A Clash of Cultures and Property Values : Paso Robles: Indian activists, developer square off over parking lot that threatens a burial ground.

To Pilulaw Khus, a Chumash Indian spiritual leader, the weed-covered knoll near Niblick Road is a sacred place. She believes that buried in the mound are the remains of her ancestors, who lived here along the Salinas River for countless generations.

But to Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retail chain, the knoll is an annoyance. Left alone, the little hill would obscure motorists’ view of a planned Wal-Mart store and shopping mall.

And so the mall’s developer proposes to bulldoze the mound--the site of an American Indian village and cemetery believed to be as old as the Egyptian pharoahs--and put up a parking lot.

Paso Robles, a sleepy Central California town that has doubled in size in the past dozen years, is the scene of a brewing confrontation between the values of modern-day commerce and the spiritual beliefs of California’s indigenous people.

Members of the Chumash and Salinan Indian nations have organized to preserve the burial ground, which they say is as sacred as a church or synagogue. In the hope of leaving their ancestors’ spirits undisturbed, they have offered the painful compromise of paving over the one-acre knoll and sealing the graves under the mall parking lot.

But this is not acceptable to the developer, James Halferty of Pasadena, who contends that a shopping mall cannot make money unless it is visible from the highway. Wal-Mart and other prospective tenants want the knoll to go, he said.

“What we have, regrettably, is a clash of cultures,” Halferty said in an interview. “We have a culture that inhabited this property hundreds of years ago. Some of them may be buried there. Today, we’d like to use the land for something else.”

The Paso Robles City Council has given its go-ahead. For the Indians, indifference to the knoll’s cultural significance is just the latest attack on the holy places of their religion, which are being eradicated by subdivisions and shopping malls.

“They are destroying our people,” said Khus, a Chumash elder and healer, as she looked out onto the knoll. “What they’re saying is they’re willing to destroy this sacred burial ground for the sake of advertising.”

Khus and three other American Indians have taken their case to court, arguing that the grave site should be preserved under a California constitutional provision safeguarding religious freedom and state environmental laws that protect significant archeological sites. Archeologists--including two hired by the developer--who have examined the knoll concluded that the site is significant and unique. They all recommended that it be preserved.

Halferty’s archeologists also said he tried to pressure them into altering their findings or keeping silent. They now support the Indians’ bid to save the site.

“I had no choice but to disassociate myself from this project,” said archeologist Clay Singer in a court declaration filed on behalf of the Indians. “I felt that in retrospect, I had been completely misled by Mr. Halferty.”

The developer denies that he misled or pressured anyone and insists that he has tried to be sensitive to the Indians’ wishes. “I understand their anguish,” he said. “It’s not an easy issue.”

Indigenous people have occupied the knoll overlooking the Salinas River as far back as 5,000 years ago--most likely drawn by nearby hot springs, archeologists said. They established a village, built houses, made tools, prepared their meals and buried their dead, according to the evidence unearthed.

Most of the inhabitants were probably Chumash Indians, the largest tribe in California, whose territory extended from Malibu to Paso Robles and included the Channel Islands. When Spanish missionaries arrived 200 years ago, there were an estimated 20,000 Chumash; today, there are no full-blooded Chumash.

The Chumash had a thriving and sophisticated culture, made their own currency from beads and had an economy that was subject to inflation. At the Paso Robles site, they ate seafood brought 20 miles from the coast, brought in purple shells for the manufacture of money and used tools made of obsidian from the Owens Valley 160 miles away.

Archeologist Bob Gibson, who first found evidence of the settlement in 1978, said the site is especially significant because it was on the border with two other nations, the Salinans to the north and the Yakuts of the San Joaquin Valley. Most likely, he said, it was a multiethnic village where different languages were spoken and trade flourished.

In preparing for the shopping mall, Halferty’s team dug five test holes and found a skull and part of a finger. Archeologists suspect that there are dozens of bodies buried nearby.

“Even with the meager amount we’ve been able to learn, it is a very important site,” said Gibson, a specialist on the Paso Robles area who has sided with the Indians. “It’s absolutely one of the most senseless cases of destruction I’ve ever run across.”

The knoll is the last known Indian site in Paso Robles and is bigger than all the others combined. One was a village site just across Niblick Road that Halferty covered with a smaller shopping mall in 1990.

The Indians say the burial grounds are central to their religion. Grave sites have been destroyed by missile silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base, a housing subdivision in Pismo Beach, the nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon, university buildings in Santa Barbara and countless plows, houses, roads and grave robbers, they say.

Until recently, laws prohibiting the desecration of graves did not apply to American Indian burial sites. Nationwide, as many as 2 million Indians have been dug from their graves and placed in museums, universities, tourist attractions and private collections.

Traditionally, Indians worship at the graves of their ancestors, believed to be a source of knowledge, wisdom and spirituality. Their religion holds that the dead communicate with the living, providing strength and guidance. Desecration of graves breaks the spiritual link between generations and brings harm to the living, they believe.

“When the burials of our ancestors are disturbed, their spirits cry out to us in pain,” said Khus, who has been called in many times to rebury the dead uncovered by bulldozers. Around Paso Robles, where few Indians live, there is little sympathy for their point of view and even less understanding of their religious beliefs.

“Wake up,” said Harold Glasco, a steel salesman wearing a white cowboy hat. “People gotta live. People gotta have jobs. The dead and gone are already taken care of.”

Many residents believe that their town--halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco--needs the mall to survive. They would like to be able to shop at a big discount store without having to drive an hour to Santa Maria.

“You can’t stand in the way of progress,” said Jackie Moynahan, manager of Dolly’s Donuts. “People have to make concessions everywhere.”

In recent years, downtown Paso Robles has suffered a decline, with shops closing and retail chains pulling out. At the same time, immigrants from Southern California have swelled the population.

“The old-timers are in the minority,” said Paso Robles Mayor Chris Iverson. “Many of the newcomers are most anxious to have the shopping. They want the rural nature and the climate, but at the same time they don’t understand why there’s not a Nordstrom within a couple of miles.”

Some business owners are concerned that a Wal-Mart on the outskirts of town will ruin the downtown business district. But others worry that it would be even worse for Paso Robles if a big shopping mall was built in a nearby town. The Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce polled its members and found that 78% backed Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has publicly left everything in the hands of the developer. The chain, based in Little Rock, Ark., has ignored requests from the Indians to state its position on destruction of the grave site. Company officials declined to be interviewed.

The Indians say a compromise could be worked out that saves the burial grounds and allows construction of the mall if Wal-Mart and other stores accept an elevated parking area that partially blocks views of the mall.

But Halferty insists that the project cannot work unless he shaves 12 feet off the knoll, taking out the entire archeological site.

He says he will spend $100,000--twice what the law requires--to recover bones and artifacts before construction, but archeologists say that would pay for recovery of only about 2% of what is on the site.

Under the developer’s plan, bodies found during construction would be reburied in the same area--and eventually paved over for the mall parking lot. A plaque or monument would mark the spot.

“This has nothing to do with us interfering with their religious beliefs,” Halferty said. “They are trying to interfere with our property rights.”