Tucson Weekly: Fool's Gold (June 4

A Canadian Mining Company Seeks To Desecrate And Destroy A Native American Sacred Site.
By Kay Sather
THE QUECHAN PEOPLE have a history veined with gold.
It has not made them wealthy, however. For this 2,500 member Colorado River tribe living near Yuma, it has meant only trouble.
The trouble started four centuries ago with Francisco Coronado's search for the rumored Seven Cities of Gold. He brought the Spaniards early to Quechan territory, which was situated at a natural crossing point over the Colorado. With the explorers came European diseases that eventually killed off nearly three-quarters of the tribe.
Currents Later, the discovery of gold in California funneled hoards of forty-niners needing to cross the river through the area. The Europeans came then in numbers to settle, building a fort, claiming land, and removing Quechan children from their families to place them in a Catholic boarding school. Farther upstream they built a string of dams which reduced the great river to a small stream, constricting the lifeblood of Quechan floodplain farming.
Now a Canadian mining company, Glamis Gold, is preparing to set up open-pit gold-mining operations on land held sacred by the Quechuan for centuries. The proposed 1,625-acre Imperial Project site belongs to public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, and covers about half of the total area considered sacred by the tribe. The BLM has published an environmental impact statement that addresses archaeological and cultural issues, but not adequately, according to some tribal members--especially when it comes to the religious importance of the land.
"Our religious value is a little different from yours," says Lorey Cachora, a trained archaeologist and traditional Quechan.
Revelations, dreams, and visions, sometimes induced through fasting, are central to Yuman spirituality. Circles on the ground, cleared of rocks except for a simple altar-like stone in the center, traditionally served as visionquest sites. The proposed mine project area includes a number of these "prayer circles," as well as ancient petroglyphs, geoglyphs (ground drawings), artifacts, and various anthropomorphic icons of the Creator. And throughout the area, stones called "spirit breaks" still stand guard against evil as they have for centuries.
An ancient trail through the area connects the Quechan with their mythic birthplace to the north, Spirit Mountain. Cachora calls it a "trail of dreams," and explains that it's important to the traditional Quechan mourning ceremony still practiced on the Fort Yuma Reservation. The rite requires four days of singing songs with lyrics based on dream images that come from experiences on the trail. "We go there, and then we go back to the trail in our sleep," he says.
NOT SURPRISINGLY, Glamis downplays the religious importance of the site in its carefully-worded informational literature. "The area was used by pre-contact Native Americans as a travel route and source of tool-grade stones," the company states, apparently unaware that it's defining the Quechan's relationship to the land according to its own intentions--the transportation of ore and personnel, and the extraction of resources. The wholistic significance of the area to native culture is clearly not understood or recognized; most artifacts would be either removed or destroyed, and sites eligible for the National Register of Historic Places would be affected (though "carefully studied and archived before disturbance occurs").
A map produced by Glamis itself is perhaps most telling. Native American "cultural sites" are shown as virtual islands surrounded by waste rock stockpiles, excavated pits, and a toxic leach pad--hardly the stuff of dreams. And according to Cachora, the area "contains sites they're not aware of." This may certainly be true, since the Quechan do not speak freely about their spiritual traditions. Talking about certain aspects makes them vulnerable to evil.
If the BLM approves the project, mining operations will be conducted on the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for a projected 20 years. Glamis repeatedly touts its success with progressive reclamation techniques as demonstrated at its nearby Picacho Mine, now spent. But one of the three open pits excavated at the Imperial Project would not even be backfilled, much less reclaimed. The remaining pit, 80 stories deep, would simply be fenced off until future technology makes further mineral recovery profitable.
No one doubts Glamis' ability to turn a profit with this mine (companies pay nothing for minerals taken from public lands), but given the low grade of ore here--0.016 ounces of gold per ton--it's clear the efforts required to extract it would be costly in other ways, certainly environmentally.
"That's one gold ring to several boxcars of toxic waste," says Jeff Berman, a representative of The National Wildlife Federation. To obtain gold from such large amounts of ore, a leaching solution of sodium cyanide is used. Though the solution is dilute, cyanide is highly toxic. And mines aren't known for their spotless accident records. According to Berman, 66 mine sites are now on the Superfund priorities list, and cleanup for these and other mines may cost taxpayers $100 billion. Federal and state governments require mines to post bond against possible disasters, but posted amounts are often insufficient, and mining companies often escape financial responsibility by hiding behind subsidiaries.
Clearly, environmentalists have reason to align themselves with the Quechan in opposition to the mine. But are these indigenous people and their religious beliefs being "used" to further the environmentalist cause?
No, says Edie Harmon, a non-Indian who considers herself a friend of the tribe. At one local gathering she watched the accusation bring Preston Arroweed to his feet in anger and inspire him to expound on the subject in the Quechan language, with obvious emotion. And to reservation nutritionist Barbara Antone, who would like to see more of her people return to growing their own food, the toxicity and destructiveness of a mine here would be an affront to the nourishing potential of the land, both physical and spiritual--they are the same. "We were born from Mother Earth," she says. "We were created from the clay."
THE FUTURE OF this particular piece of clay will be decided by the BLM, probably within the next six months. The Quechan have their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. They also have a two-year-old Executive Order from President Bill Clinton stating that federal land management agencies shall "accommodate access to and ceremonial use of Indian sacred sites by Indian religious practitioners" and "avoid adversely affecting the physical integrity" of such sites.
But the BLM is still under the influence of a shamelessly outdated mining law passed back in 1872, which still holds mining to be the "highest and best use" of public land. Some say the BLM's hands are tied by that law; others say they are not. Most likely, the BLM will not see this choice as a golden opportunity to bring their agency into the 20th century.
But one can dream.

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