Rights and Rites Clash in Mine Plan

Most everyone agrees there is something of enormous importance in this rock-strewn and wind-swept portion of the eastern Imperial Valley bounded by Picacho Peak, Pilots Knob and Muggins Peak.

A Canadian firm believes there is gold buried deep beneath the desert, and it wants permission to create a 1,571-acre open pit mine where 130,000 tons of rock a day would be gouged, blasted and drilled from the earth.

But the Quechan Indian Nation, whose history in the region dates back hundreds of years, believes that something even more valuable than gold lurks here: the religious essence and life force of the tribe. The tribe views the mining proposal as a sacrilege.

“Just because our people did not build a giant cathedral like Europeans doesn’t mean the land isn’t just as important to our religion,” said tribe member Lorey Cachora. “If you destroy the land, you destroy what we believe in, who we are.”

This clash between commerce and religion, metallurgy and spirituality has flummoxed the federal Bureau of Land Management, which controls the area.

The dispute marks the first significant test of an executive order issued by President Clinton two years ago requiring federal agencies that oversee the government’s vast land holdings to show greater sensitivity to sites held sacred by Native Americans. The bureau has asked for legal guidance from the Department of the Interior, of which it is a part.

“What is decided for the Quechans and Imperial Valley could set precedent for how Native American requests are handled throughout the West and beyond,” said Russ Kaldenberg, a bureau archeologist and Native American issues coordinator for California. “What we have here is a clash of two cultures: one modern, one ancient.”

The bureau has considerable experience in sorting out the competing interests of the mining industry and the environmental movement. The latter commonly views open pit mining as an ecological abomination.

The Mining Act of 1872, however, tilts heavily toward granting permission for mining on public property if the excavating companies promise to avoid “undue” destruction.

The proposal by Glamis Imperial Corp.--a Nevada corporation whose corporate parent is Glamis Gold Ltd. British Columbia--also has the power of precedence on its side.

The company’s plan to coax the gold out by bathing mounds of ore in sodium cyanide involves “heap leaching” technology, which is standard in the industry and is considered safe by the Bureau of Land Management. Glamis Imperial, formerly Chemgold, uses the method at its Picacho mine to the bureau’s satisfaction.

The agency has detailed regulations on how to deal with concerns kicked up by mining proposals about air pollution, water pollution, light pollution, noise control, dust control, endangered and/or threatened species, ground water depletion, impacts on wilderness areas, effects on military training grounds, and a great deal more.

For structures or artifacts of historic or archeological significance, the bureau has regulations to determine what must be saved, what can be destroyed and how much “mitigation” must be done elsewhere as compensation.

But the Quechans, whose reservation adjoins the bureau’s land, concede that there are no churches, altars or other buildings to attest to their belief that this is a place where they can contact their gods and receive divine inspiration.

Executive Order No. 13007, by Clinton, mandates that agencies dealing with federal land “avoid adversely affecting the physical integrity of . . . sacred sites.” But the order also says that a sacred site should be a “specific, discrete, narrowly delineated location.”

The land eyed by Glamis Imperial is 45 miles northeast of El Centro and 20 miles northwest of Yuma, Ariz. Native American history teaches that the Creator and two spiritual leaders passed through the region a millennium ago leading several Colorado River tribes on a trek into the interior of what is now Mexico.

Picacho Peak, Pilots Knob and Muggins Peak are each said to be home to the spirit of one of those beings--with a constant flow of energy intermingling in the flatlands bounded by the three points. The area is mentioned repeatedly in Quechan songs.

One of the questions to be pondered by the Interior Department lawyers is whether the seemingly sizable area fits the executive order’s definition of a sacred site. “We need guidance,” said Tom Zale, a Bureau of Land Management supervisor in the El Centro office.

Peter Nabokov, an associate professor in the American Indian studies program at UCLA who is writing a book on “sacred geography,” said the lower Colorado River region is particularly rich in such holy sites.

“We know that Indian history is anchored to a sense of place, what the French call ‘sites of memory,’ ” he said. “When Indians like the Quechans make these claims, these are not spurious claims to rattle the chains of the white man. They’re speaking from the heart, from a traditional imperative.”

