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Tribal Artifacts
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STATEMENT OF SUZAN SHOWN HARJO,
PRESIDENT, THE MORNING STAR INSTITUTE,
FOR THE OVERSIGHT HEARING ON
NATIVE AMERICAN SACRED PLACES
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS,
UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 18, 2003
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman and Members of the Committee on Indian
Affairs, thank you for holding
another in the series of oversight hearings on Native American sacred
places.
The national Sacred Places Protection Coalition is most appreciative of
the opportunity to develop a
record on the status of Native American sacred places, how they are faring
under existing laws and
policies and what new law needs to be enacted for their protection. It
is our hope that the Committee will
continue its series of oversight hearings and, in this 25th anniversary
year of enactment of the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act, will begin to develop legislation that treats
the subject with the seriousness
it deserves.
Since the Committee’s last oversight hearing, the Sacred Places Protection
Coalition conducted a
gathering of Native American traditional religious leaders and practitioners,
as well as tribal
representatives, cultural specialists and attorneys. The gathering, which
was held in San Diego,
California, on November 8 and 9, 2002, produced a major policy statement
regarding legislation to protect
Native sacred places: “Gathering to Protect Native Sacred Places: Consensus
Position on Essential
Elements of Public Policy to Protect Native Sacred Places.”
Participants at the gathering considered strategies for protecting Native
sacred places and arrived at a
consensus on the essential elements and the objectionable elements of
any public policy to protect
Native sacred places. A bill that includes these essential elements and
excludes these objectionable
elements would indeed be serious legislation.
The very first of the essential elements is a sacred places cause of action.
As the Committee knows,
deletion of the cause of action for protecting sacred places was the price
of House passage in 1978 of the
American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
Without a specific cause of action, Native Americans have not been able
to adequately defend sacred
places in court. This has exposed Native sacred places to risk and left
Native Americans at a
disadvantage in negotiations, when and where federal agencies and developers
have entered into talks at
all. For the most part, the attitude of agencies and developers has been,
“So, sue me,” knowing full well
that we lack the legal tools to do that. Federal laws protect non-Native
churches, sacred ground and
religious practices.
All the other religions have several doors to the courthouse. We do not
have even one door. Native
Americans need protection for our places of worship and for our exercise
of religious liberties, too. It is
grossly unfair that we do not have them.
Federal actions and inactions caused or allowed most of the damage and
destruction of Native sacred
places when the U.S. policy was to eradicate our traditional religions
and keep us from the places where
we pray. Now that the U.S. policy is to preserve and protect our traditional
religions, the federal
government has an affirmative obligation to do that and to take remedial
action on our behalf, including
returning and restoring those places that still have life.
The 2002 gathering identified the following as essential elements in any
legislation on Native American
sacred places:
· Cause of action for protection of sacred places.
· Zero tolerance for desecration, damage or destruction of sacred
places.
· Recognition that sacred places are to be defined only as places
that are sacred to
practitioners of Native traditional religions and that sacred places include
land (surface and
subsurface), water and air; burial grounds, massacre sites and battlefields;
and spiritual
commemoration, ceremonial, gathering and worship areas.
· Early, meaningful consultation with traditional religious leaders
and tribal leaders.
· Recognition of and reliance on traditional religious leaders,
tribal science and oral history as
the authorities on Native sacred places.
· Respect for traditional religious tenets and tribal law regarding
non-disclosure of confidential
and private information about sacred places.
· Notice requirements, with burdens of proof on the developers,
for proposed development
within the aboriginal territory of Native nations, in accordance with
mapping to be developed
by Native nations.
· Application to undertakings and actions on federal land, water
and airspace and to all other
land, water and airspace with a federal nexus.
· Provisions for protection of sacred places by transferring or
conveying ownership title to the
affected Native nations.
· Provisions for protecting the integrity of sacred places through
agreements for management
or co-management of or access to sacred places.
· Severe federal penalties for violations of sacred places.
· Recognition and application of tribal laws regarding arrests,
penalties and imprisonment for
violations of sacred places.
· Appropriations and allocations of land acquisition fund and other
monies for acquisitions of
sacred places and maintenance of the integrity of sacred places.
