Preservationists Take Fight to Gods : Fryman Canyon: The ground is blessed in an Indian prayer ceremony to prevent 26 luxury residences from being built on the Studio City site.

Worried that secular forces will fail them, a group of homeowners and environmentalists who want to preserve Fryman Canyon appealed Saturday to ancient Indian gods.

Charlie Cooke, a construction worker who said he is the hereditary chief of the southern Chumash tribe, called on “Mother Earth” and “Father Sky” to prevent 26 luxury residences from being built in the Studio City canyon.

“Get the people who don’t want to protect the canyon out of office,” Cooke beseeched the gods before a crowd of about 90 people at the Mulholland Drive overlook above the heavily wooded, steep canyon.

Cooke then used an owl feather to wave burning sage over 10 children, many of whom held their noses and coughed at the pungent smoke.

“Bless this ground and think of it as a holy area,” he said.

The midmorning prayer ceremony was the latest tactic by homeowners, whose efforts to thwart developer Fred Sahadi’s plans have included a blockade of bulldozers and an unsuccessful attempt to win cultural landmark status for the canyon.

Foes of the housing tract said Saturday’s ceremony was intended to rally support before the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy meets Monday to decide whether to buy the canyon for parkland.

Under a plan proposed by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and City Councilman Michael Woo, who represents the area, a coalition made up of state, city and private interests would buy the canyon from Sahadi for $10.9 million to keep it from being developed.

But the conservancy, a state parklands agency, has balked at the price, saying the property is worth $8.75 million, or $2.15 million less than Sahadi’s asking price of $10.9 million.

Both Sahadi and the conservancy have filed lawsuits over the matter, and conservancy officials will consider in closed session Monday a settlement that could pave the way for the canyon’s preservation, said Joseph T. Edmiston, the agency’s executive director.

Judy Marx, a marriage therapist and a foe of the housing tract, said the idea of invoking Indian gods before Monday’s meeting occurred to organizers after a life-size kachina doll--a wooden icon--mysteriously appeared near a hiking trail in the canyon. Occasionally, contributions to buy the canyon appear in an old hubcap near the turquoise-colored doll, Marx said.

“There’s more going on here than we know about--it’s the hand of the gods,” Marx said.

Attorney Benjamin M. Reznik, who represents Sahadi, said in a telephone interview that the ceremony was a ploy to attract media attention. “I really do suspect their whole motivation. . .,” Reznik said.

Many of those who attended the ceremony drove up in sleek luxury sedans, but wore Native American garb--or facsimiles.

During the hourlong gathering, Cooke offered to “purify” the adults with the same sage smoke that caused the children to cough. “If you want to be changed, come on up,” Marx shouted. Dozens of people swarmed Cooke and twirled in the sage smoke in an apparent attempt at instant metamorphosis.

Stepping up to the microphone, Dr. David Gans, an internist who lives nearby, read a poem he wrote about the canyon that included this stanza:

Fryman Canyon’s treated like a child

Down homeless in the city

Just something to be defiled

For profit and for pity