Wise Elder’s project has been added to the featured project section of the site.
The government of Australia recently granted permission to the Woodside Company’s new Liquid Natural Gas “Pluto” Plant, for removal of 941 rock art engravings, despite the fact that the site was recently listed on the Australian National Heritage List. For more information you can visit websites for Dampier Rock Art www.dampierrockart.net and the Friends of Australian Rock Art, www.standupfortheburrup.com
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Click image to enlarge.
The tribal people of Jharkhand, India have just celebrated their harvest festival, Sohrai. It is a festival associated with cattle and the deity of cattle. The horns and hoofs of cattle are annointed with oil diluted with sindoor (tumeric mixed with lime to produce a vibrant red pigment) and earthenware lamps are lighted in cattle sheds and in kitchen gardens. An important feature of the festival is the painting of the walls of houses with traditional mot
The special projects section has been updated with a draft of the Wise Elder’s Project. More updates will follow.
Many sacred sites in the U.S. are part of National, State, and Regional Parks. These sites are mixed use, meaning that people can hike, fish, practice New Age rituals, rock climb, picnic, ride horses, and mountain bike.We often see conflict at sites like Cave Rock, Nevada, Hueco Tanks, Texas, and Mato Tilpea (Bear Tower in Lakota), commonly known as Devil’s Tower. Rock Climbers scale the face of this National Park located in Wyoming and Native Americans gather at the site every summer to practice their religion by performing ceremonial rites. Rock Climbers are asked not to scale the rock during this period, however, many do, thus disturbing the Native Americans.Sacred Sites International has developed some Guidelines for Visiting Sacred Sites. Please visit our website: www.sacred-sites.org/preservation.Sacred Land Films has produced an excellent film on the subject of conflict at sacred sites: www.pbs.org/pov/pov2001/inthelightofreverence/resources.html. The film highlights: Mt Shasta in Northern California, Devil’s Tower and the Colorado Plateau.
The frontpage prototype is now finished. Soon I’ll be working on a backend update–conversion of existing pages onto a drupal framework. Look for a demo version @ sacred-sites.org/drupal.
Group stops construction at burial Site
TOM FINNEGAN
Native Hawaiians Andrew Cabebe, left, Jim Huff and Hank Fergerstrom linked arms using “black bears” yesterday to protest the building of a house on a Hawaiian burial ground. They were joined by another two dozen supporters on the house site of Joseph Brescia, who is trying to build on Naue Point.
HAENA, Kauai » The construction of a beachfront home on top of an ancient Hawaiian cemetery was halted yesterday as more than a half-dozen protesters linked themselves together on the site.
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The protest, carried out by a group of mostly native Hawaiians from all four major islands, ended after a peaceful eight-hour standoff. No one was arrested.
However, the protesters vowed to return if work begins anew at the site, which contains at least 30 sets of remains and has been the source of protests for months and numerous court cases stretching back to 2002.
Police told the protesters that all work would be halted until Thursday, when a hearing on a preliminary injunction is to be held in Circuit Court in Lihue.
The protesters, however, were asking yesterday for Gov. Linda Lingle to step in and condemn the property and cease work completely and forever at the burial site.
“As the (legal) process continued to fail us, we had to take matters to a higher level,” said Andre Perez, of Oahu. “The Burial Council has been undermined … and is not doing the job they were created to do.”
The seven protesters came prepared with “black bears” to make it difficult for them to be removed from the property. The “black bears,” Perez said, were used by protesters in the Pacific Northwest to keep loggers from cutting down old-growth forests. They consist of two PVC pipes connected with an elbow joint. Two protesters link hands inside the pipe, tie a rope around their wrist, connect the other end to a mountain-climbing carabiner and then use two carabiners to connect themselves inside the pipe.
The only way to remove them is to saw through them.
They removed the devices, however, when it became apparent that the half-dozen police officers who arrived at the scene would not attempt to arrest them or their two dozen supporters who entered the construction site yesterday. Construction crews that arrived in the morning left by about 10 a.m.