The 2002 gathering identified the elements below as objectionable in any
legislation on Native American
sacred places.
The first of these objectionable elements is definition of the sacred.
As the Chairman and Vice Chairman
will recall, there was considerable pressure for Native Americans to define
the term “sacred object” in the
historic repatriation provision in the National Museum of the American
Indian Act of 1989 and the Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990. Ultimately, Congress
agreed with Native
Americans that no other religions had to define the sacred in American
laws or legal proceedings and that
it would be discriminatory and unduly burdensome for Native Americans
and only Native Americans to
define the sacred.
· Definition of the sacred.
· Prioritizing sacred places.
· Centrality or degree of significance requirements.
· Discrimination against non-federally-recognized tribes with traditional
sacred places to
protect.
· So-called “mitigation” of impacts to sacred places.
· Reliance on previously published or recorded coerced or incomplete
information regarding
sacred places.
· “Discrete delineation” requirements.
Participants in the 2002 gathering unanimously agreed to carry this position
to the National Congress of
American Indians and to urge that NCAI support public policy to protect
Native sacred places only if it
includes these essential elements and to oppose any such policy that includes
these objectionable
elements.
Participants also agreed to urge the NCAI to utilize these same criteria
to support or oppose state-based
legislative efforts to protect sacred places; to support non-comprehensive
congressional measures that
will advance protection of sacred places and are consistent with this
criteria; to oppose legislation with the
potential to harm sacred places; and to assure that its lobbying process
is inclusive and reflects all
segments of Native nations.
These elements were adopted unanimously by the NCAI Subcommittee on Human,
Religious & Cultural
Concerns on November 11, 2002, and by the participants in the NCAI Convention
Session on Sacred
Lands: Protecting Our Most Precious Resources on November 13, 2002; The
NCAI Convention
unanimously adopted conforming resolution #SD-02-027 on November 14, 2002.
The policy elements position was developed by some of the most knowledgeable
people nationwide on
the subject of protection of sacred places. We trust that the Committee
will continue to work with
traditional Native people and our cultural and legal representatives when
it comes time to prepare
legislation for movement through Congress.
A bill that would do little to protect sacred places has been reintroduced
in the House. It does not have a
cause of action or other essential elements we have identified, and it
has too many of the objectionable
elements. Native people who were not boosters of last year’s bill were
not permitted to testify in the sole
legislative hearing on it.
Oddly, the House bill purports to codify the 1996 Executive Order on Indian
Sacred Sites. That Order is a
bare restatement (and a limitation, in part) of a portion of the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act,
which has been codified since 1978. We already have a good policy statement.
Now, we need a law to
give that good policy statement the teeth the House defanged 25 years
ago.
This makes the Committee’s process more important than ever – to hear
about the threatened sacred
places from the people who are the most directly affected, then to craft
legislation that is based on and
will meet real needs.
The Committee has heard testimony about the Comanche and multi-tribal
burial ground in Texas, Coso
Hot Springs, Hickory Grounds, Hopi Black Mesa and Lower Moencopi, Kaho’olawe
Island in Hawaii,
Missouri River sacred sites, Mount Shasta, Quechan Indian Pass and Zuni
Salt Lake. Situations at these
sacred places have not improved over the past year and the federal agencies
still have not responded to
the questions the Committee asked them during the prior two oversight
hearings on June 4, 2002 and
July 17, 2002.
Today, the Committee will hear about three Native American sacred places,
all of which have in common
various forms of a federal/state/private nexus:
1) Bear Butte in the Bear Butte State Park in South Dakota – a holy mountain
to the Cheyenne,
Lakota, Arapaho and other Native Peoples – which is under attack from
a proposed state and
private gunnery range, funded with federal seed money from the Department
of Housing and
Urban Development, that would destroy the peace and sanctity required
for ceremonies, vision
quests and prayer.
2) The Ocmulgee Old Fields in Georgia – which contain the former capitol
of the Muscogee Nation,
ceremonial grounds and burial mounds – are threatened by a proposed multi-lane
state highway.
The National Trust on Historic Preservation recently named this Traditional
Cultural Property to its
2003 list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
3) Medicine Lake in California, a Pitt River Nation ceremonial and healing
place, 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.
