“They Are Coming Like A Storm”
Dedication Ceremony & Protest Held Side by Side on June 17 at Blythe Solar Millenium Site
By RUTH NOLAN
Copyright June 29, 2011 by Ruth Nolan
On Friday, June 17, a private groundbreaking ceremony was held at the Blythe Solar Millenium site in eastern Riverside County and attended by elected local, state, and federal government officials, including California Governor Jerry Brown, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey, as well as German board members of the German-based Solar Millenium company. “We (the state of California) are going to be the world leader for solar energy,” said Brown at the ceremony.
However, the ceremony also attracted protestors from Native Americans and other citizens, who strongly oppose the project based on concerns over the destruction of Native American sacred sites. Members of La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle, the Chemehuevi and Quechan Indian tribes, and other concern citizens who attended the June 17 protest object to the destruction of the area’s estimated 300 geoglyphs, trails, and other Native American sacred and archaeological sites. A
100-foot wide road has already been bladed through the area by construction workers.
“They’ve already destroyed geoglyphs of the sun,” said Patricia Figueroa of La Cuna de Aztlan. “We’re desperate. All geoglyphs are tied to the creation story.”
According to members of La Cuna de Aztlan, former BLM archaeologist Boma Johnson, and members of the area’s Native American tribes, including Chemehuevi, Navajo, and Quechan, there are at least 300 geoglyphs ,as well as parts of the Xam Kwatchan and Cocopah-Maricopa Trails, within and adjacent to the boundaries of the Blythe Solar Millenium site. These geoglyphs hold spiritual/religious meaning that are crucial to the spiritual/religious beliefs and practices to members of all of the Colorado River Indian tribes, including one geoglyph of the anthropomorphic figure Kokopilli; a 16-level altar to the underworld; circles and shapes and swirls that form a spiritual/religious connection between humans, the earth, and the cosmos; a thunderbird; a dragonfly; three whales; an octopus, and more.
The Solar Trust of America Renewable Energy Station is the most expansive solar project to be approved on federal land, spanning 7,000 acres eight miles west of Blythe, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and is expected to be the largest solar facility in the world.
Although it is currently under investigation by the German government for embezzlement and financial misconduct of its former CEO - who received $12.5 after working for only 74 days -, the Solar Millenium company is still on track to receive over 2.1 billion dollars in U.S. loans and an 18 million dollar grant from the Federal government, funded largely by U.S. taxpayer money to complete the Blythe project. The company has also secured taxpayer-backed loans from the Department of Energy, though the total amount was not disclosed.
La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle filed complaints on December 28, 2010, in United States District Court, Southern District of California, challenging the Bureau of Land Management permitting processes related to six large solar facilities planned for the Mohave, Sonoran and Colorado deserts of Southern California. The group was joined by CARE, Californians for Renewable Energy, and 6 individual Native American plaintiffs. Litigation is ongoing.
Citizens and members of the areas Native American tribes have asked the government to focus renewable energy efforts on rooftop solar, instead of destructive projects such as Blythe and in other areas of pristine California desert, which is one of the last remaining, largely ecologically and archaeologically-intact areas of the United States.
According to Philip Smith, who is a member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, “Our church, the church of the Chemehuevi and Mojave and other Colorado River Indian tribes, is on the rocks and on the land and it is on the trails such as the Xam Kwatchan Trail that passes in the area near the geoglyphs. These sacred sites are where we pray and hold religious ceremonies. You cannot replace a sacred site once you destroy it. What will I tell my children and grand-children? That they have no history, that they have no religion, that they can’t practice their religion?
Another protestor, Reginald Wally Antone, a Quechan Indian who lives in Yuma, also voiced his concerns.“My religion, my spiritual life and practices, have to take place at the sacred sites. it can’t happen somewhere else. The Blythe geoglyph site is one of these places, and the Kokopilli geoglyph, especially the eye of the Kokopelli geoglyph, is sacred to the Quechan Indians, according to our Quechan elders. If they destroy that, I can’t go there to pray.”
Salazar maintains that the Obama Administration considered Indian concerns a top priority. We have to make decisions to move forward in a way (that is) respectful of native concerns,” he said.
However, La Cuna de Aztlan, which has a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the BLM and several leaders of the region’s Indian tribes, asserts that their concerns have been consistently ignored by the government in all stages of the Blythe solar project planning, including the Department of Energy/BLM sponsored PEIS meetings, held this past February in Indian Wells, which attracted 100 community members, most of who strongly objected to large solar development projects in the California desert.
Ron Van Fleet, Mojave Indian Tribal Elder and grandson of the last traditional Mojave Chief, who also attended the PEIS meeting in Indian Wells last February, has voiced his concerns over the lack of government respect for Native American in the renewable energy development process. The Mojave Indians, along with the Chemehuevi Indians, consider themselves caretakers of the entire California desert region, with ancestral history, usage, and religious practices dating back for centuries.
“In the last five years, they have approached our tribe, with all these big solar and wind projects, and they haven’t told us specifically what they are going to do. Our tribal leaders have written letters and gone to the public meetings to voice our concerns about these projects, and they ignore us and go ahead and do what they want anyway,” he says. “They’re coming like a storm. We aren’t opposed to solar energy. But we strongly object to these huge renewable energy projects that are going to destroy our sacred desert lands.”
