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RIGHTS-US: Native Tribes Take on Ski Resort
By Haider Rizvi
NEW YORK, Dec 9 (IPS) - Indigenous communities are up in arms against commercial plans to expand a ski resort on a mountain peak in the U.S. state of Arizona that has been held sacred by the natives for centuries.
Currently locked in a court battle with the United States government, American Indian leaders say the proposed ski resort development on the San Francisco Peaks violates their religious rights.
"They are desecrating our sacred lands," Klee Benally of Save the Peaks Coalition told IPS. "Why, in 2007, do we as America's first people have no guarantee for protection of our religious freedom?"
In 2005, the coalition comprising over 13 American Indian tribes and numerous environmental groups challenged the commercial use of the peak in a court but lost. However, two years later a higher court overturned that decision.
In March this year, a California circuit court blocked the proposed ski area expansion and snowmaking with treated sewage and held the U.S. Forest Service had violated its own laws by not fully studying the impact of human contact with fake snow made from the treated sewage.
The ruling also determined that the development on the peak would substantially burden the American Indians' religious practice, which the indigenous communities described as a victory for religious freedom, environmental justice and cultural survival.
Not pleased with that verdict, the U.S. forest officials and developers took their case to the U.S. court of appeals in Pasadena, California, which is due to hear the arguments next week about the decision blocking the ski resort owners from further development on the San Francisco Peaks.
The coalition of tribes and environmental groups says it wants to prevent the environmental destruction, community heath hazards, and the extreme desecration this planned development would cause.
"It should not be this difficult to keep government or anybody else from using sewage containing feces, hospital waste, pharmaceuticals, and pathogens like the Norwalk Virus for anything humans would come in contact with," said Rudy Preston, board member of the Flagstaff Activist Network and plaintiff in the case.
"It's a no-brainer- you don't play in your own poo," he added in a statement.
Tribal leaders of the Yavapai-Apache, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, White Mountain Apache, and Navajo Nations say they will converge on the Pasadena courthouse for oral arguments in defence of their original victory. Many non-indigenous organisations have also assured the natives their full support.
"Our federal government seems to place the profitability of a privately owned, non-destination ski area that operates on federal land, over the deeply held religious and cultural convictions of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans living in the southwestern United States." said Howard Shanker, of the Shanker Law Firm, PLC.
The firm represents the Navajo Nation, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Tribe, the Havasupai Tribe, Rex Tilousi, Dianna Uqualla, the Sierra Club, the Centre for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network.
"The struggle for indigenous people's cultural survival is directly connected to maintaining a healthy environment." said Jesus Torres of Communities for a Better Environment, a California statewide environmental health and justice organisation.
"Although Los Angeles and the surrounding areas may seem distant from these threatened sacred landscapes," Torres added in a statement, "we recognise this is a fight for environmental justice and human rights."
Shanker, who is running for Congress in Arizona, urged lawmakers to stand up against plans to use the peak as a resort by stating that the continued pursuit of the use of reclaimed waste water to make snow on the San Francisco Peaks "should be an affront to all people of conscience everywhere."
The resort development on San Francisco Peaks is not the only case that has caused anger and resentment among American Indian communities. In recent years, the native tribes have lodged several complains with the United Nations against violations of their rights.
In response, a U.N. committee took the rare step of assailing the U.S. government in March this year and said Washington had run afoul of an international anti-racism treaty by violating the rights of Native Americans.
The independent Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) stated it had ''credible information alleging that the Western Shoshone indigenous people are being denied their traditional rights to land'' and asked federal authorities to cease all activities on tribal land - including efforts to set up commercial mining operations.
Indigenous leaders see the court case as a test for the U.S. government's fairness in ensuring religious freedom for all.
"If you desecrate this sacred mountain it is like destroying the Mormon chapel or other churches through out the world, even Mecca, a holy place, what will be next what if it's your place of worship," said Avery Denny, a member of the Dine' (Navajo) Hataali Association, which is involved in the lawsuit to protect the holy mountain.
(END/2007)
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