The Committee also will hear from one of our Cheyenne ceremonial leaders
-- who will speak in part from
his experience with the Medicine Wheel in Wyoming -- about the federal
agencies’ ongoing requirement
in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to consult with Native American
traditional religious
leaders, as well as the consultation requirements in several other laws.
Despite these requirements, no one consulted with the traditional leaders
or with those Indian nations that
own Bear Butte property – not HUD, not the state, not the city and not
the private developers. As a result
of this failure to consult, they are being sued in federal court. In the
case of the Ocmulgee Old Fields, the
state did not consult with the Muscogee Nation and has ignored its numerous
requests to move the
planned highway. With Medicine Lake, consultation did not occur initially;
when it did, the substance was
disregarded and plans proceeded as if consultation had not taken place.
Federal agencies do know how to protect sacred places and do know how
to build in meaningful
consultation and review of agreements. The co-management of fisheries
in the Northwest and Great
Lakes, including ceremonial fishing and sites, are working examples of
ongoing cooperative agreements
that have spanned three decades.
The Bureau of Land Management has entered into a cooperative agreement
with the Pueblo de Cochiti
for joint management of the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks Monument in New Mexico,
a sacred place to all
the Pueblos. The Bureau’s excellent record in this instance makes its
record of permitting desecration
and destruction of sacred places elsewhere, most prominently the proposed
gold mining at Quechan
Indian Pass, all the more inexplicable.
The Sacred Places Protection Coalition will be examining the fisheries
and Tent Rocks agreements and
other co-management accords as it develops guidelines for the Tribal/Federal
Summit on Sacred Places
Consultation Protocols, which will take place on November 15 and 16, 2003,
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
We invite the Committee to send representatives to the Summit. We request
the Committee to encourage
the federal agencies to send high-level policy representatives to this
Summit and to work with us to
develop guidelines and elements for consultation and management.
There are many sacred places around the country that are not being damaged
at this time. A few are
known to be sacred places, but many are not known. Some Native Americans
have strict prohibitions
against revealing the identity or location of a sacred place or any information
about why it is sacred or
what is done there. Others maintain silence in an effort to keep from
attracting the attention of people who
are looking for recreation or vacation spots or of developers who would
flood out, pave over, dig up or
suck the life out of these precious places.
Both the 2002 gathering and NCAI Convention identified numerous Native
American sacred places that
are under attack now.
Among the endangered sacred places identified in California, in addition
to Medicine Lake and Quechan
Indian Pass, are the following: Coastal Chumash lands in the Gaviota Coastal
southern region; 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; and the sacred Katuktu (Morro Hill) of the San Luis Rey Band
of Mission Indians.
The groups called for the protection and recovery of these identified
sacred places in the Southwest: 1) in
Arizona, Apache holy land, Mount Graham, from the Forest Service and the
University of Arizona’s
massive telescope project; Hualapai Nation landforms in Truxton and Crozier
Canyons from private
extraction of boulders for decorative landscaping; Hopi and Navajo lands
and the Navajo aquifer from
slurry coal mining by Peabody Coal Company; the San Francisco Peaks from
Forest Service and private
expansion of the Arizona Snow Bowl; and the Boboquivari Mountain of the
Tohono O’Odham Nation; 2) in
New Mexico, in addition to Zuni Salt Lake, the micaceous clay-gathering
place of the Picuris Pueblo from
mica mining by Oglebay Norton Specialty Minerals; and 3) in Texas, Carrizo/Comecrudo
lands flooded by
Amistad Lake and Falcon Dam.
Other sacred places identified as under attack now, in addition to Hickory
Ground, Missouri River and
Ocmulgee Old Fields, include the following: the Badlands, Black Hills
and Medicine Wheel in the Plains;
Semiahmah Village burial ground and Snoqualmie Falls in Washington; Pipestone
National Monument
and Cold Water Springs in Minnesota; Taino Caguana ceremonial site in
Puerto Rico and Yaqui Zona
Indigena in Sonora, Mexico.
EarthKeepers specializes in the education
and preservation of indigenous tribal artifacts, their history and use.
More information, including a eLearning slide show coming soon…
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