Non-Native & Natives Take Action to Stop Desecration of the Sacred San Francisco Mtns.

Photographs courtesy of Kyle Boggs The Noise and Beth Lavely.

Defenders of San Francisco Peaks statement:

Today, we take direct action to stop further desecration and destruction of the Holy San Francisco Peaks. We stand with our ancestors, with allies and with those who also choose to embrace diverse tactics to safeguard Indigenous People’s cultural survival, our community’s health, and this sensitive mountain ecosystem.

On May 25th 2011, sanctioned by the US Forest Service, owners of Arizona Snowbowl began further destruction and desecration of the Holy San Francisco Peaks. Snowbowl’s hired work crews have laid over a mile and a half of the planned 14.8 mile wastewater pipeline. They have cut a six foot wide and six foot deep gash into the Holy Mountain.

Although a current legal battle is under appeal, Snowbowl owners have chosen to undermine judicial process by rushing to construct the pipeline. Not only do they disregard culture, environment, and our children’s health, they have proven that they are criminals beyond reproach.

Four weeks of desecration has already occurred. Too much has already been taken. Today, tomorrow and for a healthy future, we say “enough!”

As we take action, we look to the East and see Bear Butte facing desecration, Mt. Taylor facing further uranium mining; to the South, Mt.

Graham desecrated, South Mountain threatened, the US/Mexico border severing Indigenous communities from sacred places; to the West, inspiring resistance at Sogorea Te, Moana Keya facing desecration; to the North, Mt. Tenabo, Grand Canyon, Black Mesa, and so many more… our homelands and our culture under assault.

We thought that the USDA, heads of the Forest Service, had meant it when they initiated nationwide listening sessions to protect sacred places. If the process was meaningful, we would not have to take action today.

More than 13 Indigenous Nations hold the Peaks Holy. The question has been asked yet we hear no response, “what part of sacred don’t you understand?”

For hundreds of years resistance to colonialism, slavery, and destruction of Mother Earth has existed and continues here in what we now call Arizona.

The United States recently moved to join the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, evidently the US has not currently observed and acted upon this declaration, otherwise we would not be taking action today. This document informs our action, we also assert that UNDRIP supports the basis for our action.

Article 11, 1: Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artifacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature.

“Article 11, 2: States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.”

“Article 12, 1: Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains.”

“Article 25: Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard."

For nearly 4 decades, resistance to desecration and destruction of the Peaks has been sustained. Prayer vigils, petitions, lobbying, protests, and many diverse tactics have been embraced. Historic court battles have been fought.

We continue today resisting Snowbowl’s plan to spray millions of gallons of wastewater snow, which is filled with cancer causing and other harmful contaminants, as well as clear-cut over 30,000 trees. The Peaks are a pristine and beautiful place, a fragile ecosystem, and home to rare and endangered species of plants and animals.

Our action is a prayer.

We invite those of you who could not join us today and who believe in the protection of culture, the environment and community health to resist destruction and desecration of the Peaks:

- Join us and others in physically stopping all Snowbowl development!
- Honor and defend Indigenous Peoples’ inherent right to protect Sacred Places
- Resist colonialism and capitalism! Embrace diverse tactics to end Snowbowl’s and all corporate greed
- Demand USDA end Snowbowl’s Special Use Permit
- Demand that the City of Flagstaff Mayor and Council find a way out of their contract to sell wastewater to Snowbowl
- Demand that Arizona Department of Environmental Quality change its permission allowing wastewater to be used for snowmaking.

http://www.indigenousaction.org/

Black Mesa, NE Arizona, from space, June 2011

The expanding coal mines operated by Peabody Energy can be seen from space
By Bahe Y. Katenay, SheepDogNation Media

Big Mountain Dineh bi' Keyah, Black Mesa - June 2011 It all began in 1906 when U.S. Geological Survey reported coal seams within these 125 to 30 million year old sandstone and clay formations of Black Mesa. Black Mesa coal field as it became known as covers about 60 miles by 80 miles and is ancestral homelands to both the Dineh (Navajos) and Hopis.

Like it was a "gold" discovery, utility companies in the 1950s began their desperate effort to stake out claims once they realized cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles will eventually grow tremendously. These prospectors ran into a brick wall which was that, this "largest chuck of coal" was all Indian reservation, and only some slick, top-notch corporate lawyers might be able to establish "legal" access. The other roadblock for the prospectors was that the Hopis did not have a "U.S. Federally-recognized" tribal authority. The Hopis were still a sovereign nation in that they still had Village Chief authority nor did they ever signed a treaty with the U.S. of A.

Sleazy attorneys also specialized in corporate law converged on this isolated, forgotten world of the Navajos and the Hopis. It took a Salt Lake City attorney, John S. Boyden, to utilize the Indian Land Claims Commission's proceedings to coerced a small group of Hopis to call themselves The Hopi Tribal Council. The traditional Village Chiefs protested these colonial underminings. By 1962, the Hopi council was legal and immediately Peabody Coal Company was awarded the nearly 70,000 acres to start mining.

Today, those scarred lands have been "reclaimed" by the coal company with alien scrubs and grass. Thousand of acres of ancient juniper and pinon pine forests will probably never come back due to today's climate changed weather. But Peabody still want their new leases approved so that they can expand into the Dineh's sacred regions of Big Mountain. In 1974, the U.S. Congress also "settled" the rest of this real estate distribution by passing legislation to displace and relocate nearly 22,000 Dineh and about 600 Hopis. Peabody in 1964 stated, "this mining of Black Mesa will go beyond 100 years and this mining operations will facilitate the removal of the local human population."

Futhermore, this very complex Executive mandate and its false interpretations of reasoning have severely impacted this particular human culture and their environment which they interacted with sustainably. The Dineh especially those that associated their home areas and cultural areas with the Big Mountain summits have withstood over 30 years of harassment, threats, arrests, and trial by court, but unfortunately their human rights are continued to be violated. American popular media also are an accessory to these injustices by reiterating that 'false reasonings' and headlining it as the "Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute" to contradict the obvious corporate mineral interests.

The future of a once pristine and unique traditions of the Dineh of Big Mountain is uncertain, the numbers of homesites have decreased, the ritual cultural world has been silenced, most younger generation lack any connections to their ancestry, and threat of fossil-fuel addicted America still looms over these Dineh traditionals. A handful of Non-Native supporters try to continue in providing physical and network support on behalf of elder resisters and their families. However, there is still a great chance for the hope of survival that can still be justified and be saved but it will take much greater awareness and acceptance to maintaining sacred sites by helping to create them as living (sacred) communities.

Truth can no longer be feared but instead each individuals must promote and advocate for awareness about truth in order to secure the futures politically, economically and socially. There is also a lot that can be learnt from Dineh way of life at Big Mountain even though it may not be considerated as great influencial statespersons or political figures, but in actuality the Elder resisters are just that.


Here is an extra resource about networking: http://blackmesais.org/take_action/


SDNrocks, 2011