Scars Upon Sacred Land VI: 2013 Snapshot of Indigenous Action

Indigenous protestors in Ecuador, November, 2013.
Photo credit Chevron's Dirty Hand Campaign; all rights reserved.

Author's Note:  This piece first appeared at Daily Kos as part of my series "This Week In American Indian News" on September 30, 2013, hence the references in the introductory section. It is posted here with minor edits as a component of my regular Scars Upon Sacred Land series. My original intent was to post a brand-new entry in the series today, as well — an entry planned for yesterday as part of the Daily Kos blogathon to promote the final days of the public comment period prior to the Obama Administration's decision regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline. Life intervened and while there will be no post related to the blogathon, but there will be many more entries upcoming in this series. 
Today, we have a special environmental edition. 

On several occasions over the last few weeks, I've had to make last-minute revisions to accommodate developing stories. The result is that stories sometimes get bumped for a week or more. Last week, I realized that we were reaching a critical mass of stories addressing environmental issues affecting American Indians, and so I elected to hold some of them for this week for an edition dedicated exclusively to such topics.

Yes, there's a great deal of new and important Indian news out there, not least of which are last week's [as of this posting, last September's] developments in the Baby Veronica story. But with our news, each story deserves to be covered in a manner that addresses the issues properly within their cultural and historical contexts — accuracy is often better served by a short delay that permits proper coverage than by trying to be first out of the gate with a given story. We'll get to them, never fear. But this week, the stories that are ripe for covering are environmental ones. And while this week's edition is, as a result, unusually lengthy, it is by no means comprehensive. There are many more environmental issues in Indian Country that have yet to be covered, and they will be.

Over the last few years, I've written an intermittent series of diaries under the title Scars Upon Sacred Land. They're diaries that focus on environmental issues in Indian Country. Some focus on infliction of new scars on the body of Mother Earth; others, upon attempts to prevent them; and still others, upon rehabilitation and reclamation afterward.

This week's edition explores the latest in scars upon sacred land.

Scars Upon Sacred Land II: Apache Leap and BHP Billiton/Rio Tinto

Apache Leap.  Photo credit unknown.

Author's Note: This piece first appeared as part of the now-defunct EcoJustice series at Daily Kos on October 4, 2010. It is reposted here with minor edits.

Welcome to Apache Leap. The elders tell of a time when invading U.S. soldiers sought to abduct the Apache people, herd them onto reservations, and steal their land. The people fought valiantly, but were woefully outnumbered. When the end came, the Apache warriors chose to retain their honor rather than surrender to thieves and thugs: They leapt off the peak to their deaths below, joining the spirits of their ancestors and depriving the Army of prize captives.

At the base of the formation, a nearly-translucent brown-black obsidian is found. The stones are called Apache tears, and as the story goes, when the surviving women found the bodies of their men at the base of the leap, they mourned so deeply and bitterly that Spirit turned their tears to beautifully, lethally sharp stone, so that no one would forget the crime against the people that had happened in that place.

Now, John McCain, Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, and other greedy pols want to turn this sacred space over to an even greedier consortium of foreign corporations - to desecrate it further and dishonor the memories of those warriors and their survivors.

Scars Upon Sacred Land I: Uranium Mining Begins at the Grand Canyon

The Arizona 1 Mine. Image credit: StopUraniumMining.org. 

Author's Note: This post first appeared, in two slightly different incarnations, at Daily Kos, first on February 26, 2010, and again as part of the DK Greenroots series on March 7, 2010. It is reposted here as the first in my ongoing environmental series of the last four years, Scars Upon Sacred Land, and appears with very minor edits.

There is a reason why we refer to the earth as our mother.

The land lives; it is animated by Spirit. It sustains us: physically, spiritually. We are the land, and it is us — and any injury to it injures us all.

Scars Upon Sacred Land

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Over the last four years, I've written an intermittent environmental series at Daily Kos that I entitled Scars Upon Sacred Land. 

The original impetus for the title was the emergence of several renewed threats of mining on or adjacent to tribal lands. Over time, I think it became clear to readers that the scars were no less real even when they involved other forms of environmental damage, and that to use, the affected land was no less sacred for having long since been stolen and handed over to others.

I'm going to begin re-running that series here. Yes, there's a reason: If all goes as planned, there'll be a brand new entry in the series on Friday. But for context, I'm going to run each of the first six in the series, in order, here. 

Now, these posts are all anywhere from six months to four years old. I'll be running each with a note at the top indicating its original posting date. The information in some of them is no doubt outdated, at least in the details. But the broader risk that each represents still stands, and not one of the land areas discussed in them is yet safe. 

The first entry will post later today. When you read it, keep in mind that it's from 2010. Also keep in mind that the risks have not abated, nor has the damage already done been remediated.

And keep your eyes open for more entries every day this week, with a brand-new one at the end of the week.


Copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.