Glamis Imperial has agreed to buy more than 1,600 acres elsewhere in the desert for the bureau, to compensate for any damage done on the site to desert tortoise habitat. The company has also promised to erect three “wildlife guzzlers,” sunken tanks that serve as moisture collectors for deer and other animals.

In an effort to placate the Quechans, the company offered to move one of the ore heaps away from an area called the Trail of Dreams. And it said it would provide endowment money and a truck for three years so a tribe member could engage in cultural education projects full time.

Still, negotiations between Glamis Imperial and the Quechan leadership were unavailing.

“You can mitigate for the loss of natural resources,” Cachora said. “But you can’t mitigate the loss of religious resources. This land is our entry to the other world. If it is gone, so are we.”

Steve Baumann, general manager of the project, is frustrated at what he sees as an absolutist position taken by the Quechans.

“It makes it very difficult to find common ground,” he said. “We believe the project can coexist with the Indians and with nature, but we have to be given a chance.”

Like most mining projects, the Glamis Imperial proposal has garnered ideological allies and enemies from far outside the area.

The project is backed by People for the West, a Colorado-based organization formed in 1988 in the wake of the spotted owl controversy in the Pacific Northwest. The group’s goal is to protect private property rights--a mining claim even on federal land is considered such a right--and oppose overzealous governmental regulation, particularly on publicly controlled land.

“The company has done everything possible to dot the I’s and cross the Ts,” said Pat Davison, the group’s California director. “This is a good project.”

Although the mineral’s prices have dipped considerably in the last year, gold mining worldwide has seen boom times for the past decade with increasing demand in both the jewelry and industrial (window coatings, computers, electronics and aerospace parts) markets.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), after listening to the Quechans, last month asked the bureau to reject the proposal as “nonessential” and a “grave threat to the religion and culture” of the tribe.

The Glamis Imperial project comes amid great change and uncertainty in the Imperial Valley gold fields.

The American Girl mine has closed. The Mesquite mine is being converted into a regional garbage dump, and the Picacho mine is set to end digging soon. All three are or were on federal land.

At a bureau hearing in the Imperial Valley hamlet of Holtville, mine supporters talked of the economic boost offered by the Glamis Imperial project (estimated annual property taxes of $500,000 and local purchases of $2 million) for a county that is among the state’s poorest.

At a similar hearing in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa, the proposed mine came under withering attack from the Desert Protective Council and the American Indian Science & Engineering Society.

“Crisis at Indian Pass,” a poem by Stacy Vellas, a teacher and amateur archeologist who goes by the pen name Anastasia, was read into the official record--to be considered by the bureau in making its decision.

Gold is the name

And gold is the game.

Are my people’s ‘vision quests’ doomed?

Will financial gain

Lead us to shame

As it gives way to the mining boom?

Some tribe members visit the area to walk among the basalt fragments, the ironwood trees and the cat’s-claw bushes. In the summer heat, mirages--which the Quechan believe are divinely inspired--shimmer in the distance.

“This is a place where I can listen to my maker,” said tribe member Pauline Owl.

The tribe is involved in two other attempts to prevent modernity from encroaching on land considered sacred by Native Americans.

The Quechans have petitioned an Arizona water district to curtail quarry operations in Antelope Hill and beseeched the U.S. Air Force to avoid certain areas in the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range near Gila Bend.

A complicating factor in the mining dispute is that fewer Quechans are observing the traditional religious customs or visiting the religious grounds, as the tribe--which runs a casino and has large agricultural interests--becomes more assimilated.

Several key sections of the proposed mining area that the Quechans say are particularly sacred have been unused and unvisited for decades, according to the tribe. Baumann and other mine supporters suggest that that fact undercuts the Quechan argument about the necessity to keep the area pristine.

Owl and Cachora, both members of the tribe’s cultural preservation committee, see it differently. They say the area’s importance remains undiminished and must be preserved for what they hope will be a renaissance of spirituality among younger tribe members.

“We are part of the Earth,” Cachora said. “Our job is to protect her.”