Post by blackcrowheart on Jun 12, 2006 10:51:43 GMT -5
Trouble With Tribes
In the battle between Native Americans and a power
plant project, the warpath leads to San Jose
By Sercan Ersoy
www.metroactive.com/metro/06.07.06/calpine-0623.html
<http://www.metroactive.com/metro/06.07.06/calpine-0623.html>
AMERICAN history classes don't spend much time on the
Indian Wars. Even university level courses generally
skip over the more-than-a-century-long series of
battles between the U.S. government and every tribe
from Georgia to the West Coast. But while that
conflict might have officially ended in the 1890s, the
Indian Nations are still skirmishing with the federal
government—and now a Silicon Valley energy
company—over the land they still control.
The conflict spilled over into San Jose earlier this
year when Native American activists protested at the
headquarters of locally based energy provider Calpine
over two geothermal power plants the company wants to
build in the Medicine Lake Highlands in Siskiyou
County, near the California-Oregon border.
Calpine, with the support of the federal Bureau of
Land Management, is proposing power plants the company
says would create enough energy to supply 50,000
people. But Native Americans are angry because
Medicine Lake has been considered a sacred place for
many of the area's tribes for thousands of years—they
compare the prospect of industrializing the area to
the suggestion that Vatican Square be opened for
drilling—and they're suing to block the project.
Of the handful of tribes in the area, the Pit River
Nation has been the most vocal in its opposition.
"It's part of our religion that it's a sacred place to
go and bathe and drink the water," Pit River citizen
Radly Davis says. According to Davis, the lake itself
has as much significance to them as well known
religious sites like Jerusalem have to Jews,
Christians and Muslims.
"When the world was still moist," he says, "the
creator stopped there and rested and left part of his
spirit there." That's how important it is.
While all three of the big Western religions follow
some variation of Genesis—where God spends a week
creating the world and then decides to take a quick
rest when he's done—the tribes' ancient religion goes
further and pinpoints an actual spot where they
believe the creator went to relax. It's a place, they
believe, where young men can absorb some of the
creator's spirit by swimming in the lake and drinking
its water.
Neither the BLM (which manages the federal land the
tribes call home) nor Calpine dispute the tribes'
religious claims.
"I can't argue with the tribes," says BLM spokesman
Sean Hagerty. "They believe those are sacred to them
and I can't argue with that."
Hagerty thinks the power-plant project is far less
intrusive than the tribes believe it will be.
"I think they're looking at the projects as something
that's not natural to the area," he says, "but I do
believe that the industrial site is not what the
opposition is picturing. I think [they] just don't
want to see any changes up there ... but it won't be
the nightmare they claim it to be."
Hagerty is indeed correct—the tribes don't want any
development on their land. They believe that to hold
on to the Lake's sacred value, the surrounding area
has to be pristine. The BLM and Calpine insist that
with the minimal air and water pollution their
research indicates the plant would cause, the tribes
could still use Medicine Lake just as they had before.
"The best way to quantify geothermal [is] to look at
what the existing emissions are from coal," said
Calpine's PR director Kent Robertson. According to
Robertson, the project doesn't violate any federal or
state environmental laws and Calpine has taken
thousands of steps to mitigate the effects of each
pollution-causing aspect.
"You have equipment at this site that prevents the
emissions from going into the atmosphere," he says.
"To say that the projects have gone through an
exhaustive environmental review is something of an
understatement."
But according to Deborah Sivas, Stanford Law School
professor and lead attorney on behalf of the tribes,
simply minimizing pollution rates can't undo the
impact of the power plants.
"The big concern of the Pit River Tribe is that this
project would industrialize the area," she says. "The
lawsuit is focused on the fundamental change the
project would cause."
Battle Lines
The philosophical chasm between the two sides of this
issue has become more and more pronounced since the
1980s, when the U.S. Geological Survey discovered
large amounts of geothermal energy underneath the
volcanic caldera where the highlands sit, and granted
renewable 10-year leases to Calpine and CalEnergy
(which Calpine later bought) to industrialize the
area.
A potential power plant at Medicine Lake first became
an issue in 2001, after the Bush administration
appointed new heads to both the bureau and the
Department of the Interior, who had their own ideas
for how federal lands should be managed. Ironically,
under President Clinton, the BLM along with the U.S.
