarudi, a custodian elder, said in 2008, “It is no longer possible to respect the sacred site as it should be respected. Members of our clan have become sick. The Earth is sick. We know that this is because we have not been able to conduct our rituals properly in the last years. What we request is simply that our sacred site should be allowed to remain a place of pure, untouched nature.”

Read the report to learn more about the Ramunangi and Phiphidi Waterfall, and what you can do to help.

Guardians meeting at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona in October 2008 issued a statement on protecting sacred sites. After review and editing, the final version is now available for download.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes, perhaps one of the most significant acts of activism conducted by Native Americans to date. Led by Mohawk activist Richard Oakes,  Indians from diverse tribes across the country occupied Alcatraz for 19 months from Nov. 20, 1969 to June 11, 1971.

The group used humor to make earnest demands aimed at improved rights for Native Americans. Their bold action was the  the first indication that Native American culture could rise again. “Alcatraz was a big enough symbol that for the first time this century Indians were taken seriously,” Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. said.

The occupation led to real changes such as the creation of Indian-studies programs, tribal museums, increases in funding for college students, and legislation that supported self-determination, including the removal of federal Indian termination policy.

The annual sunrise gathering to celebrate indigenous people’s rights will depart for Alcatraz from Pier 33 on Nov. 26 as. early as 4:45 am.

Coit Tower will also be lit with film projections the evenings of Nov. 25 and 26 to greet those attending the sunrise ceremony. The film, titled “Indigenous Renewal: Alcatraz Occupation Remembrance + Ohlone Presence Celebrated!” prefigures the return of the Ohlone to San Francisco and asks viewers to consider what “indigenous” is. Community radio KPOO-FM 89.5 will broadcast a live program to accompany the projection from 6 p.m. to at least 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 25.

It’s a night to remember and celebrate the power of unified action for change.

POWER PATHS, a one-hour film directed by Bo Boudart, written by SLFP’s Jessica Abbe and narrated by Peter Coyote, will be nationally broadcast Nov. 3 on the PBS series Independent Lens. SLFP Project Director Toby McLeod contributed advice and archival footage to this timely documentary on renewable energy development in Indian Country.

POWER PATHS offers a unique glimpse into the global energy crisis from the perspective of a culture pledged to protect the planet, historically exploited by corporate interests and neglected by public policy makers. As Anishinaabe activist Winona LaDuke says in the film, “We need to create a way of life where a community is not forced to cannibalize their mother in order to live.”

The film follows an intertribal coalition as they fight to transform their local economies by replacing coal mines and smog-belching power plants with renewable energy technologies. POWER PATHS follows the Just Transition Coalition in its attempts to balance Navajo and Hopi losses from the 2006 closure of the Mohave Generating Station and Peabody Energy’s Black Mesa mine by creating green jobs. This transition would honor their heritage, protect their sacred land, and provide electricity to their homes. At a time when the planet as a whole hungers for alternatives to fossil fuels, POWER PATHS offers proof that going green is not only possible—it’s the only choice we have.

In the Bay Area, POWER PATHS is scheduled to air on Tuesday, November 3 at 11 p.m. on KQED-9. Check local listings for your PBS station, or visit the PBS website.