The courts and the USDA Forest Service have refused to acknowledge the religious beliefs and practices of the First Nations by allowing an expansion of a ski resort on sacred land coupled with the use of reclaimed sewage water for synthetic snow making. President Obama needs to live up to his earlier rhetoric that claimed respect for Native American religion and spirituality and stop this desecration.

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Is the ghost of former President Andrew Jackson haunting the streets of Flagstaff, Arizona and the Whitehouse in Washington, D. C.?

Arizona already has become infamous for its state legalization of racial profiling, commissioning police to act as posses to enforce anti-Mexican prejudices. Now Arizona's Flagstaff, the gateway to the Grand Canyon, will extend the dominant culture's supremacism by complicity in the conversion of First Nations' sacred lands to a playground for the rich and powerful of Phoenix.

The Obama administration wisely has challenged the noxious Arizona law that allows the police to question the immigration status of individuals during everyday police encounters. But President Obama's Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, has missed an opportunity to repudiate Arizona's intolerance of First Nation's religious freedoms.

Arizona's San Francisco Peaks soar high above the Colorado Plateau, providing a volcano-born refuge for plants, critters, and humans in a desert environment beset with the vicissitudes of global warming and climate change.

The San Francisco Peaks are sacred to at least 13 Native American Nations including Dine' (Navajo), Hopi, Zuni, Havasupai, Hualapai, Apache, Tohono O'Odoham and San Juan Southern Paiute. According to Yavapai-Apache Chairman Vincent Randall, the peaks are one of the "sacred places where the earth brushes up against the unseen world." To the Navajo, the Peaks are the "Holy house of our sacred deities whom we pray to and give our offerings." The massif's name speaks of the poetry of other languages: Doko'oo'sliid (Dine') - "Shining On Top" and Nuvatukaovi (Hopi) "The Place of Snow on the Very Top."

In 1930, before Native Americans found a strong voice, the U.S. Forest Service permitted a ski lodge and an access road to be built on Mt Humpheys, one of the sacred Peaks. In 1969, opposition from several tribes and community groups put a halt to a full-on expansion with the usual Disneyland array of restaurants, shops, and lodges.

In 1979, consistent with its perceived mission to convert the natural world into ready cash, the Forest Service approved a new lodge, a paved road, additional parking, four new lifts, and 50 acres of trails. This expanded to 777 acres.

The chairman of the Hopi Tribe warned, "If the ski resort remains or is expanded, our people will not accept the view that this is the sacred home of the kachinas. The basis of our existence will become a mere fairy tale."

With a straight face, the Forest Service went on to claim that the ski lifts would facilitate the practice of Native American religious rights. Essentially the Courts concurred, finding that the Forest Service had faithfully met all the provisions of the existing laws.

Since 2002, the nearby city of Flagstaff has thrown its weight behind Phoenix developer's Eric Borowsky's scheme to get richer quicker by yet again building out the local Arizona SnowBowl ski resort and adding snowmaking capacity. It's a scheme born in hell: a sacrifice of sacred lands and scarce and invaluable high elevation habitat in order to make room for new skiing amenities and ski slopes. Counterfeit snow will be made using reclaimed sewage water that contains an arsenal of industrial chemicals, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceuticals. Snowplay reigns! All bow down!

The First Nations have fiercely opposed this desecration (http://www.savethepeaks.org). Led by the Navajo Nation, the Yavapai Apaches, the Hopi Tribe, and the White Mountain Apaches were joined by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Flagstaff Activist Network in an appeal of the Forest Service decision to allow the expansion of the resort and the use of reclaimed sewage water. Violations were claimed of the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. While the District Court found against the appellants, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in 2007 and found for the First Nations and environmental groups.

Ninth Circuit Judge William Fletcher wrote: "The record in this case establishes the religious importance of the Peaks to the appellant tribes who live around it. From time immemorial, they have relied on the Peaks, and the purity of the Peaks' water, as an integral part of their religious beliefs. The Forest Service and the Snowbowl now propose to put treated sewage effluent on the Peaks. To get some sense of equivalence, it may be useful to imagine the effect on Christian beliefs and practices -- and the imposition that Christians would experience -- if the government were to require that baptisms be carried out with "reclaimed water."

