Just south of the Grand Canyon and seven miles north of Flagstaff, the volcanic San Francisco Peaks loom 12,000 feet above the Arizona landscape. They also sit at the intersection of a cultural, environmental and commercial controversy—one that could make its way to the Supreme Court. The Peaks, which are managed by the United States Forest Service (USFS) as part… return to article
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Reader Comments (13)Page 1 of 1 pagesMurray is certain the case will make it to the Supreme Court. “If we prevail,” he says, “well, the Indians might have to adjust some of their thought processes or religious practices. But if they win, the ski area goes away.”
Adjust some of our thought processes that have held these peaks sacred for thousands of years so that someone can make money off of stomping all over sacred land? Does not make sense at all.
Posted by wsdd on May 17, 2007 at 10:14 AM “making snow from wastewater violated the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), based on the religious practices of the Navajo, Hopi and Havasupai tribes.”
How very funny! Skiing on “natural” snow is ok, but it is irreligious to ski on snow made from reclaimed water? Perhaps the natives are just anti-environmentalists? How did such nonsense get into their religion in the first place (hint - this is obviously a bogus argument)!
My vote is with the resort.
Posted by wolf on May 17, 2007 at 11:49 AM Technically Mr. Murray cannot appeal the case, it is up to the Forest Service. The ruling by the 9th Circuit is very enlightened on behalf of the First Nations. However almost 3/4 of their opinions are overturned by the Supreme Court, so it will be a fight. The Indian Wars never ended, they just changed venue.
I do not understand the previous posting, calling Natives “anti-environmentalist.” You would assume trying to maintain the balance of harmony in nature sans wastewater, into the watershed for a community of 50,000 non-natives to be the sound argument, and that the company was pulling the environmental wool over the communities’ eyes. That sounds like environmentalism as a creed and lifeway.
To truly understand what you are talking, Mr. ‘wolf’ about I suggest taking a few moments and read the court ruling from the 9th circuit. It has a brief overview of the religious beliefs of three First Nations and some info about the type of wastewater we are speaking. There are degrees to a lot of what is being weighed here: the rights of the indigenous and protection of their religious rights, public land used for private company profiteering, the health of society and community, and the protection of Mother Earth. There are many more colours than black and white in this argument, I suggest you learn them before you pass transitory judgement upon subjects you know nothing of.
Ivan K. GamblePS your vote doesn’t count...sorry.
Posted by IvanGamble on May 17, 2007 at 3:05 PM The 9th Circuit is out of touch with reality, hence their constantly overturned opinions. Obviously the balance of nature must include the repurification of “wastewater”. The *religious* aspect of the argument (as presented here) is merely silly and i expect the Supremes will agree with me, whether they take my “vote” into account or simply figure it out themselves (it is not very difficult in this instance).
If there are truly health arguments that are viable, they might be more persuasive. Otherwise i would rather we get to use a small faction of the land for public good, even if someone actually profits (oh no!!!) from such endeavors.
Posted by wolf on May 17, 2007 at 3:47 PM Would the various tribes accept water made potable??
Perhaps Murray can sell water that is pure enough to drink and use it to make snow.Re the post by Wolf: I don’t know what to expect from that 5-4 supreme majority but I expect the worse. If the Bushies stole the 2000 election and the 2004 election then we have fraudulent Supreme Court.
Tigertiger
Posted by Tigertiger on May 18, 2007 at 12:32 PM ‘If the Bushies stole the 2000 election and the 2004 election then we have fraudulent Supreme Court.’
Interesting assertion. Are/were you bothered by the Kennedy appointees as well? (Factually Bush did not “steal” the infamous 2000 election, rather both the election and its aftermath in Florida were botched by the Gore team.)
Still remember that the rich child GW Bush never even bothered to travel abroad before he was elected prez. Not once! Given this little factoid, is it even vaguely surprising that his foreign policy is, well, what it is?
Posted by wolf on May 18, 2007 at 2:35 PM Wolf is scornful of many things, religious feelings among them. Wolf probably has these feelings himself and is confused about them.
We all are under the same natural laws but Wolf, scorn for the subtle and often slow processes of nature will come back on you until you become respectful and gain the respect you wish from the people who practice respect.
Natural processes speak at a pace of time far different than the stock market. Slow down, Wolf, you will become wiser.
Posted by rain on May 19, 2007 at 8:37 PM First of all, use of reclaimed water is bound to expand in the future, in arid regions like Arizona and elsewhere. It would be wise to test all such water for anything that might impact the health of humans and animals using it. I have no idea how much more expensive it is to take processed water from “A-plus” unpotable to “potable”, but my supposition is that the expanded ability to use the resulting water for all purposes, drinking and otherwise, might make the added cost worthwhile. It may not be cost effective to make all sewage water into drinking water (for instance, why do so for water destined to irrigate roadside groundcover?), but in the case where a mouthful of snow or water which was derived from sewage is not at all unlikely, maybe that water ought to meet the potable standard.
Anyone who has skied has likely fallen and gone face-first into a snowbank at some point, and might like to rest assured that they’re not getting a mouthful of something that will sicken them. Again, I am not acquainted with the relative costs of this higher level of processing; maybe that’s just the unavoidable risk they take, like a backpacker who gets a drink of water from a woodland stream and risks contracting giardia when he does. I’ve had this happen to me; “natural water” is not always “clean water”.
