A journal of threats and serious issues affecting
Native
people throughout the hemisphere
Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and the Duckwater
Shoshone Tribe
U.S. officials want to store radioactive waste in tunnels inside the mountain,
which is sacred to Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe
Sacred Zuni Salt Lake, New
Mexico: SAVED!
The
threat: Fence Lake Coal Mine threatened the water
levels of this space, considered sacred by several
tribes, including Zuni Pueblo, in the U.S. Southwest.
The 18,000-acre strip mine is just 10 miles from
the sacred lake. New Mexico's congressional delegation
in late June 2003 asked the Department of Interior
to halt mining until hydrologic studies can determine
the extent of damage.
The solution: On Aug. 5, Salt River Project cancelled
plans for the mine. The Zuni Salt Lake Coalition's
(ZSLC) sustained campaign to stop the Fence Lake
Coal mine had garnered support from hundreds of
thousands of people across the country who had
added their voice to call for the protection of
sacred sites over dirty coal. The ZSLC had held
24-hour prayer runs around SRP headquarters, marches
and rallies and helped secure political pressure
to stop SRP's mine.
The ZSLC includes the Pueblo of Zuni, Center
for Biological Diversity, Citizens Coal Council, Sierra Club, Water Information
Network, Tonatierra and others.
" This victory is a testament to the spirit of the Zuni people, other Native
American tribes, and non-Native supporters who would not relinquish Salt Woman
in the name of cheap coal. We can all breath easier knowing that we have brought
environmental justice to the tribes of the Southwest and stopped a dirty coal
mine," said Andy Bessler of the Sierra Club, a founding member of the ZSLC.
While the mine proposal was stopped before ground was disturbed, more than
seven bodies were excavated during preliminary survey work for the coal
mine's rail line.
" Those bodies need to be reburied where SRP found them before SRP walks
away completely in order to respect our ancestors," said Cal Seciwa, ZSLC
founding member. Currently, the bodies are stored in an SRP trailer.
The ZSLC had pressured SRP with multi-language radio ads, billboard trucks,
thousands of letters and support resolutions from the Inter-tribal Council
of Arizona, All-Indian Pueblo Council, National Congress of American Indians,
and the New Mexico Council of Churches. While the ZSLC's two-year campaign
was gaining momentum, SRP responded by canceling plans for the mine ensuring
that Zuni Salt Lake would be protected for future generations.
"It has been a long 20 year struggle with a lot of mental anguish and frustration
for our people, but we have had our voices heard," said Pueblo of Zuni head
councilman Carlton Albert. "I feel relieved and it send shivers down my
back to realize how long this struggle has been and now it has come to closure.
So many people have supported us in this struggle and there is no word that can
express our appreciation to those who have given us help in the struggle. If
there is a lesson to be learned it is to never give up and stay focused on what
you want to accomplish."
Brazil: The Juma had a population
of just four people in 1999 before they slipped into virtual extinction.
Just a generation earlier, in 1964, they numbered 100. But that same year,
rubber grove owners launched a campaign of violence that included hacking
tribal members to death with machetes. By the mid-1990s, the Juma numbered
only 7. In 1999, the four survivors -- two girls and two elderly males
-- were removed from their territory by the Brazilian government because
of constant threats made by fishermen, palm heart extractivists and loggers,
as well as disease from non-Native encroachers. That year, a young Juma
woman had been raped by fishermen and was pregnant. Brazil transferred
the four to the Uru Eu Wau Wau tribe, where the two elderly people soon
died. The young people married members of the Uru Eu Wau Wau tribe and
have been exiled from their traditional lands due to lack of security and
threats from the land exploiters.
Source: Editor's contact
with AP Correspondent Todd Lewan, who reported about the Juma's
threat of extinction in 1998 but who later was unsuccessful persuading
U.S. r editors, including the publisher where this editor worked in 1998,
to carry follow-up stories about the tribe's desperate plight.
Medicine Lake, a Pitt River Nation ceremonial and
healing place in the Modoc National Forest in northeastern California, is
threatened by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service decision
to permit the state-funded Calpine Corporation to build a network of geothermal
power plant facilities to produce electricity to export to Bonneville Power
Administration for consumers in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
• Indian Pass, which was named on the 2002 list
of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, is a sacred place
in the California Desert area that is threatened by the BLM’s decision
permitting Glamis Gold, Ltd., to undertake what the Quechan Indian Tribe
calls a “massive, open-pit cyanide heap-leach gold mine on 1,600
acres.”
• Coastal Chumash lands in the Gaviota Coastal
region in southern California.
• Yurok Nation’s salmon fisheries in the
Klamath River affected by the Interior Department’s waterflow decreases.
• Berry Creek, Moore Town and Enterprise Rancherias’ lands
impacted by the California Water Project’s fluctuation zone at the
Oroville Dam Reservoir.
• the sacred Puvungna of the Tongva and Acjachemen
Peoples.
• the sacred Katuktu (Morro Hill) of the
San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians.
Source: The Morningstar Institute, Washington,
D.C.