It was a rare victory for the First Nations, but it was to be all too fleeting.

Snowbowl and the U.S. government appealed the decision to the en banc Ninth Circuit Court. In a split decision in 2008, the Court reversed the earlier decision claiming it was too broad an interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and that "the diminishment of spiritual fulfillment serious though it may be is not a 'substantial burden' on the free exercise of religion." The Roberts-Bush Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in 2009.

To its credit, the Obama administration conducted a review of the Forest Service's decision, incurring the unbridled wrath of Arizona's Senators and local Congressional Representative who have responded with delays of administration appointments and other threats.

Early July saw the evaporation of hope that we might see some "Change you can believe in" as Agriculture Secretary Vilsack gave (July 2, 2010) the snowmaking project a thumbs up. In a move to play the role of King Solomon, Vilsack has given the city of Flagstaff and Snowbowl an option to avoid using reclaimed sewage to make snow. Instead, he proposes using Flagstaff drinking water. The cost would amount to an additional $11 million over 20 years (never mind the loss of invaluable groundwater in a desert, in a time of climate change, in a time of expanding population). American taxpayers would foot the bill for this inanity since Mr. Borowski would get federal funding by way of a grant to cover part of the pipeline to Snowbowl. "The plan was that the USDA would issue a grant to the industrial development authority to pay for part of the pipeline. We come out even," Borowsky said.

Ain't it sweet?

On Thursday November 5, 2009, President Barack Obama stood before Native American Tribal Leaders and told them "I get it. I'm on your side.'' He added "I know you've heard this song from Washington before. I know that you may be skeptical that this time will be any different"This is not something we just give lip service to,'' the president continued. "We are going to keep on working with you.''

He told the Crow Nation during his campaign "You will be on my mind every day I am in the White House."

The President's words apparently didn't get to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and the U. S. Forest Service.

Presidents Obama's Native American policy statement before his election read: "Native American sacred places and site-specific ceremonies are under threat from development, pollution, and vandalism. Barack Obama supports legal protections for sacred places and cultural traditions, including Native ancestors' burial grounds and churches."

President Obama can still avert another injustice to our brothers and sisters of the First Nations. Or will his words be remembered like the empty promises of President Andrew Jackson prior to Trail of Tears - "as long as grass grows, as long as water flows?"

Authors Bio:
Paul F. Torrence is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, USA. His career spanned 30 years at the US National Institutes of Health where he was a Section Chief and then 8 years at Northern Arizona University where he was department chair for 3 years. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and edited 4 books in medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, and drug discovery. He now lives in Williams, Oregon where he is an organic farmer also involved in forest and watershed restoration. He organized Congressional lobbying efforts for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1991 and in 1995, on leave from NIH, as an employee of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center. He was instrumental in forming the Shenandoah National Park Coalition in the early 1990's and served as a member of the Maryland Governor's Endangered Species Taskforce. He was a consultant and witness for the plaintiffs in Navajo Nation et al vs. US Forest Service et al in the issue of using reclaimed sewage water to make snow on the sacred San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. He has hiked and backpacked throughout the U.S. and mountaineered on five continents. He now serves on the legislative committee of the Williams, Oregon Grange (#399), and he is a scientific advisor to the German group SIMBIOSIS - Mensch u. Natur e.V. (www.promonte.de). He is also a BOD member of the Wilderness Land Trust (www.wildernesslandtrust.org). Most recently, he taught a course for Southern Oregon University's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute entitled "The Sixth Great Extinction and the Future of Medicine".

Dr. Torrence is a preservationist who believes that the most critical problem of all is human-induced species extinction. A fundamental disrespect of life is the root cause of much of societal failures and human suffering. Learning to co-exist with all species must form the foundation of any ultimately truly functional and successful culture.