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After eight hours at the site, protesters heard rumors that police would use Tasers to subdue them, and, according to their spokesman, Ehu Cardwell, they did not want to risk serious injury or death, as a number of the protesters had heart conditions. “They proved their point yesterday,” Cardwell added. “We will be back in force” if construction proceeds.
Kaiulani Edens-Huff, who camped out at the site for 16 weeks to protest the construction, stayed away from the protest yesterday, attending the Kauai-Niihau Burial Council meeting in Lihue. About 50 other burial supporters angrily testified that the council had failed to uphold its responsibilities, Edens-Huff added.
At the site, about 24 concrete pilings have already been poured, and at least a dozen grave markers have been removed.
The plans for the home have been approved by the county Planning Commission, the state Historic Preservation Division, the Kauai-Niihau Burial Council and others after the bones were found last year.
The homeowner, Joseph Brescia, a California businessman, bought the lot, which sits on Naue Point just off Alealea Road, in 2000 from actor Sylvester Stallone.
But numerous legal battles over the size of the house, its setback from the beach and its shoreline certification delayed construction even before the burials were found.
Brescia has said he has complied with all county and state rules and just wants a home on the lot he paid for.
“I now have no choice,” Brescia said in a prepared statement in June. “I have done what I could after learning of the burials.”
Nine Mile Canyon Update July 21, 2008
We are waiting for the decision of record for the West Tavaputs Draft EIS. The date for release keeps getting pushed back. You may have read that the EPA warned the BLM that the air quality model is insufficient and needs to be re-done. Evidently the BLM is going to do that over the next 10 weeks but is not going to release it as a supplemental EIS for public comment. The BLM has received the final report for Constance Silver’s dust study for Nine Mile Canyon but is not letting the public see it yet. In addition, Carbon County (Utah) has formed a Nine Mile Canyon Road Authority and invited the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition to sit on the board. They have released a memo that they will be conducting tests of three dust suppressants on stretches of the road in the Canyon. We understand that will begin this week. Last week I visited the Canyon and observed the application of a dust suppressant that looks promising (I think this is a separate operation than the test strips, but no one can confirm that right now). However, it doesn’t look like the road surface has been sufficiently prepared so I have some concerns that the product may not be as effective as it could be. The Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, in partnership with other groups, formally asked for an extension of the comment period for the DEIS so we could hire an engineering firm to study alternative routes into the Canyon, something the DEIS did not consider very seriously. This was denied, but we will be moving ahead with several partners to commission a study anyway. We also formally asked that the DEIS be withdrawn because it was incomplete and insufficient, but that was denied also.
In the meantime we asked for a state director’s review of the whole process of granting statutory exclusions for drilling new wells without NEPA work. This was denied.
We have also been working on the listing of Nine Mile Canyon to the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination was considered by the Utah Board of State History last month and received positive comments. Only one landowner objected to the listing. The nomination now goes to the State BLM Director for her signature, but Bill Barrett Corporation has objected to the listing as has Carbon County, Duchesne County, and Uintah County (all in Utah). We have a meeting with Duchesne County Public Lands Committee tomorrow night to clear up some misunderstandings.
Our best efforts to protect the cultural resources of Nine Mile Canyon are to fix the existing road so there is not so much dust covering the rock art (BBC evidently is not going to use magnesium chloride anymore which is a great relief) and to develop alternative routes for accessing the gas leases on the top of the Tavaputs Plateau. The road engineering study will address this.
Pam Miller, Chair
Nine Mile Canyon Coalition
The Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island is in a bitter dispute with a developer who wants to build a housing project on land the tribe says is a sacred burial ground.
More information here.
Preah Vihear Temple has become a battle ground as two countries, Cambodia and Thailand, claim this sacred site. 
Photo courtesy of Dave Perkes at www.peaceofangkor.com