We started the day this morning at a very interesting breakfast meeting with Valencia Herder, of North Leupp Family Farms.  Despite being both very busy and sick, Valencia sat with us for a couple of hours to share with us information about her and her community's efforts to return to a traditional agricultural and pastoralist model of subsistence.  She herself grew up with pastoralist parents, but is highly in demand now as a leader and board member of several different organizations in Flagstaff (which most of the women we've met with have referred to as a 'border town').  She was very interested to learn more about WEA's Women and Water Program, and we identified the exciting possibility that we could develop a form of the water catchment and collection trainings that WEA recently co-facilitated in Africa.  Valencia was happy to see our loom, since she comes from a matrilineal tradition of weavers.  Our team was also delighted to hear about Valencia's efforts towards creative solutions to the problem of unsustainable energy use and community dispersement.    

We were then blessed with the opportunity to sit with Jeneda Benally, of the Save the Peaks Coalition.  Jeneda, who is a punk rocker, a healer, and an activist (although she told us that she has never defined herself as an activist, but does this work simply because she cares), is a passionate advocate for the survival and flourishing of her people -- a survival which is being threatened by the existence and development of a ski resort on San Francisco Peaks, which are sacred to the Navajo and to 13 other tribes, and culturally significant to 22 tribes.  I'm drawing extensively from the very useful Save the Peaks Coalition website (www.savethepeaks.org) to tell this story, so that you can understand the extent of the desecration that is taking place, but throughout I will weave Jeneda's deeply moving rendering of the story from her perspective.

The San Francisco Peaks, or Nuva'tukiyaovi in Navajo language, is a feminine mountain, the westernmost mountain among the four sacred mountains that define the boundaries of the Navajo's traditional homeland.  Located in the Coconino National Forest, the Peaks have long been the source of land-use conflicts. Starting in the late 1800s, the area was extensively logged and grazed. At the same time, the area’s dramatic beauty attracted tourists and the pull for recreational use has not ceased. The area is under the domain of the U.S. Forest Service, which has a mandate to allow multiple uses on its lands. Consequently, the Forest Service allowed the construction of a ski lodge and access road on its northern slopes in the 1930s. Full-scale development—with shops, restaurants and lodges—was first proposed in 1969, but the opposition of several tribes and community groups prevented this initial project.

However, in 1979, the Forest Service approved a new lodge, a paved road and expanded parking, four new lifts and fifty acres of trails to be added to the existing ski area, which would grow to 777 acres.  Despite Hopi and Navajo protests, the Forest Service regional supervisor in 1980 approved the paving of an access road into the Peaks. The Hopi and Navajo filed separate lawsuits to stop the development, while the Forest Service argued that religious rights would be unimpeded, and even facilitated, by the ski lifts. Three years later (the suits having been consolidated into one case, Wilson v. Block), the Hopi and Navajo were unable to convince the District of Columbia Circuit Court that the Peaks were "indispensable" to their religions, and the suit was denied. According to the judge, permitting the Ski Bowl expansion may have "offended" their beliefs, but the Forest Service had faithfully met all the provisions of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978.

The present-day Arizona Snow Bowl ski area hosts 30,000 to 180,000 visitors per year. Visitor numbers fluctuate according to the snowfall; hence the resort is seeking to manufacture extra snow using wastewater from the city of Flagstaff. Once again, area tribes and community members are working together to fight this proposal. Because the natural melting snow goes into an aquifer within the mountain which is then piped to provide water for Flagstaff, they fear the waste water in the manufactured snow will pollute the pure mountain water.  Save the Peaks Coalition sued under NEPA and RFRA; they lost in the district court, won at the Ninth Circuit, and then lost at a rare en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit (with a beautifully-crafted dissent by our own Willy Fletcher!).  They are now considering whether to request certiorari to the Supreme Court; additionally, their NEPA claims were thrown out on procedural grounds, so they are considering refiling a NEPA suit as well as a state suit against the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. 

The expansion plan at Snowbowl includes: clear-cutting 74 acres of rare alpine ecosystem & creating a 14.8 mile long pipeline up the San Francisco Peaks to a 10 million gallon storage pond to  make fake snow out of wastewater.  This wastewater has been proven to contain harmful contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, hormones and cancer causing agents.

In a study of Flagstaff's "reclaimed" water known as the “Endocrine Disrupter Screening Project”* completed by NAU and the USGS, besides the obvious bacteria and nitrates, they also found the following:

Human and veterinary antibiotics, antihistamines, caffeine, codeine, oral contraceptives and other hormones, steroids, anti-seizure medication, solvents, disinfectants, flame retardants, moth and mosquito repellants, wood preservative, antifreeze and de-icer ingredients, pesticides, and other cancer causing agents such as Atrizine (the list goes on). Dr. Propper suggested that she “would be very concerned if anyone were to drink the reclaimed water”.

And even beyond all of the scientific, health, and even economic reasons (northern Arizona is not a renowned ski destination, and the Snowbowl has been shown to have a negligible effect on the area's economy) that artificial snowmaking is a bad idea, perhaps the most important concern is the devastation that this project would wreak upon Native cultural and spiritual life.  The Native people in the area protest that this proposal will imperil their religious freedom, and therefore their very cultural survival. As the chairman of the Hopi tribe warned, “If the ski resort remains or is expanded, our people will not accept the view that this is the sacred home of the Kachinas. The basis of our existence will become a mere fairy tale.” 

Jeneda shared with us that it is the belief of the Hopis that the Kachinas, who are the holy people, live in the Peaks and are responsible for generating snow.  If artificial snow was to be added to the mountain, the Kachinas would find themselves to be no longer useful, and would retreat into the mountain.  She also explained that Navajo medicine people carry medicine bundles containing earth from each of the four sacred mountains; if this earth were to be contaminated, the medicine bundles -- central to the spiritual well-being of the Navajo -- would be rendered unusable.

Advocates for the Snowbowl dismiss these concerns; in fact, the 9th Circuit en banc panel determined that the religion of the Navajo people is "subjective spirituality" -- as if they could imbue any mountain with spiritual significance -- and therefore not subject to protection.  Tears came to Jeneda's eyes as she relayed to us the humiliation of having to explain Navajo spiritual practice (traditionally held very close and private by the medicine people) in open court, in order to advocate for its protection. 

She and her colleague Rachel also spoke eloquently against the argument that since the Snowbowl is "just 1% of the Peaks," it shouldn't really matter.  They asked what would happen if they went around and hosed wastewater onto the altar of the Catholic church, or ripped out 285 pages of the King James bible, or made a wave machine at the Wailing Wall -- all of which could be construed as one percent or less of the spiritually central places and artifacts of major Western religions. 

This issue is an intensely moving one, and is also a 'test case' for the federal government's treatment of sacred sites all throughout Native American lands.  If the Coalition can gain protection for this site based on the government's recognition of the legitimacy of their belief system, that sets a powerful precedent for all future resource conflicts which implicate sacred sites.  If, however, the federal courts continue to dismiss Navajo spirituality as "subjective," comparing it -- as they did -- to Burning Man, this could effect the denial of religious freedom for many of the original peoples of this land.  It is, therefore, vitally important that all of us express our support for the sanctity of the Peaks.  Please take a look at the "Take Action" of the Save the Peaks website, and set aside a few minutes to write your elected representative about your support for this issue. 

Our time with Jeneda was immensely moving, and it was an honor to sit with her, her beautiful baby daughter, and her colleague, to connect with the reality of the worldview clash -- and corresponding destruction -- that is taking place in our own country. 

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