Beyond that, what makes a patch of land sacred? Is it centuries or millennia of religious myth and ritual, aimed at a particular location? Is it depth of feeling among people who live nearby, regardless of how long they’ve been attached to those feelings? Do paganistic or other long-standing religious expressions get the benefit of the doubt, or do the relatively new religions of the One God, in all their variety, get the nod due to their larger share of adherents?
It seems to me that forming policy on land use as guided by religious sentiments puts the state in the position of having to judge in advance. What if fervent Catholics wanted to set aside land that had been claimed by the church, back in the days of Spanish expansion? What if Mormons wanted to do so, with lands that they might identify as sacred? How about modern neo-pagans or Wiccans, who might identify a piece of land has having important spiritual meaning to them? Surely those groups can be as passionately attached to particular lands as the native tribes are. And secular people can also be devotedly attached to land; what if their ancestors’ bones lie within it? Whose claim gets first respect? Is it those who have been f’d over most by the events of American history (God knows how that could be determined!)? Is it the ones whose ancestors got here earliest? The richest? The palest of skin? The darkest? Where do the specifics of the actual case enter this puzzle?
If American society wanted to really do something substantive for the native tribes, there’s ample room for improvement in the areas of education, equal protection under the law, investment in local economies (beyond casinos), medical and social services, etc. If they don’t want to accept those provisions, it’s their prerogative to refuse them, but those are quality-of-life issues that society can actually do something about right now, in the 21st century world that exists today. I think it becomes immediately problematic when legal decisions like the one described in the article are made with an eye toward making up for broad historical issues (defeats, really) that are aside of the direct facts of the case. It forces a prejudgement, based not on the merits of the arguments, but on the sentiments of judges. These are neither consistent from one judge to the next, nor are they necessarily based on legal precedents, nor are they derived from anything concrete that can be argued or refuted by those in the courtroom. The ski resort owners are not racist genociders; the merits of their case should not be prejudged as though they were.
Posted by Kuya on May 21, 2007 at 1:43 AM I’m sure I’ll get slashed for “not caring about” native Americans, which is crap. I simply say, in this world today, here and now, the ski resort owners have a case to make too, even if it’s not a sentimental/spiritual one. If it comes to relieving human suffering, which I do care about, I think there are more direct ways to accomplish that than arguing over whether a ski resort ought to be scraped off a mountain or not.
How about taking care of people as though they were actually worth something more than sewage themselves?
I suppose that’s not elegant enough.
Posted by Kuya on May 21, 2007 at 2:13 AM “Wolf is scornful of many things, religious feelings among them. Wolf probably has these feelings himself and is confused about them”
General Hint: Ascribing motives to people one does not know leads to incorrect and foolish assertions. Better to stick to the issues, rather than to attempt to analyze the author of any particular post.
Kuya, very thoughtful posts, i enjoyed reading and pondering them.
Posted by wolf on May 21, 2007 at 10:27 AM In order to carefully consider the words of the courtroom and economic i.e. profit rights, still “disappearing” Native American resistence, it is useful to return to John Locke, the “father of epistomology,” the main influence and advocate in the 1600’s during the development period of the American system of justice and early capitalism. Here are some quotes that could almost be heard today-- and yet this was four hundred years ago:
Locke advocated “...the ownership of property to be not only a right in society but also a duty to generate wealth...land that is left wholly to nature...is called, as indeed it is, waste.” Locke condemned American Indians as “a handful of people living in one of the richest lands in the world, idly refusing to exploit their riches.”
“Though the water running in the fountain be every one’s, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg of Locke’s POV that shaped the dominent society, and, sadly to say, is still is the foundation of our advanced consumer society and its “rights and privileges” over all of Nature and her advocates.
Posted by rain on May 22, 2007 at 10:05 PM Who wants to ski in frozen reclaimed water? I’m all for using such water on golf courses, which is better than decimating a city’s drinking water for “tourism”. But golfers aren’t falling in the stuff, and it’s not melting over nature.
if people are so hot to ski, why don’t they go places where there’s snow? It there’s no snow, maybe these people should take a look at the SUVs they’re driving, etc., and start thinking about global warming. Yes, the desert has cycles. But Flagstaff has had water shortages for some years now.
The Navajos, Hopis and other Native Americans in the area were there well before the skiers. They protested setting up the skiing in the first place, as I recall. So this isn’t something that they suddenly decided. Why can’t we show a little respect for people who have real beliefs and values instead of worshipping money.
Posted by diane on May 27, 2007 at 11:58 PM I lived in Flagstaff and my sister is married to a Navajo man. (He is an associate professor in cell biology and has had to wrestle with his beliefs for years because of the field he is in. That is his personal choice and hasn’t been forced on him. The economy in Flagstaff depends in part on the skiing industry and many jobs result during a busy season. It has been dry for the last few years and the season has been shortened. Guess what skiiers, there are other places to go in Arizona that doesn’t disturb sacred grounds and doesn’t take away from traditions of a proud people.
Through out history, we give and then we take away as a government. I remember an article about dinosaur bones found in the Badlands and the excavators trod on that land too and wouldn’t let the Indians lay claim to it because the bones were after all, in the ground and not on the land.
I think Snow Bowl is gorgeous but I also think that the peaks belong to the Indian people and is sacred to them. Don’t like it, then it shouldn’t have been left to them in the first place. The government should have raped them of that land too...years and tears ago. Now, our present government has an opportunity to correct the past and wipe the tears away in this specific area. Will it step up to the plate?
Speak out!
Posted by kimberlyausten on Jun 1, 2007 at 11:59 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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