Forest Service recommended in 2000: "After careful
consideration of all perspectives and factors,
balancing the need for renewable energy and the need
to protect the visual and cultural values associated
with the unique and highly significant historical
properties in the Medicine Lake Caldera, we have
concluded that the interests of the public would best
be served by selecting the no action alternative."
The tribes' spiritual arguments won out then, but
since the 2001 reversal, the bureau and Calpine have
left the courts and bureaucrats to define what kind of
environment the tribes need to practice their
religion.
"Officials have determined that the tribes ... can
continue their activities unimpeded," Robertson says.
"We're in no position to pass judgment. It's the
agencies and the courts that do that."
As a result, the tribes have been forced to shift from
religious to more pragmatic legal arguments, hoping to
prove that some part of the project will destroy the
area.
"There are not a lot of good legal handles making
those kinds of [spiritual] claims," Sivas says, "so
we've been focusing more on the environmental claims."
But with the wide acceptance of geothermal power as
clean and environmentally sound it has been an uphill
battle. Another issue is that the BLM issued the
initial leases without doing what's known as
government-to-government consultations with the tribes
or an environmental impact statement (both of which
are mandatory) until after the deals had gone through.
"They put the cart before the horse, so to speak,"
Sivas says.
But so far this hasn't panned out either—the bureau
insists that once it issued the leases, it couldn't
then go back and unissue them.
Despite all this Sivas doesn't seem discouraged and
intends to fight the project in court as far as it
will go. But other advocates of native rights, like
Bradly Angel, executive director for San
Francisco-based Green Action, have continued to focus
on what they call "environmental racism."
"There are civil rights laws we believe are being
violated," he said, "sacred rights protections that
are not being upheld."
Angel is focusing on more direct opposition, with
Green Action working with tribal citizens to organize
massive protests against the project, like the one in
front of the Calpine building in San Jose back in
January.
"Anything within the realm of nonviolent resistance is
being considered," Angel says. "They need to drop this
project or they will be committing a grave error and
be facing ever-increasing protest."
With Calpine currently in bankruptcy, it may be some
time before anything gets resolved in this latest
conflict over Native American land. (According to
Sivas, corporations in bankruptcy proceedings are
immune from civil litigation unless a judge gives the
OK.) But for the time being, both sides are convinced
their side will prevail.
In the battle between Native Americans and a power
plant project, the warpath leads to San Jose
By Sercan Ersoy
www.metroactive.com/metro/06.07.06/calpine-0623.html
<http://www.metroactive.com/metro/06.07.06/calpine-0623.html>
AMERICAN history classes don't spend much time on the
Indian Wars. Even university level courses generally
skip over the more-than-a-century-long series of
battles between the U.S. government and every tribe
from Georgia to the West Coast. But while that
conflict might have officially ended in the 1890s, the
Indian Nations are still skirmishing with the federal
government—and now a Silicon Valley energy
company—over the land they still control.
The conflict spilled over into San Jose earlier this
year when Native American activists protested at the
headquarters of locally based energy provider Calpine
over two geothermal power plants the company wants to
build in the Medicine Lake Highlands in Siskiyou
County, near the California-Oregon border.
Calpine, with the support of the federal Bureau of
Land Management, is proposing power plants the company
says would create enough energy to supply 50,000
people. But Native Americans are angry because
Medicine Lake has been considered a sacred place for
many of the area's tribes for thousands of years—they
compare the prospect of industrializing the area to
the suggestion that Vatican Square be opened for
drilling—and they're suing to block the project.
Of the handful of tribes in the area, the Pit River
Nation has been the most vocal in its opposition.
"It's part of our religion that it's a sacred place to
go and bathe and drink the water," Pit River citizen
Radly Davis says. According to Davis, the lake itself
has as much significance to them as well known
religious sites like Jerusalem have to Jews,
Christians and Muslims.
"When the world was still moist," he says, "the
creator stopped there and rested and left part of his
spirit there." That's how important it is.
While all three of the big Western religions follow
some variation of Genesis—where God spends a week
creating the world and then decides to take a quick
rest when he's done—the tribes' ancient religion goes
further and pinpoints an actual spot where they
believe the creator went to relax. It's a place, they
believe, where young men can absorb some of the
creator's spirit by swimming in the lake and drinking
its water.
Neither the BLM (which manages the federal land the
tribes call home) nor Calpine dispute the tribes'
religious claims.
