Sacred-Sites International Blog

Sacred Native American geoglyphs, also known as the Intaglios, in Blythe, California are being threatened by six large solar energy projects attempting to be implemented by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). One of these is the Solar Millennium project, which, if implemented, would construct a 5,900 acre solar energy facility eight miles west of San Bernardino, right next to the mesa where the Intaglios exist.  The other project under attack is BrightSource Energy’s 3,600 acre facility, on which work began in October in Ivanpah Valley of San Bernardino. Both of these projects would be built on top of a large area of land sacred to many Native Americans.

Alfredo Acosta Figueroa, founder of the group La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle, is in the midst of a legal battle against the government.  He is trying to derail their plans through a lawsuit filed December 27, 2010, arguing that they fast tracked the project in order to get government subsidies without consulting with Native American groups whose land and sacred sites would be affected.  Figueroa’s attorney, Cory Briggs, said that the government rushed to approve renewable energy projects because of a December 31, 2010 deadline to receive economic stimulus funding.

There are over 600 intaglios in the Southwest and nearby areas of Mexico.  The Blythe Intaglios are some of the most well-known. They are giant drawings carved into the desert rocks, telling the creation story according to the Native American Mohave and Quechan tribes.  Native Americans left them centuries ago, scraping away dark surface rock to reveal a lighter soil underneath. In this way, they created incredible drawings of humans, animals, and shapes that can be most easily seen from above due to their large size.  A pilot named George Palmer first discovered them while flying over Blythe in 1930.  He saw what is today one of the most famous of the Intaglios, a 171 foot human figure.

Besides this geoglyph, the Blythe Intaglios depict five other human and animal figures spread primarily between three locations. Who made them and exactly how old they are is unclear. They are thought to be somewhere between 200 and 450 years old, but could be thousands of years old.  Their creators are believed to be the ancestors of the Native Americans living along the Colorado River, but there is no consensus as to specifically which tribes made them. There is also discrepancy over their meaning.  One commonly accepted explanation is that the human figures represent Mastamho, the creator of all life according to Native American legend, and the animal figures symbolize Hatakulya, an important character who helped Mastamho in creation, described as either a horse or mountain lion. According to this theory, these figures guide the Native Americans toward Old Woman Mountains. Although their exact meaning is unclear, these geoglyphs are extremely important to Native American tribes of the area.

In the past, the importance of the Intaglios has been acknowledged by the government. Although some of the Intaglios exist on private property, the three main figures north of Blythe are technically under Federal Protection and the jurisdiction of the BLM. They were added to the National Register of Historic Places after an extensive qualification process that began in 1978 and the BLM even constructed a fence around them to protect them from vandalism. Whether the protection of these sites will be prioritized over the solar energy projects remains to be seen, but Figueroa hopes that the BLM will realize that, “There’s no way these people can circumvent all the sacred sites out here, and no way to fix it when the damage is done.”