"I can't argue with the tribes," says BLM spokesman
Sean Hagerty. "They believe those are sacred to them
and I can't argue with that."
Hagerty thinks the power-plant project is far less
intrusive than the tribes believe it will be.
"I think they're looking at the projects as something
that's not natural to the area," he says, "but I do
believe that the industrial site is not what the
opposition is picturing. I think [they] just don't
want to see any changes up there ... but it won't be
the nightmare they claim it to be."
Hagerty is indeed correct—the tribes don't want any
development on their land. They believe that to hold
on to the Lake's sacred value, the surrounding area
has to be pristine. The BLM and Calpine insist that
with the minimal air and water pollution their
research indicates the plant would cause, the tribes
could still use Medicine Lake just as they had before.
"The best way to quantify geothermal [is] to look at
what the existing emissions are from coal," said
Calpine's PR director Kent Robertson. According to
Robertson, the project doesn't violate any federal or
state environmental laws and Calpine has taken
thousands of steps to mitigate the effects of each
pollution-causing aspect.
"You have equipment at this site that prevents the
emissions from going into the atmosphere," he says.
"To say that the projects have gone through an
exhaustive environmental review is something of an
understatement."
But according to Deborah Sivas, Stanford Law School
professor and lead attorney on behalf of the tribes,
simply minimizing pollution rates can't undo the
impact of the power plants.
"The big concern of the Pit River Tribe is that this
project would industrialize the area," she says. "The
lawsuit is focused on the fundamental change the
project would cause."
Battle Lines
The philosophical chasm between the two sides of this
issue has become more and more pronounced since the
1980s, when the U.S. Geological Survey discovered
large amounts of geothermal energy underneath the
volcanic caldera where the highlands sit, and granted
renewable 10-year leases to Calpine and CalEnergy
(which Calpine later bought) to industrialize the
area.
A potential power plant at Medicine Lake first became
an issue in 2001, after the Bush administration
appointed new heads to both the bureau and the
Department of the Interior, who had their own ideas
for how federal lands should be managed. Ironically,
under President Clinton, the BLM along with the U.S.
Forest Service recommended in 2000: "After careful
consideration of all perspectives and factors,
balancing the need for renewable energy and the need
to protect the visual and cultural values associated
with the unique and highly significant historical
properties in the Medicine Lake Caldera, we have
concluded that the interests of the public would best
be served by selecting the no action alternative."
The tribes' spiritual arguments won out then, but
since the 2001 reversal, the bureau and Calpine have
left the courts and bureaucrats to define what kind of
environment the tribes need to practice their
religion.
"Officials have determined that the tribes ... can
continue their activities unimpeded," Robertson says.
"We're in no position to pass judgment. It's the
agencies and the courts that do that."
As a result, the tribes have been forced to shift from
religious to more pragmatic legal arguments, hoping to
prove that some part of the project will destroy the
area.
"There are not a lot of good legal handles making
those kinds of [spiritual] claims," Sivas says, "so
we've been focusing more on the environmental claims."
But with the wide acceptance of geothermal power as
clean and environmentally sound it has been an uphill
battle. Another issue is that the BLM issued the
initial leases without doing what's known as
government-to-government consultations with the tribes
or an environmental impact statement (both of which
are mandatory) until after the deals had gone through.
"They put the cart before the horse, so to speak,"
Sivas says.
But so far this hasn't panned out either—the bureau
insists that once it issued the leases, it couldn't
then go back and unissue them.
Despite all this Sivas doesn't seem discouraged and
intends to fight the project in court as far as it
will go. But other advocates of native rights, like
Bradly Angel, executive director for San
Francisco-based Green Action, have continued to focus
on what they call "environmental racism."
"There are civil rights laws we believe are being
violated," he said, "sacred rights protections that
are not being upheld."
Angel is focusing on more direct opposition, with
Green Action working with tribal citizens to organize
massive protests against the project, like the one in
front of the Calpine building in San Jose back in
January.
"Anything within the realm of nonviolent resistance is
being considered," Angel says. "They need to drop this
project or they will be committing a grave error and
be facing ever-increasing protest."
With Calpine currently in bankruptcy, it may be some
time before anything gets resolved in this latest
conflict over Native American land. (According to
Sivas, corporations in bankruptcy proceedings are
immune from civil litigation unless a judge gives the
OK.) But for the time being, both sides are convinced
their side will prevail.